Restoring US pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere
“In 1973 the White House supported Pinochet’s coup. ‘I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,’ Henry Kissinger had said a few years earlier. Now, decades later, the current US president has hailed the victory of Kast, whom he says he endorsed.”
The intereference in Honduras last hear and now in Venezuela. The recent CIA operation in the latter has not “provoked no response from Western governments, which are usually quick to pounce on instances of military aggression and electoral manipulation, as long as they can be attributed to Moscow.”
“Ahead of Argentina’s parliamentary elections on 26 October, Trump conducted economic and financial blackmail similar to the attempt to ‘persuade’ Hondurans.
“Washington has many tools for pressure and retaliation against Latin American countries, all of which help facilitate its redeployment across their region. Governments can be paralysed by measures that suppress trade, which are often less attention-grabbing than direct political interference, Truth Social posts or extraterritorial sanctions (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela). So all these states try to avoid Trump’s wrath and seek to ‘negotiate’ in the hope of tariffs being reduced or removed.”
In Mexico, “Claudia Sheinbaum’s government must daily attempt to head off the threat of further penalties, regularly issued by the US for various reasons.
“In July 2025 Trump imposed on Brazil the heaviest customs duties levied on any country (except for China in early 2025) – 50%… After weeks of tough negotiations, Brasília obtained tariff exemptions or 40% reductions on many agricultural products (beef, coffee, cocoa, fruit) because of fears the tariffs would fuel US inflation.
“Washington’s return to its former backyard is meant to ‘ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come’. The document expresses an openly imperial ambition: Latin America must contribute to the reconstruction, strengthening and development of the US’s productive, technological, strategic and military capacities in order to maintain a ‘balance of power’ with other actors whose status is acknowledged: Russia and, especially, China.
“Washington states that it does not wish to attack its competitors, but does not intend to tolerate their expansion in the ‘Western Hemisphere’ (US strategic parlance for the entire American continent), nor to let such expansion be easier because of the US growing weaker. In general, ‘the purpose of national security policy is the protection of core national interests – some priorities transcend regional confines.’ Preserving this security, the strategy document argues, requires Washington to be dominant from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt refined the Monroe Doctrine “by declaring that ‘in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of … wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.’ This stance became known as the ‘Roosevelt corollary’. The recent national security strategy document now adds a Trump corollary.
“The security strategy document invites governments to make the US their ‘partner of first choice’. Those who comply will be rewarded. As for those who resist, ‘we will (through various means) discourage them from collaboration with others.’
“Washington can now count on many countries being in alignment, even among those whose biggest or second-biggest trading partner is China.
“The right is gaining ground all across Latin America. It takes a different form in each country, but its most radical manifestations are increasing their influence and even winning power directly. Almost everywhere, the CEO-style presidents of the recent past – Argentina’s Mauricio Macri (2015-19) or Chile’s Sebastián Piñera (2010-14 and 2018-22) – who foregrounded their capacities as competent neoliberal managers, have been eclipsed by figures who make much more of their ideological appeal.
“The combined effects of these crises – which the left managed within the existing socioeconomic system, meaning without being able or willing to undertake ambitious structural reforms – have left Latin American societies deeply scarred. They have contributed to strong feelings of resentment against the state as an institution and, in some countries, against political leaders associated with these painful periods. In most of them, progressive parties’ record in combatting crime, a phenomenon that has simultaneously become more serious and more widespread, is generally regarded as unsatisfactory.
“But other factors are fuelling the rise of the right. Since the end of the pandemic, many workers have become self-employed, especially in sectors linked to the expansion of digital platforms (transport, catering, import-export etc). In some economies, the informal sector absorbs nearly half the workforce, and in others, such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, over 70%. Young people who live in cities are particularly affected. This growth in self-employment feeds the trend towards social and political individualism and fragmented electorates, while rejection of incumbents is becoming more radical as the prospects of improved social mobility fail to materialise.
“Lastly, the feminisation of Latin American societies has accelerated since the early 2000s (women are in the majority demographically, have increased access to higher education and the labour market, and have made advances in individual and collective rights, including in the sexual and reproductive spheres). Conservative, religious and traditionalist currents are exploiting a generally worsening economic situation to develop a reactionary vision of women’s place in society, and in so doing giving increased impetus to the radical right.”
Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2006
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