Tag Archives: Monroe Doctrine

Basin in the Meantime

3 January 2026 By in History, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Maybe there’s nothin’ happenin’ there
Or maybe there’s somethin’ in the air  — John Hiatt – Memphis in the Meantime

The operation in Caracas did not inaugurate a new doctrine so much as enforce an old one: The Monroe Doctrine or as the new moniker that is sweeping social media: The Don-roe Doctrine, The DDs. It demonstrated that, when the United States chooses to act in its near abroad, it can do so quickly, decisively, and without the prolonged escalation that once defined hemispheric interventions. The speed mattered less than the silence that followed.

What stretches south from the U.S. southern border is not a collection of isolated states so much as a single basin of changing fortunes. A shared space of currents and constraints where energy, food, money, people, and power circulate unevenly. In that basin, geography compresses time, stretching from long somnolence to sudden, decisive action in prestissimo. Decisions made in one port quickly reverberate into another; scarcity in one system bleeds into the next. When a major node fails, the effects do not remain local, they resonate in a loose, syncopated jazz time

The removal of Venezuela as a patron did not merely end Maduro’s dictatorship, it likely altered the flow of reality in the basin itself. What followed from adjacent confines and distant hegemons alike was not immediate confrontation but boilerplate as hesitancy or visa-versa. Borders were secured. Procedural condemnations were issued. The United Nations will hear of this! Behind the statements, positions were analyzed and reassessed. Cards were checked. No one raised. Everyone counted their chips. Everyone kept their cards, except Maduro, but no one pushed the pot.

In the meantime: the basin holds it breath, the alternatives have no luster, and time has taken on a velocity beyond the speed limits of the usual diplomatic stall. In the basin, survival at all costs no longer promotes stability of government nor docility of the populace. In the basin, the strength of will is now measured in meals, watts, and months: maybe. The Venezuela operation lasted 3 hours.

The absence of a Venezuelan military effective response was not the lack of detection of the opposing force or bribery of key personal to look the other way. It was the predictable outcome of a hollowed-out command structure confronted more attuned to loyalty rather than ability. Selective strikes against decision‑making nodes, combined with degraded communications and uncertainty about leadership status, collapsed the chain of authority before it could cohere into action. In a system likely conditioned to await orders from the top rather than exercise initiative, paralysis was the rational response. No one bucks the top…North Korea redux. A thirty‑minute operation leaves no room for deliberation; it ends before the system can decide what it is seeing. Maduro wasn’t answering his phone.

And the operation was not just the removal of a bad actor; it was also about who was watching.

The Iranian strike was never just a counter‑proliferation exercise. Reducing nuclear capability was the mechanism, not the message. The message was capability itself. It was designed to be seen not by Tehran, which already understood the risks, but by Moscow and Beijing. The flight profiles, the munitions used, the coordination, the timing, the public naming of the operation, all of it communicated U.S. reach, patience, and the ability to act unilaterally at scale without triggering uncontrolled escalation. It was deterrent by demonstration, not a declaration for further action.

The Venezuela operation carries the same scent, even if the target is less world‑ending. Different theater, different tools, same audience. There were other tells. In Moscow, state‑adjacent channels reverted to cultural filler, Swan Lake on shortwave. A gesture with a long memory. In Russian political language, it has historically marked moments of uncertainty at the top: authority suspended, clarity withheld, everyone instructed to wait. It was not a declaration, but it was not nothing either. Less foreknowledge than recognition. An acknowledgment that something irreversible was unfolding, inferred from U.S. posture rather than anything concrete.

That recognition itself would not have gone unnoticed. Intelligence services watch each other as closely as they watch targets, and awareness on one side becomes signal on the other. A brief pause, publicly attributed to weather or timing around the holidays, need not imply any hesitation. It can just as easily reflect confirmation: that inference had not translated into possible interference, that compromised channels would remain compromised, and that recognition would stay passive. In that sense, the music was not a warning, and the delay was not a feint. Both were acknowledgments that the hand had changed, and that no one intended to show their cards before the next move was made.

The unrest in Iran reads differently. Less recognition than diversion. When leverage is limited in one theater, pressure migrates to another. Iran’s internal volatility has long been a known fault line. One where agitation carries asymmetric cost. Disruption there absorbs Iranian authorities’ attention, resources, and narrative bandwidth, reducing the capacity for coordinated response elsewhere. Whether by design or exploitation, the effect is the same: consequences are diluted across theaters rather than concentrated at the point of action. Hezbollah and Hamas in the Caribbean remain isolated and neutered.

