The ongoing US military buildup in the Caribbean represents not a prudent exercise of regional leadership but rather a dangerous resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine’s most counterproductive impulses. Nearly two centuries after President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere closed to European colonization, American policymakers continue to invoke this antiquated framework to justify interventions that serve neither US security interests nor the cause of stability in our own neighborhood.
The national security establishment’s reflexive response to instability in the Caribbean—deploying military assets, threatening sanctions, and contemplating regime change—reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both the region’s dynamics and America’s actual strategic interests. Whatever the threat du jour—Chinese influence, drug trafficking, or migration flows—the prescription remains unchanged: more American involvement, more military presence, and more attempts to micromanage the internal affairs of sovereign nations.
This approach suffers from the same delusion that has plagued American foreign policy for decades—the notion that the United States can and must control political outcomes in every corner of the globe, or in this case, every island in the Caribbean. It reflects what might be called the “Beltway bubble” perspective, where Washington insiders convince themselves that events in Port-au-Prince or Havana pose existential threats to American security, requiring immediate military responses.
Particularly troubling is the resurrection of great power competition rhetoric to justify Caribbean intervention. The specter of Chinese influence—whether through infrastructure investments, diplomatic engagement, or commercial relationships—has become the latest excuse for American meddling. This represents a stunning failure of strategic imagination.
China’s commercial activities in the Caribbean no more threaten American security than Japanese investment in the region did in the 1980s, when similarly alarmist voices predicted Tokyo’s economic dominance would undermine US interests. The reality is far more prosaic: Chinese firms are filling infrastructure gaps that American companies find unprofitable and that US foreign aid has failed to address adequately.
Rather than competing with China through positive economic engagement and mutually beneficial trade relationships, the US foreign policy establishment defaults to what it knows best—military posturing and threats. This approach guarantees that regional governments will continue to diversify their partnerships, viewing Washington as an unreliable partner more interested in domination than in genuine cooperation.
The economic and strategic costs of this interventionist reflex are substantial. Every dollar spent on military operations in the Caribbean, every deployment of naval assets, every threat of sanctions represents resources diverted from genuine national priorities. More fundamentally, these interventions breed exactly the instability and anti-American sentiment they purport to prevent.
History offers unambiguous lessons here. Decades of US intervention in Haiti have produced neither stability nor prosperity. The embargo against Cuba has failed spectacularly to achieve its stated objectives while providing Havana’s government with a convenient excuse for economic failures. Support for authoritarian regimes throughout the region, justified by anti-communist or anti-drug rhetoric, has compromised American credibility and created long-term resentment.
A genuinely realist foreign policy toward the Caribbean would acknowledge several uncomfortable truths. First, the United States lacks both the capability and the right to determine political outcomes in sovereign nations, regardless of their proximity. Second, most developments in the region—even those Washington finds distasteful—pose no meaningful threat to American security. Third, military intervention typically exacerbates rather than resolves the underlying problems it claims to address.
What would a more restrained approach look like? It would begin with abandoning the grandiose ambition of regional hegemony in favor of more modest, achievable objectives: maintaining open shipping lanes, preventing genuine security threats (not phantom Chinese bases), and promoting trade relationships that benefit American businesses and workers.
Such an approach would recognize that Caribbean nations have every right to pursue relationships with China, Russia, or any other power they choose. It would acknowledge that migration flows are driven primarily by economic conditions and violence—problems that military intervention would exacerbate rather than solve. It would accept that drug trafficking is fundamentally a demand-side problem requiring domestic policy solutions, not military campaigns.
The Monroe Doctrine belongs to a bygone era of American history. Its invocation in the twenty-first century reflects not strategic wisdom but rather the intellectual bankruptcy of a foreign policy establishment unable to imagine alternatives to interventionism. The doctrine’s promise to keep European powers out of the Western Hemisphere has morphed into a presumptuous claim that Washington should manage all regional affairs—a mission impossible that serves neither American interests nor regional stability.
The irony is rich: the same voices warning about Chinese “debt trap diplomacy” in the Caribbean support policies that would trap the United States in an endless cycle of military interventions, nation-building failures, and budgetary hemorrhaging. The same officials who claim to defend American interests advocate commitments that drain national resources while producing minimal security benefits.
The path forward requires intellectual courage—the willingness to admit that American military power cannot solve every problem and that restraint often serves national interests better than intervention. It demands recognition that the Caribbean’s proximity to the United States creates neither an obligation nor a right to dominate the region’s political affairs.
Until Washington abandons the Monroe Doctrine’s interventionist legacy and embraces a foreign policy of realistic restraint, the Caribbean will remain a theater for costly, counterproductive military adventures. American taxpayers and Caribbean peoples alike deserve better than this tired, failed approach masquerading as a strategic necessity.
Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught international relations, Middle East politics, and communication at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for The Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for The Jerusalem Post.
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