Trump's Power Play in Latin America
Trump's Power Play in Latin America
"What we're seeing today is a light version of the gunboat diplomacy of a century ago," said AS/COA's Brian Winter to the Financial Times.
It is the biggest show of US military power in the Caribbean in decades: a naval task force capable of unleashing hundreds of Tomahawk missiles, squads of helicopter-borne special forces and waves of air strikes.
President Donald Trump’s show of military power, deployed to wage war on cartels smuggling drugs by boat into the US, is also exerting pressure on Venezuela, a key regional ally of China and Russia. But the spectacle also points to a more fundamental shift in US foreign policy, analysts say, as Trump seeks to place the US at the centre of the western hemisphere. [...]
Some experts say Trump is in effect pursuing his own 21st-century Monroe Doctrine, pulling back from the world to focus on the Americas, a continent culturally akin to the US and rich in terms of natural resources and trade opportunities.
“It’s amazing how many echoes you see today of gunboat diplomacy and the Roosevelt Corollary and the Monroe Doctrine, and they’re all back to some degree,” says Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of the New York-based publication Americas Quarterly. “What we’re seeing today is a light version of the gunboat diplomacy of a century ago, because of the post-Iraq reality that boots on the ground will not be tolerated by the Maga base...”
