A while back I wrote about Trump’s nostalgia for the “gilded” era (defined by tariffs and wars) and his return to a “neo” version of Gunboat Diplomacy with his threats to annex Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. The term “gilded age ” was bestowed before but came to focus on William McKinley’s time in office by none other than Mark Twain, who noted that by “gilded” he meant all glittery on the surface and thoroughly corrupt underneath. How prescient he was, because what was true then certainly is true now.
Here I propose to extend the US imperialist theme that was part of that era by moving onto a famous phrase from McKinley’s successor, Teddy Roosevelt. McKinley was assassinated while in office and Roosevelt, as Vice President, at age 42 assumed the presidency. More than his extensive political career, including serving as governor of New York, he was famous for his leadership of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War and had served as an assistant secretary of the Navy before joining McKinley on the 1900 Republican presidential ticket. In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediator role in ending the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War., so perhaps that is another legacy of that era that Trump (he of “I have ended eightor nine wars” fame) would like to emulate. Roosevelt was also the president who authorized the building of the Panama Canal, so the historical tie-backs do not end with Trump’s preposterous fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize or on (re) claiming pieces of other country’s territory..
Roosevelt coined the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick.” This aphorism guided his approach to relations with the Western Hemisphere, where it came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary stated that beyond declaring the Western Hemisphere off-limits to non-hemispheric foreign military powers such as Spain, France, Germany and Russia (the Monroe Doctrine) , Roosevelt added the notion that the US would be the hemispheric policeman enforcing that doctrine as well as imposing peace on “uncivilized” and restive post-colonial Latin American societies.
The “Speak Softly/Big Stick” approach had five component parts: First, it was essential to possess a serious military capability that would force adversaries to tread carefully when it came to challenging US power, especially in Latin America. At the time that meant a world-class navy (not only was Roosevelt a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy but he had written a book on the 1812 naval war between the US and England as well as several articles on naval power projection that were deeply influenced by the pioneering naval geopolitical analyst Alfred Thayer Mahan). The other qualities of the Speak Softly/Big Stick posture were to act justly toward other nations, never to bluff, to strike only when prepared to strike hard, and to be willing to allow the adversary to save face when being deterred, or when demurring, or if push comes to shove, in defeat.
It should be clear that Trump is incapable of speaking softly in any setting and that he bluffs, lies and dissembles as a matter of vulgar and bullying course. It is also clear that Trump is following Steve Bannon’s advice to “flood the zone” with an endless barrage of inane and serious initiatives, to the point that it is hard to disaggregate and differentiate between them in order to discern the details of the content because every day brings another scandal, Executive Order, or presidential musings on any number of things.
But in the approach towards what his former national security advisor (and now indicted defendant in a Trump political relation scheme) John Bolton called the “Triangle of Tyranny” (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), now expanded to include Colombia, Trump is clearly brandishing the big stick of US intervention, including of military attack, against them. At the same time, he is bestowing selective favors (let’s call them “carrots”) on rightwing governments like those of Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador while overtly and covertly providing assistance to rightwing opposition leaders in states led by leftists, such as the case with the (reportedly) CIA-backed, recently announced Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela. This regional foreign policy approach is worth breaking down in further detail.
Since the early 1960s US foreign policy in Latin America has been dominated by Cuba, Cuban exiles and anti-communism. The exiles are an important domestic lobby with deep reach into the Republican Party but they also line the pockets of Democrats in key districts and recently have now been joined by anti-Chavez/Maduro (anti-Bolivarian) Venezuelan exiles, anti-Sandinista exiles from Nicaragua and rightwing nationalists from other Latin American countries, Chileans most recently. Concentrated in places like South Florida, New Jersey and the Washington DC area, these groups of voluntary and involuntary expatriates wield disproportionate influence over US foreign policy in the region. And a fair few of them, Cuban and not, are violently inclined.
