Is the Trump Administration's 'Donroe' Doctrine Transforming Relations with Latin America?

Hello, welcome to Roosy in London. I'm Neil Melvin and this is Global Security Briefing, the podcast devoted to providing insights on contemporary regional security developments around the world and on how the UK can best navigate a fast-changing international environment. In today's episode, I'll be examining how Donald Trump's America First strategy is reshaping security and geopolitics across the Western Hemisphere. and why in 2026 the Americas have moved to the center of U.S. national security planning. The Trump administration's 2025 national security strategy and the subsequent national defense strategy place the Western hemisphere at the forefront of U.S. strategic priorities, linking regional stability directly to homeland security. Migration, drug trafficking, supply chains and the presence of external powers are now framed not as distant foreign policy challenges, but as immediate national security concerns. This shift marks more than a return to hard-edge diplomacy. Washington is combining economic pressure, expanded security cooperation, and military deployments with efforts to counter China's economic reach and Russia's security footprint across Latin America. For regional governments, this evolving posture presents difficult choices. Many are seeking to balance relations with Washington while preserving economic ties with China and maintaining regional autonomy. The result is a hemisphere increasingly shaped by great power competition, domestic political pressures, and competing visions of regional order. The central question is whether the renewed U.S. focus will stabilize the hemisphere or deepen fragmentation and strategic competition. While the U.S. approach is hemispheric, two countries currently sit at the center of Washington's recalibrated regional policy. In Venezuela, U.S. policy has entered a new and uncertain phase following the January 2026 U.S. military operation that resulted in the capture of Nicolas Maduro and the installation of an interim leadership in Caracas. Is the country now moving toward a negotiated political settlement or becoming a new arena for proxy competition among major powers. In Cuba, US policy has taken on renewed strategic urgency. In early 2026, Washington declared a national emergency with respect to Cuba, citing security threats linked to foreign intelligence activity and the island's growing ties with US adversaries. The US has intensified economic pressure by targeting Cuba's energy supplies, warning that countries supplying oil to the island could face tariffs, a move that has deepened fuel shortages and disrupted transport, tourism and the electricity supply. Will the U.S. now take forward its pressure approach? But is direct action the possibility? So in this episode of Global Security Briefing, I'll be asking, why is Cuba re-emerging as a strategic concern in U.S. policy? Can Venezuela maintain stability and transition to a new political settlement while under U.S. stewardship? Does Latin America risk becoming a significant arena for US-China strategic competition? And are we witnessing the emergence of a new hemispheric security architecture built on bilateral security agreements and military deployments? And finally, does this change represent a transformation in the relations between the United States and the West of the Western Hemisphere? or are we seeing another cycle in the long-running relations between Washington and other parts of the region? Joining me to discuss these questions are Dr. Brian Fonseca, who is director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy and an adjunct professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University, and Dr. Carlos Salah, who's a senior research fellow in Latin American security at RUSI. So it's great to have you back, Brian and Carlos on Global Security Briefing. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Nice to be with you, Neil. So I wanted to dive in straight away with looking at what the US is up to at the moment. I'm coming to you, Brian, on the case of Cuba, because that very much seems to be the sort of the eye in the regional storm at the moment. Why is it that the US is focusing on Cuba in this way? I mean, obviously, there's a long, long history in the US-Cuban relationship. Is this something different from what we've seen before? I think the U.S. has long been fixated on Cuba, particularly after the Cuban Revolution and sort of the adversarial relationship that popped up between the United States and Cuba. Right now, Cuba is very important, certainly for this administration. It goes without saying that our current Secretary of State and current National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, is Cuban-American. He's born to Cuban immigrants. And so this is an issue that's really passionate for him. And I'll say that I think the U.S. has been focused in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the context of political regimes and disrupting the last three remaining autocracies in the region, autocracies that have been adversarial to US interest. And Venezuela has already seen the United States take an offensive approach to being disruptive there. And I'm sure we'll get into that. But Cuba is next. And I think for Washington and for the administration, we had to get through Venezuela in order to get to Cuba. And I think now it's about economic coercion, cutting off all potential lifelines that Cuba has. And I think there's, to your point, there's certainly history that underwrites this. But I also think there's a degree of contemporary interests that are being perceived by Washington, not just sort of the autocracy and this longstanding dictatorship, the impact that has on domestic politics, particularly in places like South Florida and Florida, but also, again, this idea of strategic denial, a return to the concepts of the Monroe Doctrine? How do you ensure that America's adversaries are not finding friends in the Western Hemisphere? And whether it was the Soviet Union's approach to Latin America in the latter part of the last century through Cuba, or sort of the resurgence of China and Russia operating in Cuba today in terms of building relationships. So I think there's certainly a pragmatic interest that US is pursuing, but it's also baked in this broader historical narrative of tensions between the United States and Cuba. They, by the way, go much further back than just the Cold War, to sort of post-colonial period as well. But what then do you think, I mean, what's the US goal at this moment? Obviously, there's a lot of economic pressure, you mentioned that there's the energy