Brian Winter on Vox about the New U.S. Approach to the Western Hemisphere
Brian Winter on Vox about the New U.S. Approach to the Western Hemisphere
"In the broad sweep of history, it's amazing how unexceptional this is," said the AS/COA vice president to the digital outlet.
The Trump administration is taking a shockingly interventionist approach to the Western Hemisphere, as shown by last weekend’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his threats of military intervention against several other countries in the region. But we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Donald Trump came into office a second time pledging to retake the Panama Canal and annex Greenland and possibly Canada. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Less than a month into his term, he was slapping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and Colombia for their perceived defiance of his agenda. His choice for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had such longstanding interests in Latin American affairs that many observers saw him as effectively running US policy toward the region from his Senate office during Trump’s first term.
Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, Mike Waltz (now ambassador to the UN), had dubbed the White House’s regional approach “Monroe Doctrine 2.0.” Trump lately appears to prefer the New York Post-coined “Donroe Doctrine.” [...]
“In the broad sweep of history, it’s amazing how unexceptional this is,” Brian Winter, Latin American politics analyst and editor of Americas Quarterly magazine, told Vox. “The exceptional period was the last 35 years” following the end of the Cold War.
Winter added that “this White House is more focused on Latin America than any other since probably the 1960s,” referring to the era that followed Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, and included a number of military interventions meant to prevent the spread of Communism in the region as well as a confrontation with the Soviet Union over Cuba that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war...
