The new Monroe Doctrine

The recent rise of Latin America in the news isn't a coincidence

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

By Allan C. Stam

For the better part of three decades, the compass of American grand strategy pointed everywhere but south. Bipartisan optimism defined the post-Cold War era, a belief that the United States presided over an ever-growing, increasingly liberal, integrated global system. The integration of Eastern Europe, the wars in the Middle East, and the “Pivot to Asia” consumed our attention. A series of U.S. presidents treated Latin America mainly with a policy of benign neglect, viewing it as a settled question with domestic problems rather than a strategic theater.

That era has ended. If you look at today’s headlines, the datelines are no longer dominated solely by Kyiv or Jerusalem but by Caracas, Bogotá, and Georgetown. The recent rise of Latin America in the news isn’t a coincidence; it’s the result of a deliberate and significant shift in the structure of American power. We are witnessing the end of the United States being seen as the “indispensable nation” for the entire world. In its place, a new grand strategy is emerging—one that abandons the idea of managing a universal liberal order in favor of a more old-fashioned concept: spheres of influence. The administration has revived the Monroe Doctrine’s emphasis on the Western Hemisphere but has simplified its diplomatic complexity and adapted it for a modern era of resource competition. Now, the goal isn’t to make the world safe for American-style democracy, but to make the Western Hemisphere safe for the United States. We are moving from a role as the global leader to that of a regional stronghold.

For decades, American foreign policy leaders were guided by the North Star of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History.” The core assumption was teleological: eventually, all nations would adopt liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. During administrations from Clinton to Obama, and arguably even during the neoconservative projects of the Bush years, the U.S. engaged with Latin America mainly through the lens of democratization. We built institutions, monitored elections, and promoted human rights, confident that history was on our side.

That era has definitively ended. The “End of History” has been overturned by the return of history—specifically, the resurgence of raw power politics and right-wing nationalism. The current administration has abandoned the messianic aim of transforming the region into a Jeffersonian democracy. Instead, it has adopted a stark, transactional realism. The key driver of this new approach is not what a government is, but where it stands. In a replay of Cold War policies under Eisenhower to Nixon, we are witnessing a decisive move toward supporting right-wing governments that align with U.S. security and economic interests, regardless of their domestic governance records.

Nowhere is this shift more apparent—or more cynical—than in the administration’s recent approach to Honduras. The pardon of the former Honduran president is not just an act of mercy; it is a strategic use of influence to counter Chinese encroachment. By tying the pardon to the outcome of the current elections, Washington has sent a clear message to the Honduran voters: Vote for the conservative candidate or risk losing American support. This open and coercive involvement in foreign elections, unlike past covert actions, exemplifies the new strategy at play. The United States is no longer the neutral judge of free and fair elections; we have become an active player, tilting the scales to keep “our side,” the nationalist right, in power. It echoes what Jeane Kirkpatrick described during the Cold War: We may not like autocrats, but we prefer our autocrats to the alternative.

To strengthen this new sphere of influence, the administration has repurposed the most flexible tool in the modern American arsenal: the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks to target Al-Qaeda, this legislation has become an all-purpose authority for executive power, employed by every president since George W. Bush to align with their individual security agendas. For example, President Obama expanded the AUMF to support a worldwide drone warfare campaign, striking targets well beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan. While effective against terrorist networks, this campaign set a troubling precedent of unilateral deadly force, where wedding parties and funerals sometimes became collateral damage in the quest for security.

Today, the same legal flexibility applies in the Western Hemisphere. By formally labeling specific drug cartels and state-sponsored trafficking networks as “narco-terrorists,” the White House has effectively brought the drug war under the scope of the AUMF. This semantic shift gives the executive branch legal cover to carry out kinetic operations in the Caribbean and Central America without the need for pending congressional approval. However, this securitization carries a clear partisan bias. The “narco-terrorist” label is mainly used against leftist regimes, most notably in Colombia and Venezuela. By characterizing Venezuela’s regime, led by Nicolas Maduro, not just as a dictatorship but as a terror nexus, the administration sets the stage for decapitation strikes under the pretext of counterterrorism. Meanwhile, right-wing allies in the region, whose institutions are often equally affected by cartel influence, are given a different classification. For them, drug trafficking is a “governance challenge” requiring aid; for our ideological opponents, it becomes a casus belli.

The driving force behind this strategic shift is geological. For nearly a century, American foreign policy has been closely linked to the Persian Gulf. This involvement predates the Cold War, dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agreements with Standard Oil and the House of Saud to develop the region’s oil reserves in the 1930s and 40s. That early commercial interest eventually evolved into the “Carter Doctrine,” which declared the free flow of Persian Gulf oil a vital U.S. interest, justifying wars, permanent bases, and a large naval presence. However, the landscape of global energy has changed, making that old framework outdated.

