It has been a year since Donald Trump renamed the “Gulf of Mexico” the “Gulf of America”. Largely decried as a joke at the time, this proclamation signalled a shift in US actions towards Venezuela and broader Latin America, which sensationally culminated in the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026.
Donald Trump’s renaming of an internationally recognised body of water, which surrounds northeastern Mexico and the southern United States, was used to justify large naval build-up in the Gulf and neighbouring Caribbean Sea during 2025. A core part of that operation related to the designation of eight Latin American Cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organisations” in February 2025. The Venezuelan Cartel “Tren de Aragua” was the Trump administration’s primary target. Since 2 September 2025, the US has conducted 38 strikes that have killed at least 124 people to prevent the movement of narcotics headed towards the US market. Most have been in the Caribbean, though some have been on Mexico’s Pacific coast. While most observers argue that US actions have been against international law, by designating narco-traffickers as terrorists there is some precedent for extra-judicial attacks, and killings, though it must be recognised that most traffickers killed were low-ranking and often young members of the organisations.
These attacks, and the seizure of the first, of many, Venezuelan oil tankers on 11 December 2025, were reminiscent of the old “Gunboat Diplomacy” of Theodore Roosevelt. To contextualise US actions days earlier, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth offered a rationale as:
“This is the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, recently codified so clearly in the National Security Strategy. After years of neglect, the United States will restore US military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region.”
In 1823, President James Monroe delivered his generational warning to European Empires that the hemisphere was off-limits to colonisation. Hegseth’s interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is flawed. Yes, the US has often used its privileged position to assert its political and economic advantage in the region, most directly in the era of “Gunboat Diplomacy” at the beginning of the twentieth century. But at its core the Monroe Doctrine requires regional support. That is, the US is protecting Latin America from a foreign enemy, and the region consents to that protection. Hegseth’s interpretation rejects diplomacy in favour of gunboats meaning that many governments feel the need to protect themselves from the US, through either acquiescence or foreign partnerships.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that Latin American leaders, and people, will protect themselves from abject US domination by seeking external protection. At the end of the “Gunboat” era in the 1920s, many Latin American nations turned to the League of Nations, to Britain and even to Nazi Germany to counter US imperialism before Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbour policy restored the US position approaching the Second World War.
During the Cold War, the Cuban Revolutionaries turned to the Soviet Union for defence following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. John Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was crucial in reversing the anti-US sentiment in that era, leading to Cuba’s exclusion from the Organisation of American States.
The strength of Monroe’s now 200-year-old doctrine was forming friendly relations to lead the Americas politically and economically.
In the modern era, it is China who are increasing their influence in Latin America. They are the main external trading partner of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. Chinese trade and investment have gradually risen since the mid 2010s and today the US, once dominant in the region, now only accounts for 44% of trade with Latin America.
While one could justify the capture of Maduro on moral and legal grounds, the opposition to US actions in the lead up to, and aftermath of, January 3 demonstrates the flaws in Hegseth’s interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Yes, the US can take the oil tankers. Maybe they can even take the oil fields. But at what cost? Rising anti-Americanism and a preference to deal with China in broader Latin America.
Yet again, we are seeing a gulf in the Americas. Statements from Latin American leaders, including those formerly hostile to Maduro’s Venezuela, are mounting up. For example, after a October 2025 attack on “drug boats” Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated, “The United States has invaded our national territory, fired a missile to kill a humble fisherman, and destroyed his family, his children. This is Bolivar’s homeland, and they are murdering his children with bombs”. Trump responded with his usual hostility and barrage of insults towards Colombia and its leaders. He has been similarly short with the leaders of Brazil and Mexico.
Moreover, this is not what Monroe had in mind in 1823. Yes, the US is a large nation capable of exerting massive influence on its neighbours. However, the strength of Monroe’s now 200-year-old doctrine was forming friendly relations to lead the Americas politically and economically. In absence of those friendly relations, the US will lose leadership in the Americas as is evidenced by increasing trade, investment and influence coming from China.