The Trump administration is not just brandishing the Big Stick in Latin America. It is welding it to bash its perceived enemies and hapless people caught up in its machinations. It began by broadening the definition of terrorism to include narco-traffickers, who it argues sow fear in the US by supplying drugs and via associated criminal activities. It has particularly focused on Mexican cartels like those in the Northern states of Sonora and Sinaloa, Venezuelan gangs like Tren de Agua and Salvadorean gangs like MS-13 that, ironically, grew and became powerful syndicates inside the US rather than their countries of origin. The expansion of the term terrorist to include drug gangs allows the US latitude when engaging them with force, because irregular warfare groups like ideological non-State actors (say, ISIS) that use terrorist tactics are not covered by the Laws of War and Geneva Convention. Labelling criminal drug traffickers “narco-terrorists” therefore clears the way for the US to engage in extra-judicial execution of those suspected on being so. But in order to do so, the US must ignore the fact that under US, international and regional national laws, drug running is not a capitol offence even if due process is followed. So, as Trump himself has openly said, they “are just killing them.”
Perhaps in recognition of this and not wanting to be charged as a war criminal, the 4 star admiral who leads the US military command responsible for Latin America, the Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, is taking early retirement, perhaps forfeiting his fourth star retirement pay because he did not serve out a full year in that rank after promotion. He may also had in mind Secretary Hegseth’s advice to the assembled general and admirals this month that if they had any “cringe” about his order, then they should do the honorable thing and resign.
The US pirate approach to the use of force at sea has led to the murder of over 50 individuals (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan and Trinidadian citizens) by US forces without charge, arrest, trial, sentencing or any evidence of drug-smuggling (e.g. no floating bales of drugs after the strikes even while other debris was observed on the surface). In fact, imagery of the targeted vessels indicate that they were wooden outboard motor boats that could not reach the US mainland from Venezuela (which the US claims without evidence was the originating point) without multiple refuelling stops at sea or on land, (where they could be detained with relative ease by any number of regional law enforcement agencies). The same is true for the boats presumably coming our of Colombia that have been targeted in the Eastern Pacific. By its actions the US choses to be judge, jury and executioner without warrant, which effectively make its behaviour acts of piracy. The fact that none of the countries whose nationals were killed in these extrajudicial strikes are at war with the US only highlights the outlaw impunity with which Trump’s Big Stick is wielded.
Eight of the twelve kinetic operations against” narco-terrorists” happened in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela in international waters. Four strikes have killed people in wooden boats in the Eastern Pacific off the coast of Colombia (the Colombians claim one of the strikes was in Colombian territorial waters) and Central America. Trump is threatening to expand US military operations onto land in Venezuela and Mexico, where left-centre president Claudia Scheinbaum has clashed with Trump over his immigration and border control policies. Now Trump has cast his malevolent eye on Colombia, apparently because president Gustavo Petro, the first left centre president to survive and win a presidential election campaign in decades, had the temerity to criticise Trump’s immigration policies and join anti-ICE protests in New York City during the UN General Assembly meetings at which he spoke. That angered Trump, who revoked Petro’s visa and began to launch baseless accusations that Petro was somehow in cahoots with the narco-traffickers. The message was then backed with the kinetic strikes off Colombian shores.
Ironically, Colombia has traditionally been the US’s strongest ally in Latin America, especially as part of the so-called “War on Drugs,” and it definitely has the most experienced armed forces in the region thanks to its decades-old wars with various leftist guerrilla groups like the FARC and ERP. US special forces embedded with their Colombian counterparts for many years and the Colombians use US weapons platforms, equipment and training doctrine. They are no push-over military with generals sporting good conduct medals. They are also very proudly nationalistic, so they will not be walk-overs in the event the US decides to up the ante with them. It is therefore doubtful that the US will significantly step up physical attacks on Colombian territory and nationals, limiting itself to personal, diplomatic and economic sanctions, and, of course, noisy bluster from the loudmouth-in-chief.