sort of pressure that the US is putting on it, which seems to be causing quite a lot of domestic economic difficulties, but against the backdrop of a pretty terrible economy already. Is the US pushing for regime change? Is that the ultimate end? Yeah, absolutely. I think the US is definitely pursuing regime change. I don't think regime change is going to happen. The kind of regime change that maybe Cuban Americans want is probably not going to happen overnight. There is going to be a transition period, a value transition, if you will, that would displace those sort of cronies that sit at the top of the political class in Cuba today. Cuba is very different than, for example, the Venezuela case because of two fundamental reasons. One, there is no real democratic opposition in Cuba. That has been repressed for decades. There is no vibrant opposition class that is ready to inherit the country going forward. I think that's certainly number one. And number two, there isn't anyone in Cuba today that remembers democracy. So you're talking about a fundamentally different landscape in terms of transitioning Cuba back to democracy. There's no one there. Those institutions are not calibrated for that. And I think another maybe third important point is many of the revolutionaries that sort of were born out of the Cuban revolution that ascended to positions of power in Cuba, they're all gone. Those that govern Cuba today are first generation, second generation born to the revolutionaries. So they have a little bit of a different connection to the Cuban revolution. I think those things are important in terms of understanding at least the political climate in Cuba today. I think the United States is going to have to think about things like the role of the FAR or the Cuban military in Cuba. The Cuban military has long been the vanguard of the revolution. It's probably the most important institution in Cuba today. The military is not a professional military. It's an ideological one. It's a military that was designed to reinforce continuity more so than be subordinate to civilian leaders. In fact, the military controls much of the shots. And that's not just on the political side. That's also on the economic side, which is really important. So when you think about an opening of the Cuban economy, you're going to have to at least consider the fact that billions of revenue and assets are controlled by the military through a conglomerate called Gaesa, which essentially manages really important parts of the Cuban economy. And so any approach by the United States in Cuba that's looking to affect economic change is going to have to consider the military in that space as well. So I think there's some fundamental differences there. But it is going to be a challenge for the United States to do this in terms of what that means in getting through the valley of transition back to some type of democracy. And to circle back to your point, yes, I think it's about regime change, but there's a lot of moving pieces in terms of how the U.S. gets there. It's probably not going to be satisfactory to Cuban Americans that want to see an immediate pivot to things like democracy. There may be elections, but those institutions have to be calibrated for democracy. So I think it's going to be more of a longer transition period to get there, even if you just displace the top of the regime today, classified as regime change, lift things like the Helms-Burton Act and the embargo, and then try to bring Cuba back into the American sphere of influence. You mentioned this sort of growing pressure and also the Venezuela experience when we saw US military force at the forefront. But we're recording this on Friday the 13th of February. I mean, as we speak, the aircraft carrier that was deployed to the region to support the Venezuela operation is on its way back to the Middle East. It seems to do sort of gun diplomacy on Iran. Is that a signal that the United States is probably not looking at a similar kind of military operation? It is going to be more this cranking up the economic pressure. And what sort of constraints are there on the US? I mean, I've seen some analysis that there is concern that if they go too far and the regime collapses, then things like waves of migrants seeking access to the US is a concern, particularly kind of in the Florida area. And so the US is a bit more cautious, perhaps, than it was in the Venezuela case. Those are all excellent questions. And I think they merit unpacking. My sense is that the US does not intend to use the military the same way that it used the military in Venezuela. Remember, in the case of Venezuela, it's been years in the building up of legal cases against senior members of the Venezuelan government to sort of classify them as narco traffickers, indicting them in the United States, making them criminals of American justice. And I think that was all setting the stage for unlocking the military as an instrument. In the context of foreign terrorist organization designations by the United States, that unlocked the military as an instrument to go after those individuals if coercive diplomacy and economy didn't work to produce the change it wanted. I don't think that that same case can be made in Cuba. I don't think there's been... I mean, the United States does not recognize the regime as sort of a legitimate regime. So there's some elements of similarity there, but you can't necessarily engage the Cuban regime in sort of the broader narrative of narco trafficking, for example. I mean, they're corrupt cronies, but they're not being designated as narco terrorists. And so unlocking the military as an instrument of power may be an ultimate last resort if the White House can't get Cuba to the point of break. I think it's going to rely on coercive economy and diplomacy. I mean, the first thing that the US did was stop oil shipments to Cuba. The second thing it did was stop Mexico from shipping oil to Cuba. And it was about, again, cutting off their access to energy. And everyone, myself included, feel it's just a matter of time before the lights go off in Cuba. And this is to your other point, which is really important. And that is, okay, if you have a full on collapse, and the Florida Strait is flooded with Cubans trying to flee the country for the United States, that puts the United States in another really important bind where it's now deploying Coast Guard and naval assets to pick up immigrants that are fleeing dangerously to the United States, or an increase in sort of Central American corridor migration, or migration south akin to what we saw with the Venezuelan massive migration in 2019. And so the United States has to be careful, which is why I think