This does not require coordination to function. Systems under strain respond predictably to stress applied at their weakest seams. Iran’s unrest filled the information space with noise at precisely the moment clarity elsewhere would have been costly.

In Venezuela, the point wasn’t regime change as an ostentatious show of force or a shot across the bow. It was proof of access, intelligence dominance, and decision‑speed inside a space long assumed to be cluttered with foreign influence. The absence of a name matters. So does the brevity. So does the lack of follow‑on rhetoric, which, for Trump, is really saying something.

Regional reactions reflected this reality. The message, delivered without verbiage, was understood immediately. Except in Congress. Colombia’s troop movements were defensive and stabilizing, aimed at spillover rather than confrontation. Mexico and Colombia’s appeals to multilateral condemnation preserved diplomatic cover without altering facts on the ground. China and Russia issued ritualized objections. Entirely predictable, restrained, and notably unaccompanied by action. Iran’s rhetoric filled space where leverage was absent. Across the board, states assessed their stacks of chips and chose not to raise.

This collective hesitation revealed the deeper shift. The Caracas operation likely removed Venezuela as a structural patron and sanctuary, not just a regime. That removal matters less for ideology than for logistics. It collapses the external framework that allowed other systems: most notably Cuba, to remain in the game, even without chips.

Cuba’s predicament is not strategic; it is temporal and tactical. The island lacks indigenous energy beyond biomass, cannot sustain its grid without imported fuel, and faces chronic food insecurity dependent on foreign exchange. Its export of human capital: doctors, engineers, security personnel, once generated influence and cash, but those returns have diminished, and the population left behind is aging and shrinking. Tourism and remittances no longer provide reliable buffers. Scarcity does not need to become catastrophic to destabilize a system; it only needs to become unpredictable. Revolution is three meals away.

In this context, the familiar options narrow. Refusal to accept the obvious with re-engerized brutality can delay outcomes but the path ahead remains the same. Partial opening risks unleashing forces that cannot be re-contained. A managed transition preserves continuity but requires acknowledging mistakes and ultimately exhibiting weakness. Waiting for the irrational rescue likely recreates Ceausescu execution at the hands of an exhausted populace. Time is now a luxury. And there is no Che Guevara left to pretend this is about anything other than power.

The broader hemispheric picture reinforces this compression. Panama’s strategic assets favor quiet realignment rather than confrontation. Colombia’s incentives point toward containment. Mexico’s long‑standing safety valves, outward migration and remittance flows, have narrowed as borders tighten and returns increase. At the same time, cartel finances face pressure from heightened surveillance, financial enforcement, and disrupted logistics. When money tightens, patience evaporates. Ambiguity and neutrality become expensive.

The external powers, beyond the basin, face their own constraints. Russia’s tools in the hemisphere are limited to smoke signals, narrative, and opportunistic cyber and communication disruption; it cannot project sustained force near U.S. logistics without unacceptable risk. China’s leverage is financial and infrastructural: think Peru’s deepwater port, but money loses persuasive power when leaders weigh it against personal liability. Loans cannot guarantee immunity. Infrastructure cannot extract individuals from collapsing systems. A Berlin‑style airlift to sustain Cuba is implausible: geography, energy requirements, and visibility make sustained resupply untenable without escalation. A step that neither Beijing nor Moscow appear willing to risk.

What emerges instead is a less noisy contest. The real currency becomes safe passage for the unwanted and the management of transitions rather than bids for loyalty. Ports, telecom, finance, and migration policy, to and from the U.S., become the levers. Intelligence exploitation encourages action against cartels, rolling up networks of crime rather than staging battles.

In this environment, public speeches matter less than demonstrated capability. Respectful language toward leaders paired with relentless focus on non‑state threats: cartels, preserves diplomatic niceties while narrowing the options. The message is conveyed not through ultimatums but through persistence: neutrality becomes costly; alignment allows for tomorrows.

The western hemisphere has entered a meantime: not a moment of dramatic conquest, but a period where waiting is the most dangerous strategy. Outcomes will be shaped less by declarations than by which pressures are allowed to accumulate, and which are relieved. The Caracas operation did not end the game; it thinned the table and moved the stakes to the final table.

Hamlet Goes to Milwaukee—A Tragicomedy in Five Acts

28 October 2025 By in History, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Prolepsis’ Prologue:

The Chorus enters. A single spotlight. A single Damocles’ bullet hangs in the air like a haunted ghost spinning to history’s rhythms and trajectories.