The Western Hemisphere now sits atop a hydrocarbon wealth comparable to the Middle East. Beyond North America’s shale fields, recent discoveries off the coast of Guyana have uncovered one of the largest offshore oil and gas reserves found in decades. The massive scale of these finds, estimated at 300 billion barrels in Venezuela and 11 billion barrels of high-quality crude in the Guyana-Suriname basin, provides the United States with a historic opportunity: complete hemispheric energy independence. The New Monroe Doctrine is, at its core, a plan to secure this region. By bringing these resources under a U.S. security umbrella, Washington can finally detach its economic future from the unpredictable politics of the Persian Gulf. This geological shift allows a significant change in America’s role in the Middle East. We are not leaving the region; instead, we are insourcing its security. The new approach involves arming Israel and Saudi Arabia extensively, empowering them to serve as the main defenders of regional stability. We are shifting from directly protecting the area to acting as an arms dealer and technology provider, allowing us to focus our strategic attention closer to home.

If energy independence enables this strategic shift, then the rise of China provides the motivation. Over the past decade, Beijing has quietly pursued a strategy of commercial encirclement in the Western Hemisphere, filling the gap left by American inattention. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has expanded from just buying soybeans to securing critical infrastructure and resources that will shape the 21st-century economy. The administration’s “New Monroe Doctrine” is primarily a counter-offensive aimed at dismantling these footholds and breaking China’s grip on the global technology supply chain.

The stakes are highest in the race for critical minerals. As the world moves toward a battery-powered, fossil fuel-free future, the “Lithium Triangle” of Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina has become a new Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, significant deposits of rare earth elements have been discovered across Brazil and the Andean countries. The U.S. strategy now clearly aims to take control of these raw materials. By holding these reserves within our own hemisphere, Washington aims to create a supply chain that is immune to Chinese restrictions. However, Beijing is not quietly surrendering. In Peru, the Chinese state-owned COSCO Shipping has activated the massive Chancay deep-water port, seeking to shift the continent’s logistics toward Asia. This specific pressure prompted Washington to pardon the Honduran president; the U.S. decided that tolerating a compromised ally was a necessary sacrifice to prevent the nation’s loyalty from falling under China’s influence. The message now sends an ultimatum: economic decoupling from Beijing is the price for American security.

As a matter of pure Grand Strategy, this contraction of American power into a hemispheric fortress offers a compelling logic: strategic solvency. For two decades, the United States suffered from “imperial overstretch,” attempting to police the Hindu Kush and the Donbas simultaneously. By narrowing our security perimeter to the Americas, we align our limited means with achievable ends. Securing the resources of Guyana and the Lithium Triangle insulates the U.S. economy from Eurasian shocks, and establishing unambiguous spheres of influence potentially reduces the risk of accidental war with other Great Powers.

However, this realist ledger carries significant structural risks, especially the historical trap described by historian Walter LaFeber. As LaFeber argued in Inevitable Revolutions, the U.S. strategy of supporting military-oligarchic regimes in Central America to maintain short-term stability effectively halts the region’s social progress. By tying American security to right-wing autocrats and “our” strongmen, we prevent the release of moderate reform. This policy creates a pressure cooker where the only way to political change is through violent explosion. We are securing order today, potentially at the cost of radicalization tomorrow. This risks accelerating the outmigration of Central Americans northward—something that would be as politically destabilizing in the U.S. as the persistent refugee crisis in Europe following 2011’s Arab Spring.

Furthermore, the urge to use force to control this area—especially in Venezuela—overlooks the realities of war. The administration might aim for a precise “Panama”- style outcome to secure energy supplies, but regime change seldom follows a quick timeline. The danger isn’t a straightforward victory but ending up like an Iraq-style quagmire in the jungle.

The “New Monroe Doctrine” signals the definitive end of the post-Cold War consensus. We have moved away from Wilsonian goals of a universal liberal order to a Jacksonian focus on strict borders and spheres of influence. However, this withdrawal doesn’t mean abandoning our traditional allies in East Asia or Western Europe. Instead, it introduces a new, transactional maturity into those relationships. By indicating that the U.S. cavalry will no longer be the first to respond to every crisis in the Donbas or the South China Sea, Washington is encouraging Brussels, Tokyo, and Seoul to become more self-reliant—something they have long avoided. The benefit is fairer burden-sharing, as fiscal hawks have called for over the years. But it also brings a clear risk: a Europe or Asia capable of defending itself might also choose to act independently, potentially separating their foreign policies from ours.

Strategically, the United States is effectively going “all-in.” Like a player at a high-stakes Texas Hold ‘em table, the administration is pushing its chips into the Western Hemisphere pot, betting that regional dominance is the only hand worth playing in a fractured world. If this gamble pays off, the rewards will be generational. By securing the Guyana-Suriname basin and the Lithium Triangle, the United States could establish decades of economic independence, immune to Chinese supply chain coercion or Middle Eastern instability. We would achieve true strategic stability, aligning our capabilities with a defendable perimeter.

However, this is no game, and the risks are as real as the potential rewards. The success of this strategy hinges on a precarious set of contingencies: that our chosen strongmen remain stable partners; that the U.S. can manage the “inevitable revolutions” LaFeber warned of; and that our allies abroad can stand up without falling apart. We are betting that raw power and transactional realism can deliver the security that democratic idealism could not. It is a logical, ruthless calculation—but one that leaves no room for error. The Trump administration has placed its bet; now we will see where the cards fall.

Allan C. Stam is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and University Professor, professor of public policy and politics, and former dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia