When the United States launched its first major military intervention abroad, it was a fledgling republic barely 25 years old. In 1801, president Thomas Jefferson decided that America would no longer follow the European custom of paying protection money to North African Barbary states to keep Mediterranean trade routes safe. Instead, he sent the US Marines to war.
The campaign against Tripoli also included an ultimately unsuccessful covert expedition led by William Eaton, the US consul general in Tunis, aimed at overthrowing Tripoli’s ruler and installing a more pliant alternative. Jefferson’s cabinet defended the operation by arguing that the president required “no specific statutory authority” to do so. More than two centuries later, the same logic propels Washington’s justification for the dramatic capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Many described the January 3 operation as shocking and unprecedented. The brazenness of the Maduro operation and its openly transactional character, particularly the emphasis on oil, may appear new. But the underlying logic is not. For more than 200 years, the US has repeatedly acted alone, used force without international approval and justified intervention as necessary to protect its interests.
The broader framework for intervention in the Americas emerged in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine declaring that the western hemisphere would be treated as a US sphere of influence. Over time, it became a licence for intervention. In 1904, president Theodore Roosevelt made this explicit through his ‘Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine’, claiming the right for the US to act as an international police force in Latin America when governments were deemed corrupt, unstable or incapable.
Donald Trump has openly embraced this tradition. His justification for removing Maduro fits neatly into this worldview. Venezuela was framed not as a sovereign state with internal problems but as a “criminal narco-state posing a direct threat to American society”, while China’s growing influence there was treated as intolerable. Trump made clear he would not allow the United Nations or any other global body to stand in his way. “The UN Charter’s restrictions on the use of force have never functioned as binding legal constraints on presidential decision-making. International law lacks a sovereign authority, a court with compulsory jurisdiction, and reliable enforcement mechanisms for violations,” writes John Yoo of the American Enterprise Institute.
This logic produced a long record of interventions in Latin America, often driven as much by economic interests as by ideology. Republican administrations were particularly active. In 1954, president Dwight Eisenhower authorised a coup in Guatemala that overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz. His land reform programme threatened the United Fruit Company, a powerful American corporation with deep ties in Washington. The operation was publicly justified as a defence against communism, but its real purpose was to protect corporate interests.
Ronald Reagan was another champion of unilateral action. In 1983, he ordered the invasion of Grenada to remove a Marxist government, without UN approval. Reagan’s foreign policy also relied heavily on covert operations. His administration secretly backed Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in the 1980s. At that time, Iran-backed groups in Lebanon were holding American hostages. To secure their release, US officials sold weapons to Iran at inflated prices and diverted the proceeds to fund the Contras. The Iran–Contra scandal exposed deception and illegality at the heart of the administration, yet Reagan escaped impeachment or prosecution.
The pattern continued under George H.W. Bush. In 1989, he ordered the invasion of Panama to capture its leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the US on drug trafficking charges. American forces dismantled Panama’s military, seized Noriega and flew him to Florida for trial. Like the Maduro operation, the invasion lacked UN approval and was widely condemned, but it set a clear precedent: the US military could be used to arrest a foreign head of state.
After the Cold War, disregard for international institutions became even more pronounced. Following the September 11 attacks, president George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan without explicit UN authorisation, arguing that the US had the right to self-defence. Two years later, his administration invaded Iraq without a specific UN Security Council mandate, assembling a “coalition of the willing”, and justifying the war as a pre-emptive strike against weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a rogue leader beyond redemption, much like Maduro today. After the invasion, the US established a provisional authority to govern Iraq, a model Trump has explicitly cited when discussing Venezuela’s “transition”.
Democratic presidents have also contributed to this record. In fact, it was a Democrat who launched the first American invasion of the 20th century. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson sent US Marines to Haiti after the country’s president was killed by a mob. The intervention, presented as stabilising, became an occupation designed to protect American financial interests and block German influence. In 1961, John F. Kennedy approved the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro. Four years later, Lyndon B. Johnson sent more than 20,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to prevent what he described as a communist takeover.
Even presidents who spoke the language of multilateralism often acted alone. In 1993, Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on Iraq after intelligence agencies concluded that Iraqi operatives had plotted to assassinate George H.W. Bush in Kuwait, a few months after he left office. Clinton also led NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia without UN approval. Barack Obama’s intervention in Libya in 2011 began with a UN mandate to protect civilians, but it evolved into a regime change operation that ended with the overthrow and killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
Against this backdrop, Venezuela looks less like an exception than the latest chapter in a long story. What perhaps makes the current moment different is Trump’s bluntness. Previous presidents often gave better speeches and cloaked intervention in the language of democracy or human rights. Trump made little effort to do so. He openly described the Venezuela operation as transactional, saying America would run the country and take its oil to recover costs. In stripping away the moral cover, he revealed the logic that has long underpinned US interventionism.
There is, however, a line that even this history has rarely crossed. Modern US interventions have generally avoided permanent territorial expansion. If Trump were to pursue control of Greenland by force, it would mark a real break with post-war practice. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a founding NATO member. Using force against it would amount to attacking a treaty ally. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that such an action would effectively end NATO by destroying the principle of collective defence.
For America’s allies, this raises unsettling questions. If Washington is willing to bypass international law and pressure even its partners, sovereignty begins to look conditional. Security guarantees appear transactional, exchanged for access to resources or strategic advantage. Europe, already divided, looks especially vulnerable.
Yet, the fear that the rest of the world will “balance” against American power looks unfounded because of the sheer asymmetry of the existing global order. “The American consumer market rivals the combined size of the markets in China and the eurozone,” writes Michael Beckley of Tufts University. “Half of global trade and nearly 90 per cent of international financial transactions are conducted in dollars, funnelled through US-linked banks—giving Washington the power to impose crippling sanctions.” Exports account for just 11 per cent of US GDP, compared with a global average of 30 per cent, while around 70 countries depend on US protection through defence pacts.
No wonder Trump made a stark warning about taking over Greenland while speaking to the New York Times on January 7. “Ownership is very important. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty,” said Trump. And he is prepared to use force. “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
Greenland is very much in play.