The image of the fat armchair general that Secretary of Defence/War Pete Hegseth railed about in his talk to the US military brass a few weeks ago is more suited to Venezuela, which has slid from the lofty “pink tide” aspirations of the Bolivarian Revolutionary colonel and president Hugo Chavez in 1999 to a venal, bloated, corrupt one party “elected” kleptocracy under his former Vice President and one-time bus driver, now fraudulently re-elected president, Nicolas Maduro. Recognising the deep weakness under the veneer of Bolivarian solidarity, the US has threatened to invade Venezuela and Trump has openly claimed that he has authorized CIA covert operations in that country. The not-so-subtly declared objective is clear: regime change and replacement with a US-friendly leadership.
That would not be surprising given that several US -backed plots have been uncovered against both Chavez and Maduro, but in this instance Trump appears to be playing a crude psychological pressure game designed to foster paranoia and factionalism with the Venezuelan political and military leadership. And if the reports of Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado’s links to the CIA prove true, then those leaders have good reason to be concerned. After all, rightwing Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan exiles are openly plotting and scheming along with rightwing US groups to overthrow their respective home governments as soon as possible, and organising to that end in enclaves like Weston, Florida, northwest of Miami. The CIA is on friendly terms with these groups. Could this be the makings of Bay of Pigs 2.0 even if the exiles think of scenarios like the invasions of Grenada or Panama? We shall see.
Interestingly, although the US is putting direct heat on Colombia and Venezuela at the moment, it has taken as more subdued approach to Cuba and Nicaragua. On a scale of openness, Colombia is clearly first–it is democratic after all–but Cuba is in a slow process of liberalisation itself, while Nicaragua has regressed into a quasi-Stalinist kleptocracy much like Maduro’s Venezuela. So why the difference when it comes to waving and welding the Big Stick? In fact, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela all have close ties with Iran, the PRC, Russia, North Korea and assorted non-state actors like (what is left of) Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet Colombia is lumped in with Venezuela as a narco-terrorist State according to the Trumpian world map. The answer may lie in domestic politics–Trump has made numerous false claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over US cities, including Tren de Agua, while the US cocaine trade is largely controlled by Colombians–and personal hubris: Trump hates Petro because the latter showed up at a demonstration against Trump and Stephen Miller’s version of the Gestapo, while Maduro is an easy to ridicule tinpot clown posing as a revolutionary strongman.
Cuba and Nicaragua, on the other hand, are getting the kid glove treatment in comparison. This may be an admission that the White House does not see them as easy push-overs, worth confronting, or as places against which the MAGA base will rally. Perhaps they simply are seen to be undesirable scapegoats given their low drug-running profiles, even if the truth is that both autocracies have hand-in-glove connections to the narcotics trade.
The dissimilar approaches are made odder by the ongoing presence of a Russian naval base in Cuba (Cienfuegos) and Nicaragua’s expansion of ties with obvious US adversaries. One would think that the Trump Big Stick would be applied equally to all of the leftist “Fearful Foursome” countries, but perhaps this is just a reflection of Trump’s personalist policy making and attention span rather than ideological enmity or geopolitical calculation. Alternatively, perhaps the US thinks that regime change in Venezuela will stop the flow of oil and other resources from it to its regional allies, thereby indirectly squeezing them as well.
What is most ominous in the evolving scenario is that Trump appears determined to forcibly impose regime change on Venezuela. He obviously does not understand the lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent years and instead is hell-bent on showing his toughness by picking on a country that cannot put up a legitimate fight against US forces. His pretext is the claim of drug-running out of Venezuelan bases, although there has been no concrete proof yet provided to that effect. To buttress his bully move (which is an odd stance for a guy who campaigned on withdrawing the US from foreign conflicts), Trump has ordered the deployment of a carrier task force (a carrier with 5000 sailors, +/-100 aircraft, including 70 warplanes, 5 destroyers, a submarine and tenders) to the Southern Command area of operations (AOR) where an additional 8 warships are already stationed along with a US Marine Expeditionary Force. SOUTHCOM also uses Army, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard assets on specific occasions as deemed warranted, and is already conducting strategic and tactical bomber runs near Venezuelan airspace by B-52s and B-1s stationed on the US mainland.
