Ukraine events are demonstrating, how dangerous is to let fester an enemy around you in time of drones.
“BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Trump has remade Washington's role in Latin America with a force not seen in decades, deploying U.S. military and economic weight with abandon and treating the region as an exclusive sphere of influence.
No American president has exerted as much pressure on the region since the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan focused his efforts there on battling left-wing Central American insurgencies and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
From the Mexican border to Patagonia, Trump is punishing adversaries with high tariffs, airstrikes and rhetorical broadsides while offering those he considers friends security aid and economic deals. One analyst called it, "The Donroe Doctrine," a play on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine guiding U.S. policy toward the region.
The region is crucial to the president's goals of stopping migration and the flow of drugs into the U.S. while trying to counter China, which has deepened economic and diplomatic ties in Latin America the last two decades.
"We haven't seen a U.S. president as brazen and as aggressive as Trump has been in Latin America," said Michael Shifter, a senior scholar at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group. "His mindset is that the region is the U.S.'s backyard and his strategic prerogative, in the name of protecting the homeland and boosting 'America First.'"
Allies who flatter the president and align with his worldview -- from Argentine President Javier Milei to El Salvador's Nayib Bukele -- are scoring deals and a warm embrace. Those who defy him -- most notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and Colombia's Gustavo Petro -- find themselves in his crosshairs.
The Trump administration's top diplomats have experience in Latin America, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has made numerous visits to the region even as he has juggled peace talks in Ukraine and Gaza. The State Department's second in command, Christopher Landau, is a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. The new ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, is a former U.S. intelligence officer with broad experience in Latin America.
Rubio said that previous administrations overlooked the Western Hemisphere and gave adversaries a pass, hurting American interests.
"As a result, we've let problems fester, missed opportunities and neglected partners," he wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. "That ends now."
Before Trump, the U.S. backed Latin American allies in the region while isolating and sanctioning countries Washington considered autocratic and anti-American, namely Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, under a policy defined by broader, long-term considerations.
Bill Clinton tried to forge stronger trade ties with the region, George W. Bush promoted democracy and intensified America's war on drug smugglers in Colombia, and Barack Obama re-established full diplomatic relations with Cuba. The Biden team worked with leaders who governed democratically, no matter the ideology.
From the first day of his administration, Trump and his team reversed course on decades of policies, taking a more confrontational approach that called for a quick response from regional leaders.
The tone was set at his inauguration, when he asserted that China controlled the Panama Canal and said the U.S. would take control of the waterway. Trump also took on the U.S.'s biggest trading partner, Mexico.
Analysts said the president increasingly bases policy on the individual personalities and ideologies of political leaders and the transactional nature of the relationship. Some leaders have learned that flattery -- and a healthy dose of lobbying in person -- can earn them big rewards.
No president could potentially reap more than Argentina's Milei. The Trump administration on Wednesday pledged a financial lifeline amid a run on the peso that endangers Milei's free-market overhaul.
Tommy Pigott, the State Department's deputy spokesman, said the administration's foreign policy in the region "is centered towards prioritizing our national interests and standing with regional partners."” [1]
1. World News: Trump Is Reasserting U.S. Dominion Over Latin America. Forero, Juan; Dube, Ryan. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 Sep 2025: A9.
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