The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was barely a month old when the president ran a successful one-hour military operation, with no American casualties, that captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

Most of the responses thus far have been one-dimensional, for better or worse: “Trump grabbed a wanted narcoterrorist cartel leader to stand trial.” “He’s starting another war for oil to help his capitalist cronies.” “He’s getting us into another war of choice.” “He’s betrayed his base and done a regime change as a tool of the (insert hidden hand here).” These arguments are simple and easy to understand. They range from the politically and legally tidy to stale anti-imperialist Marxism and paranoid isolationism, which often sound like the same thing, to the ragebait trolling of the gullible. But they all fail to understand the full gravity of the administration’s accomplishment in Venezuela.

In capturing Maduro, Trump has removed a key pillar that, if played wisely, could compromise the web of entangling alliances of many of our most dangerous adversaries.

Operation Absolute Resolve, paralleling the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, just might have forestalled Communist China’s expected invasion of Taiwan. The synchronicity is perfect. Maduro joins Iran’s mullahs in a pas de deux to the bottom, while the Cuban Communist regime, constantly suckling at a wealthy patron’s teat for 65 years, now faces a fatal weaning.

Ordinarily, these would be historic wins for Trump and the United States. And indeed they are. However, this trifecta of victories is merely a prelude to greater potential wins ahead.

Trump’s Street Sense

Donald Trump could very well preside over a time of extended peace through strength and restraint in the years ahead. That restraint makes the Trump Corollary consistent with the famous foreign policy doctrine of our last Founding Father president, James Monroe, which was authored by his brilliant, if largely forgotten, secretary of state and successor, John Quincy Adams.

In 1823 when Monroe announced his doctrine, the United States was growing but militarily weak. As a matter of principle, it stood by the newly independent republics of Spanish Latin America—not to conquer them, but to help them keep their newly won sovereignty. American military weakness in comparison to the European empires required forging a foreign policy featuring skilled diplomacy, deal-making, and assertiveness with restraint.

The late, brilliant Angelo Codevilla mastered all of John Quincy Adams’s writings and policies, rolling his approach into an America First strategy for the 21st century in his posthumously published book, America’s Rise and Fall among Nations. The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is absolutely in line with Codevilla’s interpretation of America’s most brilliant secretary of state. It potentially elevates Trump’s own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to Adams.

Codevilla, a classicist, might have referred to ancient cosmology’s quintessence, or “fifth essence,” the aether beyond the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. Human senses can discern the four elements, but it takes a special gift to sense the aether. Likewise, it takes a particular instinct to exploit the aether that one is gifted enough to discern, or is described by someone else who can. We might call that instinct a geostrategic street sense.

That street sense requires mustering all the instruments of power to exploit every opportunity, every conceivable strength, along with an adversary’s every vulnerability, to advance American national interests with minimal risk and cost for maximum effect. Trump has done this as a businessman, politician, and president. Now, with his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the president has a philosophical framework, an intellectual architecture, that connects him with the last president among the Founding Fathers.

This framework is not a guaranteed means to a historic presidency. Nor is it about Trump anointing his successor. It is about protecting American sovereignty and securing the Western Hemisphere for another 200 years. That means forging a grand strategy that can drive our aggressive adversaries back into their holes.

Trump’s November 2025 National Security Strategy does not mention Venezuela. But as it was being written and edited, his administration was preparing to pull the linchpin: Trump designated the Maduro regime as a terrorist state and a criminal cartel, providing himself with more legal, economic, and military tools to turn the thumbscrews.

• First, he used sanctions, prosecutions, soft support for the democratic opposition, and backdoor contacts with the cartel regime itself.

• Second, he used military shows of force with ample, repeated warnings to Maduro.

• Third, he redefined the drug traffickers as terrorists, and used existing counterterrorism laws to destroy the narcoterrorist smuggling boats in international waters.

• Fourth, he seized ghost tankers under false registrations and flags, trafficking in Venezuela’s sanctioned crude.

