When former US Secretary of State John Kerry lamented that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behaving in a nineteenth-century manner following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he likely did not anticipate that his words would so precisely describe contemporary US foreign policy.
Analysts have drawn numerous historical parallels with the recent American intervention in Venezuela, and the twentieth century offers no shortage of precedents. Yet the most resonant era is the one that marked the beginning of heavy and recurring US interventions in Latin America. That story begins in 1898.
After defeating Spain in the 1898 war, also known as the Spanish-American War, the United States seized former Spanish colonies, including Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, while establishing a protectorate over Cuba. Separately, it annexed Hawaii, explored plans for a canal through Nicaragua before later choosing Panama, and sought to purchase territory from Denmark in the Caribbean. For half a century after 1898, the sun effectively never set on the American empire.
Although the United States already possessed deep experience in expansion, exploitation, and colonial practices, 1898 represented a turning point. Within a matter of months, the United States dismantled a European empire, seized more than seven thousand islands located more than seven thousand miles from California, and instantly became a Pacific power. From that moment onward, US troop levels never fell below one hundred thousand. As Woodrow Wilson stated a decade before assuming the presidency, no war changed the United States as profoundly as the war with Spain, which he described as a new revolution.
The echoes of 1898 are once again evident. The similarities are striking. US President Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs and protectionist policies, his interest in reclaiming the Panama Canal, tensions with Canada, his focus on Latin America, and his pursuit of Danish territory all recall the early twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, one of Trump’s political role models is President William McKinley. His successor, Theodore Roosevelt, who expanded McKinley’s policies and became the first US president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, may also command Trump’s admiration. Together, McKinley and Roosevelt opened the door to what became known as the American Century, an era of global US dominance.
Yet the parallels go beyond specific policies or actions. The Trump administration is not merely drawing from an old playbook, but more significantly reviving an old way of conceptualising power and security. It has resurrected a worldview centred on wealth, geography, and civilisation, measures of state progress that are centuries old. The material and cultural objectives of the Trump administration closely resemble the thinking that shaped US foreign policy at the turn of the twentieth century. However, in pursuing this vision, Trump and his advisers must absorb the central lesson of 1898. The more the United States intervenes abroad, the more each new challenge appears vital, and the harder it becomes for Washington to extract itself from the resulting entanglements.
Power in the Old World
A strong economy lay at the heart of McKinley’s understanding of power and security. He sought to shield Americans from uncertainty, fear, and economic hardship. His conception of American power rested on domestic prosperity, self-reliance, and industrialisation. McKinley was less concerned about a direct military attack on US territory, aside from the Spanish threat during the 1898 war, than he was about economic depression leading to panic and disorder. As a result, when he entered office, his focus on foreign affairs was secondary to domestic priorities.
Expansion also played a central role in this equation. Speaking to a crowd in Minneapolis in 1899, McKinley compared his Pacific gains to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and celebrated the addition of new territories, declaring that territorial expansion had greatly enhanced American power and prosperity. The annexation of the Philippines added a landmass comparable in size to Arizona to US holdings. In McKinley’s view, this conferred prestige and respect. He later told an adviser that insisting on acquiring the Philippines was among their greatest achievements, noting that within months the United States had become a world power.
Roosevelt advanced this logic further. For him, power and security were not limited to territorial possession but extended to a broader strategic understanding of geography. McKinley’s occupation of Cuba and control of Puerto Rico enabled Roosevelt to treat Latin America as falling within the US sphere of influence. This inspired his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which explicitly built on McKinley’s policy of turning Cuba into a protectorate. This corollary did not merely supplement the Monroe Doctrine but contradicted it. While the original doctrine sought to prevent European powers from establishing new colonies in the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt’s interpretation asserted that the United States had an obligation to intervene to protect hemispheric states from instability and internal disorder. In doing so, it positioned the United States against the hemisphere itself, violating sovereignty.
The concept of civilisation formed the final and perhaps most important pillar of McKinley’s and Roosevelt’s understanding of power and security. In the 1890s, elite circles viewed civilisation as a measure of societal achievement, arranging people in a hierarchy of progress from so-called savages and barbarians at the bottom to civilised societies at the top. Civilisation, in this view, encompassed rule of law, order, self-governance, innovation, morality, prosperity, Christianity, modernity, literacy, and education. These criteria were deeply shaped by racial, social, and cultural biases and laid the groundwork for later concepts such as the Global North and Global South, emerging economies, and the First and Third Worlds.
Civilisation served as the bridge between culture and security. Internal decay was believed to invite chaos and misery, prompting many elites to call for restricting immigration into the United States. In the late nineteenth century, Congress introduced dozens of resolutions targeting anarchists, whom officials viewed as threats to national security, as documented by historian Alexander Noonan. This fear was reinforced when an anarchist assassinated McKinley in 1901, only six months into his second term.
At the same time, others invoked civilisation to oppose US imperialism. McKinley’s Secretary of State William Day urged the president not to annex the Philippines in 1898, warning that incorporating foreign peoples could threaten American civilisation. Writing to McKinley during negotiations with Spain, Day cautioned that annexing a vast archipelago of eight or nine million people, many of whom he described in derogatory terms, posed a daunting task for a nation that prided itself on governance by consent.