it's trying to calibrate its pressure and then begin to sort of, I mean, it's allowing humanitarian aid to go to Cuba because it understands that dynamic to some degree, but it does have to walk a very fine line so that it doesn't find itself in a different security context in which now it has the sort of seas are red with those trying to flee the country akin to what we experienced in the 80s in Miami with the Marialitos in the Muriel boatlift So I think the US is trying to navigate that And I think the Cuban regime is going to try to hold on as long as possible It not uncommon for the regime to make pronouncements of reforms to try to appease the United States. It's done this historically too. You can think back famously when then-President Barack Obama tried to open relations with Cuba and Cuba made some provisions to appease the United States. I think you're going to see some of that. And I think the United States understands that that's Cuba's modus operandi. And so it's going to work against that by being as coercive at the onset as possible and see if it can't displace the Diaz canals and try to get to some type of seemingly acceptable structure that it can work through in order to open Cuba's economy and begin to change the political landscape going forward. Carlos, on Venezuela, I mean, obviously, eyes are on Cuba at the moment, but Venezuela was the case that kicked off this whole new thinking. It seemed at least in the public understanding of what was happening. Do we get a sense now of what this new Venezuela looks like with the US sitting offshore and trying to run things? Is there a direction that we see? Is this a transition to some form of different government, maybe even democracy? Or is this just going to be how things look? It's essentially the same team, but with the US keeping the guardrails in place. I believe we're looking at a very different Venezuela. Remember that the U.S.-Venezuela relation was at its lowest early January 2026. These were countries that were preparing to engage in massive combat. The Venezuelan militias were on the streets. The Venezuelan beaches were filled with anti-warfare type of arsenals. But now, second week on in February, we've seen the first authority from the U.S. government, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, spend two years in a very, very amicable visit to Caracas, where he was hosted. Flags were behind this scenario. They went to an oil facility. The energy secretary kissed a glass of oil. So a very romantic picture between Delcy Rodriguez and a U.S. cabinet member. We have a charge of the affairs now. The U.S. has Laura Dogu permanently in Caracas. So the relationship is very, very different. Six weeks in which Venezuela has moved to a completely different country. Still, the macro conditions of Venezuela remain massively the same. The National Assembly has passed a law very quickly liberating political prisoners, which to my understanding is a way that Delcy Rodriguez has in order to recompose a little bit the political scenario. So although the United States still engage in this first stage, which is let's talk the economy, Let's get the oil industry revamped over the next six months. And then we'll continuously engage with the political terms, which is a return to democracy and probably elections. Delce Rodriguez was interviewed this week as well, in which she, for the first time, mentions that elections are in the horizon for Venezuela. So the situation here is quickly changing. I think there is a lot of momentum. The United States, as you've mentioned, is clearly engaging with other parts of the world. The fleet is moving to Iran. The Middle East might pick up again this week as well. We're listening from Hexit, from Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference. So the conversation is coming back into Russia, this information, Ukraine, and so on. But I think that the authorities overall in the United States are keeping a lot of pressure in Caracas. I think they know that these are regimes together with Cuba, such as Brian was clearly explaining. These are regimes that have been, one has been six decades and the other one has been almost three decades. So they know that they can buy time, that know that they can delay conversations, sit down in one negotiating table after another. But there seems to be a lot of momentum. Don't wrote doctrine claim, three policy documents, the national defense strategy, the national security strategy, and then some priorities from the State Department, all pointing towards the Western Hemisphere as a point of attention for the next three years of this administration. Also this week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Americas, they met in the US. They all agreed to military unity across the Western Hemisphere. Secretary Pig Hetzig was there. So it wasn't just a generals and admirals meeting in the US, but actually one of the main defenders of the Down Road Doctrine was there to meet and greet. So clearly a very pivotal moment in Latin America. And I think the rest of 2026 will bring many surprises. You're highlighting the military aspects. I want to come back to that in a minute. But in the days after the US intervention, there was a lot of focus on the role of energy and the oil supplies from Venezuela. And in particular, that there was going to be an opening up of these and that US energy companies were going to come back. This was going to be the transformational motor in many ways, it seems, of some of the changes. How is that playing out? Is the US actively sort of becoming engaged? You mentioned in your comments this visit where we would see a US official going to the oil production sites. But what does that look like now? Well, the U.S. is clearly putting a lot of energy into mobilizing the Venezuelans. This is a massive act. So to rebomb the Venezuelan oil industry, it requires more than political visits. It requires more than just the U.S. pressure, mostly because you need to get back into the engineering, the producing, taking the oil out of the ground, putting it in tankers, moving it back to refineries. So it's a big engineering operation, which at one point it will stop being political and it needs to go into the technicalities of the political economy of the oil industry. It's still early stages into this. I think the business community still has many doubts about whether this will be a safe operation for them or not. You still need Venezuela to provide peaceful streets. You need to have engineers and other operators moving safely within the Venezuelan environment. So there is criminality. There is corruption. There are many other things in which the regime still survives and holds on