One can get a sense of what US forces have deployed to the Caribbean to date here.
US Navy ships in Southern Caribbean. Source: Trinidad Express.
What all of this means is that the game is on. Moving this amount of assets to the Caribbean Basin, especially given the presence of land forces in the deployment, is no bluff. Trump seems to think that he can make an example out of Venezuela, contrary to historical precedent when it comes to the forced regime change going as planned or producing the desired results. One things is certain. It will be Venezuelans who suffer the most from any eventual escalation, and their scotch-swilling wealthy exile “leaders” will do nothing to shield them from a US assault.
In contrast to all of this Big Stick manoeuvring, Trump has offered Argentine president Javier Milei a USD$40 billion bridge loan as a form of bailout for Milei to make interest payments on outstanding public loans. No international lender like the IMF or World Bank would do so because of concerns about Milei’s reckless fiscal and macroeconomic policies (at one point he wanted to dollarize the Argentine peso and shipped off Argentina’s gold reserves to England on a private plane). Private investors took advantage of Milei’s public sector asset sale program to strip them of what value they held, repatriated the profits from the re-sale of those assets, then left the economy. What private investors remain are engaged in dodgy crypto schemes and destructive enterprises like critical mineral mining (lithium, in particular) where regulation is lax and where profits are largely sent abroad.
Milei himself is embroiled in an investigation into a memecoin “pump and dump”/”rug pull” scheme concocted along with Trump-allied US crypto billionaires, where he touted on social media a specific coin called $Libra that rapidly rose, then fell in value, making the 9 founding $Libra accounts around USD$82 million and leaving 72 thousand other investors with USD$251 million in losses in just over 3 hours. Milei later distanced himself from the scheme but it was discovered that he was one of the 9 founding accounts, which as per usual were managed by his sister and chief personal advisor, otherwise known as “Ms. 3 percent” for the price of the “commissions” she demands of entities doing business with the Argentine State (the most recent involving a pharmaceutical company). Milei’s sister, Karina, is also being investigated for links to–surprise!–narcotraffickers and assorted other dark forces in the Argentine landscape.
The Trump bridge loan bailout for Argentina was in fact a political rescue line thrown to Milei. His party (Libertad Avanza or Freedom Advances) did very poorly in provincial and first round congressional elections in September and at the time of the bailout it was assumed to be posted to suffer a similar fate, or at least not improve its minority Congressional representation in the national midterm elections this past weekend. That would jeopardize his reform agenda for the remainder of his presidential term, making him a lame duck and paving the way for a return of either a Peronist party faction leader or a newer centrist coalition-backed candidate. Either of these option would spell the end of the “chainsaw” approach to public sector restructuring as well as Milei’s pro-US (and pro-Israel and anti-climate change) position, something that Trump seeks to avoid.
As it turns out, Libertadad Avanza won 41.7 % of the congressional electorate vote, defeating the opposition coalition, which won 40.4% of the total number of party votes. This improves the government’s bloc position in Congress and strengthens Milei’s hand in imposing more reforms, but it also sets the stage for ongoing deadlocks and resort to rule-by-Executive decree on the part of the Argentine president. But for the moment, chalk this up as a win for Trump’s bailout carrot/election interference gambit because even if short term in nature, it may have influenced things in a US-favorable way when it comes to Argentine foreign policy. Since Trump threatened to rescind the bailout of Milei’s party did not win, it is quite possible that tis weighed significantly on the minds of voters (who still turned out in record low numbers–67.8%– in spite of voting being mandatory).