• Finally, in a breathtaking stroke that took months of preparation, he snatched Maduro and his wife to enforce a long-existing federal grand jury indictment.

Trump is known for winging it and creating and exploiting circumstances to his advantage. Time will tell whether he’s winging it now regarding the Venezuelan regime itself, or has something closer to a five-dimensional strategy up his sleeve. Or at least within arm’s reach.

But right now, much of the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere, can be as Donald Trump wills it.

Drinking Their Milkshake

The administration’s move to take Maduro now allows Trump to exert unanticipated leverage over both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. CCP war planners almost certainly never thought the U.S. would depose Maduro. Xi is unlikely to invade Taiwan under these new conditions, and Trump’s dominance over China’s oil supply can dent Xi’s seeming invincibility as party leader and the patron of the Global South, which is already bleeding.

Beijing buys as much oil as it can that is not subject to American pressure—oil that cannot be sold just anywhere because it is sanctioned, so it’s unloaded at a heavy discount.

Russia is China’s largest foreign oil supplier. China has also been buying between 60% and 90% of Venezuela’s heavy crude and 85% and 90% of Iran’s light crude. This sanctioned oil is cheap twice over for Beijing. First, China gets it at a pirate discount, and second, it generally pays not in American petrodollars but in printable Chinese yuan. Depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China’s present oil imports. (Arab countries responsive to U.S. concerns provide roughly another 40%.) With pro-American governments expected to run Venezuela and Iran soon, Trump will be able to regulate a good 70% of Communist China’s present-day oil needs. Russia, by contrast, supplies about 18-20% of China’s oil imports.

The expected quick recovery of Iranian oil production, along with the slower, long-term recovery of Venezuela’s decrepit oil infrastructure atop the world’s largest reserves, will keep oil prices down. That’s good for America and terrible for Russia.

That also means the U.S. will need to exert less pressure in the Indo-Pacific going forward, which is a net benefit to American NATO commitments in Europe. The United States might even be able to reduce its NATO expenditures further than planned, as most NATO countries spend more on their own defense—a win from Trump’s first term. The reason for this is that the loss of discounted, sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil will give China more leverage to chisel Russia for even steeper discounts.

A Shock to the System

The aftermath of the regime change in Venezuela (and soon in Iran) is unlikely to topple Xi Jinping, the party boss. But a serious disruption to the CCP’s cheap oil flows would undercut Xi’s dominant narrative. It would raise his political risks, erode his room for maneuvering, and expose his weaknesses at home and abroad. All of this would diminish his standing even further if oil instability provoked an economic shock or visible failure in governance. For example, a sudden jolt to the operation of China’s National Oil Companies (NOC) trading or refining would raise energy costs, slow industry, or trigger inflation.

NOCs are a powerful interest group within the CCP. Their leaders often occupy senior party positions and shape the party’s grand strategy, including Xi’s global Belt and Road mercantilist system. They have escaped his tightened political controls over state-owned enterprises and private capital. NOCs and oil-dependent coastal provinces help stabilize China’s fuel supply. They rely heavily on the discounted, sanctioned crude oil from Russia, Venezuela, and Iran—China often pays only between $15 and $30 per barrel for Brent crude. This means billions of dollars in savings and trading margins for the NOC leadership, making the NOCs and coastal refinery provinces big players within—and cash cows for—the Chinese Communist Party.

Depriving the CCP of discounted Iranian and Venezuelan oil will slash NOC profits and provincial revenues. Many of these refineries are new and must remain profitable. A lack of profitability will cause pushback against Xi and his policies.

Sustained instability in those sectors and regions could amplify economic downturns, forcing Xi to spend political capital on bailouts or austerity rather than on his high-profile signature programs. Severe fiscal strain in multiple NOCs and petrochemical/fuel regions would stretch Beijing’s capacity and make Xi’s failures more visible. He would likely defend himself by starting another set of purges and busting NOC executives and related party and provincial officials for corruption.