CHORUS:

John Schrank shoots Theodore Roosevelt, 113 long and mostly forgotten years ago, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a sharp and chilled Monday, coats pulled tight, 14 October 1912.

That’s the end, my friend, or so it seems. But tragedy demands context, and context demands sacramental passings. Let us reset and reconfigure the scene, with a sentimental barbershop quartet interlude of ‘Moonlight Bay’ drifting in the background and summon the ghosts of campaigns past and the raving refrains of the mad, all served with a bullet.

Act I: The Bull Rising

Before the Bull Moose and the bullet there was tradition and restraint. Before Roosevelt charged up the hill and across the plains, there was McKinley’s calm firmament.

William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, governed with a philosophy of calculated prosperity and protective nationalism, fittingly called the Ohio Napoleon, holding folksy court on America’s front porch. He was deliberate and firm but never rash, he was a Republican loyalist second, leader first, and a quiet expansionist, A Civil War veteran and devout Methodist, McKinley championed high tariffs, the gold standard, and industrial growth as the pillars of American strength.

His first term (1897–1901) unfolded as an economic recovery from Grover Cleveland’s faltering presidency and the Panic of 1893. It was marked by economic stabilization, the Spanish-American War, and the acquisition of overseas territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii, all additions to America’s imperial structure.

His vice president, Garret Hobart died, of heart failure in 1899 at the age of 55. With no constitutional mechanism to fill the vacancy, the office remained vacant until McKinley’s re-election. It wasn’t until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967 that a formal process was established to replace a vice president.

In 1900, Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of New York and war hero of the San Juan Hill, was chosen as McKinley’s running mate. His nomination was largely a strategy of containment: an attempt to temper his reformist zeal beneath the inconsequential and ceremonial weight of the vice-presidency.

Act II: Bull Cometh

The Bull Moose was buried beneath ceremony, but symbols cannot contain momentum. The front porch would give way to the lists and charging steeds.

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley stood beneath the vaulted glass of the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, an American shrine to progress, electricity, and imperial optimism. There, in the charged glow of modernity, he was shot twice in the abdomen by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish American self-declared anarchist and bitter subject of the Panic of 1893 and its resultant mill closures, strikes and wage collapse, etched into his disillusioned psyche.

Czolgosz had been baptized in the radical writings of Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian emigree and firebrand of the American radical left. Goldman championed anarchism, women’s rights, and sexual liberation. She founded Mother Earth, a journal that became an infamous intellectual hearth for dissent and revolutionary analysis.

To Czolgosz, Mckinley was the embodiment of oppression: capitalism, imperialism, and state violence. His answer to these perceived provocations was violence. Concealing a revolver wrapped in a handkerchief, he fired at close range during a public reception, just as McKinley extended his hand in welcome.

Initially, doctors believed McKinley would recover. But gangrene developed around the damaged pancreas, and he died on 14th of September. His death was slow and tragic, a symbolic collapse of the front porch presidency.

Roosevelt, just 42, stepped up and became the youngest president in U.S. history (JFK was 43). With containment at an end, the Bull broke loose. And he mounted the stage with an agenda.

Act III: The Charge of the Bull

The Bull builds a protective legacy of words and stick, sweat and blood.

Roosevelt’s early presidency honored McKinley’s legacy: trust-busting, tariff moderation, and economic expansion. But he soon added his own signature: conservationism, progressive reform, and a bold, moralistic foreign policy.

He preserved 230 million acres of public land and established the U.S. Forest Service, 5 national parks, 18 national monuments, 150 national forests and a constellation wildlife refuges. Stewardship of the land became a sacred ideal that continues to present day.

In foreign affairs, Roosevelt extended the Monroe Doctrine with his Roosevelt Corollary (1904), asserting that the U.S. had the right to intervene in Latin America to prevent “chronic wrongdoing.” It was a doctrinal pivot from passive hemispheric defense against European imperialism to active imperial stewardship, cloaked in the language of civilization and order. America became the self-appointed policeman of the Western Hemisphere.

The corollary was a response to incidents like the 1902 Venezuelan debt crisis where European navies blockaded ports to force repayment. In Cuba, unrest was quelled with U.S. troops in 1906. Nicaragua, Haiti, and Honduras saw repeated interventions to protect U.S. interests and suppress revolutions. If Latin American failed to maintain order or financial solvency, the U.S. would intervene to stabilize rather than colonize.

The doctrine justified the U.S. dominance of the Panama Canal and set the precedent for Cold War interventions, neutralizing the American back yard while containing Soviet expansion in the east.

