Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine for the United States prioritises relations with North and South America – the Western Hemisphere. It treats them as extensions of US domestic politics on security, migration, drugs, trade and investment. This is clearly seen in Trump’s appointment of Pete Hegseth as his secretary of war, formerly defence. Hegseth has overseen a huge military build-up against Venezuela in the Caribbean alongside lethal attacks on alleged drug smugglers. His reported order to “kill everybody” in an attack on September 2nd is under intense investigation.
Domestic and international politics and law differ qualitatively in their remit and values, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s determination to assert raw US power against such legal imperatives in Latin America. The new US National Security Strategy adds a “Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Munroe Doctrine which warned European imperial powers off interfering there. The administration wants to enlist political and ideological allies in other states like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Honduras, oppose hostile governments in Venezuela and Colombia and expand its links to Mexico and other states willing to deal on its terms. These moves willfully cut across international law to bolster US interests.
That point is being made powerfully by Pete Hegseth’s Congressional and legal critics in the US, in a welcome reassertion of the rule of law’s central importance for US constitutionalism. The 21 attacks on small boats in the Caribbean since September, in which at least 50 people have died, are acts of international war without the legally necessary approval of Congress. Hegseth’s reported order to “kill everybody”, if confirmed, is a criminal act in US domestic law. His denial of making it in person, offloading responsibility to the commander in charge, does not alter that fact and leaves the military open to possible prosecution. It is all in keeping with the swaggering braggadocio Hegseth brings to the role, with Trump’s full support.
Hegseth’s misjudgements in the “Signalgate” episode last March, when he released information about an imminent US attack on Houthi targets in Yemen on an unsecured app, are highlighted in a highly critical internal Pentagon report. They add to the evidence that he is unfit for such a sensitive role, a conclusion many senior military have also reached. That matters enormously in an administration which puts military might in such a commanding position as it seeks to change the geopolitical shape of the hemisphere over which the US claims renewed hegemony.
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Gunboat diplomacy on this scale, with this ethos, resurrects memories and charges of Yankee imperialism in Latin America. Trump will find it more and more difficult to achieve that hegemony with these means alone.