Something else to consider is that the CCP is still on the hook for at least $10-12 billion in outstanding loans to Venezuela, backed by Venezuelan oil. These debts can be nullified if the future Venezuelan government decides that the cartel regime incurred them illegally or corruptly, adding more strains on Xi’s imperial plans.

Some critics argue that the expected new oil dynamics, or American attempts to squeeze China, will start a war. They call it a repeat of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 decision to choke off Japan’s oil imports, which, thanks to Soviet pressure on Japan to fight British, French, Dutch, and American interests in the Pacific, begat Pearl Harbor. The circumstances today, however, are entirely different. But even if they were not, we are not talking about the drastic step of preemptively blockading China from importing oil. Trump will soon have a power he lacked a week ago: he can now heighten the U.S.’s response to Beijing’s malevolent behavior in a prudential way. 

There are even more wins for Trump and mankind we should consider. First, the Chinese and Russian efforts to destroy the petrodollar, through BRICS and other means, will suffer. If the U.S. steers its policies properly, Venezuela and Iran will revert to selling their oil only in American dollars, and not Chinese yuan. This will take some of the shine off the CCP’s fiat currency and buck up the petrodollar, which means strengthening the value of the dollar and of every American’s purchasing power.

Second, these changes will enable China to squeeze Russia. Some might argue that China should not offset its losses of discounted Iranian and Venezuelan oil by importing more from Russia. But after losing access to discounted crude from Iran and Venezuela and being forced to pay full price in U.S. dollars, China will have more leverage to demand steeper discounts from Russia.  

Russia is highly dependent on China as its main buyer of sanctioned oil. Under sanctions because of the war in Ukraine, Russia has nowhere else to turn but China. Those Western sanctions paradoxically empower the CCP to demand ever-cheaper oil from Russia. However, China cannot push too hard because of its own dependence on Russia as a supplier, and Russia cannot afford to pump oil at a loss.

With increased crude supply on the world market and prices declining or not rising, Putin will feel the squeeze even more. His standing depends on higher oil prices. Soon he will find himself with less cash to continue the war in Ukraine. That gives Trump more leverage to demand better peace terms as a declining Europe sets out to rebuild its once formidable military might.

Goodbye, CCP?

The mere specter of Trump and his successors’ ability to regulate Chinese oil imports will not only likely delay a near-inevitable invasion of Taiwan, and the CCP’s seizure of Taiwan’s massive semiconductor industry, but it will also set back Xi’s plans for other advancements, including building a blue-water navy to project power anywhere in the world and dominating artificial intelligence.

Such slowdowns or reversals could mean an end to Xi Jinping’s rule, an end to Communist Party rule in China, and an end to the Chinese Communist Party itself, though Trump has publicly given zero indication of any such intent. Diplomats and markets don’t like to think this way, but they didn’t like Reagan’s loyalists’ idea against the Soviets, either, and those diplomats and markets were wrong.

The loss of Venezuela and, ultimately, the Cuba domino, on top of Trump’s decisive move early in 2025 to ensure American interests in the Panama Canal, will deprive the CCP of any hope of establishing naval port access in the Caribbean.

This is all, of course, consistent with the powerful restraint philosophy of the Monroe Doctrine, which aimed to protect the independence of new American republics from European empires. The Trump Corollary subtly broadened the Monroe Doctrine to exclude the Chinese Communist empire. It merits mention here that the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative did not encroach into the Western Hemisphere until 2013, the year the Obama Administration formally renounced the Monroe Doctrine.

The critics have it wrong when they accuse Trump of dividing the world with Putin and Xi. Trump has succeeded in pushing a howling Europe to empower itself to ensure its own self-defense. He similarly persuaded Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan to do the same against China. His corollary ensures a peaceful American hemisphere, with foreign empires keeping their political, military, and subversive influences out. That principally means China.

Iran and Venezuela helped fuel the Communist China-dominated order. By helping remove hostile regimes in both countries, Trump is pulling out the linchpins without resorting to war.