Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said the “Monroe Doctrine is in effect, and stronger than ever under the Trump Corollary.” This corollary was added in the new National Security Strategy from President Donald Trump.
“The War Department stands ready to take focused and to fight decisive action that advances U.S. interests,” Hegseth said Saturday in his keynote address. “This is the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, recently codified so clearly in the National Security Strategy. After years of neglect, the United States will restore U.S. military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region.”
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He said the U.S. “will also deny adversaries ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities in our hemisphere.”
“Past administrations perpetuated the belief that the Monroe Doctrine had expired,” Hegseth said. “They were wrong.” He went on to call the Monroe Doctrine is in effect “a common sense restoration of our power and prerogatives in this hemisphere, consistent with U.S. interests.”
The Monroe Doctrine
The National Security Strategy published this week states that “after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere,” the NSS said. “This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
The Monroe Doctrine was part of former President James Monroe’s message to Congress on Dec. 2, 1823, and asserted that European powers were not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. It came 11 years after the end of the War of 1812, which put the U.S. against the British.
While the Trump Corollary lays out several demands when it comes to the Western hemisphere, particularly in Latin America, experts Straight Arrow News spoke to said it’s not exactly clear what this means in terms of actual policy and implementation.
According to the NSS, the Trump administration’s goals for the Western Hemisphere under the corollary are to “enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea,” while also “cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.”
Stephen Rabe, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas-Dallas, previously told SAN this is “an attempt to reassert that the United States is the hegemonic power in Latin America.”
“What they mean is that the United States will be the most powerful country acting on Latin America, right?” McPherson said. “And so, what is that? Another word for Imperialism.”
Part of what the Trump Corollary in the NSS includes is “targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades.”
The U.S. has been expanding its military presence in the Caribbean following the bombing of alleged drug boats and threats from Trump of military action in Venezuela.
Criticism of boat strikes
However, these actions, particularly the strikes on boats accused of carrying drugs, have elicited criticism from Latin American leaders as well as bipartisan members of Congress. While Hegseth defended the strikes in his remarks Saturday, saying that Trump “can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit,” some in Congress accused him of committing war crimes.
After a closed-door congressional hearing on Thursday over the authority of Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley to issue a second strike on survivors of one attack, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said the testimony “was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” Two people the military killed in the strike were clinging to a destroyed vessel and had no means to move, Himes said.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has also said the people accused of carrying drugs on these boats by the White House should not have been killed without a trial or representation.
