Greg Grandin on how the Monroe Doctrine Became the Donroe Doctrine

Greg Grandin (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

Joe, I love doing American history episodes. In part, because I feel like my own knowledge of American history is fairly simplistic. And I do remember a huge culture shock when I went from high school to college. And I think I told this story before. So I went to college, university in London. And I had always heard the American Revolution described as the American Revolution, right? And then as soon as I got to the UK.

Joe Weisenthal (0:55)

What did they call it? I never, yeah, what did they call it?

Tracy Alloway (0:57)

Yeah, they call it, I think, the American War of Independence, which has a different tonality to it.

Joe Weisenthal (1:04)

Definitely.

Tracy Alloway (1:05)

But it definitely demonstrates just how subjective tensions, conflicts and policies can actually be in history depending on who you're talking to. And we are going to talk about not just a pretty subjective American policy, but one that has been reinterpreted and amended many, many times in the past.

Joe Weisenthal (1:24)

Right. So obviously, for us, this has been a Venezuela week, and there's all sorts of immediate questions that are sort of most directly relevant to, we've been talking about the market elements mostly. We talked about oil, we talked about the sovereign debt, etc. But then there's all these questions, of course, about international law and what is legitimate and what is illegitimate. I mean, I couldn't even believe the headline when I saw it that we had arrested. I know.

I was flabbergasted. I just, the idea that we had arrested a head of state from another country is just absolutely gobsmacking. And then people talk about international law, and then they say, does international law even exist? And so forth. And what it feels like, to some extent, truly uncharted territory here. Yep.

Tracy Alloway (2:10)

Uncharted territory, but people are drawing on a parallel, which is the Monroe Doctrine.

Joe Weisenthal (2:16)

Yes.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

The Monroe Doctrine of, I think it was 1823, I want to say, basically said that America would assert its dominance over the entire American region. And since then, it's changed a number of times. But the way it's being talked about now is, as the Trump corollary or the Monroe Doctrine, which was described in the National Security Strategy document that the Trump administration put out back in December. And that one's a little different. So we keep seeing these amendments to the doctrine. By the way, I should just say, do you remember back in 2013, John Kerry explicitly said that the Monroe Doctrine was over? It was dead.

Joe Weisenthal (3:02)

I don't remember that.

Tracy Alloway (3:03)

And now it's back. It's arisen.

Joe Weisenthal (3:06)

Some version of it is certainly back. You know, it's very interesting because the US clearly has a long standing history of various operations, overt and covert of involving itself, shall we say, with the politics and domestic affairs of our neighbors, particularly in the South and Central America and so forth. I suppose any country is naturally going to have some security interest in what's happening in its proximity. I don't think that itself is particularly weird. I really like this term, the Donrow Doctrine, because there's two things. There's this long standing history that the US wants to have a role to play in everyone else's politics among our neighbors. But then there's this other element with Donald Trump specifically where it feels like a lot of our policy and principle is essentially, he's the president and what's in his head and his ideas are legitimate because they're his ideas and he's the president. Yes, there's precedents, there's norms and so forth, and then there's this novelty that everyone's trying to read his mind. We're in this very strange situation, which has come up on our last two episodes, in which you have the president talking about oil.

Tracy Alloway (4:23)

Explicitly, yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (4:24)

Yet, people are skeptical. It's very strange. It's a very strange situation, because you have it torpically. It's like, oh, he admitted it. It's about oil. And yet, everyone's like, is there something else at play beyond here? It's the total inversion for how people have talked in the past about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of how we involve ourselves internationally.

Tracy Alloway (4:44)

That was part of the original Monroe Doctrine as well. There was this weird tension between like pro-democracy, anti-colonialism, keep the European powers out, and America basically kind of creating its own informal colonies. That tension has always been there and we should talk about that. We should talk about whether or not there might be different strategies at play in Venezuela, different goals. I'm happy to say we do in fact have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Greg Grandin. He is a professor of history at Yale and the author of the new book, America, América, A New History of the New World. So Greg, welcome to Odd Lots. Thanks so much for coming on.