The New Doctrine Reshaping Global Markets

Back in January, I published a piece arguing that the United States’ Caracas raid and arrest of Nicolás Maduro was not a one-off event but a pilot episode. I called it the dawn of Imperium Americanum – a shift away from the old model of global governance and diplomatic restraint toward something much more direct: accumulating strategic assets, fortifying supply chains, and eliminating perceived threats.

I said that the next 11 months would be the most aggressive stretch of American foreign policy in living memory and that investors needed to reposition accordingly.

Well, alongside Venezuela, Greenland, and the increasingly militarized U.S.–Mexico border, I would like to submit additional evidence into the record: Cuba and Iran.

In recent weeks, both nations have moved abruptly from diplomatic friction to direct confrontation with Washington. In Cuba, the United States has tightened the economic vise around an already collapsing regime while opening channels that could lead to a “managed transition.” And in Iran, tensions escalated far faster – from protests and nuclear brinkmanship to a full-scale joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign that targeted the regime itself. Different theaters, different tools. Same strategic logic.

At some point, a pattern stops being a pattern and becomes a doctrine. 

The United States of America has moved into the acquisition business. And if you aren’t positioned for it, you are leaving serious money on the table.

The Donroe Doctrine: America’s New Foreign Policy Strategy

Let’s set the scene with a brief timeline because the velocity of events matters as much as the events themselves.

January 3: Operation Absolute Resolve. U.S. forces extract Nicolás Maduro from Caracas. He’s flown to New York to face drug charges. Days later, at the State of the Union address, President Trump boasts that the U.S. government has taken possession of over 80 million barrels of Venezuelan oil – not secured or protected; taken. That is the language of plundering, not peacekeeping.

January 3-9: Trump, emboldened by the Caracas operation, immediately pivots to warning other nations in the Western Hemisphere. He says U.S. military force is “always an option” to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark. His deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, goes on CNN to declare that the U.S. has a right to Greenland, full stop. Then his wife Katie Miller tweets a map of Greenland covered in the Stars and Stripes with the caption: “SOON.” Not exactly subtle.

January-February: Trump says that Cuba “looks like it’s ready to fall,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – a Cuban-American with a personal stake in the island’s politics – warns Havana’s leadership that they are “in a lot of trouble.” Cuba’s oil supply from Venezuela has been cut off. The island is economically asphyxiating. Regime change by strangulation is already underway.

February 28: Operation Epic Fury. Joint U.S. and Israeli forces launch an attack against Iran – targeting missiles, air defenses, nuclear facilities, military infrastructure, and the country’s supreme leader himself. Ali Khamenei is assassinated in the opening wave. Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the body that would choose his successor, sees its meeting place destroyed in a subsequent strike. The United States and Israel did not consult the UN Security Council, convene with NATO, or wait for any second opinion. It acted decisively.

Trump dubbed his approach the “Donroe Doctrine” – a self-named spin on the Monroe Doctrine that drops all pretense of multilateralism. The New York Times noted it was “the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview”: that national strength – not laws, treaties, or conventions – is the deciding factor when powers collide.

The doctrine may have been declared in Caracas. But its real test was always going to come somewhere far bigger.

Iran and the New Era of Power Politics

If Venezuela was the proof of concept, Iran is the proof of scale.

Beginning in January, massive anti-government protests swept more than 100 Iranian cities – the largest uprising since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps responded with live ammunition, mounted machine guns, and drone suppression of crowds. Thousands were killed. In a Truth Social post, Trump urged Iranian protesters to continue and said that “help is on its way.” He then sent two carrier strike groups to the Middle East, the largest naval buildup in the region since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

In early February, there were nuclear negotiations in Oman. Iran rejected a proposal for a civilian nuclear program with American investment in exchange for full dismantlement. On Feb. 27, embassies began evacuating Tehran. On Feb. 28, the campaign began.

What happened next separates this operation from nearly every U.S. military engagement of the past three decades. This was not a punitive strike or a “shaping operation.” It was a campaign aimed at removing the regime entirely – one that also intended to permanently destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. 

By day nine of the conflict, the U.S. and Israel had struck Iran’s oil storage depots and refining facilities for the first time. Iran had fired over 500 ballistic missiles and nearly 2,000 drones at U.S. and Israeli targets. Oil briefly spiked toward $120 a barrel before whipsawing lower as markets priced in the possibility of Iranian regime collapse. The Strait of Hormuz – the chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows – has been partially shut, with Iran restricting or halting passage for vessels tied to the United States, Israel, and their allies while allowing limited commercial traffic from other nations to continue.

Let me be direct: this conflict is not just a foreign policy event. It is a market-restructuring event.

Energy flows, defense procurement, and the global gold market are already reacting to the shift.

Investors who position early will capture the upside. Those who wait for “clarity” will be buying after the move.

Greenland and Cuba: Strategic Assets in Play

I won’t dwell here because the situation with Iran demands most of our attention. But Greenland and Cuba deserve a mention as well.

Greenland – sitting atop one of the world’s largest rare earth and uranium deposits and astride the Arctic shipping lanes that China and Russia covet – remains an active acquisition target. Trump ordered Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to develop invasion plans before walking it back slightly at Davos. The rhetoric has cooled from ‘hot war with a NATO ally’ to ‘very aggressive negotiation,’ but the strategic intent hasn’t changed. This administration wants that island, one way or another. And now that Washington has demonstrated in two different arenas that it is willing to use force, Denmark and the EU are negotiating from a very different position than they were six months ago.

Cuba, for its part, is being strategically suffocated. Following a broader U.S. strategy of cutting off Cuban allies, the nation’s economy is collapsing as it experiences acute shortages of fuel, food, and money. Trump has floated a “friendly takeover,” with Rubio engaged in ‘high-level discussions’ with representatives of the Cuban government. Whether Cuba falls on its own or gets a push, another item on the Imperium Americanum checklist gets ticked.

Both are important threads. But Iran is the main event.