Yves here. Before anyone over-reacts to the headline, recall that Kissinger said, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” For Latin America, a new risk is that the US, frustrated with its setbacks in critically important parts of the world, will redouble efforts to exert influence in what we see as our back yard.
By Uriel Araujo, a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. Originally published at InfoBRICS
n their recent Foreign Policy piece, Carsten-Andreas Schulz (assistant professor in international relations at Cambridge University) and Tom Long, (affiliated professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City) argue that the Monroe Doctrine is making a come back in Washington, including talks about military intervention in neighboring Mexico. According to the two experts, the White House’s “warnings about China’s growing footprint in the Western Hemisphere carry a distinctively Monroeist undertone.” Latin America has, after all, been the stage of great power competition between the US and China, and also between the former and Russia.
In order to understand how a supposed outdate conception such as the Monroe Doctrine could possibly reemerge, implicitly and explicitly, in American discourses one has to keep the following points in mind:
1. In the de-industrialized world, geoeconomics meets geopolitics: insulating industries from geopolitical disputes is now increasingly hard.
2. In this context, we live in an age of economic warfare and the superpower who weaponizes the economy and its currency the most is the United States of America with the dollar leverage.
3. As part of that, the US-led West has been mostly pushing a New Cold War paradigm of “alignmentism”, wishing for nations to “pick up a side.”
4. At the same time, most of the Global South now, to a greater or lesser extent, pursues, non-alignmentand multi-alignment, as shown by Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Egypt – with echos even in Europe, as seen in the (thus far timid) German and French attempts at “strategic autonomy”.
5. Thus, American attempts to pressure partners and allies into some kind of unconditional alignment have the potential to backfire, as seen in Asia, and the Middle East.
6. To make matters worse, more often than not, Washington economic war-gaming hurts its partners and allies, as exemplified by US President Joe Biden’s subsidy war against Europe, with Taiwan being yet another instance, in the context of the chip war. Albeit often counterproductive, such an approach is still employed by the Atlantic hegemon, for reasons that might have to do with the inertial resilience of paradigms, embedded as they are in several institutions and policies, not to mention the hubris that often accompanies superpowers.
The above context provides a framework that enables one to grasp part of the logic behind American campaign pressures in Latin America. With regards to that part of the world, Washington is mostly interested in exploiting its resources, as exemplified by hydropolitics of pressuring Brazil over the Amazonissue, while keeping China, and also Russia, “away” – albeit without necessarily offering Latin American nations anything more attractive. In fact, in Latin America particularly it is arguably becoming increasingly clear that being “pro-American” simply does not pay off.
One has merely to consider initiatives of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, defeated in October 2022 elections. After being consistently “snubbed” by Washington, Bolsonaro ended up seeking cooperation with Moscow for its nuclear submarine project at the end of his term. Or consider the newly elected “pro-American” leaders in the continent (and they are many), ranging from center-left to the far-right, be it Javier Miley of Argentina, Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay, Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana, or Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, among others. In each and every one of these cases, these leaders have brought huge economic, political, military or social problems upon their nations, due the complexities of their domestic realities, but always made worse by American pressures.
Argentina’s Milei is of course an extreme case. On November 29, he met with top US officials in Washington and took his economic team to a meeting with IMF officers. The IMF did not seem to be so happy about the meeting, though. Milei’s economic measures are controversial, to say the least – and could mean a “nightmare” to Argentines, according to Michael Stott, the Financial Times’ Latin America editor. They involve devaluing the Argentinian currency, the peso, by over 50% as part of “emergency” measures”.
During his campaign, Milei promised to “get rid” of the peso by replacing it with the dollar. Such a dollarization move, for all practical purposes, would take away the Argentinean Central Bank’s role in the country’s economy, while handing it to the US Federal Reserve – this amounts to fully giving up any autonomous monetary policy. This plan has not been abandoned. According to a statement signed by several leading economists (including the likes of Jayati Ghosh and Thomas Piketty), the poor exchange rate in this case would place the “burden of adjustment” on “working people”, bringing about a real wages decline and more inflation. “Geopolitically-wise”, he has pledged not to join the BRICS trade group.
The Argentinian president has employed vicious rhetoric against Brazil and China, which are among Argentina’s main trading partners. In response to such signaling, Beijing has reportedly suspended US$6.5 billion in credit swaps to the South American country.
While Washington demands its Latin American partners decouple from China, the truth is that the US itself cannot safely “decouple” from China or, to use the trendy term now, “de-risk”. In addition, Latin American countries such as Brazil need the nitrogen, potassium and phosphates (the three main fertilizers) supplied mostly by Russia and Belarus, and not all countries in the region are willing to sacrifice their own economies as Europe has shown itself to be – for the sake of cold war “alignmentism”. Moreover, in terms of intergovernmental organization and multilateral forums, all the US-led West has to offer to Latin Americans are the likes of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Lima Group. It is no wonder that BRICS has been gaining traction, as states seek alternatives and parallel mechanisms.
As mentioned, even Bolsonaro saw the light, albeit too late, and even a traditional American ally such as Colombia is currently negotiating with Beijing to build “an alternative to the Panama Channel” – not to mention, moving from the Americas to West Asia, Saudi Arabia’s recent pivoting to Asia in the context of the emerging de-dollarized world. Eventually, although it seems very unlikely now, even Milei might see it too. As is the case with so many other American approaches, today’s neo-Monroeism is bound to backfire.
