Ryan Berg in Foreign Policy: Trump’s Western Hemisphere Pivot Is Real

More than any of its predecessors since the first edition in 1987, the Trump administration's new National Security Strategy (NSS) reflects a belief that the Western Hemisphere is the paramount zone of strategic interest for the United States. It dashes any hopes that the Western Hemisphere would be ephemeral to the U.S. national interest and signals a promising trajectory for hemispheric relations.

The first year of the second Trump administration has already featured a strong focus on the Western Hemisphere. On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's first trip abroad was to Central America, a once-in-a-century move that came after penning an article adumbrating an "Americas First Foreign Policy." At least five cabinet secretaries have visited the region so far, many of them multiple times. Militarily, the United States has undertaken a critical build-up of air and naval assets in the Caribbean and just this week imposed a blockade on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers.

The foreign-policy establishment, however, has regarded the Americas First approach as mistaken policy at best and suicidal strategy at worst. This is misguided. The Trump administration's strategic pivot aims to rebuild the foundational source of U.S. global power-a prosperous, economically integrated, and secure hemisphere. Now the question is how much the 2025 NSS will actually guide U.S. policy. If U.S. President Donald Trump wants to make good on the strategy in the remaining three years of his term, several long-term trends in the U.S. approach toward the Western Hemisphere must change.

The new NSSplaces the Western Hemisphere first in the regional section, dedicating four pages to outlining U.S. strategy in its neighborhood. Principally, the NSS asserts U.S. desire to "restore American preeminence" in the Western Hemisphere and "enlist" and "expand" the number of regional partners that can serve as force multipliers on the administration's key issues: curtailing illegal immigration, reducing drug trafficking, and combatting China.

Strikingly, the NSS leads with the development of a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary states that the Trump administration "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 Trump Corollary's emphasis on a "potent restoration of American power and priorities" calls upon the Monroe Doctrine's history. Concerned with hemispheric instability, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 annual message to Congress famously overhauled the Monroe Doctrine with Roosevelt's own corollary, declaring that "flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence" would bring the United States "to the exercise of an international police power" in the region. Positive identification with the Roosevelt Corollary foretells Trump's aim for muscular engagement in Latin America.

The Trump Corollary likewise invokes the Lodge Corollary, which resolved that neither foreign powers nor foreign companies could control territory or harbors in the Americas from which they could exercise "practical power of control" and threaten the United States. Named after Henry Cabot Lodge, this corollary emerged from the Massachusetts senator's resolution opposing the acquisition of Magdalena Bay, Mexico, by a Japanese company. Today, Chinese companies are involved in more than three dozen ports in the Western Hemisphere. Old challenges are resurfacing in a new century.

The Trump Corollary also suggests that great-power competition has entered a new period. After an initiation of competition in the first Trump and Biden administrations, the United States perceives an onset of the contest's "consolidation phase." In this phase, rival powers gird themselves: solidifying their immediate neighborhoods, demanding more of their alliances, and institutionalizing the competitive environment across diplomatic, economic, technological, and military domains.

Trump's new NSS-and its focus on consolidating the Western Hemisphere while pursuing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific-should be read in light of where the United States perceives itself to be in the timeline of great-power competition. Take it from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, who said recently at the Reagan National Defense Forum, "Over the last few years, we haven't had a lot of American combat power in our own neighborhood; I suspect that's going to change."

National security strategies are more statements of intention and descriptions of an administration's ideal world than strict blueprints for action. Presidents must react to crises as they arise, and often without much forewarning.

In Trump's first term, the COVID-19 pandemic derailed a full pivot to the Americas. And it's worth noting neither Monroe nor Roosevelt named their policies eponymously. Rather, historians and commentators retrospectively termed the doctrine and corollary as such because of the distinct, consistent policies both leaders inspired or drove.

Over time, perhaps the Trump Corollary, too, could chart an unmistakable policy direction on hemispheric affairs. What's evident now is that Trump's NSS has already fundamentally changed U.S. conceptions of national security.

Transnational criminal organizations, many now designated as foreign terrorist organizations, present an intractable dilemma in that they function as para-state entities with deep pockets and well-stocked arsenals. Accordingly, the Trump administration has expanded the means for confronting these organizations, which has immense ramifications for how the United States implements the NSS. Trump's frontal policies on these organizations began day one of his administration with a flurry of executive orders, and continue apace.

