By Stefano Palestini Céspedes* and Fulton Armstrong

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Colombia during his Latin American tour last summer. / White House / Flickr / Creative Commons

The Trump administration’s revival of a vision of U.S.-Latin America relations akin to the Monroe Doctrine is advancing with little pushback from the region.  Since former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson eight months ago proclaimed that the Monroe Doctrine is “as relevant today as it was the day it was written,” Washington has continued to revive it as a guiding principle that includes limiting the influence of other powers in the hemisphere as well as reserving for itself the right to intervene when it feels its interests are threatened.

• Tillerson complained that China “is using economic statecraft to pull the region into its orbit” and that Russia’s “growing presence in the region is alarming as well, as it continues to sell arms and military equipment to unfriendly regimes who do not share or respect democratic values.” In August, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis renewed the attack on China’s investment of billions in Latin America, claiming that “there is more than one way to lose sovereignty. … It can be with countries that come offering presents and loans.”  Last week, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence repeated his government’s complaint that Latin America is among the regions where China is offering large infrastructure loans that are “opaque at best, and the benefits flow overwhelmingly to Beijing.”
• Washington has also resorted to cavalier rhetoric regarding its perceived right to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries to advance its interests. At the United Nations in late September, President Trump said, “Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintain[ing] our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.”  President Trump argued for regime change in Venezuela and repeated that “all options are on the table, [including] the strong ones.”  In the new NAFTA agreement, Washington demanded, and achieved Mexican and Canadian concurrence on, a clause stipulating that the United States could terminate the agreement with six months’ notice if either negotiated a free trade agreement with a “non-market economy” – that is, with China.

Latin American governments’ voices have been thus far muted – perhaps because they are getting used to downplaying Trump’s rhetoric – even though the revival of the Monroe Doctrine is already shaping actual policies.  A hundred years ago, Latin American international lawyers, diplomats, and intellectuals worked hard to transform the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral doctrine into a multilateral policy able to shape first Pan-American and later Inter-American relations.  Those efforts led to the adoption of hemispheric instruments such as the OAS Charter in 1948 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter in 2001, gradually defining a mutually acceptable approach that strikes a balance between shared hemispheric values and the principle of non-intervention.  After the Cold War, references to the Monroe Doctrine disappeared from public discourse – except to disparage it as the Obama administration did – until the Trump administration revived it.

Today, the forums and organizations that Latin America has used during the last decade to articulate concerns and political responses to U.S. policies are not working.  OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro’s recent declarations that military action to solve the crisis in Venezuela cannot be ruled out, rather than offering a riposte, echoes Trump’s stance.  The Lima Group – which gathers together a group of OAS member states committed to the defense of democracy in Venezuela – pushed back against Almagro’s statements but, importantly, not against the U.S. administration’s policy.  More formal organizations such as UNASUR are not only muted, but actually paralyzed by the inability of its members to reach consensus and solve fundamental discrepancies. 

• To resist and speak up when confronted with rhetoric and policies with such profound implications as a revitalized Monroe Doctrine is not a matter of politics and economics, but rather a necessary condition for friendly and respectful international relations and the sort of partnership that Latin Americans of all political stripes claim to want with the United States. To articulate such a response, Latin America urgently needs its leaders to think in “regional” and not only “national” terms – to nurture a genuine Inter-American community, not just bilateral relations with Washington.  The odds for such leadership to emerge at this moment do not appear high.  The possible election of a nationalist, xenophobic, and illiberal leader in Brazil may become a further challenge for collective action in the region.

October 12, 2018

* Stefano Palestini Céspedes is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Catholic University of Chile.