Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ aims to dominate the Americas

Two centuries after President James Monroe warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas, his namesake doctrine is surfacing on influencer TikToks and podcasts, in corporate pitch decks and White House hallways, as President Trump recasts it as a blueprint for U.S. dominance in the region.

Since returning to the Oval Office in January vowing to “take back" the Panama Canal and make Canada the 51st state, Trump has applied extraordinary pressure on countries across the region to fall in line with his security agenda.

In what some Trump officials have dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine," a centuries-old warning has become a battle plan. The president has deployed sweeping counterterrorism authorities against Latin American cartels and criminal gangs, launched airstrikes against alleged drug boats that have killed dozens, approved covert CIA operations and mounted the largest military buildup the region has seen in decades.

Where Monroe sought to keep European powers out of the region, Trump has turned the doctrine inward—treating the hemisphere as an extension of the U.S. homeland, where Washington will act unilaterally to root out perceived enemies. Loyalty is rewarded, and defiance can carry a price. The White House has moved quickly to punish dissenting leaders, yanking visas and imposing sanctions from Bogotá to Brasília. It has combined a show of force in the Caribbean with a campaign to squeeze Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, hoping to drive him from power.

“We’re restoring a needed focus on defeating threats in the Western Hemisphere," Trump told hundreds of generals and admirals assembled at Quantico last month.

That message has quickly reshaped Washington’s national security priorities.

After decades of what defense officials call “South blindness," U.S. Southern Command suddenly finds itself on the front line, with renewed resources and a vastly expanded mission. Half of the countries visited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been in the region. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, touting “the Americas first," has overseen the deployment of F-35 jet fighters, Navy warships and Marine expeditionary forces to the Caribbean.

“It’s really stunning how quickly the administration has moved," says Steve Bannon, an influential Trump ally, ticking off the rapidly expanding list of countries targeted in the region. “It is breathtaking how broad this has been, the scale of it and the intensity of it all the way to kinetic warfare."

While it might seem odd for voters who elected Trump on his promises to stay out of foreign entanglements to cheer this new front, the MAGA faithful see the logic in deeper involvement in the Western Hemisphere. In a recent Economist/YouGov survey, 74% of Republicans and 82% of Trump voters in 2024 approved of the strikes on the boats in the Caribbean.

“This is much more sellable to the America First base than the stuff in the Middle East," says Bannon. “Monroe 2.0 was not in the lexicon. And now people have gone back and they’re saying, ‘Yeah, definitely, I agree with that. Love that.’"

This isn’t new for Trump. In his first term, his top aides invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify a tougher stance toward Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and to warn China and Russia to stay out of the hemisphere. But this time, “Monroe 2.0" has become a popular rallying cry across the conservative ecosystem.

“I’m at least thrilled that we’re finally using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland," popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk said on his podcast on Sept. 3, a week before he was assassinated. Kirk said the drug vessels in the Caribbean targeted by Trump’s lethal strikes pose a bigger threat to Americans’ safety than Russians soldiers.

The Pentagon’s forthcoming National Defense Strategy is expected to cement this shift, elevating homeland defense and Latin America as key national security priorities and shifting critical resources closer to home, U.S. officials say.

U.S. security firms and contractors from Palantir to Blackwater founder Erik Prince have followed the administration’s lead, invoking hemispheric security while pitching deals from Ecuador to Haiti that align with Trump’s new war on terror. Prince, who has been working with Haiti to target gangs with drones, lamented the “erasure of the Monroe Doctrine" in a podcast earlier this year, arguing “what happens in the Western Hemisphere is America’s business."

Trump has rewarded right-wing leaders in the region whose agendas mirror his own. He enlisted El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele to accept more than 250 U.S. deportees in the country’s notorious maximum-security prison in exchange for $6 million. Trump later received Bukele, who has been accused of human-rights abuses in his crackdown on the country’s gangs, at the White House, praising him as an example for other nations in the hemisphere.

Trump’s new focus on the Americas relies on economic leverage as well as the threat of force. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hailed a $20 billion currency swap to stabilize Argentina’s economy as an “economic Monroe Doctrine." Trump explicitly tied the assistance to President Javier Milei’s political future. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone," Trump said, hinting at a larger effort to cultivate sympathetic governments in the region.

“It’s not going to make a big difference for our country, but it will in terms of South America," Trump said about the bailout. “If Argentina does well, you’re going to have others following."

Critical analysts and former officials say that explicitly conditioning U.S. aid on ideological alignment risks undermining U.S. credibility as a partner in the region. “If we invoke the Monroe Doctrine, that is the biggest narrative gift that we can give to China," says Leland Lazarus, a former special assistant to the head of U.S. Southern Command and an expert on Chinese-Latin American relations. “When Latin American and Caribbean partners hear that, they think that’s the return of imperialism, of U.S. military intervention. It might actually push countries further into China’s hands."

Critics warn that Trump’s punitive approach is shortsighted in a region with growing economic dependence on Beijing and where resistance runs deep to American policies that recall the long history of U.S. intervention. “2025 is not 1823," says Jorge Heine, a veteran Chilean ambassador. “This policy is all sticks and no carrots, and focused on U.S. domestic politics, while China is the number one trading partner of South America."

Some leaders in the region have criticized what they see as Trump’s revival of U.S. imperialism. “This is nothing more than a new way of applying Monroeism, which once again asserts that the Americas belong to the North Americans, creating conditions for a new moment of neocolonialism," Bolivian President Luis Arce said at the U.N. General Assembly last month.

After Colombian President Gustavo Petro said an American strike on alleged drug traffickers had killed a Colombian fisherman, Trump labeled him an “illegal drug leader." He cut off all U.S. aid to Columbia, one of Washington’s closest counternarcotics partners, jeopardizing decades of security cooperation.

Trump also imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, in what he cast as retaliation for the country’s prosecution of its former President Jair Bolsonaro. The move sparked a WTO challenge and threats of retaliation, straining one of the U.S.’s biggest trade relationships in the region and driving up costs for American consumers.

For its part, the Trump administration says its approach is already yielding results. After visits from Rubio and Hegseth, Panama announced it would withdraw from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. White House officials have touted a drop in migrants and drugs entering the U.S. on the southern border. Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa has pushed to host a U.S. base, seeking a referendum to lift his country’s ban on foreign military installations.

Amid Trump’s escalating military campaign in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic and Guyana have praised the strikes, positioning themselves as close U.S. security partners.

“Trump is reverting to what has been America’s historic policy, even before it was a great power," says Joseph Ledford, a historian at the conservative Hoover Institution who recently testified to Congress. “The United States is now willing to exercise force and have a military presence in Latin America again."

Trump has stated his “Donroe Doctrine" more bluntly. Addressing Maduro’s attempts to placate him, the President warned: “He doesn’t want to f— around with the United States." As U.S. warships amass off the coast of Venezuela, few in the region doubt he means it.