F.S. Aijazuddin
Published January 15, 2026
DAWN
POLITICAL doctrines, like public buildings, are often named after persons. The US boasts the Lincoln Memorial, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, even Washington, D.C. America’s very name owes its origins to the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Had the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller not appropriated the name America for his map of the New World in 1507, America might have been named Colombia, after Christopher Columbus.
Political doctrines too have a patrimony: in the East, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism and Brezhnevism. The latter declared the then USSR’s obligation under the Warsaw Pact to intervene militarily if any Eastern Bloc socialist country was threatened. China has seen Taoism, Maoism and more recently Xi-ism. Xi-ism has morphed from ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, formally incorporated in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party in 2018. Xi Jinping Thought has been summarised to include Ten Affirmations, Fourteen Commitments, Thirteen Areas of Achievements, and Six Musts. Collectively, they encapsulate Xi Jinping’s worldview and the Sinicisation of Marxism.
Xi Jinping has chosen to follow the footsteps of his precursors. In the west, President Donald Trump has hurdled over the doctrines left by his predecessors — in particular, Dwight Eisenhower’s of 1957, which assured economic aid and military assistance to any Middle Eastern countries threatened by ‘international communism’. And Richard Nixon’s in 1959, which affirmed that the US would honour “treaty commitments” but expected its allies to be responsible for their own defence. It would provide arms and aid but not troops.
Trump has backtracked centuries to Theodore Roosevelt’s doctrine of 1904 and James Monroe’s of 1823. Roosevelt’s doctrine identified Latin America as its backyard, where the US could expand its commercial interests and block European hegemony in the region. It sought to make the US the dominant power there. Monroe warned European powers like Spain against colonising the Americas further.
A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
The impact of the Monroe Doctrine on US foreign policy has been discussed in Jay Sexton’s The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. He traces the growth of these United States (the original 13 states) to the United States. He explores their ambivalent relationship with an expansive 19th-century Great Britain, and describes the Monroe Doctrine as “an American shorthand for a hemisphere (and ultimately a world), cleared of the British Empire”.
Two centuries later, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 has been refurbished and reframed as the ‘Don-roe doctrine’. Today, Trump’s America has nothing to fear from King Charles III’s Britain. Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is more than a doctrinal goal. It is a combustible propellant that admixes “right-wing populism, right-wing anti-globalism, national conservatism and neo-nationalism”.
His policy is a forceful application of ‘dollar diplomacy’, used many times before in US history — instances are when the US bought Louisiana from France in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
The Danes having sold the Virgin Islands should prepare themselves for the ‘forced sale’ of Greenland. They may not have a choice. The contiguous US mainland is almost four times bigger than Greenland which is 50 times larger than Denmark. A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
Trump’s demands evoke fears expressed over a century ago by small nations when threatened by larger ones. Hispanics in particular became apprehensive. As one Argentine put it, by substituting the United States for Europe as “a source of civilisation”, they would be getting “European civilisation second hand”.
This in essence is the unease felt by many in our modern world. There are over 190 sovereign states, each with its own flag, individual aspirations, and unique identity. They view modern Xi-ism with its One Road, One Belt universalism and Trumpism with its insidious tariff ultimatums through the same lens. They fear being treated by both superpowers as ‘politically free’ but also as ‘commercial slaves’.
These concerns are sharpened by the reality that China and the US share a sinister characteristic: Xi is leader for life; Trump for a finite term, ending whenever. At their apex, both superpowers have become what John Quincy Adams (who helped draft the Monroe Doctrine) warned against — ‘a military monarchy’.
Some will recall the Five Principles (Panchsheel) agreed between China and India in 1954, and echoed in the I.K. Gujral Doctrine of 1996. They spoke inter alia of territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence. Sadly, “the past”, in L.P. Hartley’s words, “is a foreign country”. They did things differently there.
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2026
POLITICAL doctrines, like public buildings, are often named after persons. The US boasts the Lincoln Memorial, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, even Washington, D.C. America’s very name owes its origins to the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Had the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller not appropriated the name America for his map of the New World in 1507, America might have been named Colombia, after Christopher Columbus.
Political doctrines too have a patrimony: in the East, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism and Brezhnevism. The latter declared the then USSR’s obligation under the Warsaw Pact to intervene militarily if any Eastern Bloc socialist country was threatened. China has seen Taoism, Maoism and more recently Xi-ism. Xi-ism has morphed from ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, formally incorporated in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party in 2018. Xi Jinping Thought has been summarised to include Ten Affirmations, Fourteen Commitments, Thirteen Areas of Achievements, and Six Musts. Collectively, they encapsulate Xi Jinping’s worldview and the Sinicisation of Marxism.
Xi Jinping has chosen to follow the footsteps of his precursors. In the west, President Donald Trump has hurdled over the doctrines left by his predecessors — in particular, Dwight Eisenhower’s of 1957, which assured economic aid and military assistance to any Middle Eastern countries threatened by ‘international communism’. And Richard Nixon’s in 1959, which affirmed that the US would honour “treaty commitments” but expected its allies to be responsible for their own defence. It would provide arms and aid but not troops.
Trump has backtracked centuries to Theodore Roosevelt’s doctrine of 1904 and James Monroe’s of 1823. Roosevelt’s doctrine identified Latin America as its backyard, where the US could expand its commercial interests and block European hegemony in the region. It sought to make the US the dominant power there. Monroe warned European powers like Spain against colonising the Americas further.
A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
The impact of the Monroe Doctrine on US foreign policy has been discussed in Jay Sexton’s The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. He traces the growth of these United States (the original 13 states) to the United States. He explores their ambivalent relationship with an expansive 19th-century Great Britain, and describes the Monroe Doctrine as “an American shorthand for a hemisphere (and ultimately a world), cleared of the British Empire”.
Two centuries later, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 has been refurbished and reframed as the ‘Don-roe doctrine’. Today, Trump’s America has nothing to fear from King Charles III’s Britain. Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is more than a doctrinal goal. It is a combustible propellant that admixes “right-wing populism, right-wing anti-globalism, national conservatism and neo-nationalism”.
His policy is a forceful application of ‘dollar diplomacy’, used many times before in US history — instances are when the US bought Louisiana from France in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the US Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
The Danes having sold the Virgin Islands should prepare themselves for the ‘forced sale’ of Greenland. They may not have a choice. The contiguous US mainland is almost four times bigger than Greenland which is 50 times larger than Denmark. A Great Dane is no match for a hungry Rottweiler.
Trump’s demands evoke fears expressed over a century ago by small nations when threatened by larger ones. Hispanics in particular became apprehensive. As one Argentine put it, by substituting the United States for Europe as “a source of civilisation”, they would be getting “European civilisation second hand”.
This in essence is the unease felt by many in our modern world. There are over 190 sovereign states, each with its own flag, individual aspirations, and unique identity. They view modern Xi-ism with its One Road, One Belt universalism and Trumpism with its insidious tariff ultimatums through the same lens. They fear being treated by both superpowers as ‘politically free’ but also as ‘commercial slaves’.
These concerns are sharpened by the reality that China and the US share a sinister characteristic: Xi is leader for life; Trump for a finite term, ending whenever. At their apex, both superpowers have become what John Quincy Adams (who helped draft the Monroe Doctrine) warned against — ‘a military monarchy’.
Some will recall the Five Principles (Panchsheel) agreed between China and India in 1954, and echoed in the I.K. Gujral Doctrine of 1996. They spoke inter alia of territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence. Sadly, “the past”, in L.P. Hartley’s words, “is a foreign country”. They did things differently there.
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment