President Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy, unveiled Dec. 4, puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy and revives the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, appending it with a "Trump Corollary." The document presents the Americas as the main line of defense for the US homeland and links that doctrine directly to ongoing military operations against suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean and Pacific waters.

The document invokes the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine, but pushes it further. It states that the US will block "non-Hemispheric competitors" from owning or controlling "strategically vital assets" in the Americas, including ports, energy facilities, and telecommunications networks. It describes the Western Hemisphere as the top regional priority, above Europe, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, and ties that status to controlling migration, drug flows, and foreign influence before they can reach US territory.

This comes as the US has sent thousands of troops, an aircraft carrier, and additional warships to the southern Caribbean, in a campaign US officials frame as a push against drug trafficking. US aircraft have carried out multiple strikes on small boats that the administration labels cartel or "narco-terrorist" assets, sinking vessels, and killing dozens of people. Officials present these actions as security operations tied to a broader national strategy, not as traditional law-enforcement interdictions.

The Trump administration is framing these operations in the language of armed conflict. Officials routinely describe cartels as "narco-terrorist" organizations and suggest the president can use military force as necessary to defend the US from cartel-related threats. If operations against cartels are treated as part of a non-international armed conflict, then the law of armed conflict governs questions of targeting, detention, and accountability. If they remain below that threshold, international human rights law and peacetime law-enforcement standards apply, including stricter limits on the use of lethal force, especially against persons at sea who are not resisting.

The "Trump Corollary" also revives long-standing regional concerns about spheres of influence. Many Latin American governments and scholars have viewed the Monroe Doctrine as a policy that has historically served to justify US intervention, not a neutral principle of regional security. A strategy that openly promises to "reassert" US pre-eminence, condition aid and investment on unwinding Chinese-backed infrastructure projects, and "push out" foreign companies from key sectors, will likely rekindle debates over sovereignty and unequal power relations in the inter-American system.

There is also a broader tension concerning international law. The US formally supports the UN Charter's ban on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, and the principle of sovereign equality. A doctrine that treats the Western Hemisphere as a US security zone sits uneasily with those commitments. It also risks weakening US objections to similar arguments by others. If Washington insists that major powers keep their hands off Latin American ports and telecoms on strategic grounds, it may face hard questions when it opposes Russian claims over Ukraine or Chinese claims over Taiwan and nearby waters, similarly framed in "regional security" terms.

The National Security Strategy also signals a shift in how Washington views its traditional allies. The same document that elevates the Western Hemisphere warns that parts of Europe face "civilizational erasure," and calls for "cultivating resistance" to some European policies on migration and speech. European officials have criticized that language as echoing far-right narratives. They have also linked it to concerns that US attention and resources are moving away from the Euro-Atlantic theater, even amid demands that Europe shoulder more of NATO's conventional defense burden.

From JURIST, Dec. 7. Used with permission. Internal links added.