Just hours after US special forces took Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from the presidential palace and the country, US President Donald Trump was elated to be watching the action live from his Florida mansion.
He shared his feelings on the American conservative news channel Fox News.
"If you could have seen that speed, that ferocity, as they call it... It was an incredible job," Trump said.
"No one else could pull something like this off."
The American president wants quick victories and he needs them.
Even before he took office for a second term in the White House, he boasted that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours.
Venezuela, as he presents it in his statements, represents precisely the quick, decisive victory he craves.
Maduro is now in a prison cell in Brooklyn, New York, the United States will "govern" Venezuela, and Trump has announced that the Chavismo regime, now led by a new president, will hand over millions of barrels of oil.
And that he will control the way the proceeds from it are spent.
All of this, for now, without the loss of American life and the long-term occupation that had catastrophic consequences after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Trump and his advisers are, for now at least publicly, ignoring the complexities of Venezuela.
This is a country larger than Germany, still governed by a network of factions, deeply rooted in corruption and repression, embedded in the very core of Venezuelan politics.
Instead, Trump is enjoying a burst of enthusiasm about geopolitics.
Judging by the statements they made while standing next to Trump at the Mar-a-Lago residence, the same is true for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsett.
Since then, they have been repeating that Trump is a president who does what he says he will do.
He made it clear to Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Greenland and Denmark that they should be nervous about where his ambition would take him next.
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Trump loves nicknames.
He still calls his predecessor Sleeping Joe Biden.
Now trying out a new name for Monroe Doctrine, which has been the foundation of American policy in Latin America for two centuries.
Trump, in his style, renamed the doctrine after himself – the Donro Doctrine.
James Monroe, the fifth president of America, presented the original doctrine in December 1823.
It declared the Western Hemisphere an American sphere of interest, warning European powers not to interfere and not to establish new colonies.
The Donro Doctrine is like Monroe's 200-year-old message, but "on steroids."
"The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we have largely moved beyond it," Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago residence as Maduro, blindfolded and shackled, was on his way to prison.
"Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned."
Any rival or potential threat, especially China, must stay away from Latin America.
It is not clear, however, what this means for the vast resources that China has already invested in the region.
The Donro Doctrine extends the vast area that the US calls its "backyard" northward, all the way to Greenland.
The 2026 equivalent of Monroe's 1823 calligraphy is a photo of a frowning Trump posted on social media by the US State Department.
"This is OUR hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be compromised," the caption read.
This means using American military and economic power to coerce countries and leaders who don't play by the rules, and to seize their resources, if necessary.
As Trump warned another potential target, the president of Colombia - they need to be careful what they do.
Greenland is a target for America, not only because of its strategic location in the Arctic, but also because of the mineral wealth that is becoming increasingly accessible due to the melting ice due to global warming.
Rare metals from Greenland and heavy crude oil from Venezuela are considered strategic resources for the US.
Unlike other American presidents who have been prone to foreign intervention, Trump does not disguise his actions with the legitimacy - however false - of international law, nor with the desire to establish democracy.
The only legitimacy he needs is his belief in the strength of his own will, backed by the raw military power of the United States.
From Monroe to Donro, foreign policy doctrines have been important to American presidents.
They shape their actions and their legacy.
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In July, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Back in 1796, the first American president, George Washington, announced that he would not run for a third term, and his farewell speech still has a strong influence today.
Washington issued a series of warnings for the US and its relationship with the world.
Temporary alliances in times of war may be necessary, but in peacetime the United States should avoid permanent alliances with other countries.
This began the tradition of isolationism.
And Washington warned citizens of the United States to beware of extremist movements.
Divisions, he said, pose a danger to the young American republic.
Washington's farewell address is read every year in the Senate, but it has no impact on today's highly partisan and deeply polarized American politics.
Washington's warning about the dangers of entangled alliances was heeded for a full 150 years.
After World War I, America withdrew from Europe and returned to a policy of isolationism.
But World War II turned the United States into a world power.
This is where another doctrine comes into play, much more significant for the way of life of Europeans - until Trump.
By 1947, the Cold War with the Soviet Union had turned icy.
Financially exhausted by the war, Great Britain informed the United States that it could no longer finance the Greek government's fight against the communists.
Then-President Harry Truman responded that the United States was obligated to support "free peoples who are resisting attempts by armed minorities or outside pressures to subjugate them."
By this he meant threats from the Soviet Union or domestic communists.
That was the Truman Doctrine.
It led to the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe, and then to the founding of the NATO Alliance in 1949.
Atlanticists in the US, such as Harry Truman and George Kennan, the diplomat who devised the strategy of containing the Soviet Union, believed that these commitments were in the American interest.
There is a direct connection between the Truman Doctrine and Joseph Biden's decision to fund Ukraine in its war against Russia.
It was the Truman Doctrine that largely created the relationship with Europe that Trump is now dismantling.
It represented a sharp break with the past.
Truman ignored Washington's warning about permanent, entangled alliances.
Now Trump is breaking with Truman's legacy.
If he carries out his threat to somehow take over Greenland, which is a sovereign territory of Denmark, he could destroy what is left of the transatlantic alliance.
This was summed up by Steven Miller, an ideologue of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, in a statement to CNN earlier this week. Make America Great Again) and a powerful Trump advisor.
He said the US operates in a real world "ruled by strength, force, power... These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."
No American president would dispute the need for strength and power.
But from Franklin D. Roosevelt, through Truman and all their successors to Trump, the people in the Oval Office believed that the best way for America to be powerful was to lead an alliance, which involved give and take.
They supported the creation of the United Nations and efforts to establish rules governing the behavior of states.
Of course, the US has ignored and violated international law many times, significantly undermining the idea of a rules-based order.
But Trump's predecessors did not try to reject the very idea that rules are needed in the international system, no matter how imperfect and flawed they may be.
The reason is the catastrophic consequences of the rule of the strongest in the first half of the 20th century - two world wars and millions of deaths.
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However, the combination of Trump's "America First" ideology and his entrepreneurial drive for acquisition and transactions has led him to believe that America's allies must pay for the privilege of his favor.
Friendship seems like too strong a word.
US interests, according to the narrow definition presented by the president, require the country to remain a major player by acting alone.
Trump changes his mind often.
But there seems to be one constant, and that is his belief that the US can use its power with impunity.
He claims it's the way to make America great again.
There is a danger that Trump, if he sticks to his course, could turn the world back to what it was in the era of imperialism, more than a century ago.
And that is a world in which great powers, which had spheres of influence, sought to impose their will.
And a world in which powerful authoritarian nationalists led their peoples into disaster.
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