The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Bid to Control the Western Hemisphere
President Trump opened the year with pledges to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
He is ending it by bombing boats from South America, stationing the world’s largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and exploring military options against Venezuela’s autocratic leader.
In a sharp shift of decades of U.S. foreign policy, the Western Hemisphere has become the United States’ central theater abroad. In addition to military threats and action, the White House this year has carried out punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas.
Mr. Trump has said he is seeking to stop drugs and migrants from entering the United States. But, in other moments, top administration officials have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet.
“He believes this is the neighborhood we live in,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Latin America until June, who continues to advise the White House. “And you can’t be the pre-eminent global power if you’re not the pre-eminent regional power.”
The United States has long tried to tip the scales around Latin America, where it has supported military coups, conducted covert operations and invaded Panama.
That U.S. foreign policy was often tied to ideology. During the Cold War, there was the effort to champion capitalism — even if it meant backing dictators. In recent decades, as attention drifted to wars and competition in the other hemisphere, the focus was on democracy and free trade in Latin America.
Mr. Trump’s approach appears purely pragmatic: What is in it for the United States?
Stronger control of the hemisphere, and particularly Latin America, promises major benefits. Ample natural resources, strategic security positions and lucrative markets are all in play.
Backed by a team of hawks with a long history in Latin America, most prominently Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump is overhauling U.S. policy in the region to try to extract those prizes.
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The effect has been a reordering of politics up and down the Americas. Many leaders have twisted themselves to align with Mr. Trump — often winning major benefits in return — or bet their governments on defying him.
Many observers have begun calling the new U.S. approach “the Donroe Doctrine” — a term that appeared on a January cover of The New York Post — a Trumpian twist on a 19th-century idea.
In 1823, President James Monroe aspired to stop European powers from meddling in the hemisphere.
In 2025, the competing power is China, which has built up enormous political and economic power in Latin America over the past several decades.
Some foreign policy analysts believe that Mr. Trump would like to divide the world with China and Russia into spheres of influence. In recent months, top U.S. officials have explained their strategy in those terms.
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President Javier Milei of Argentina, for instance, campaigned to “Make Argentina Great Again” and questioned Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. When his government was wobbling on the edge of an economic crisis last month, the Trump administration arrived with a $20 billion bailout, and in midterm elections days later, Mr. Milei’s party won big.
The next day, Mr. Trump took credit. “We’re getting a real strong handle on South America,” he told reporters. On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mr. Milei announced the framework of a trade deal that should give the United States more access to Argentina’s critical minerals.
In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele agreed to take more than 200 Venezuelan deportees into his nation’s maximum security prison when no other nation wanted them.
Mr. Trump promptly praised Mr. Bukele to the cameras in the Oval Office and, in a critical boon for El Salvador’s tourism industry, the State Department removed its travel warning for the country.
Mr. Bukele, who has overseen a sweeping crackdown at home, also got something else he wanted: the return of MS-13 gang leaders in American custody. U.S. officials had previously found evidence of secret negotiations between Mr. Bukele’s government and gang leaders; he has denied having any pact with them.
For many, playing ball with Mr. Trump has been a winning strategy.
El Salvador, Ecuador and Guatemala last week secured new trade deals. Panama has staved off Mr. Trump’s threats. The positive relationship with Washington has helped some Latin American leaders remain among the most popular in the region, and more right-wing figures appear to be ascending in their wake.
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Bolivia ended two decades of leftist rule last month, an election celebrated by U.S. officials. Chile appears poised to elect a right-wing president who has embraced Mr. Trump. And Trump officials sought to aid a leading candidate for Peru’s presidency, a right-wing mayor known as Porky, just as he held a memorial for Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist assassinated in September.
On the other side, there have been consequences for those who do not cooperate.
The White House has worked to punish Latin America’s three leftist, autocratic governments, threatening 100 percent tariffs on Nicaraguan imports, further isolating Cuba and beginning an intense pressure campaign against Venezuela.
U.S. officials have called Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, a fugitive and offered a $50 million reward for his capture. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has been considering land strikes and the use of Special Operations forces there.
At the same time, the U.S. military has built up its largest presence in the hemisphere in decades, with more than 15,000 troops. Last week, the Navy moved its largest carrier within striking distance of Venezuela.
Since September, the U.S. military has carried out 21 strikes against speedboats it says are ferrying drugs, killing 83 people. U.S. officials have not presented evidence the boats were smuggling drugs.
That highly unusual campaign, which has raised concerns in Congress and elsewhere about its legality, has also been used to pressure other nations.
In Colombia, for instance, President Gustavo Petro has become one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent critics — and targets.
After Mr. Petro, a leftist, criticized the boat strikes, the United States halted aid, and its military struck a boat hailing from Colombia. Then the Treasury Department hit Mr. Petro with sanctions, accusing him of being a drug trafficker. Mr. Petro’s popularity has fallen, and analysts believe the nation could swing right in next year’s election.
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In one sign of Mr. Trump’s impact, the premier diplomatic forum for the hemisphere, the Summit of the Americas, was abruptly canceled this month for the first time in its 31-year history. Organizers cited “deep divisions that currently hamper productive dialogue.”
When it has come to the hemisphere’s largest players, Mr. Trump has found limits to his strategy of pressure and threats.
As the United States’ two largest trading partners, Mexico and Canada retain enormous leverage. Each has found ways to comply with some of Mr. Trump’s demands while holding firm on others. And the nations’ leaders, each from left-leaning parties, have benefited politically from their approach to Mr. Trump.
But Brazil represents the strongest test case for Mr. Trump’s approach. In July, he hit the nation with 50 percent tariffs and sanctions in an effort to stop the Brazilian government’s criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.
Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, quickly criticized Mr. Trump and watched his poll numbers rise. Brazil then convicted Mr. Bolsonaro of trying to stage a coup and sentenced him to 27 years in prison.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump abruptly changed course. He met with Mr. Lula and said he liked him, and now the two nations are negotiating an end to the tariffs.
Jack Nicas is The Times’s Mexico City bureau chief, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean."
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