Buried in the Western Hemisphere section of the NSS, however, lies a crucial line on the rapidly changing conception of hemispheric defense: "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." Gone are the days of counternarcotics strategies conceived in a law-enforcement paradigm. The United States will now utilize all elements of national power to confront and eliminate cartels.

The Trump administration's elevation of transnational criminal organizations to an imminent national security threat worthy of the use of military force is no less consequential than the inclusion of the preemptive doctrine as a core component of U.S. foreign policy in George W. Bush's 2002 NSS.

The starkest example of this paradigm shift has been more than two dozen precision strikes against suspected narco-laden vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. These strikes may soon come ashore to Venezuela; a potential target of lethal force, the country's Maduro regime presents the most immediate challenge to the Trump Corollary. Venezuela fits under the NSS definition of "key geographies," especially since it serves as the hemisphere's principal beachhead for China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia. Venezuela also possesses what the NSS terms "strategically vital assets," holding the largest proven oil reserves in the world and significant deposits of critical minerals. The NSS rhetoric portends action-and indeed, Trump warned recently that Maduro's "days are numbered."

Trump's showdown with Venezuela carries substantial risks to the full execution of his hemispheric strategy. Failing to solve the Maduro problem would hamstring the United States' ability to address Trump's priorities: the triad of migration, drugs, and China.

Notwithstanding these stakes, it is the stability of Mexico that must remain the cardinal objective of long-term U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. The NSS does not mention prioritizing U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, but that relationship stands above all else. Mexico's future will have a profound impact on the growth of the North American economy and the fate of deadly cartels. Bilateral trade between the United States and Mexico may surpass $1 trillion this year, as U.S.-Mexico supply chain integration deepens. Meanwhile, Mexican cartels such as Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation pose unprecedented threats to the United States' homeland and neighborhood-and the world. Securing Mexico safeguards U.S. interests at home and abroad.

Contrary to retrenchment fears, the Trump administration's Western Hemisphere strategy will also redound to the benefit of U.S. allies in Europe. Degrading and dismantling drug cartels will prevent the flow of narcotics into Belgium and France, where an insatiable appetite for cocaine helps fuel unrelenting gang violence besieging cities.

The calculated objectivesand benchmarks of the 2025 NSS remain to be borne out. Enforcing a 21st-century Monroe Doctrine, and with it the Trump Corollary, will incur a heavy fiscal burden and necessitate recalibrating U.S. defense posture.

Currently, U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), the combatant command covering much of Latin America, receives well under 1 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's annual budget. The department requested roughly $575 million for SouthCom for fiscal year 2026, in a budget expected to exceed $900 billion. SouthCom's annual unfunded priorities list still tops $300 million.

Another crucial factor prevents the Western Hemisphere from emerging as the decisive theater envisaged by the NSS: SouthCom has no permanently assigned combat troops under its geographic command. The combatant command relies on forces assigned temporarily, which the Defense Department allocates on a rotational and mission-specific basis. SouthCom exercises and preparation in the region also tend to be quick and episodic.

Moreover, the Department of Defense's split of the Western Hemisphere between SouthCom and U.S. Northern Command makes little strategic sense. This area of responsibility division separates critical U.S. neighbors such as Mexico from broader policy toward Latin America. Unifying the two commands could prevent bureaucratic structures from hindering consistent policy-especially when the NSS conceptualizes hemispheric security and homeland defense as a distinction without a difference-and help make the region a true priority theater.

On Dec. 5, 2025, the U.S. Army activated the Western Hemisphere Command, a new headquarters for both the Northern and Southern commands. The proactive measure is an efficient start, but the administration should continue to eliminate redundancies and improve resource allocation across the Americas. Crises, security challenges, and natural disasters do not respect borders. Nor should countries such as Mexico and the Bahamas linger artificially cleaved from their southern neighbors in a distinct combatant command.

The new NSS has identified the direction. Now, the Trump administration must execute this much-needed course correction. In drawing on the Monroe Doctrine, the 2025 strategy reveals a fundamental truth about U.S. power: The United States cannot persist as a superpower without securing its hemisphere. Redressing Washington's neglect of the Americas will have global implications, not the least of which is extirpating the malign influence of the United States' adversaries from its neighborhood.

Can the Trump administration turn this well-grounded strategy into a successful set of policies? The next three years will tell us.