The wisest condemnation of Donald Trump’s decision to send us troops to the sovereign nation of Venezuela to remove President Nicolás Maduro, as part of the administration’s plan to “run” Venezuela in collaboration with US oil companies, came 205 years before Trump announced his “Donroe” Doctrine. Even where the United States might object to a foreign leader, Adams argued that the country must lead by example and with diplomacy, so that the fundamental maxims of US foreign policy would not change insensibly from liberty to force: “She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” This popular rejection of Trump’s territorial ambitions should inspire members of Congress to stand up to the administration—recognizing, as John Quincy Adams did, that if a president seeks to make America “the dictatress of the world,” this country will “be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
Author: Katrina vanden Heuvel,John Nichols
Published at: 2026-01-13 00:00:00
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