This was published in last week’s American Free Press. I wrote it more than a week before Trump invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro. Unfortunately the points I made are still as relevant as ever. The Dumbroe Doctrine—alienate all your former allies, especially those in your hemisphere—will go down in history as, well, the dumbest doctrine ever. -KB

By Kevin Barrett, for American Free Press

President Donald Trump was elected—twice—on an America first platform. Trump brandished the term America first in 2016, shocking the media, which noted that the slogan originally designated Charles Lindbergh’s movement to keep the US out of World War II—a movement that has been unjustly demonized as “antisemitic” by pro-war historians.

America first has a clear meaning: Stay out of foreign quarrels, save the blood and treasure, and take care of business at home. Trump won the White House by wielding the term against the neocons and their puppet George W. Bush, who had squandered seven billion dollars and countless lives, as well as American soft power, in service to pointless adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. And voters responded, because America first has been a popular policy ever since George Washington’s Farewell Address. Our first Founding Father famously warned against getting involved in the “frequent controversies the causes of which are foreign to our concerns,” and to steer clear of “entangling alliances.”

George Washington urged US policymakers to “observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.” Today, Trump is violating Washington’s rule by fomenting a blatantly unjust war on Venezuela.

Trump’s ludicrous lies about Venezuela make Bush’s lies about Iraq sound relatively reasonable. Trump insists that Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro is the head of a drug cartel called “The Cartel of the Suns.” But all informed observers agree that no such cartel exists. The name was invented as a joke, based on the fact that Venezuelan generals wear sun patches in the same way US generals wear star patches. We have three-star generals, they have three-sun generals. Anti-Venezuela wags charged that some Venezuelan generals are complicit in drug trafficking, and invented the term “Cartel of the Suns” as a humorous way of pushing that claim. Nobody ever took it seriously or believed there was really such a cartel, until Trump made a fool of himself by insisting it was real and Maduro was its boss!

Trump blames the phantom “Suns” cartel for killing Americans with fentanyl. But Venezuela has no relationship whatsoever to fentanyl—that, too, is completely imaginary. Fentanyl consumed in the US comes from Mexico, and Venezuela has nothing to do with it.

After spending three months murdering over 100 Venezuelan fishermen based on claims that they worked for an imaginary cartel and were carrying imaginary drugs, Trump sent an armada to the coast of Venezuela and pivoted from ridiculous lies to a half-truth: We want their oil. On Truth Social, Trump demanded “all of the Oil, Land and other Assets” owned by Venezuela, falsely claiming that it really belonged to the US. He then ordered “a total and complete blockade” on Venezuelan oil tankers. Turning pirate, Trump began seizing ships, stealing their oil, and bragging about it.

How did Trump, who covets the Nobel Peace Prize, become an even loonier warmonger than George W. Bush? The most likely answer is that he is getting bad advice. Trump wants to pivot away from the war on Russia through Ukraine, which the US and its European vassals have effectively lost. So far so good. But neocons like Marco Rubio have convinced him to embrace a policy that might be termed “the Monroe Doctrine on steroids.” According to Rubio, US wars in the Western Hemisphere are winnable, because no great powers from the Eastern Hemisphere, such as Russia and China, will intervene.

But what Rubio isn’t telling Trump is that Venezuela could become a back door to war on China. Venezuela is reaching out to China for help, which may have already come in the form of advanced anti-ship missiles that could sink much or all of the US flotilla that is currently menacing Caracas. (China knows that if the US succeeds in using naval power to muscle Venezuela, Taiwan could be next; while a US debacle in Venezuela would keep Uncle Sam bogged down there and unable to meddle in Taiwan.)

Trump’s Western Hemisphere war plans also target Greenland and Canada. After he polishes off Venezuela and the rest of South America, Trump imagines, he can turn his attention to the frozen north. So instead of “America first” Trump’s motto is: “South America first, Canada and Greenland later.”

If South America, Greenland, and Canada all lined up dutifully to turn over their sovereignty and resources to the US, welcoming US occupation soldiers with flowers and candy, Trump’s grandiose imperial dreams might become a reality. But the odds of that happening are about the same as the odds of Iraqis greeting US troops that way circa 2003: less than zero.

Why is Trump repeating Bush’s mistake? It isn’t just oil. Israel’s hatred of Venezuela, which strongly supports Palestine, is probably the deciding factor.