Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

And welcome to the Roads with Bell.

Today is December 11th, 2025, and we're going down the roads to Trump, Monroe, and understanding the link.

Recently, the Trump administration released a 33-page document that purported to be a national

security strategy. But it really reads like a justification after the fact of what Trump wants to do

because of his feelings. In it, it says the U.S. will assert and enforce a trump corollary to the Monroe

doctrine. I described it as a twisted version of the Monroe Doctrine when I covered it. That's led to

a lot of questions about the Monroe Doctrine as a whole. Lots of people asking about whether it was good or bad.

It depends on what century you're in. The other thing is that it gets referred to in the past tense,

primarily because it's one of the oldest American foreign policy doctrines. But the truth is, the Monroe

doctrine never really went away. It evolved. It expanded. It reversed. And for nearly 200 years,

it's been one of the most powerful justifications the United States has ever used to project power beyond its

borders, especially down south. And what's interesting is that it didn't start as a threat.

It started as a warning. In 1823, the United States was young. Fragile, really. It was still figuring out whether

it could survive as a nation or fracture into something else. Most of Latin America had just

broken free from European colonial empires. Spain was weakened. Portugal was strained.

And the great monarchies of Europe were looking across the Atlantic, wondering if they could

reclaim what they'd lost. President James Monroe went before Congress and said in the simplest

of terms, the Western Hemisphere is no longer

open for European colonization. Any attempt by European powers to expand their control in the

Americas would be seen as a hostile act against the United States.

At the time, it wasn't bluster.

...