What is also interesting is not that the bailout was given for political rather than sound economic reasons. That happens. What is of note is that the bailout comes at a time when US tariffs on Chinese goods resulted in retaliatory tariffs on US agricultural products, especially soybean exports. Most of these are grown in Red Trump-voting states. When the retaliatory tariffs kicked in Argentina dropped its export taxes on soybeans, and along with Brazil rapidly took advantage to increase soybean exports to the PRC. In just a few months Argentine and Brazilian soybean exports have taken over the previous US share of the PRC soybean import market. So in effect Trump has bailed out a foreign government for ideological reasons even though it directly hurts a core voting block in the MAGA coalition. That makes neither economic or political sense.
In response to criticism of this deal, Trump puzzlingly announced that he would reduce tariffs on Argentine beef imports so that it could increase its US market share. At a minimum that means reducing US beef prices in the face of Argentine import competition., which is now the stated intention of the plan (beef price reductions across the board). Once again, US beef is mostly produced in Red states, so here too the economic and political logic at play appears to be contrary to the interests of key MAGA voters. It seems that for Trump ideological buttressing of an ally abroad is more important than the material fortunes of US farmers, and he does not fear electoral retribution as a result. That is another oddity, unless he has a plan for avoiding electoral backlash in the first place, which may be what the overall beef price reduction plan is all about..
In El Salvador, Trump has courted Nayib Bukele, the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” who offered to house US deportees at his infamous CECOT prison in exchange for money, diplomatic favours and the betrayal of several FBI informants tied to the Salvadorean gang MS-13. Regarding the latter, Secretary of State promised the FBI that he would not divulge the informant’s names to Bukele but then did so, whereupon Bukele demanded they be returned to El Salvador rather than stay in US detention. Secretary Rubio obliged and it is now presumed that the informants are dead. Here the Big Stick was wielded on behalf of a foreign government in conjunction with domestic objectives rather than used against it for strategic gain.
Further afield, MAGA operatives have close links to former Brazilian president (and coup plotter) Jair Bolsonaro’s party and his revanchist sons while the Trump administration has imposed a 50 percent across-the-board tariff on Brazilian goods as well as travel sanctions against the judges that convicted Bolsonaro and sentenced him to six years in prison for sedition earlier this year. The Trump connection to Latin American opposition groups includes rightwing Chilean figures, adherents of the old Pinochet dictatorship and new tech moguls, as it is reported to be quietly influencing the policies of Paraguay (led by a conservative) and rightwing opposition factions in Peru. In effect, in these instances the Big Stick used by one foreign policy hand is complemented by a more subtle and covert velvet glove approach on the other.
In the end, Trump’s return to a US gilded age is very much true in the original Twain sense of the phrase, and its adoption of a crude form of Gunboat Diplomacy characterised by a Big Stick/Carrot approach is playing out in contradictory but obvious ways in what Trump considers, to Latin American revulsion, to be the US’s backyard where the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine gives it the right to act with wanton disregard for International law and imperialist impunity with regard to the rights of individuals and States. Much like demolishing of the White House East Wing serves as an allegory for the destruction of the US constitutional system and social fabric, the return to the Big Stick and selective carrots is symbolic of an increasingly feckless approach to US foreign policy, regionally defined.
As the saying from former Mexican president Porfirio Diaz goes (amended here to include the entire region): “Poor Latin America. So so far from God and so close to the United States.”
Que Pachamama los proteja!
Declaration: I was the Regional Policy Analyst for the Interamerican Region and Caribbean Desk Officer in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense (OSD/ISA/IA), co-Team Leader of the Cuba Task Force and a consultant to the CIA, US Southern Command, US Air Force Special Operations and US Navy Special Operations Commands in the 1990s. In those roles I was engaged in exactly the sort of exercises that go into this type of war-planning/preparation and am well aware of the long history of US anti-drug campaigns in the region as well as the US military involvement in them (including the infamous Pablo Escobar/Cali Cartel years). My commentary is informed by those experiences and by the certain knowledge that the norms and restraints that governed the actions of my colleagues and I no long apply when it comes to the application of US military force.