pretty dearly because it keeps the regime running, which I think the big oil industry and the international executives are looking forward to changes in Venezuela. The oil reserves in Venezuela are extremely promising, but this won't be a change from one day to the next. It requires steps such as Secretary Wright visiting Venezuela to send us a signal that the United States is committed to this politically. And when executives look at this political commitment, they will jump on board and then you'll become a more complex operation. But still, early days, only six weeks on, but clearly signs that point towards a direction in which oil executives will probably re-engage with Venezuela very soon. Brian, I mean, Carlos mentioned the consolidation, at least in the documents of this new US approach. And we've seen, of course, the deployment of military force. Do you think this represents a shift in the regional security arrangements in the way that the United States has its military ties with countries in the region and it talks about and uses military force? Is this a kind of new regional security architecture emerging? It's a great question. My sense is that the US is the administration is aligning to what it thinks is the new international world order, the context, right? I think there's some degree that the United States is now kind of in a dogfight with China and Russia over dominance in the international system. And that dogfight is happening in the spaces of diplomacy and economic and sort of military projection of power, etc. And I think one of the things that the documents, and Carlos points this out well, is that there is this kind of renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere as the priority. And that's not to suggest that previous administrations were completely neglected of the Americas or the Western Hemisphere, but there are other priorities. And I think this administration has been very clear that the Western hemisphere is priority number one. And I think that if you sort of take that in this context or degree of acceptance that we're in a multipolar landscape, then regional dominance has to be a priority. I mean, you can't assert global projection without having incredible control and dominance over your own region. We see that in Russia's case in sort of the fear that they're striking in the European context, China shoring up its dominance and ability to project influence in Asia. I think this great power landscape is now looking at sort of first order of interest being their own region. and then beyond that sort of moving out in an effort to deter and out-compete in regions where they can find sort of wrinkles in the adversarial context. So I think that to me lends itself to where this administration is going in terms of its foreign policy and why you see the Western Hemisphere being asserted as the priority in American foreign policy and national security making. And then the other thing, and this goes to your other point, this also renewed preferences for the military as an instrument of power as well, right? I mean, we've seen this through previous administrations being reluctant to deploy the military. And this is probably a product of the exhaustion of Afghanistan and Iraq and sort of this American apathy for foreign wars and being engaged militarily. But this administration has been very open to using the military in very strategic context, whether that was striking Iran over the summer, or what they pulled off on January 3rd in Venezuela, and now sort of the pivot to moving the military back over the Middle East in case it has to get involved in Iran. And I think that means that the US is looking at the military as an instrument of power that is willing to deploy, not just sort of doing gunboat diplomacy, but deploy as an American asset to pursue critical interests, vital interests in American foreign policy and national security pursuits. Carlos, I guess many people have argued that the region was already pretty much dominated by the United States. And there was a lot of US-led organizations and ideas. So how much does this change? And where does it fit? Because does this basically mean now that the multilateral approach to the region is now going to be put to one side by the US? I agree with that idea. I think the US Southern Command was deployed throughout the year in the region over the last, at least, the last three chief commanders of US Southcom have put a lot of attention and a lot of energy into being in the region with multiple exercises at the same time and doing 365 days a year. Look, again, I was listening to the Munich Security Conference. There was the Minister of Defense of Colombia there. And when he was asked about the Colombia-US relation, he came up with this episode that happened when President Gustavo Petro recently went to Washington DC and to see Donald Trump. He corrected the America first terminology. He called it the Americas first, right? And by that saying that some countries in the Americas are welcoming the Dunro Doctrine, and they, rather than this being a unilateral exercise of policy stemming out of Washington, they're basically saying, you know what, we've been trying to counter drug trafficking for decades now. We've done it with you and sometimes with less energy from the US. But now we can all collaborate and we can all agree that this, at least transnational organized crime and drug trafficking is a serious issue. So although you do have that rhetoric, which is at the very high level of prescience, you know, they might don't like each other, they come from different political colors. But if you start scrolling down the tiers of power, which is, you know, the Minister of Affairs, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, generals and admirals in charge of the armed forces in the region, I think they're quite welcoming of this new approach, this new revamped energy from Southern Command towards the region. Can I add something real quick? Carlos made a really interesting observation, and I want to reinforce it. Petro and Trump traded gifts on the sidelines of that. And one of the things that Trump gave Petro was a make America great hat, right, sort of very emblematic of Trump and his movement. And Petro added an S to America and posted that on his socials, this make America's great again. And I think it goes to Carlos's point where the U.S. is certainly pursuing an America first agenda. And I think the region may be looking at this as an opportunity to make this America's first, right, in which, again, there's a degree of consolidation among the powers in the Western hemisphere. They're moving in a pretty consistent, not entirely always on the same page, but