Donald Trump displays a penchant for American and shameless American imperialism with regard to politics in the Western hemisphere. Even before entering the oval office for his second term, he sparked alarm bells among neighboring countries. As elected president, he said that he intended to put pressure on Denmark to sell Greenland in the United States. He also demanded that the Panamanian government are making full control of the Panama Canal in Washington.
Such sudden and uncompromising rhetoric intensified once Trump took office, and he quickly accompanied himself with a decisive action. When Colombian officials opposed Washington to return planns of illegal migrants expelled in their country, the Trump administration retaliated by imposing hard prices for Bogota exports. This answer dissipated any notion that Trump’s coercion threats were just a bluff.
The rapid capitulation of the government of Colombia will probably encourage the White House to use such brassying tactics in bralange concerning disputes with other nations in the hemisphere. The revival by Trump of his prior threats to use the military force against the Mexican drug cartels, for example, should make the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum more than a little nervous.
A story of the big stick
From the end of the 19th century, the United States had acquired enough economic and military power to reach hegemony throughout the Western hemisphere. American leaders did not hesitate to apply this status. Washington has even regularly ousted the regimes deemed insufficiently cooperative. Recent American administrations preferred to rely on more subtle measures, but President Trump shows clear signs of wanting to return to the use of the “big stick” to impose Washington’s desire.
Despite the immediate capitulation of Colombia with regard to the question of the expulsion of refugees, officials of the Trump administration are likely to discover that it is much more difficult to support us in the hemisphere than They do not plan it. Indeed, the cracks in this domination have been developing for some time.
Washington’s inability to oust the Communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba was the first significant indicator. After the 1961 failure in the pig bay (using armed Cuban exiles as American proxys) to overthrow Castro, a series of American administrations did not want to pay the probable price in the treasure and the blood necessary to reach a change forced diet.
More recently, US officials seem to have taken the same conclusion, so reluctantly, concerning Radical left governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Their threats of action are mainly hot air.
Even Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Ultra-Hawkish, Marco Rubio, are unlikely to abandon such a restraint in politics. Most of the hemisphere governments are reluctant to enlist in an armed American crusade to oust his opponents in Cuba and Venezuela. The days when members of the Organization of US states would have simple rubber stamp decisions taken in Washington have long been over.
Indeed, the resistance among the neighbors of Washington towards us the complaints concerning the nature of the relations which they have established with major powers outside the hemisphere becomes significantly stronger. American decision -makers regularly express their irritation of growing economic and diplomatic ties that countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have forged with Russia and the People’s Republic of China. The usual responses to Washington objections, however, are increasingly made up of polished but firm layoffs. For example, trade between Brazil and the RPC reached 181.53 billion in 2023 and was about to exceed this total in 2024.
The limits of Washington coercive diplomacy throughout the international system have become graphically when the administration of Joe Biden tried to recruit a global coalition to impose sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The exception of NATO and longtime American security customers in East Asia in East Asia, the campaign collapsed. This failure was nowhere obvious in Latin America. With the exception of British Guyana, none of the countries of this region imposed sanctions in Moscow, and even less has responded favorably to Washington’s call for economic or military aid to kyiv.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, speaking with participants in the Student Action Summit 2019 organized by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Center Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Such behavior stresses that the world is now undoubtedly multipolar, politically and diplomatically and economically. Even military capacities are becoming more and more dispersed, thus starting to erode the domination of Washington in this area also.
Donald Trump should be careful
Multi-polarity is a crucial development within the hemisphere as well as in the world. Countries like Brazil, Canada, Mexico and even Argentina are important diplomatic and economic actors. Measured by the Nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) The economy of Brazil is the 9th largest in the world, in Canada, in the 10th, in the 12th in Mexico and in Argentina, 23rd. The will of these countries to follow the example of Washington on the policy can no longer be considered to be acquired, and this development can prove to be a brutal alarm clock for Donald Trump and his associates.
About the Ted Galen Carpenter
Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a columnist for 19FortyFive and main member of the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He also held various leading political positions during a 37 -year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 pounds and more than 1,300 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil freedoms. His latest book is unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and Us Foreign Policy (2022).