McKinley and Roosevelt believed that international affairs would become more predictable and peaceful if other states resembled the United States in their civilisational standards. This idea, described here as civilisational peace theory, later evolved into democratic peace theory, which holds that democracies do not go to war with one another.
For Roosevelt, this logic also underpinned what historian Charlie Laderman termed the second corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This framework justified intervention in response to crimes against civilisation, including atrocities committed by governments against their own populations. Roosevelt believed the United States bore a civilisational duty to punish misconduct and prevent egregious violations wherever they occurred.
These principles shaped security policy under McKinley and Roosevelt, producing an era defined not only by empire building but also by sustained intervention to preserve territory, influence, trade rights, and what was then regarded as civilisational progress.
A New Global Power
Today’s US leaders view power and security in ways that closely mirror those of McKinley and Roosevelt. The economy, for example, plays a central role in Trump’s national security policy. His administration’s emphasis on reindustrialisation, protectionism, and self-reliance seeks to revive the late nineteenth-century industrial golden age.
As previously argued with Don Graves in Foreign Affairs, Trump’s approach to economic security also prioritises short-sighted opportunism across technology policy, alliances, development, and even gifts from foreign governments. This logic explains why Venezuela’s natural resources, particularly its vast oil and mineral reserves, have become a central target.
Territory likewise holds significant importance for the Trump administration. If energy resources, supply chains, and economic interests were the sole concern, trade agreements and port leases would suffice. Yet Trump has openly suggested acquiring territory in Panama, Canada, Gaza, and Greenland.
Following the nighttime abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump declared that the United States would manage Venezuela until an appropriate transfer of power could occur. This signalled not a hypothetical outcome but an explicit intent to impose a form of protectorate. In the aftermath, Trump’s aides renewed threats regarding Greenland.
What brings the past sharply into focus in Trump’s Venezuela policy is the central role of civilisation in his actions. The abduction of Maduro aligns with Roosevelt’s logic of hemispheric stability and with the notion of punishing crimes against civilisation.
While Maduro is widely viewed as a dark chapter in Venezuela’s history, and regime change had long been advocated by prominent US lawmakers, Trump’s actions fulfilled two Rooseveltian commitments. Trump has openly questioned Venezuelans’ capacity for self-rule, stating on 3 January that the United States would ensure the country is properly governed. This echoes McKinley’s doubts about Filipinos before annexation, when he insisted that only the United States could teach them how to govern.
Civilisational thinking also permeates Trump’s broader security agenda. Expanded immigration raids, heightened border enforcement, and widespread visa cancellations reflect a desire for social homogenisation.
In the 2025 National Security Strategy, the Trump administration warned of the erasure of civilisation in Europe and the erosion of Western identity. This mirrors fears about internal decay within the United States itself, reflected in unprecedented central control over Smithsonian exhibitions and sustained attacks on the education system. Just as William Day feared Filipinos might eventually become US voters, many contemporary Republican leaders view diversity as a national security threat. The 2025 strategy declared that the era of mass migration is over.
More Intervention Means More Problems
One statement from Trump’s 2025 inauguration stands out. He declared that the United States would once again consider itself a growing nation, expanding its wealth, territory, and cities, raising expectations, and lifting its flag to new horizons. Few modern presidents could utter such words, yet they would have fitted seamlessly into McKinley’s second inaugural address.
The McKinley era offers cautionary lessons, centred on what can be described as the intervention trap. Trump would do well to place his administration in McKinley’s position in the autumn of 1898, as it charts its course in Venezuela. McKinley had overthrown a repressive regime by defeating Spain in the Philippines, distrusted the local population, and believed the United States could govern better. Victory and control over Manila fostered a sense of ownership that led him to overestimate the strategic importance of the Far East.
Concluding that US withdrawal would trigger a great power war, McKinley chose annexation as the lesser evil, despite having previously shown little concern about such conflicts. Intervention thus became self-justifying, compelling continued involvement to protect interests that existed only because of the initial annexation. The Philippines did not achieve independence until 1946.
Trump now faces a similar choice. Many Venezuelans welcomed the removal of an authoritarian leader, but the celebration of change does not equate to acceptance of US control. Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo initially celebrated McKinley’s victory over Spain, yet Filipinos had no say in what followed.
McKinley’s decision to annex the Philippines ignited a rebellion thousands of miles away, leading to the longest overseas war the United States fought until the Second World War. Although US forces prevailed, the material and moral costs were immense. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died, mostly from disease and starvation, including in US-run detention camps. A comparable number of civilians were later killed by US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The notion of administering Venezuela from the Pentagon, the State Department, or the White House may appear logical to some within the administration. Yet overt intervention risks drawing this and future administrations into believing that events in Venezuela are more vital to US interests than they truly are.
As the Trump administration attempts to oversee Venezuela, developments previously peripheral to US interests will begin to appear central. Should intervention provoke rebellion or sustained opposition, the president may respond in ways that generate instability and tragedy.
Political scientist Caleb Pomeroy recently observed in Foreign Affairs that states often feel less secure as they grow more powerful. When the United States annexed the Philippines, its expanding power produced heightened vulnerability. Roosevelt admitted this in 1907 when he told William Howard Taft that the Philippines represented America’s weak point.
If Trump assumes control over Venezuela, he may not find governance impossible, but he and future administrations will likely find it exceedingly difficult to relinquish that control.
