And if you blinked, you probably missed it.
With Washington stirring up violence and mayhem all over the planet — including, most importantly, in West Asia, where the fallout from the US-Israeli war against Iran is inflicting crippling damage on the global economy — it is easy to lose track of what is happening in the US’ direct neighbourhood.
For instance, when was the last time you saw news coverage of US Southern Command’s Joint Task Force-Southern Spear, which has seen the US armed forces conduct a total of 63 strikes on boats allegedly (since no proof has been presented) transporting drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific?
A long time ago, I imagine.
For two main reasons. First, as the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy Research notes, “there has not been a US military strike on an alleged drug boat since mid-June — the longest such break since the campaign began in September”. The second reason is a general lack of interest among the legacy media.
As the Washington Office on Latin America notes in its report, “Killing Spree: Extrajudicial Killings in the US Boat Strikes Campaign“, the boat strikes, which have claimed the lives of 221 people during an 11-month period, all “torn apart by bombs and missiles fired by the US armed forces,… barely register in U.S. and regional news”:
Each attack is so similar to those that came before it that there is little “news handle” to grab onto. The boat strikes are blending into the background, buried under layers of newer crises distracting public opinion. After initial shock and outrage, the consequences of these illegal, lethal operations are becoming normalized…
[T]he U.S. government’s boat strikes are not normal and must never become so. They are murder under domestic law and extrajudicial killings under international human rights law. They are the result of the executive branch’s reckless use of the “terrorist” label to enable employing the U.S. military to target civilians. Their deaths come with no presentation of any evidence of wrongdoing, much less any due process for those being attacked. They must stop now, and those who have ordered and carried them out must be held accountable in all available venues.
Unfortunately, not only does the US government show no sign of halting its extrajudicial killings on the high seas, though they have been paused temporarily, it is actually expanding its so-called “war” on so-called “narco-terrorist organisations” to Latin America’s entire land mass.
At midnight on Monday, US Southern Command retired Joint Task Force-Southern Spear and put in its place Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere (JTF-WHEM), with the stated goal of “build[ing] on a legacy of excellence to secure the region and defeat all threats.” SOUTHCOM commander Francis Donovan stated:
“We will apply total systemic friction on these networks that threaten our homeland and our partners here in our shared region. And along with Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, our 18 other nations that all support the same effort, we will take the fight to the enemy. So today, we initiate the stand up of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, the action arm of U.S. Southern Command.”
In other words, the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (aka the Donroe Doctrine) just went fully live. And if you blinked, you would have probably missed it.
As far as I can tell, the New York Times has not even deigned to cover this latest development, which Spain’s Defensa.com describes as “one of the most significant operational reorganisations [of the US military] in recent decades”. Nor for that matter have the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC or The Guardian.
“Naked Machiavellianism”
Established in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, published in November, the Donroe Doctrine seeks to secure hemispheric dominance of Latin America and the Caribbean for US interests by asserting a hardline US sphere of influence across the region. It also explicitly aims to shut out strategic competitors — primarily China, but also Russia and Iran — from controlling vital infrastructure, resources, or military positioning in the region.
We have already seen this in action in Marco Rubio-controlled Venezuela. “Brazen thuggery” and “naked Machiavellianism” were the four words Prof. Jeffrey D Sachs used to describe the US’ new (but not that different from the old) security doctrine:
The United States, the NSS declares, will ensure that Latin America “remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and alliances and aid will be conditioned on “winding down adversarial outside influence.” That “influence” clearly refers to Chinese investment, infrastructure, and lending.
The NSS is explicit: US agreements with countries “that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage” must result in sole-source contracts for American firms. US policy should “make every effort to push out foreign companies” that build infrastructure in the region, and the US should reshape multilateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, so that they “serve American interests.”
Latin American governments, many of whom trade extensively with both the United States and China, are effectively being told: you must deal with us, not China—or face the consequences.
Such a strategy is strategically naive. China is the main trading partner for most of the world, including many countries in the Western hemisphere. The US will be unable to compel Latin American nations to expel Chinese firms, but will gravely damage US diplomacy in the attempt.
The Pentagon already began the process of expanding its war against narco-terrorist organisations from sea to land when it launched joint counter-narcotics operations with Ecuador in March. As we have been warning since September 2023, the US’ intensifying war against the drug cartels — recently designated as “narco-terrorist” organisations — is really nothing more than a pretext to justify deploying US military forces anywhere in Latin America. Which is what we are now seeing.
Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa government has also opened the door to a plethora of US government agencies, including the DEA, the DHS and the FBI. We are likely to see similar developments in other countries in the region closely aligned to the US, such as Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. As with Ecuador, it won’t even matter if the people of those countries are broadly opposed to the presence of the US military and three-letter agencies on their soil.
In the case of Ecuador, an overwhelming majority of voters voted in a 2009 referendum to close down the US military base at Manta. Besides evicting US military personnel from Ecuador, the then-Rafael Correa government inserted an article (#5) into the country’s 2008 constitution stipulating that Ecuador is a country of peace, and expressly prohibiting the establishment of foreign military bases or foreign facilities for military purposes.
The Noboa government tried to overturn this article through a constitutional amendment, but in a November 2025 referendum an overwhelming majority voted against the reinstalment of foreign military bases on Ecuadorian soil. That didn’t stop Noboa, whose family business has been repeatedly implicated in cocaine trafficking, from opening the doors to joint military strikes with US Southern Command.
Now, the US is seeking to impose joint military strikes across the entire region, starting with Mexico’s Central American neighbours, Honduras and Guatemala, notes New York Times investigative correspondent Maria Abi-Habib in a tweet:
This is the announcement we expected: the Pentagon is standing up a task force that will see Latin American countries accept joint US strikes inside their borders. It moves the boat strikes from intl waters to sovereign inland territories across the region.
In May we wrote about how the US was pressuring Guatemala & Honduras to accept joint strikes. It’s part of a campaign to normalize US troops across Latin America. SOUTHCOM chief Donovan traveled to Guatemala & Honduras right after our story published
Why would the Pentagon first target Honduras and Guatemala? So Mexico feels the pressure to finally accept greater US military action inside its borders. It’s a tactic of “everyone else is doing it why won’t you?” Who knows if it’ll work but DC Mexico is DoD’s biggest “prize.”
The Other Main Prize
The other main prize is, of course, Brazil. Tensions between the two countries have escalated, through tariffs, accusations of interference and increasingly fiery speeches. As we reported a few weeks ago, Wahington is also targeting Brazil’s digital payments system, Pix. In the process, the Trump administration — or more specifically, Marco Rubio — is inflicting serious harm on diplomatic relations between the American continent’s two largest economies.
In the latest round of tit-for-tat sparring, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lambasted the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, calling the move “irresponsible and thoughtless.”
The US Department of State announced the visa revocation on Tuesday in retaliation for Brazil’s refusal last month to issue visas to two US State Department officials who wanted to “observe” Brazil’s upcoming elections. Washington is also apparently smarting from Brasilia’s alleged delays in approving Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Perez.
O Globo correspondent Guga Chakra describes the escalating tensions between the two American giants as a war for the future of Brazil between Rubio and Lula (machine translation):
The actions against Brazil and the suspension of the visa of the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Maria Luiza Viotti, confirm that the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is willing to use all weapons at his disposal to help candidate Flávio Bolsonaro defeat incumbent President Lula in the presidential elections in October.
I write “Rubio” because the entire strategy for Latin America is drawn up by him and not by the U.S. president… [Rubio] knows that the US president almost blindly trusts him to deal with Latin American issues after what is seen by Washington as the successful action to overthrow Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and force the Venezuelan regime to capitulate entirely to the US…
The election of Flávio Bolsonaro would represent the consolidation of Rubio’s ideological and strategic victory [in Latin America]. The re-election of the Brazilian president, on the other hand, would represent a serious set back for the Secretary of State.
The US’ long-term goals in Latin America, as clearly outlined in the Donroe Doctrine, is to retain — and maintain — strategic dominance of the Western hemisphere. The doctrine signals not only Washington’s near-divine right to extract and exploit the resources of the region, but also the denial of non-hemispheric competitors — namely China, Russia and Iran — the possibility of controlling assets or positioning threatening capabilities.
Let’s be clear, here: this strategy predates Trump 2.0, and was first mapped out in public by former SOUTHCOM commander, Laura Richardson, as we reported in our January 23, 2023 article, “Monroe Doctrine Redux: US Military Trying to “Box Out” China and Russia from Strategic Resources in Latin America“.
This is exactly what the US has done in Venezuela: it has boxed out China, Russia and Iran from the country’s strategic resources while staking exclusive claim to said resources…
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Nick Corbishley 