'ISIS of the Western Hemisphere'? Latin America isn't buying it

'ISIS of the Western Hemisphere'? Latin America isn't buying it The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, a rather staid event held every two years, is known mostly for its boilerplate language clouded in bureaucratese. Yet, the 17th iteration of it, held in Cusco, Peru, earlier this month, strayed from the norm and gave us an extraordinary glimpse into the complexities and intricacies of inter-American relations during the second Trump administration.Conventional wisdom asserts that, despite the many difficulties U.S. foreign policy is facing in the Middle East and in other parts of the world today, it is in Latin America where it has managed (foreignaffairs.com › trump remaking latin america) to chalk up a significant number of wins.The Trump administration’s purported laurels include the January 3 attack on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife; the cancellation of the Panamanian ports concession of the Hong Kong-based company C.K. Hutchinson and of the China Mobile Valparaiso-Hong Kong cable project in Chile; the launch of the like-minded Shield of the Americas group in Miami on March 7; and, perhaps most importantly, the string of right-wing electoral victories in countries like Honduras, Colombia, Peru and Chile, some of them openly backed by Washington. The shift from U.S. hegemony to outright U.S. domination in the hemisphere appears to be in full swing. After Venezuela, Cuba would be the next domino to fall, then Nicaragua, and so on.This shift has come under the umbrella of a revived Monroe Doctrine, and its 21st century version, the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” and its associated “Trump Corollary (cebri.org).” The latter states (media.defense.gov › 2026 national defense strategy) that the United States will “protect our Homeland and our access to key terrain throughout the region. We will deny adversaries’ ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities in our Hemisphere.” Yet, what does this mean in practice?In a speech at the Cusco conference, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby attempted to answer this question. In remarks reaching back to the original initiative of President James Monroe in 1823 and tracing it to its present incarnation, he set forth (war.gov) what he considers to be the true nature of U.S. foreign policy. Washington “doesn’t need (Latin America’s) assets”; its privileged geographical position and rich natural resources mean that “it does not need imperial possessions or dependencies, even from a strictly realpolitik point of view.” In a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase, Colby described the U.S. as “an empire of liberty unto ourselves.” Washington’s concern with Latin America is thus not driven by the latter’s assets and resources, but by the region’s security and defense choices, and especially by the “negative externalities that spill from the region” into the U.S. These include the drug trade, its associated criminal activities and mass migration. Thus, Colby said, the U.S offers a helping hand “to recover control over your territory, secure your borders” and “defeat the narco-terrorists who terrorize all of our people.”The “three asks” In the name of what he refers to as “flexible realism,” Colby says the U.S. “will not treat the ISIS, the al-Qaeda of this Hemisphere, who menaces American lives, with kid gloves rather than the forcefulness the threat requires simply because they are in the Western Hemisphere.” The U.S. “will bring all assets of the United States to address these threats,” in part through “partner-led, joint kinetic operations” with the region’s militaries.Colby