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Empires have to continue expansion, they tend to start falling when they start reaching limits, whether hitting walls of unconquerable/unexploitable regions, and/or they run out of resources, including armies.
Ive read some reports that the lines of young male immigrants showing up at the southern border, may be offered citizenship in return for military service.
Pepe Escobar in a recent interview mentioned he saw the be-suited US corporate and NGO loan-shark sector having a heavy presence in the Caucasus/Central Asian countries at a recent trade conference, with slick presentations around what “we can do for you”. Pepe believes that China’s investment / infrastructure projects are seen to be actually working in places like Uzbekistan, and locals are aware that US proposals rarely get off the ground.
With parts of Africa, like the Sahel, kicking out the last remnants of colonial powers, I guess it was only a matter of time that the “backyard” would come back up the agenda. Hopefully, enough south-american countries have memory of the carnage and wreckage left behind from the long 60s, 70s, 80s incursions to prevent it happening again.
I think BRICS+ have dodged a bullet with dropping Argentina.
Please take greater care with your claims. “Ive read some reports” with no links does not cut it here.
The idea about immigrants and military service in return for citizenship is as far as I can tell a right wing fever swamp rumor. That does not mean it might not eventually happen to a degree give the terrible state of our military recruitment…but they’d need to be pretty fluent in English to be able to serve. Think that’s going to be operative in many cases?
Good point. This had me conjuring visions of exclusive Spanish speaking brigades with a billion dollar contract to Alphabet to make instant translators to be used by said Brigade personnel to communicate with their English Commanders
I’m thinking here that all this is the result of a strategic re-think, hence the Monroe Doctrine being dragged up from the past as a justification. It may be that the US has looked to the future and realized that access to places like Africa, Asia and even Europe may no longer be guaranteed in a changing world. Fortunately with an ocean on each side there is a form of protection there. But to maintain their wealth and power they will still need massive amounts of resources and what better place that South America? Southcom Commander Army Gen. Laura Richardson was practically drooling when she listed what resources this continent had. It is close enough to dominate and they have a lot of experience in these countries, especially with keeping them weak. But there is a problem. The US Army is only a shadow of what it once was back in the First Gulf War and I do not think it capable of fighting a jungle war like it had to do in Vietnam so I do not think that a military intervention is feasible. If it was, the US would right now be fighting in a jungle war in Venezuela for control of those oil fields. So instead it will be a matter of keeping countries weak and putting traitorous leaders in charge of countries through NGOs and the like.
It becomes fashionable every few years for an academic or writer to assert that the Monroe Doctrine has returned, re-emerged, or been resurrected (see this archive link from a 2020 article in The Economist )
But what, exactly is it? We know that it relays the principle that European governments may not intervene in Lantn America, making no such requirements of the U.S., but in what form is it documented? A doctrine is not a law.
The Monroe Doctrine was a speech given by President Monroe to congress in December 1823, in which he said “the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” (Link here)
Because it has remained a principle, and not a law, I would argue that it never went away, and so cannot re-emerge. The principle, namely that the U.S. owns Latin America, has found different expressions over the years, whenever it becomes embarrassing to dredge up the long and bloody history of U.S. interventionism there, such as the OAS, which Castro called the “Ministry of Colonies”.
Plan Columbia and the “war on drugs” were another; going back, we can identify it in the Kennedy “internal security” era. &c., &c.
The comprador bourgeoisie of Latin America, like Milei, seem to be frothing right-wingers who hate the poor; they are also, by and large, the few in the area who benefit from surrendering national sovereignty over natural resources, which is the reason for the touted Doctrine in the first place.
The only real law is the barrel of a gun. The Monroe Doctrine includes the use of military force in Latin and South America. The American military presence in Japan and South Korea is not for the defense of those nations against enemies real and imagined. Instead, it is to ensure that those nations do exactly what the United States desires which is to exert maximum pressure on China.
Just as a test, I tried to post the article from infobrics.org on Fascbook, sure enough, and not surprisingly, any link to that site is strictly verboten. “Community standards” apparently require that the tender sensibilities of western sheep be shielded from that sort of subversive content. Thank God the “community standards” police don’t have any problem with the thousands of ads for counterfeit designer goods or scams for “genuine” Rolex watches from Uttar Pradesh for $200.
Chicago southwest suburbs have their welcoming committees out this holiday weekend for the incoming migrant buses. Kankakee, Peotone, Tinley Park, New Lennox, Lemont, Lockport, Aurora …
Not sure why the governor is not there with open arms. Adam Kinzi ger
TL;DR as American power declines, the US needs to throw someone against the wall, lest its puppets, vassals and lackeys start to get ideas.
I am reminded of the song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, but particularly the phrase, “when will we ever learn?”
As a Canadian, we are well under the boot of Uncle Sam, and he has brain washed us to think it is good for us!
At least our politicians are under the boot, & more particular from the corporate world. And, that subsidy of the US military, Nato is causing nothing but problems.
Perkins’ book.
Perkins’ book.