a fairly consistent movement. And I think that's also illustrated maybe in some of the changes of political winds in which you're seeing more countries elect leaders that may be more inclined to align with Donald Trump than what we've had in the past. And I think the other point, and Neil, you raised this as a question, that China has made incredible inroads in the region over the last 25 years. And the United States has observed the fact that it cannot go dollar for dollar against the Chinese. The Chinese have become the most prominent economic partner for several, if not most countries in Latin America. I think that unsettles the United States to have China in the Western Hemisphere as a major economic factor combined with the fact that China has pursued activities in the strategic mining area of lithium and cobalt and wanting to constrain China ability to access resources in the Western Hemisphere China's space equities in the hemisphere have grown. I mean, they have the most ground stations in the Western Hemisphere. And so I think the US is looking at China as its main competitor for control, if not unfettered influence in the Western Hemisphere. And I think that may be part of this pivot to prioritizing the Western Hemisphere as a means of really displacing. And that's the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine or the Donro Doctrine, right? This idea, it's all about strategic denial. Deny America's adversaries access to the Western Hemisphere. And that access means access to economy, access to resources. I mean, that's part of why the U.S. wants to control the 300 plus billion barrels of reserve in the Venezuelan ground. It keeps that away from China, or at least controls its flow to China. So I think the US is really focused on disrupting China's ability to assert influence in the US's classified neighborhood, right? Western hemisphere. Carlos, on that point, I mean, it might be good to go a little bit more depth on this, because this was, I guess, the framing when the Trump administration came in that there was going to be pushback against particularly China, but also Russia and Iran had some engagement. How much do you think these actions, Venezuela, the pressure on Cuba, a bit of pressure on Colombia, it seemed initially, is that changing the dial in the region about the engagement with these external actors? I believe so. Let's go to the case of Peru, where at the moment there is a big, big news discussion regarding the port of Chiang Kai. So the port of Chiang Kai is a big sea operation that the Peruvians have put north of Lima. It came with the investment of the Chinese company. And recently, there was a ruling by the Peruvian judiciary in terms of who had the authority to regulate the port of Chiang Kai. The judiciary actually called that they didn't have that much of sovereignty over what happened inside the mega operation of Chiang Kai. Immediately, there was a tweet by the U.S. ambassador in Lima about how Peruvians were losing sovereignty over China because of this issue in Chiang Kai. And now that tweet has gone viral in the region. Everyone is paying attention to this. So the U.S. is not necessarily enforcing an economic coercion over China, but is rather picking up and amplifying conversations about what sort of regulation there is over these mega Chinese operations, not just on sea and ports and logistics, but everything that Brian has just mentioned. And there was a feeling that the Chinese were starting to operate and control many of the vital veins that will join Latin America, telecoms, electricity, other forms of energy, the discussion of precious minerals, rare earths. And this is all connected. Latin America is still a very developmental type of region in which control over natural resources controls the economy. And whatever controls the economy controls health policy and the growth of countries, right? So these are quite intense agro mining type of countries. So this whole conversation also links with Antarctica, which again puts me into the conversation that Brian was bringing about down-road doctrine, which also has a key word, which is the control of choke points. So if you go to the national defense strategy, it clearly points out north to south from Greenland to Panama Canal to the tip of South America inland continent, and then its continuation in Antarctica. So China is a major actor within the security environment. It might not be that there is a vis-a-vis exchange of military-grade weapons or other type of arsenals. But clearly, when you do strategic analysis, right? So when presidents receive strategic intelligence, China is in the picture. Carlos is absolutely right. I mean, just the first trip that Secretary Rubio took immediately coming into office was to Panama, right? And you always look at that first visit from your lead foreign policy person to get an idea of where the trajectory is going to be, where the priorities are. And the fact that Secretary Rubio went to Panama as his first trip, and I mean, Latin America, he visited others, is indicative of this idea of the United States looking to block Chinese access to strategic assets in the Western Hemisphere. Brian, then where does that leave the countries in the region? Because I mean, And they've been engaging with China now for decades. And it's not just because they want to engage with China, but China is offering something that the US hasn't been able to do, particularly large scale investments. They're selling lots of stuff to China so that they're getting the US pressing them on one side to change. But there's not really an offer that is commensurate with what China is providing economically. So how are the countries responding to this new situation? That's the tough part. the US can't outspend China one-to-one in terms of investments in the Americas. And the United States is working to do a better job at aligning the American private sector to its foreign policy and national security interests so that those companies operating in the region are extensions of American foreign policy and are competing with China and Chinese state-owned enterprises in a far more intentional way. But the challenge inherently has been that the United States has been putting pressure on countries to choose. It's us versus them. And that hasn't worked because Latin American countries don't want to choose. And so I think the United States is, maybe the strategy is evolving to be far more strategic in terms of where the United States intervenes and puts pressure points, right? Supply chains around strategic minerals, major ports and access points that give China a dual use capability that both provides support to not just China's commercial and