A number of current and former public officials took it on the chin this past week. Much of the criticism was justified, but there was overkill in several of the high profile cases. We witnessed continuing political ineptness from coast to coast, as well as an insurance calamity that happened 1000 miles away from Louisiana, but still will have a direct bearing on what policyholders here pay.
First to take place was the trauma in New Orleans. A U.S. Army veteran, who had been radicalized by his views of Islam, zeroed in on New Year’s Eve crowds on Bourbon Street killing 15 revelers at 3:15 in the morning. Could this terrorist attack have been prevented? Many, including this writer, believe so. Few cities in America have a concentration of revelers in one area that draws millions of people in a month’s time, a Sugar Bowl, the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras. If there was ever an area that should be protected with drones, extensive surveillance cameras monitoring 24 hours a day, and street barriers that were supposed to be installed and working in the French Quarter streets, New Orleans was the place. Yet the city and no detailed plan dealing with known threats. There were a few temporary barriers that easily could have been (and were) driven around. City officials from the Mayor on down really dropped the ball.
Next came the devastating California fires. When early warnings of possible major wildfires might spread to Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass took immediate action. She flew to Ghana to attend the inauguration of the new president there. She also had slashed $23 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget just a few months earlier.
A petition to recall her for her gross management has already garnered 56,000 signatures. She will spend the next year dealing with investigations and lawsuits over her poor performance operating the city. The Governor and the California legislature did no better. One hundred fifty million dollars was recently cut from the California wildfire prevention budget. Numerous wildfire prevention proposals made by firefighting experts were ignored. Several major reservoirs needed repairs and had been left empty. It would seem that New Orleans and Los Angeles have a lot in common when it comes to ineptitude.
The insurance claims due to the California destroyed houses will reach well over $100 billion. This will not be just a problem for California property owners. An insurance company needs to “spread the risk,” wherever they are operating. Therefore, what happens in California will directly affect the cost of insurance in the Bayou state. So will the massive flooding that took place in North Carolina. It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s the way insurance works. We will not see any property insurance premium reduction here in Louisiana, at least for the immediate future. Perhaps even more increases.
And how about New York’s former US attorney and mayor Rudy Giuliani? It wasn’t that long ago where he was referred to by just about everyone as “America’s Mayor.” As a lawyer for President Trump, he verbally attacked two Georgia elections workers, charging that they were complicit in Georgia election voter fraud. But then the jury ordered Giuliani to pay these two workers $148 million for defaming them. Maybe Giuliani should pay something, mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship! Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families. We also spoke about many other important topics like Energy, Trade, and the Arctic. All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in Office, and before.”
Jim Brown
Both Mexico and Canada have a lot to lose by Trump’s threatened tariffs. For example, the trade in goods deficit with Mexico was $152.4 billion in 2023 ($322.7 billion of U.S. exports to Mexico, and $475.2 billion of imports), and in Canada, it was $64 billion ($354.3 billion in exports, and $418.6 billion in imports).
So, part of the talk about making Canada the 51st state — and also Trump proposed during the campaign using military force to crush the drug cartels in Mexico — could be viewed by the incoming president as leverage to be exerted against both countries to get the commitments necessary to protect the U.S. border, at least while he is in office.
But the broader discussion by Trump about both Greenland and the Panama Canal—key strategic locations bridging North America with the Arctic and Europe in the former, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the later, both from a naval perspective—appear to showcase Trump dusting off the so-called Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823 to discourage European influence in the Americas, blocking any further colonization of North and South America.
Then, Monroe told Congress in his State of the Union Address: “We… declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it… we could not view any interposition… by any European powers in any other light than as a manifestation of any unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”
This was later expanded by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, the so-called Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, to include the possibility of the use of military force by the U.S. to protect the Americas, telling Congress: “[I] n the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however, reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power… We would interfere with them only as a last resort and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” Roosevelt immediately made good on the threat by intervening in the Dominican Republic in 1905, as he had already in Panama in 1903 by establishing a protectorate there, or predating Roosevelt’s tenure, the protectorate over Cuba starting in 1898.
Later, U.S. actions to avert the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 as the Soviet Union parked nuclear missiles there or in Nicaragua in 1981 and Grenada in 1983 were further modern examples of various assertions of the Monroe Doctrine and against world powers who were threatening security in the Americas.
In this context, Trump’s attitude towards Greenland and the Panama Canal, but also towards Canada and Mexico — which all have invited or were unwilling to stop clear dangers from abroad from penetrating their shores — is a clearly a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine and, by not ruling anything out including military force, of Roosevelt’s Corollary — a clear articulation of the credible threat of force — making the Trump Doctrine well within the mains of centuries of U.S. foreign policy.
This is the basis for peace through strength, which is to be so strong that nobody dares to attack you. Undoubtedly, this will also come into play as Trump once looks to modernize and expand the U.S. Navy and other military forces in appropriations by Congress to ensure that the U.S. has a robust capability to back up its words.
This realist approach has always been conducted on a reciprocal basis, as Monroe had originally asserted, in the tradition of George Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality and his farewell address, of nonintervention in the affairs of the greater powers in Europe. In other words, it has always been a way of telling world powers, you don’t mess with us, we won’t mess with you.
Meaning, there is a lot to discuss by Trump with China, Russia and Europe over how recent developments in the Western Hemisphere are threatening U.S. national and economic security, just as those powers will wish to press their interests, for example in Ukraine, where Trump has vowed to broker a peace agreement.
Generally, as the U.S. asserts its sphere of influence, so too will the other powers. In China’s case, it has been dramatically expanding its spheres of influence into the Americas, Africa and elsewhere, which becomes increasingly dangerous as it inevitably crashes into our own spheres. Trump recognizes this, and so before even taking office, is laying down very broad markers. Every so often, American presidents have felt the need to make these declarations — sometimes exercised by force, sometimes via diplomacy — and to the extent they have backed them up, they ultimately have kept the peace, the President’s most important job.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
