Spheres of influence stem from the very nature of states and international relations. States will always seek to secure their interests by exerting influence over their neighbors, and the more powerful the state, the greater the influence that it will seek.
That said, sphere of influence strategies vary greatly, on spectrums between relative moderation and excess, humanity and cruelty, discreet pressure and open intimidation, and intelligence and stupidity; and the present policies of the Trump administration in the Western Hemisphere show disturbing signs of inclining towards the latter.
The Monroe Doctrine too has varied greatly in the two centuries since it was first announced as core to U.S. foreign and security policy. Originally, it was no more than the stated determination to prevent Spain from re-establishing its imperial rule over its former colonies, or Britain and France taking them over.
During the Cold War, the previous determination to exclude foreign empires morphed into a determination to prevent states in the Western Hemisphere from joining hostile military and political alliances; or if Washington was forced to concede this (as in the case of Cuba), to cripple the states concerned through economic sanctions and subversion.
This longstanding U.S. strategy renders absurd the NATO and European line concerning Ukraine that “every country has the right to choose its international alliances,” and that no other country has a veto over this. And of course, this rule extends far beyond the U.S. and Latin America, or Russia and Ukraine. Whatever its legal or moral “right,” Vietnam would be very ill-advised to join a military alliance with the U.S. against China, as would Bangladesh if it joined a Chinese alliance against India. Or as one Kazakh official once told me when the U.S. was seeking a security relationship with his country, “Every sensible Kazakh has a map in his head; and what that map shows is that Russia is there, and China is there, and Kazakhstan is in the middle. And the U.S. is not on that map.”
The implacable U.S. goal of preventing a hostile military presence in the Americas has been pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations; and though the result for populations in the region was often monstrous oppression and suffering, this strategy did succeed in excluding potential military adversaries from America’s neighborhood. No Latin American government today is dreaming of inviting the Chinese or Russians to establish bases on their territories. Nor would Beijing and Moscow accept such an invitation. For they all know very well how ferocious and overwhelming would be the U.S. response.
That has not prevented actors in the U.S. from repeatedly using an alleged Soviet/Russian/Chinese threat to argue U.S. policies that they have in fact sought for quite different reasons. The single most dreadful example of this was the role of the United Fruit Company and its allies in the Eisenhower administration in creating the 1954 coup in Guatemala in order to block a moderate land reform, leading to a civil war in which tens of thousands of indigenous Maya people were slaughtered by the U.S.-backed military regime in what would today undoubtedly be called a “genocide.” The parallel with Trump’s desire that U.S. corporations should develop Venezuela’s oil is all too obvious.
Today, a non-existent “alliance” between the Venezuelan regime and China is being used as an excuse for the overthrow of that regime; and the feral hostility of the Cuba emigre lobby and its representatives in the U.S. administration to the existing Cuban state has nothing to do with any real security threat from Cuba, and everything with their own inherited hatreds and ambitions.
How much further will the Trump administration go? The “Donroe Doctrine” explicitly returns to the “Roosevelt Corollary” of 1904 that expanded the Monroe Doctrine to assert the U.S. right to exercise “international police power” to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American states if they show “chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.”
So far however, while Trump has declared that the U.S. will “run Venezuela,” he has stopped short of previous U.S. administrations of the first half of the 20th century in that he has not sought to invade and occupy Venezuela. Instead, the kidnapping of President Maduro seems intended to frighten the existing Venezuelan regime into submitting to Trump’s will, especially when it comes to U.S. control of Venezuela’s oil; not just for profit, but for leverage against Russia and China. By cutting off much of Cuba’s oil imports, it might also enable the U.S. to starve Cuba into surrender, allowing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s relatives to return “home” and regain the property that they lost in the Cuban Revolution.
The problem about trying to run client regimes in this way is: What do you do if they threaten to collapse? This is the dilemma that the U.S. faced in Vietnam, in Iran in 1979, and in Afghanistan by 2020, and the Soviet Union faced in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and Russia faced in Ukraine in 2014. Double down or quit? That is to say, allow your clients to collapse, with the resulting damage to your interests and your “credibility,” or send in your own troops to try to ensure their survival?
In the great majority of cases where the U.S. has chosen the latter course, the results have been disastrous.
In one critical instance, the official statements of the Trump administration go much further than the Roosevelt Corollary, which begins with “It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger…as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere” (though this would have come as a surprise to the Spanish and Panamanians). Trump and senior Trump officials by contrast have repeatedly emphasised their desire to annex Greenland and (less seriously) Canada. And Canada and Denmark are neither enemies nor dysfunctional dictatorships, but successful democracies and the closest of U.S. allies.
Trump and his team should take note of the Danish prime minister’s warning that a seizure of Greenland would “end NATO.” They should also look at how the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 destroyed any chance of continued Russian influence over Ukraine; and how China’s demand for the whole of the South China Sea frightened all of its neighbors, including ones previously well-disposed towards China.
China drove its neighbors into Washington’s arms. Trump risks driving America’s neighbors into the arms of China. The Trump administration also needs to remember that U.S. economic influence in Latin America is vastly reduced. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. was by far the greatest trading partner and investor in South America. Now it is China, which has also greatly increased its role in Central America. This gives countries significant opportunities to resist U.S. economic pressure; and if the U.S. tries to destroy their increasingly vital economic ties with China, it will create a backlash that will undermine or even destroy its sphere of influence.
Finally, there is an issue of diplomatic tone. It has often been said, and rightly, that Russia weakened its influence over its neighbors by the bullying tone in which its officials often stated Russian demands. Even Russian officials at their worst however would be hard put to match the coarse, smirking arrogance of Stephen Miller on the subject of the U.S. demand for Greenland. Miller clearly sees himself as an old-style imperialist. He should read a real old imperialist, Rudyard Kipling:
“If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!”
(Kipling, Recessional)
