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The Monroe Doctrine has two parts. One part warned the Old World not to interfere in the Americas. And in turn the United States promised not to interfere in the Old World. Our bases pretty much everywhere nullifies the whole thing. I’m not saying that US bases everywhere is necessarily a bad idea. But someone who believes in a US presence everywhere shouldn’t go whining about any Monroe Doctrine violation.

It seems to me that "US bases everywhere" was a result of WWII and Europe's inability to defend itself. It wasn't a violation of the Monroe Doctrine to come to the rescue of Europe or lose it to Nazism. The same for AsiaPac and Imperial Japan.

Setting that aside, there is the real issue of EuroAsia incursion into the Caribbean via Russian support of Cuba as proxy into Venezuela. This is what the Monroe Doctrine was supposed to guard against, right?

American hegemony over the North an South America, NATO hegemony over Western Europe, and Soviet hegemony over Asia?

Liberals like Clinton, Kerry, and Obama have blurred the lines in the sand over the past few decades, and we've seen the rise of China, the fall of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, the rise of terrorism in Europe, the loss of national identity across the EU, and now Russian incursion into Cuba and Venezuela.

So, I don't fault Bolton for raising a concern. Hopefully, President Trump has a vision, if not a coherent plan, for how to deal with this. Maybe he's thinking that time is on his side, that he has other more pressing needs at the moment (like the border, the Democrat coup, righting the court, 2020...).

Let's hope that's the case, that the President can stall incursion into Venezuela long enough to get some stability at the border, to flush out the Democrats, to get China to play nice for awhile, to win in 2020, and then take on the Venezuela Problem.

Anyway... that's my top-of-mind though on this.

-PJ

> It seems to me that “US bases everywhere” was a result of WWII and Europe’s inability to defend itself. <

I agree, to a certain extent. But I recently read an article that said much of America’s current foreign affairs problems stem from the year 1945. We defeated the Axis so decisively that we thought ourselves to be invincible. We could - and should - be a major force everywhere.

The Romans felt the same way. And so did Napoleon. And so did the British. And those folks all ended up the same way.

So I think America should pick and choose its interventions carefully. There is a mistake in doing too little. But there is also a mistake in doing too much.

Russia agreed to neutral Europe around 1990 making NATO absolete. It doesn’t have resources to try to dominate Europe militarily or establish dependent walfare states in East Europe nor it wants any of this because trading with neutral Europe is just more beneficial for Russia than trying to enslave it even if Russia had the means for the latter. Neutral Europe in its current form pose no military threat to Russia as well.
There is no source of tensions if not for NATO which is now a self-liking ice-cream cone and a drain on US resources.
Western Europe realizes it full well.