The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine Comes Into Its Own

President Trump is threatening to side with Argentina in its historical dispute with the U.K. over the Falkland Islands and tilt to Morocco in its standoff with Spain over imperial remnants in north Africa. He strongly signaled the shift following refusals by both NATO allies to support U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iran and help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. 

Trump’s posturing is consistent with his policy of realpolitik aimed at consolidating U.S. control over the Western hemisphere while aligning with new regional players in the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe at the expense of legacy allies, whose value he has long questioned and who have proved their unreliability by failing to turn up in the Persian Gulf. 

While casting off century-old ties to embrace untested new alliances carries risks for the U.S., it could spell disaster for Britain and Spain, once Europe’s greatest overseas empires, now ruled by delusional leftist cabals wanting to oppose Trump at any cost and go Green.

When in 1982 Argentina invaded the remote Falkland Islands, which Britain had absentmindedly kept following a failed 19th-century attempt to invade Argentina, the Reagan administration was initially divided over a response.