The nighttime raid that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this weekend was the most dramatic demonstration of President Donald Trump’s vow to focus U.S. might on the Americas, as the White House re-creates a stance toward the Western Hemisphere that more resembles its 19th century empire-building era than the laissez-faire attitude of recent generations.
Trump and his top allies suggested that the Venezuelan operation could be the start of efforts to remake the region, warning the governments of Cuba and Colombia that they might be next. Trump and some backers have also brought up Mexico as a potential target, and they are reviving talk of attempting to acquire Greenland, a Danish territory.
After announcing Maduro’s capture, Trump boasted of the “Donroe Doctrine,” a twist on the strategy articulated by President James Monroe in 1823 that European powers should stop interfering in the Western Hemisphere. The national security strategy released by the White House in December noted a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that promised “to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
The effort carries significant risks. Washington could get pulled into the nation-building invasions that Trump has long sworn to avoid if the Venezuelan military or people are unwilling to go along with his plans. It also makes it harder for the United States to argue to Russia and China that they should steer clear of their neighbors. And it may reshape global affairs more broadly, as smaller nations that were long dependent on Washington’s guarantees for global trade and stability hedge their bets by building ties elsewhere.
Backers of Trump’s strategy downplay the drawbacks and say a narrower focus on U.S. regional interests is long overdue.
“The goal of the policy is to see changes in Venezuela that are beneficial to the United States first and foremost, because that’s who we work for, but also, we believe, beneficial for the people of Venezuela, who have suffered tremendously,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, a day after Trump said U.S. forces were ready to reinvade Venezuela if Maduro’s de facto successor, Delcy Rodríguez, did not comply with his wishes.
Rubio — the son of Cuban immigrants to the United States — has long backed efforts to oust Venezuela’s leaders, who have presided over a decline in their country’s economy, ignored election results, and built ties to U.S. adversaries including Russia and China. Deposing Venezuela’s government would probably weaken the Communist leaders of Cuba as well, since they have long depended on Caracas for energy and other economic support.
“This emphasis on the Western Hemisphere should not come as a surprise to anybody. It matters more to American security than any other part of the world,” said Nick Solheim, chief executive of American Moment, a group that backs Trump’s policies and trains junior staffers.
But he said advocates of a more robust focus on the Western Hemisphere were not saying Washington should abandon global affairs entirely.
“It’s making sure that our neighbors are not doing anything that is, that would adversely affect the United States, and then focused on our greatest geopolitical challenge right now, which is China,” he said. “That is not a retreat from the world of foreign policy. It is an accurate prioritization of what actually matters the most, what poses the biggest threats to the United States.”
The move against Venezuela drew criticism from both the center and the right, as some influential “America First” advocates said that military conflicts and expanded foreign opportunities for U.S. oil companies weren’t why voters backed Trump.
“This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Trump ally who is retiring from Congress after breaking with the president, said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “We don’t consider Venezuela our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is right here in the 50 United States, not in the Southern Hemisphere.”
Washington has a long history of efforts to back friendly leaders in Latin America, including at times intervening with force to do so. But it has not done so directly since the 1991 end of the Cold War, and Venezuela — with 30 million residents and a territory double the size of Iraq’s — is an especially large nation to take on.
“I understand how we got here, but there’s been no forethought to the difficulties of the plan or the ideas that they seem to have adopted as the way ahead, and there definitely is no plan to the level of detail that’s required,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates a more limited role for the U.S. military in the world.
She said she wasn’t sure that China and Russia would be emboldened by Trump’s actions, since they already appear to feel unconstrained toward their neighbors. But she noted that Trump appears to be cautious about tangling with militaries that can inflict serious damage on the United States.
“This sort of spectacular operation is very consistent. He likes to hit adversaries that can’t hit back, whether it’s small drug-smuggling boats, or Iran with no air defenses, or Venezuela, which is also weak,” she said. “And to me, that explains the more accommodating approach to Russia and China, in the sense that his view of military power is kind of go big or go home. But that model doesn’t work against Russia and China.”
Some of Trump’s former advisers warn that the world the president is building may turn out to be more dangerous than the era of the 1990s and 2000s, when the United States was the preeminent global power and backed a broad effort to strip barriers to trade.
“It just seems to be back to the 18th and 19th centuries,” said Fiona Hill, an expert at the Brookings Institution who was Trump’s top Russia adviser in his first term. “If you’ve bought into the idea of competition among the great powers and that Russia is another great power that’s inevitably going to dominate in its region, just as China is in its region, then this is the logical conclusion from this.”
Hill said countries that have deep, allied ties to the United States but are threatened by Trump may seek to protect themselves by building trade and security relationships elsewhere, a move that will ultimately weaken Washington, not strengthen it.
The raid has sparked fears elsewhere that Trump could act on other threats toward U.S. neighbors, which have included demands to take over the Panama Canal, to turn Canada into the 51st state, to annex Greenland, and to overthrow Cuba’s government.
Trump on Sunday said he didn’t plan action against Havana, but offered tough language nevertheless.
“I think it’s just going to fall. I don’t think we need any action,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “You ever watch a fight, they go down for the count, and Cuba looks like it’s going down.”
He was sharper toward Greenland.
“We need Greenland from a national security situation,” Trump said. “It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. … Denmark is not going to be able to do it.” On Saturday, an influential former White House aide, Katie Miller, posted on social media an image of Greenland with the U.S. flag superimposed on top of it.
The president’s repeated statements about Greenland drew a sharp response earlier Sunday from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “I have to say this very directly to the United States: It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the need for the United States to take over Greenland,” she said.
In a statement, she said Denmark is a U.S. military ally and that the United States has extensive access to Greenland.
“I would therefore strongly urge the United States to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people who have said very clearly that they are not for sale,” she said.
