Explore Trump’s National Security Strategy and its impact on the Western Hemisphere.
Welcome to „The New Monroe Doctrine“, where I give you an update on what’s going on in the Western Hemisphere, south of our border, especially as it relates to the United States.
I had something else planned to write about for this column today — specifically how some Latin American countries are handling mass migration much better than Europe — but Donald Trump released his new National Security Strategy in the last 24 hours, and upon reading it, I got a little giddy. Don’t judge. I love this stuff.
But what I love even more is what’s in it: tough on Europe, shifting away from the Middle East being the core of our foreign policy, fighting China economically, and focusing heavily on our own backyard, the Western Hemisphere. That’s literally the mindset that inspired this column when I started it a couple of months ago, and it’s one reason why I write about Latin America and the Caribbean so much. Our country has overlooked the importance of the Americas for too long, and now we have a president and a Secretary of State/National Security Advisor — because let’s face it, Marco Rubio is all over this — who understand that.
And there’s no better time like the present. As I’ve covered in great detail, many countries in the hemisphere are taking a broad swing away from socialism and toward common sense. They’re tired of crime, cartels, commie leaders, crumbling economies, China walking all over them, mass migration, and government corruption. They see partnerships with the United States as a way to get ahead instead of falling into Chinese debt traps. They’re electing their Javier Mileis and the Nayib Bukeles.
Related for VIPs: Something Is Changing in Latin America
We need to seize on this pivotal moment in history and champion it. I want to hear less about the war in Ukraine or how you can’t post memes in England without receiving a jail sentence and more about the amazing things the newly elected President Rodrigo Paz is doing in Bolivia or how Peru is already strengthening its border with Chile because it’s looks like that country will have a Trump-like president very soon who doesn’t put up with stuff like mass migration or how Ecuador is cracking down on crime or how Mexican people are rising up and protesting the cartels that are taking over their country, etc.
Anyway, I’m off on a tangent. Let’s get to the facts.
„In everything we do, we are putting America first.“ That’s what the president writes in the introduction letter to his National Security Strategy before laying out what that means, where our country went astray, and what the United States wants and needs, including what it wants from the world. That includes literally building on the original Monroe Doctrine:
We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‚Trump Corollary‘ to the Monroe Doctrine
For this column, I’m going to skip most of the document (you can read it in full here: National Security Strategy) and review the final section, which focuses on various regions around the world. I think it’s something many of you will like based on the comments and emails I receive (emphasis mine): „To focus and prioritize is to choose — to acknowledge that not everything matters equally, to everyone. It is not to assert that any peoples, regions, or countries are somehow intrinsically unimportant. The United States is by every measure the most generous nation in history—yet we cannot afford to be equally attentive to every region and every problem in the world.
