Friday, 14 March 2025 — Glenn Diesen’s Substack”
The New Muscular Monroe Doctrine
Why is the US bullying Panama, Canada and Mexico so outrageously? It’s an attempt by the new administration to reinstate its dominance over the American Hemisphere; ousting Chinese influence under a reinforced Monroe Doctrine (the statement of US dominance in the hemisphere in the 1800s). As it retreats from Europe and cuts other parts of its global dominance complex, while refocusing its efforts on China, it must make sure that its backyard is secure.
As I have reported elsewhere, two and a half decades of debt-funded war making, oligarch bailouts, and tax cuts for the rich have placed the US government into a fiscal straight-jacket. At the same time, the oligarch extractive neoliberalism has socio-economically weakened the homeland by immiserating much of the US population and destroying much of the productive capacity of the nation. The answer is a retrenchment internationally, with Europe given a much bigger responsibility for managing its hemisphere to allow the concentration of US forces against China. At home, a move away from the inverted totalitarianism that has produced a political somnolence among the general population to a more overt fascistic orientation utilizing Christian Nationalism and Zionism to motivate the population to a greater readiness for war.
The most important nations are the neighbours of the US, Canada and Mexico. That is why Trump has focused his tariff threats and aggressive statements towards them early on; the Boss wanting to cow his vassals even more while forcing a chunk of their productive forces to move to the US. As noted by this article:
Second, and more importantly, Trump is trying to impose a Monroe Doctrine redux, where he can bully Mexico and, by extension, the rest of Latin America, into compliance with his new era of gunboat diplomacy without fear of retaliation.
These are dangerous times for Mexico and Latin America. The signs of a strategic and military buildup are clear: the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America”, the labelling of eight Mexican cartels as terrorist organisations, the stepping up of CIA secret drone missions deep inside Mexican territory, the deployment of a Stryker Brigade combat team to the border, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that “all options are on the table”.
The deployment of troops and the escalating rhetoric are creating the conditions for a US military incursion into Mexico. If one does take place, it would fit neatly into the long history of US aggression against its southern neighbour and Latin America as a whole, which began 200 years ago with the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
In 1823, then-President James Monroe put forward a policy, which under the guise of opposing European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere, sought to solidify US supremacy over the region.
With respect to Canada, China sees what is happening and has decided to intensify the economic pressure upon a nation that placed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and kidnapped the CFO of Huawei on the orders of Trump’s previous administration. Why help Canada when its’ ruling class has been such an obedient tool of the US Empire? Better to weaken it even more unless it embraces relations with China.
Next in importance is Central America, with the Hong Kong owners of the Panamanian ports already being forced to sell out to the US oligarchy (Blackrock). We can expect a more aggressive approach toward Cuba and Nicaragua. Also high on the list is a Venezuela that has suffered under US aggression for more than two decades. At last subjugating that nation will send a very chilling message to the rest of Latin America. Already, Trump is turning the screw by cancelling the permission of Chevron to produce oil in Venezuela while considering ordering more US companies to cease their operations there.
Milei of Argentina is of course more than happy to become a fully compliant and kowtowing US vassal, but even then his nation was not exempted from the US tariffs on imported steel; the need for the US to steal the productive forces of its vassals cannot be offset by any level of subservience. We can expect aggressive moves against such things as the Chinese port that just opened in Peru. The problem is that it makes economic sense for Latin America to trade more with the nation that has the greatest productive forces and appetite for the continent’s natural resource exports; greater than the de-industrialized US. Especially when China funds the building of infrastructure compared to the US bullying and attempts to steal what remains of Latin America’s productive assets; with US investors only wanting easy outsized profits.
The independent and more socialist Bolivia will experience even greater attempts at regime change. But the pressure from the US will be somewhat independent of the political stripes of the national ruling coalitions, as it is aimed at subjugation, obedience and openness to US extractive profiteering and theft of productive assets. Brazil, with easily the largest population and economy in Latin America, will come under extensive pressure to reduce its deepening economic cooperation with China. The reality is, all that the US has to offer is blackmail through its ability to use its currency as a weapon (which risks destroying the US$ reserve currency status), tariffs and internal political interference and military threats. The best way to tell if a nation is truly resisting US pressure will be if we see such things as US NGOs and media organizations being restricted, US embassies forcibly downsized, and entry restrictions on US operatives.
The oligarchs of Latin America are now faced with a very hard choice: accept increased US domination and economic stagnation or fight their previous Boss and ask for help from a new, perhaps nicer, Boss. They will of course try mightily to find a middle way but that will be increasingly closed by a US that becomes more and more desperate to protect its “backyard” as its inability to hold back the rise of China becomes too brutally obvious to remain blind to.
If “personnel is policy” then Trump has made his policies towards Latin America very evident by making “Little Narco” Rubio, a product of the reactionary Latino oligarch retreat Miami, the Secretary of State. This is him 7 years ago calling for a greater US focus on the “Western” Hemisphere.
Here he is a month ago bullying Central American nations to bow to US power and reduce their dalliances with China.
At his Senate hearing he pushed the “China bad” message hard, after quickly forgetting his previous full on support for the Ukraine War.
And just like the fake warrior Hegseth, he pushes his Christian (Catholic) bona fides very publicly. All the better to push the fear mongering of “godless communists”. Laughably, he pushes the Uighur Moslem genocide lies while forgetting the murder of millions of Moslems by the US and the ongoing Zionist genocide of the majority-Moslem Palestinians. Rubio started lying at an early stage of his political career, claiming his family fled Castro when they actually fled the dictator Batista and claiming that he saw nothing while living at his brother’s house that was a centre of Miami cocaine dealing. Here he is wearing the Ash Wednesday “Ash of Crosses”, looking more like a Bond villain than one who truly follows the teachings of Christ, while doing nothing about the mass murders of Christian Alawites in Syria by the HTS government that the West supports.
He is the perfect individual to drive the super-charged US policy of aggression against any nation in the Americas that dares not to say “uncle”.
The New Dark Age 
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