Trump revives Monroe doctrine with "Americas first" push in Latin America

As the Pentagon masses warships and aircraft in the Caribbean, the world is watching to see whether President Donald Trump will launch a strike on Venezuela. According to Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands, coercing President Nicolás Maduro’s autocratic, anti-US regime is merely part of a larger campaign to reassert America’s hemispheric hegemony.

In an opinion piece published by Bloomberg, Brands argues that Trump’s actions reflect a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century policy that warned European powers against interfering in the Western Hemisphere.

“The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” former Secretary of State John Kerry declared in 2013. “Not so fast,” Trump has effectively replied.

During his first term, Trump sought to resurrect that two-century old doctrine, targeting Maduro’s government in Caracas and challenging the influence of China and Russia across Latin America. Trump’s second-term foreign policy seemed like it was stolen from the 19th century, driven by an agenda of hemispheric primacy, the author notes. 

Brands outlines how Trump’s administration has pursued this goal through a mix of pressure, incentives, and symbolism. The White House“pressured Panama to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative, extended economic support to Argentina, and formed a deportation alliance with El Salvador.

Trump used threats of military intervention to prod Mexico to get tougher on drug trafficking and illegal migration, imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and even renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, a move Brands calls “a symbolic assertion of US dominance.”

The standoff with Venezuela, however, is the centerpiece of Trump’s push. The US has intensified strikes against drug traffickers, but the growing military presence in the Caribbean is vastly more than anything needed for a counternarcotics campaign, Brands notes. He suggests that Trump may be building to a coercive crescendo meant to send Maduro fleeing, or perhaps an air campaign meant to forcibly fracture his regime.

This approach — dubbed by admirers the “Don-roe Doctrine” — fits squarely within America’s long-standing strategic tradition, Brands argues. 

Yet Brands also highlights the risks. He points to four major complications in Trump’s strategy. First, Trump’s bright ideas are interlaced with bad ones. While protecting hemispheric influence is sound, meddling in Brazil’s judicial process on behalf of the ex-president Jair Bolsonaro is not. Similarly, threatening to seize territory such as Greenland or parts of the Panama Canal is needlessly provocative.

Second, Brands warns that an Americas First policy could exacerbate global strategic dilemmas, as shifting focus to the Western Hemisphere may weaken US influence in Europe and the Middle East. Third, he cautions that regime change in Venezuela could spiral into chaos, even civil war. And fourth, Trump will have to build as well as break.

Military and economic coercion may win short-term leverage, but long-term stability requires “positive-sum relationships” through trade, diplomacy, and regional cooperation, the opinion piece outlines. 

By Sabina Mammadli