For decades, Latin America was considered the United States’ backyard. Today, Washington has declared the region as its favored zone. The Donald Trump administration’s new national security strategy, released this month, places geopolitical emphasis on the American continent, to the detriment of Europe and the Middle East. From the siglos that followed its proclamation, see the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century which opened an era of Washington interventionism in Latin America, directed in its majority against the government and left-wing sympathizers, and which returns with Trumpist characteristics. The military campaign around Venezuela is one of them. The presidency ―leading to electoral interference― in favor of concerned governments and politicians in a region more polarized than it has ever been.
In what Casa Blanca defines as “the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” and which has begun to jokingly refer to itself as Donroe Doctrine (by Donald’s D), Latin America sees itself as a region from which some of the most serious problems of the United States emanate, and which is obliged to collaborate so that Washington achieves its objectives: the drastic reduction of migration, the “neutralization” of drug cartels and transnational crime, and the disappearance of the Chinese inversions which flourish in this region. For good – through incentives for economic collaboration – or for suitcases: the document clearly indicates that the large naval deployment in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela, will remain there for a long time.
“We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains well-governed and reasonably stable enough to prevent and deter mass migration to the United States; we want a hemisphere in which the government cooperates with us against narcoterrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a hemisphere that remains free of foreign hostile incursions and foreign ownership of key assets, and that supports key supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations,” the statement proclaims. Security strategy.
The main focus, at the moment, is Venezuela. In him and in his Chavista regime all the factors of American interests converge: abundant natural resources, including oil, transnational crime, massive emigration, a regime at ideological poles with good relations with China and Russia and a president, Nicolás Maduro, that Washington – and Europe, and other governments in the region – consider illegitimate, especially after the electoral fraud of July 2024.
Before the naval deployment in the Caribbean, tensions are at their peak. Trump raised them again this week, reiterating that “very soon” the military campaign, now focused solely on attacks against suspected narco-boats, and which has left at least 87 dead and 22 vessels captured, could move to a new phase of actions on Venezuelan territory.
The content of the new strategy is not a surprise. Since his return to the White House, the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his administration has raised accusations of neo-imperialism and comparisons with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which evokes the hegemonic policy of the United States in the region and stirs up the ghost of its most atrocious episodes; from supporting coups and dictators like General Augusto Pinochet in Chile to military interventions, the last of which took place in Panama just thirty years ago. At the same time, the American president threatened to fight Greenland (autonomous territory of Dan) in the Arctic and to regain control of the Panama Canal by force. Since then, and with anti-communist leader Marco Rubio at the forefront of its foreign policy, the administration’s focus on the continent has become increasingly notorious.
“Everything we’ve seen in recent months points to a kind of gun diplomacy version 2.0. You don’t have to think too hard to know that the Trump administration is not about what we called soft power and you think the only power there is is force, and forcing people to choose to be part of your gang,” says John Walsh, director for the Andes and anti-drug policy of the NGO Oficina de Washington para las Américas (WOLA).
Rewards for friends
The document only codifies this reorganization of a policy in which Trump has not hesitated to intervene to help his allies or to try to harm those perceived as hostile, in which there is no mention of democracy as an essential value, there is no mention of corruption and no “rewards” are promised to those linked to it. It also recognizes the need to collaborate with governments of “distinct” orientation willing to cooperate on issues of common interest. But for holdouts, like Venezuela, there is a warning: “selective deployments” of military force that will increase their presence and may use “deadly force if necessary.”
Trump met at the Oval with Despacho Nayib Bukele of El Salvador; he saved Javier Milei from Argentina with an envelope of 20 billion dollars (approximately 17.178 million euros); he cut aranceles towards these countries and towards Ecuador by Daniel Noboa. His government praised Bolivia’s new derechista president, Rodrigo Paz. And he intervened in the electoral processes, which seemed to belong to the past: he conditioned his aid to Argentina on the triumph of Milei in the comics of October 26. This week, I reached out to the Honduran elections to express support for the ruling candidate, Nasry Asfura. It is the final blow to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who served a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking. Something that contradicts their statements that their hostility towards Venezuela is due to the fight against drugs.
During this time, he attacked Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, whom he called a “monkey” and a “drug trafficker”, and tried to suffocate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a mountain of arances against Brazil, before reversing his decision, forced by the galloping food prices, in the United States.
“The vasal states are looking for it” Washington, says former minister and former Chilean ambassador Jorge Heine. “And I say it openly in this national security strategy. It will treat countries with those who have ideological affinities and not with others. It’s a very crude thing,” adds this research professor from Boston University. Your country, precisely, is one of those which is in the crosshairs of Washington’s strategy: on the 14th the second round of rallies will be celebrated during which the ultra-derechist José Antonio Kart finds himself behind the progressive leader Jeanine Jara in the polls. The outcome of these comics could tip the ideological balance between countries in the region to one side or the other.
Heine highlights, among other things, sections of the document that specify that Latin American countries – “especially those that are more dependent on us and, therefore, have a greater capacity to exert pressure” – will tend to award contracts to American companies without the need for a public tender. What Washington will have is “every effort to expel foreign companies building infrastructure in the region,” an allusion to China, whose businesses stretch from ports like Chancay in Peru to the Bogotá metro.
The former ambassador recalls that, in the past, American companies gave up on this type of project because they found them unprofitable. “So what should Latin American countries do, decide that they don’t like this in Washington and resign themselves to underdevelopment? », he asks. “The United States arrives too late; there is no return to the Chinese presence in Latin America.”
First fire test
The first test of the new strategy will be what happens in Venezuela. The American president is faced with a dilemma: if he acts, he risks angering his electoral base, the MAGA movement (Make America Great Again), I oppose unnecessary wars abroad. However, if it is limited to a certain type of symbolic action, “the regime will continue and become stronger,” Heine argued. This would not be a demonstration of this “powerful restoration of American power” that the White House is aiming for.
“In his ideal scenario, Trump reaches some sort of agreement with Maduro that gives the United States the opportunity to take responsibility,” says Walsh. The fall of Chavismo would give very valuable internal political points in places like Florida. “And there is this idea – the best of Marco Rubio – which could generate a domino effect between the authoritarian regimes of government in the region. Tendrías a Venezuela completely in the service of the United States, because the new government would see its existence subject to intervention. And after Nicaragua, and the joy of corona in Rubio: Cuba.”
But even the panorama of a Venezuela without Maduro is not without risks. The Iraqi precedent is a stark reminder that regime changes tend to be bloody, complicated and – most importantly for Trump – extremely expensive.
And if this were achieved through military intervention, “other Latin American countries would start to think very differently, in terms of their own sovereignty and being at the mercy of others’ orders, even if they are more politically aligned with Washington, given the long history of US interventions and how, more often than not, they have ended horribly badly,” Walsh warns.
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