Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and China are headed for Latin America clash

The conversation in Washington right now is abuzz with talk of President Donald Trump‘s new National Security Strategy and its so-called “Donroe Doctrine” framing of Western Hemispheric dominance — a modern corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. That debate had already been simmering in policy circles before the end of last year, but it was turbocharged by the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela. Almost immediately, the familiar question resurfaced: What will China do now?

Much of that speculation has fixated on Taiwan. Would Beijing use U.S. kinetic action in Venezuela as justification — or precedent — for moving against the island? That question may be understandable and its implications concerning. However, many believe that it is also the wrong question to be asking.

China will not use Venezuela as a pretext to invade Taiwan. That is neither how Beijing thinks nor how it operates. Serious analysis demands setting the distraction of seeing China as a reactive power aside, and dealing with a more consequential — and far more uncomfortable — question. It requires that we read and debate China’s own strategic documents about our region with the same rigor now being applied to the U.S. National Security Strategy, and take them seriously on their own terms.

China’s newly issued third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean is not a press release or a reactive and reflexive impulse triggered by Washington. It is a longstanding, well thought out, forward-looking, and deliberately structured approach to achieving China’s long-term goals. It includes the range of tools of statecraft that it intends to use, and the pathways through which it plans to sustain its influence. It is an institutional blueprint — dense with political mechanisms, financing pathways, commercial incentives, and a theory of the case for the legitimacy of its engagement and presence in the region rooted in Global South solidarity rather than overt claims of regional hegemony or 18th-century cosplay.

The NSS is explicit about intent. It commits the United States to keeping the hemisphere free of “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” ensuring access to “key strategic locations,” and denying non-hemispheric competitors’ control over “strategically vital assets.” Venezuela, in that telling, becomes a proof point: evidence that Washington is prepared to act kinetically to alter political realities when it believes access, stability, or strategic positioning are at risk.

But the Trump NSS also reveals a central analytical vulnerability. It implicitly assumes the United States can grant spheres of influence — cede a region here, consolidate one there — and that so-called “regional powers” will accept the arrangement. China does not see itself as…