Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel waves a Venezuelan national flag in Havana on January 3, 2026.
(Photo by Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images)
“The ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine—applied in recent hours with violent force over the skies of Caracas—is the single greatest threat to peace and prosperity that the Americas confront today,” said Progressive International.
Jan 03, 2026
US President Donald Trump and top administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, characterized Saturday’s assault on Venezuela and abduction of the country’s president as a warning shot in the direction of Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American nations.
During a Saturday press conference, Trump openly invoked the Monroe Doctrine—an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere—and said his campaign of aggression against Venezuela represented the “Donroe Doctrine” in action.
RECOMMENDED…
Trump Says Ground Attack on Venezuela Imminent—Plus Colombia, Mexico Also in US Crosshairs
‘This Is State Terrorism’: Global Outrage as Trump Launches Illegal Assault on Venezuela
In his unwieldy remarks, Trump called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro by name, accusing him without evidence of “making cocaine and sending it to the United States.”
“So he does have to watch his ass,” the US president said of Petro, who condemned the Trump administration’s Saturday attack on Venezuela as “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America.”
Petro responded defiantly to the possibility of the US targeting him, writing on social media that he is “not worried at all.”
In a Fox News appearance earlier Saturday, Trump also took aim at the United States’ southern neighbor, declaring ominously that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” which also denounced the attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
“She is very frightened of the cartels,” Trump said of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “So we have to do something.”
“This armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event. It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana.”
Rubio, for his part, focused on Cuba—a country whose government he has long sought to topple.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio, who was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, said during Saturday’s press conference.
That the Trump administration wasted no time threatening other nations as it pledged to control Venezuela indefinitely sparked grave warnings, with the leadership of Progressive International cautioning that “this armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event.”
“It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana—and an attack on the very principle of sovereign equality and the prospects for the Zone of Peace once established by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,” the coalition said in a statement. “This renewed declaration of impunity from Washington is a threat to all nations around the world.”
“Trump has clearly articulated the imperial logic of this intervention—to seize control over Venezuela’s natural resources and reassert US domination over the hemisphere,” said Progressive International. “The ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine—applied in recent hours with violent force over the skies of Caracas—is the single greatest threat to peace and prosperity that the Americas confront today.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
What Castro did to the Cuban people was awful. My neighbor was from Cuba and worked for the electrical company. He owned a home and financial secure. His brother lived in the FL. During The night the Castro military broke into their home, took everything they owned. A few weeks later the Castro military was back, allowed them to get dressed, handed them their ID, took them to the military base, put them on a ship to FL. They were sponsored by the by his brother, they learned English and accumulate with our laws. They Were allowed to work in restaurant washing dishes. Rey was hired by the electrical company and they moved them to CA. They started a business to prep beef and pork, smoke the pork. They knew what they were doing. He’ took care of the my beef and pork, package for freezer.. One of the best neighbor I have been blessed with. He moved to Las Vegas when we had collapse of our economy.
You keep trying to make this about sovereign nations, and the citizens of those nations. The fact is that it is the same for all of the sovereign nations, even though you only mention, Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba. The fight is against corruption, these governments that you so strongly defend, are corrupted by the money produced by the drug business, and while it is true that the United States is the largest consumer of all of these illicit drugs, it is only because of the more successful economy in this year size of its population. If those countries mentioned, would simply have the testicle fortitude, to rain in those who perpetuate the drug trade, and truly lock them away, you would see that their oil or their natural resources, while valuable, would not be a motivation for military action or regime change. Those factors have existed for decades in the United States has not made efforts such as these to stop it. But we now have a president who is not going to be swayed by your silly attempts at excuse, making, what he is saying in short is, stop the drug trade in your sovereign country, and you will have to do without the payments that they are making to you, and if you don’t, we will stop at ourselves, whether you like it or not. This is not the workings of the week Democratic Party administrations you have seen in the past, if God will it, your days are numbered, if you don’t end the drug trade in corruption in your own backyard.