The Monroe Doctrine returns
In September and October 2025, the USA began to move powerful military assets into the Caribbean. The US Navy has been the spearhead of the US defense system from World War 2.
The reason given by President Donald Trump was to combat drug cartels and traffickers, especially those from Venezuela and Colombia. However, adopting a hammer to smash an ant cannot be viewed as a valid enough reason.
In a world gone ‘’haywire’’ especially after Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again Movement’s grip on power in the USA, the abandonment of a post-World War 2 order that for 80 years has brought a semblance of peace in a tragic and Bloody planet has every thinker on the planet wondering.
Venezuela is rich in oil, and the Caribbean is clearly a region where global power politics has been in play in the Twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In fact, for the past 500 years, the Caribbean has been a region of world political power play.
Then, China has risen dramatically both economically and politically. In fact, the US move into the Caribbean may be part of the rebalancing in a world where two superpowers watch each other from the trenches.
China has integrated its economy into Asia’s and controls the supply chains for critical products in the region, from rare earths and pharmaceuticals, to industrial equipment, energy, transportation, both and land and maritime.
China’s car industry is becoming number one in the world, overtaking Japanese, South Korean and German cars. China is integrating Artificial Intelligence into its economy. The list is long.
Post the Second World War, the fact is the USA and its Western Allies have been the instigators of most wars. From the Korean War to the war in Vietnam, wars in the Middle East: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and attacks on Iran, the USA has been the key aggressor. Is US military power simply an extension of Post-Colonial Anglo-Saxon hegemony?
Returning to Caribbean waters and this writer will argue that the Caribbean, including the Virgin Islands, has been very successful in upholding the values of democracy. More so than countries in the so-called developed north that appear to be plunging into intolerance and authoritarianism.
That is one reason this adventurism by the USA into Caribbean waters this late 2025 is greatly concerning. If the USA functioned as the democracy with balanced institutions as intended by its Founding Fathers, there would be much more deliberation before a military adventure.
The world, especially the Western world, is suffering a dearth in wise leaders. The fact that there is attraction on the streets for strongmen points to a diminishing of tolerance and democracy.
The time is ripe for crisis, as happened in 1920s Germany.
History reveals that authoritarians start major wars – especially world wars.
The hope is the expedition into Caribbean waters does not trigger something truly awful; it is not a sign of worse to come.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 began in Caribbean waters, after all.
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6 Responses to “The Monroe Doctrine returns”
What is especially troubling now is the muted response to Venezuela’s aggression toward the much smaller Guyana over its offshore oil reserves. Guyana is part of the Caribbean family, and this imbalance should draw clear, principled objection. Yet there is now alarm about the US in Caribbean waters. For all we know the Nations of T&T and Guyana maybe grateful for US presence.
USA is finally protecting the vulnerable Venezuelan people of the influence of Cuban, Iran, Rusia and China.... The country with the biggest oil reserves are in the same, the country with the high poverty in America, under Haiti! We all in the Caribbean should defend our nations from the drugs cartels!
Moreover, the US had had an increasing presence in the Caribbean region. In addition to territorial control of Puerto Rico, portions of Cuba, and USVI, it had forward deployed bases in the Anglophone Caribbean region, viz, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, Newfoundland, Bermuda, etc. The US has had control of Haiti (1915-1934). Nevertheless, all the bases have been decommissioned, creating a reduced presence in the region which may embolden others, ie, China, etc,, to threatened the Monroe Doc. Nature abhors a vacuum. Further, the US had exhibited various policies in the region, ie, the BIG Stick Policy, The Good Neighbor Policy, the Dollar Diplomacy, etc.
The increasing build up of military assets in the Caribbean region is supposedly to deter, disrupt, etc., the drug cartels, from facilitating the flow of drugs into the US, meeting the spirit and intent of the Monroe Doctrine. Nonetheless, many are questioning the purpose of the increasing military asset build up in the region, requiring transparency. Some all also wonder if the build up is about oil. Oil is supposedly the lifeblood of the world economy, for nations which control oil control the world.