economic interests, but military interests in the Western hemisphere. And so I think the United States recognizes that it can't displace China economically, certainly not overnight, unless countries in the region start to do far better, and prosperity begins to run far deeper across the Americas that the region is going to remain committed economically to what China is offering. And there's no better place this has played out than in Argentina, in which when President Malay came in, he came in sort of striking the right chord for the United States, it was diminishing China's influence in Argentina. And when Malay came in, he realized very quickly that he cannot sever the economic ties. And so what he did was sort of bifurcate efforts, keep the economy moving in sort of harmony, while also moving political and security relations over to the United States. This played out in the South, which China had brokered a deal to put some basing equities in the South of Argentina because the governor allowed China to do that. Malay intervened and managed to block that largely at the compelling of the United States. But the economy, for the most part, remained largely intact. And I think the United States is trying to displace China maybe in some of the strategic mineral areas, but that's the challenge. The United States cannot take China on one for one in the economic sense. Latin American countries are still very much in need of Chinese capital and Chinese economic relations. And so the United States is going to focus more strategically and then be more compelling in the political and security domains. Carlos, sort of continuing this point, I'm interested just to hear a bit more about how the region is responding. Obviously, there are these countries that have had this very antagonistic relationship to the US, Venezuela, Cuba. They're in the sights at the moment. But there's also a kind of a third grouping, which have been the ones who've been looking to have more strategic autonomy from the US, I think particularly Brazil here, sort of leading in this conversation about the rise of a multipolar world where there's new access emerging through the BRICS, moving away from the dollar. Is this also now sort of really hitting the nail on the head with these countries as well, that that sort of agenda is going to be much harder to pursue in this context? And I'd be curious to know how Brazil particularly is responding to this new assertiveness by the US in the region. Brazil sits in a very particular position within the Western Hemisphere, mostly because of its size and mostly because its foreign policy changed way ahead of times in the early 2000s, when President Lula da Silva, during his first time around, clearly put a lot of energy and investments into joining what was then called the middle powers, which then turned into the BRICS. So in terms of foreign policy, Brazil, it's a decade above other countries in which it has built a sort of semi-independent way into dealing with the world, ways in which they have been able to, in a very smart way, invest on different products, one of them being the Middle East, others being the BRICS and the relationship with Russia, South Africa and China, for instance, and other being with the U.S. Still, Brazil is quite unique because it's a big powerhouse in terms of industrialization. So whenever the U.S. is trying to come up with nearshoring opportunities, it will look at Mexico, at Panama, and immediately into Brazil. And the same we could say about Europe. When Europe looks at Latin America, it clearly sees two or three main actors in which they will start investments, they will start other forms of economic bonds and security bonds. And one of them is always Brazil. And Brazilians are quite particular to the rest of the region, not just because they speak Portuguese and everyone else speaks Spanish, but they sit in a very key geographical corner within the Western Hemisphere at the moment, which allows them to look north, allows them to look northeast into Europe, and allows them to be connected through the Atlantic with the rest of Africa and its extension into India and so on. So we have President Lula again, which means that Brazil still has that very much smart appeal with the international relations. And they clearly sent a signal in which they don't belong to camps such as the Western camp or the anti-Western camp. I think they belong to one that it's about giving energy, right? Revamping the voice of those that were left over because of how the UN system and global governance have moved on into 2026. So clearly, Brazil is a friend of the US. Again, I like to see things in levels. If you look at military to military diplomacy between the US and Brazil, it's amazing. It's very, very good. If you look at the same with Europe, again, it's extremely good. If you ask where are the defense industry headquartered in Latin America, they are in Sao Paulo. They are in Rio de Janeiro, right? Because the market is still big, because they have strategic capabilities to renew their fleets, to renew their air power. They are advancing cyber power, which is quite connected to the role that the armed forces is playing. So all of this combines and allows the president of Brazil, whoever is, to have a say in the world, which clearly doesn't need to be hand in hand with the United States. You both made, I think, a quite strong case that this is a bigger strategy. This is almost a thought through assertion of US power in a new global geopolitical context that places the Western Hemisphere at the core of that. I'd be interested to hear from both of you, but how transformational do you actually think this is? Obviously, it's very early on, but we've had the Venezuela operation. There's a focus on Cuba. The region has been living with a very strong U.S. for hundreds of years, and it's probably got quite used to managing ups and downs and different kinds of relationships. Is this just part of that long cycle, or are we seeing something fundamentally different, you think, coming out of this that does represent a real sort of break, a potential new kind of relationship with the US? Brian, perhaps you have some thoughts on that? That's an interesting question, because I mean, it's an incredibly relevant one, that whether or not what the US is doing now is going to fundamentally change the relationship between the United States and Latin America. And my sense is that the relationship between United States and Latin America has been, in terms of proximity, incredibly close. I think the United States is looking to refine, maybe not fundamentally alter, but refine the relationship in a way that gives the United States a little bit more