The Trump Corollary and the Fracturing of Latin America. And on Wednesday, Benjamin N. Gedan and Nicolás Albertoni examined how the Trump administration’s policy toward Latin America in general, and the U.S. raid on Caracas on Jan. 3 in particular, has reshaped U.S. relationships throughout Latin America and accelerated regional fragmentation. |
Latin America was already riven by divisions between leaders. But Trump’s stunningly confrontational and ideological approach to the region has deepened these fault lines. In some ways, the U.S. assault on Venezuela did not fit neatly into the narrative of a polarized region. Maduro had few allies, and it was Venezuela’s dictatorship, not Trump, that dismantled the country’s democratic institutions and forced 8 million people into exile. But Trump’s framing of the U.S. mission—as a resource grab, undergirded by a self-proclaimed license to meddle under his “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine—played into regional polarization and shifted the conversation away from Venezuela’s government toward the conduct of the United States. For Washington, this regional fragmentation might seem convenient. Just as China prefers bilateral diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific, the United States has maximum leverage in its own “near abroad” when representatives of just one country are seated across the negotiating table. Greater regional cohesion would permit a coordinated response to Trump’s provocations. Yet even from the U.S. standpoint, it is not in the country’s long-term interest to permanently divide a hemisphere where the U.S. seeks preeminence. Greater regional burden-sharing is the only way to manage criminal organizations and the migration crisis, and to provide local alternatives to the “American Dream.” The same is true for U.S. competition with China in Washington’s would-be sphere of influence. Trump’s Monroe Doctrine rerun assumes the United States can simply wish China out of the region, but the past three decades suggest otherwise. Beijing has steadily increased its trade, investment and influence in the Americas—all without an aircraft carrier parked nearby. To regain ground and induce voluntary cooperation from partners, the United States must deploy a similar array of tools to knit together the regional economy and tie it more closely to the U.S. market. Trump still has an opportunity to do so. Beijing’s presence is increasingly questioned throughout the region. But reasserting the Monroe Doctrine will not win this battle. Indeed, China benefits from the contrast between Trump’s saber-rattling and its own quiet, transactional approach. Europe, the original target of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, is not simply walking away from the region either. Governments across the region want options and they are wary of dependence on any single great power. If Washington continues to rely on a coercive approach toward the region, it will find it impossible to build a credible pro-Western coalition in a contested global order.
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