Act IV: Hamlet in Milwaukee

Heads of kings rest uneasy. Ghosts of injustice haunt. Princes fall prey.

After winning a full term in 1904, Roosevelt honored his promise not to seek reelection in 1908. But disillusioned with his successor, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt returned to politics in 1912, forming the Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.

Enter stage left, John Schrank, a former barkeep plagued by visions and imagined slights. In the early morning hours of 15 September 1901, 6 days after McKinley was shot and 2 days before he died, the bar tender dreamt that the slain President rose from his casket and pointed to a shrouded figure in the corner: Roosevelt. “Avenge my death”, the ghost spoke. Schrank claimed to forget the dream for over a decade, until Roosevelt’s bid for a third term in 1912 reawakened the vision, which he now interpreted as a divine command.

Schrank believed Roosevelt’s third-term ambition was a betrayal of American tradition set forth in Washington’s Farewell Address. He hated Roosevelt and feared that he would win the election, seize dictatorial power, and betray the constitutional republic. In his delusional state, he believed Roosevelt was backed by foreign powers and was planning to take over the Panama Canal; an anachronistic fear, given total U.S. control of the canal since 1904. Schrank interpreted the ghost’s voice as God’s will: “Let no murderer occupy the presidential chair for a third term. Avenge my death.”

At his trial for the attempted assassination of Roosevelt, Schrank was remanded to a panel of experts to determine his mental competency. They deemed him insane, a “paranoid schizophrenic”, in the language of the time. He was committed to an asylum, where he remained until his death 31 years later.

Schrank’s madness parallels the haunted introspection of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Shakespeare’s longest and most psychologically complex tragedy that revolves around a ghost’s command: “Revenge my foul and most unnatural murder.” Hamlet, driven by the specter’s charge, spirals into feigned (and perhaps real) madness, wrestling with betrayal, duty, mortality, and metaphysical doubt. His uncle, the murderer, has married his mother; an Oedipal inversion within the world’s most enduring tragedy.

On 14 October 1912, as Roosevelt stood outside Milwaukee’s Gilpatrick Hotel, Schrank stepped forward and fired. The bullet pierced his steel glasses case and a folded 50-page tome of a speech, slowing its path. Bleeding, a bullet lodged in his chest, Roosevelt refused medical attention. He stepped onto the stage and spoke for 90 minutes, although it is said that due to his loss of blood, he shortened his speech out of necessity. Whether for himself or the audience is lost to history.

Unlike Hamlet, who dithers and soliloquizes his way toward a graveyard of corpses, Schrank shoots, hits, and leaves Roosevelt standing. Hamlet’s tragedy ends in death and metaphysical rupture. Schrank’s farce begins with the demands of a ghost and ends with a 90-minute speech. One prince takes his world with him into death. The other absorbs a bullet and keeps talking.

Act V: Ghosts and Republics

Ghosts and Republics are ephemeral. At the end of time; those fleeting moments, short and long; some, as Proust says, more and more seldom, are best treated with humor and grace.

In tragedy and near calamity, a man’s soul becomes visible. Some are seen darkly, others, bright, clear, unshaken and unafraid of new beginnings even if that beginning is death.

Roosevelt had already charged up San Juan Hill, bullets and fragments whistling past like invitations to a funeral ball. Each a death marker. So, when a solitary bullet from a madman struck him in Milwaukee, it was merely an inconvenience. He quipped: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

Sixty-eight years later, Reagan too survived a bullet to the chest. As he was wheeled into the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, he said he’d “rather be in Philadelphia,” a throwback to his vaudeville days, a gag line used on fake tombstones: “Here lies Bob: he’d rather be in Philadelphia.” W.C. Fields once requested it as his epitaph. He’s buried in California. To the surgeons, Reagan added: “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

Where Roosevelt offered mettle, Reagan offered mirth. Both answered violence with theatrical defiance: natural-born and unshakable leaders, unbothered by the ghosts that tracked them.

They were not alone. Jackson, beat his would-be-assassin with a cane. Truman kept his appointments after gunfire at Blair house. Ford faced two attempts in seventeen days and kept walking. Bush stood unfazed after a grenade failed to detonate. They met their specters with grace, a joke, and a shrug.

The assassins and would-be assassins vanished into the diffusing whisps of history. The leaders of men left a republic haunted not by ghosts, but by a living memory: charged with the courage to endure and to imagine greatness.

Graphic: Assassination of President McKinley by Achille Beltrame, 1901. Public Domain.