shielding or firewalling of its interests in a different global context right now, right? I think that even during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union finally realized that it could leverage Cuba to make entry into the Western Hemisphere and get into the U near abroad I think the United States still dominated its ability to control much of the Americas in a way that kept fundamentally and generally speaking some alignment So I don think we going to see a fundamental difference in the relationship I think the United States is looking to refine the relationship in a way that shores up its core interests, what it's classifying as sort of American interests, and that is displacing its rivals from the Western Hemisphere and keeping it sort of the main influencer or main sort of regional hegemon, to use those terms. It's looking to shore up resources and access to economies and tighten security cooperation across the Americas. And so I think it's probably not a fundamental shift. It's a refinement. But look, the reality is that the pendulum of politics swings in democracies. And so, I mean, much of that's conditioned on sort of continuity in terms of how American foreign policy thinking goes as we have sort of a post-Trump administration, whatever that looks like. And of course, in the Americas, the pendulum swings from left to right to center pretty frequently as well. And I think that that has been a consistent political feature. And the proximity of the White House in the Americas has often been cast through that light of ideological proximity. But fundamentally, I think that the US remains deeply connected in the Americas, and that's probably not going to change. It's just going to be fits and starts based on the political climate of the time. Carlos, how do you see this sort of playing out? I do believe we're entering a transformative moment. But in this, you need to also factor in the scale of this transformative moment. And I don't think the scale affects every continent in the world in the same proportion. Again, bringing back the Munich Security Conference happening as we record this episode, clearly what the opening speech there from one of the organizers, the president of the MSC, was saying, we need to rethink the transatlantic reset, right? So this transformative moment is not only making Latin American leaders think about their relationship with the US, but Europeans are also engaged in this conversation, right? How to take concrete steps, how to propose a new relationship with the United States or a new multilateral relationship in which the United States is one of many other actors, right? What about the Union Security Council, the 27 members of the EU. All of these groups are going through transformative change just because of this new multipolarization, the rise of China, what's going to happen to Russia after a Ukraine peace agreement, the transformation of the Middle East. All of this actually affects, and I think you need to be short-sighted if you're sitting, listening in Latin America, not to think that your country will experience a new relationship with the US, and therefore a new relationship with the rest of the world. If the U.S. comes into your country and starts demanding a more transactional relationship in terms of security, the economy, new technologies, supply chains, and so on, other actors are going to be put away because you are now preferring actor B instead of actor A. So it is a transformative moment in a sense that you need to be smart into how you calibrate foreign relations and international security, Latin America still has some very long-lasting problems in which it hinders that perspective that we're going into something that's transformative, right? Transnational organized crime has been for so long. Corruption has been for so long. Authoritarianism has been for so long. And then you have other hotspots which are, you know, we talk about Cuba, we talk Venezuela. What about Haiti, a country that has been in problems since the early 90s with no solution. So there are these episodes which keep mounting up in the history of Latin America, but we also need to be smart about where the world is going and how that will impact the Western hemisphere. If I can add something, Neil, quickly to what Carlos said, because again, I'm still debating how transformative this is versus the changing of the context. But I think something that is new, at least in American foreign policy pursuits, is this idea of coercive approaches to pursuing its interests. And I think that that's forcing countries in the region to, on one end, pick and align. We saw this during the Cold War. So we've been free of forcing countries to choose a side for roughly 35 years. But I think it's also countries are now looking to acquiesce to the United States. I mean, administrations like Rodrigo Paz that are coming in and others that are acquiescing to have closer relationships with the United States, as the United States reasserts itself in a really dominant way. And I think that acquiescence kind of steals some of the agency from countries in Latin America to align on their own terms. They're aligning, as Carlos points out, based on the changes in the broader global geopolitical landscape. And I think that may be changing and that may lend itself to being transformative. but I'm not sure that we haven't been here before. I think it's maybe we haven't been here in a few decades. And then you juxtapose that broader geopolitical landscape where you have China consolidating in Asia and looking to, again, disrupt US equities there. And that broader context may be leading itself to some transformative geopolitical context going forward. I mean, we have moved clearly from a US-dominated international system to a multipolar system. And I think with it requires countries to adapt to that new geopolitical context. And I think that may be where it's transformative, I guess. Brian, on that point about the mood to acquiesce in the region, I mean, that presumably is based also on US success, particularly in Venezuela. But reports suggest that that military mission, it was a high stakes operation. And at certain points, it could have gone quite badly wrong. So there's a certain level of fortune in that. We've seen Trump's play for Greenland apparently meet pushback and change direction. Where would you see the risks actually for this US approach, new approach to the region? I mean, where can resistance come from? Where could things go wrong? There's always the risk of miscalculation, certainly, overplaying its hand. I think the US feels it's in sort of the dominant position right now. It's using coercion as part of its proactive statecraft, right? I