Tea at Trianon: The Donroe Doctrine: Break the Tyrant, Not the Country

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 8, 2026

The Donroe Doctrine: Break the Tyrant, Not the Country

From Unlicensed Punditry:

For decades, American foreign policy was guided—at least informally—by what came to be known as the Powell Doctrine. Colin Powell summarized the concept with what became known as the “Pottery Barn Rule”: if you break it, you bought it. The idea was that if the United States toppled a regime or destabilized a country, we then inherited responsibility for rebuilding it. That assumption was the philosophical foundation for the long nation-building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan, where American forces were expected not only to defeat hostile regimes but to rebuild political systems, civil institutions, and entire economies.
Donald Trump appears to have rejected that premise entirely.
Americans instinctively understand how unrealistic that idea is because we would never apply it to ordinary life. If a neighbor’s house catches fire and the flames are spreading toward your property, you grab a hose and help put the fire out. What you don’t do is assume responsibility for rebuilding the entire house, choosing the new furniture, and deciding how the family should live from that point forward. The Powell Doctrine effectively told the United States that every time we helped extinguish a dangerous fire abroad, we were obligated to become the contractor for rebuilding the whole neighborhood.
Uncharacteristically for Donald J. Trump, a significant part of what he did in Venezuela was understated and has largely gone unnoticed—I’m not sure that if something isn’t hyperbolized or gilded in gold, people can recognize a Trump plan—but may represent a quiet but profound shift in how American power is applied. Instead of launching a long occupation or attempting to remake the country’s political system, the United States simply removed the central figure responsible for the regime’s worst abuses and left the state structure largely intact. (Read more.)