On Saturday, President Trump met with leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean for the so-called Shield of the Americas Summit in Florida. The meeting, which largely centered on the fight against organized crime, was another high-profile attempt by the Trump administration to claim geopolitical primacy in the Western Hemisphere — a goal that made the top of last year’s National Security Strategy and has been referred to as the Donroe Doctrine.
But the event did little more than reveal the limits of Mr. Trump’s regional strategy. The meeting had a deep bench of Mr. Trump’s Latin American allies, like Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. But the leaders of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — which together account for more than half of the region’s G.D.P. — were conspicuously absent.
Mr. Trump’s approach has leaned heavily on economic coercion, flattery of ideological kin and the specter of military intervention to force regional alignment. The U.S. president apparently seeks a clean network of allies purged of perceived foreign influence or anti-Trumpian defiance. This strategy has in many ways fallen short. It is difficult to project an image of an engaged hegemon when the administration’s focus is being pulled into a Middle Eastern quagmire and even more difficult when the president’s approach relies on threats and rebukes rather than a positive agenda for the region.