mean, it's starting with coercive, diplomatic and economic gestures, as opposed to reciprocating with coercion. It's coming out the gate hard, enforcing countries in the international system to engage, to sort of negotiate with the United States. And the United States sort of jumps out front. I mean, the military operation in Venezuela was by far one of the most complicated and efficient military operations I've seen in a long time. And as someone who served in the US military, there's always a high risk that something can go south very fast and completely derail the perceptions of success. I think the fact that the United States demonstrated such overwhelming military competency in Venezuela was not just sort of a high-risk gamble in Venezuela, but it was also a risk at showing the rest of the international community the American military muscle as a deterrent. I mean, you have to imagine that Iran right now is thinking about the incredible operation that the Americans conducted in Venezuela. And that changes the calculus fundamentally in terms of how countries react to the United States. And so I think the US military operation was carefully calibrated. It did not go until military leadership and planners had a high degree of success, or else they wouldn't have taken that risk, because it could have turned out catastrophic. And I think those are the types of challenges, right? Risk of miscalculation, high stakes operations like we did in Venezuela and Iran last summer go south and don't produce the kind of change and therefore undermines the military as a credible instrument of American power. I think those are some of the challenges that the United States has to wade into as it moves into this confronting multipolarity in a very intentional and direct way. Carlos, we've just completed the RUSI Latin America Security Conference, and it's an annual conference very much focused on sort of European Latin America relations, although of course taking account of the US. The US changing roles was a big part of the conversation there. How now do you think the Europeans need to adapt how they approach Latin America, including the US? I mean, I think there was a sense there was perhaps space opening up in the region as China came in and the US role seemed to be diminishing, particularly for example around arms sales, looking for selling weapons as a third force. I know that Sweden and the sale of its fighter jet was often seen as a kind of hedging option by some countries in the region. Does all this change now? Does Europe need to recalibrate how it looks at Latin America? Well, if the region is moving, obviously it forces the Europeans to rethink their place within the Western Hemisphere. Honestly, I don't think that the Europeans struggle to get into Latin America. If you look at trade tables between countries and the rest of the world. Of course, you'll find China first, the US second because of its proximity, followed by one of two of the neighbors of this particular country. But then it comes a big list of European countries, right? Because the Europeans are very good at globalization. They're very good at playing free trade. They're very good at seeing opportunity. And the same for the defense industry. If you're not buying F-16s, you're thinking about buying the Gripen, right? So it's clearly not a second choice. It's the alternative that you have when you're trying to get something on the table. The Chinese buying or bidding for telecoms, for mining, they're doing it in competition with European firms, European multinationals. The whole region, it's an example of how the Europeans have been present given its colonial past all the way back to Spain and Portugal, and to the most cutting-edge technologies being delivered in Antarctica. European countries, same with Latin Americans and others, are signatories of the Antarctic Treaty. So everything that happens in Latin America has a strong European component when it looks at international security. Obviously, that countries which care the region the most and that will have territories within the region, insular territories, think about the Dutch, the French, the UK as well, They're all in clear connection with the conversation that we've just had. The Caribbean is full of not just the Western Hemisphere countries, but interest from Europe as well. So whatever happens in Venezuela, in Brazil, in connection with the Gulf of Guinea in Africa, in the coast of Colombia, and moves towards countering drug trafficking, the UK is there, given its intelligence as part of the Five Eyes. U.S. Southern Command has always had a British officer sitting in Miami, Florida. So although Europe is not making the headlines, it doesn't mean that they've disappeared or that they're not one of the strongest and most competitive actors. And a good hand that Latin Americans have when it comes into building cybersecurity capacity, when it comes into all the projects in development and new technologies. So this is something that we discuss here at RUSI, what role has the UK, what role have the French, the Italian and the Spanish. And I think it's multiple. It's going on. And the US knows about this. And that's one of the other demands that the US does in the region. It's not just, hey, Europeans, you need to up your defense expenditure in Europe, but you also need to give us a hand elsewhere in the world where you guys have interests. This brings us to the end of today's discussion on United States and Western Hemisphere security. I'd like to thank this week's guests, Dr. Brian Fonseca and Dr. Carlos Salah, for joining me on this episode of Global Security Briefing. The podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. For further information about the work of the international security team at RUSI, please follow us on X, formerly Twitter at ISS underscore RUSI, and on LinkedIn at internationalsecurityrusi. And also find out more about the IS team's research on regional security issues around the world on the RUSI website. In the next global security briefing, I'll be examining developments concerning Iran. Over the past two years, Iran has experienced a rapid change of fortune. Its regional network of proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen has been weakened, if not destroyed. The country's military and nuclear program has been attacked and severely damaged by Israel and the United States, and the leadership has engaged in unprecedented domestic repression to quell a popular uprising against the backdrop of economic crisis. Where now will Iran go and how will the US and its regional allies see to steer the country? But for now, it's goodbye from me, Neil Melvin at Roussi in London. Bye.