Control the Hemisphere, Contain China: Inside America’s Two-Front Strategy
Donald Trump's reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine isn't a distraction from his efforts to contain China: it's their foundation.
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by Andrew Latham
November 18, 2025
The USS Gerald R. Ford’s gray silhouette cutting across the Caribbean horizon marks a decisive shift in American statecraft: U.S. foreign policy is focusing intensely on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific.
From the Ford’s slow approach to Venezuelan waters to escalating trade tensions with Canada and early signs of a harder U.S. line toward Mexico and migration, Washington’s attention is once again concentrated on the regions most vital to its security and power.
This is no tactical coincidence. It reflects a deliberate recalibration under President Trump, binding hemispheric defense to the broader logic of great-power competition. The United States is refortifying its neighborhood not as a retreat from global leadership, but as the bedrock from which it intends to sustain it.
The official story, of course, is that the Ford’s presence off Venezuela is part of an anti-drug, anti-cartel mission. The larger calculus, however, is clear enough: it is about demonstrating and regaining U.S. maritime and aerial supremacy in its southern approaches, and about showing that no outside power — China, Russia or Iran — will be allowed to establish a permanent presence in the Americas.
For decades, the Caribbean had been considered a quiet backwater. Now it is a proving ground for the reinvigorated use of sea power in the defense of the hemisphere. By deploying a supercarrier, Washington has shown that the Caribbean is once more a forward battleground in the projection of American deterrence.
It is not a return to gunboat diplomacy. It is an acknowledgment that great-power competition now extends to every maritime approach in which the adversary might test for advantage. The strategic renaissance of the Caribbean is thus an updated Monroe Doctrine, stripped of its 19th-century paternalism. It is based on the belief that the defense of the American homeland starts well beyond the shoreline.
Economic Fronts: Canada and Mexico in the Crosshairs
While the Navy reasserts control of the southern seas, the continental dimensions of hemispheric power are being defined through trade and migration policy. The new tariff standoff with Canada, long America’s most dependable ally, shows that even the friendliest partners are being affected by Washington’s strategic nationalism.
Trump’s message is simple: economic sovereignty and defense are paramount, and no ally should expect preferential treatment if its industries undermine American competitiveness or security.
At the same time, there are strong indications of a tougher U.S. stance toward Mexico. Proposed enforcement mechanisms at the border, the tightening of supply-chain rules, and a likely review of migration protocols suggest that economic integration will increasingly serve strategic ends. Washington appears to see Mexico not as a buffer but as a pressure point — an area where trade, labor, and security converge into one system.
Together, these moves reveal the architecture of what might be called the “continental fortress”: a North America more economically integrated under U.S. dominance, but also more tightly managed in the name of security and competition.
Trump’s Grand Strategic Vision: Securing the Hemisphere, Blunting China
Trump’s grand strategic vision is not isolationist, nor is it the liberal internationalism of his predecessors. It is hemispheric and selective — focused on securing the Western Hemisphere while simultaneously blunting China’s expanding bid for power and influence across the Indo-Pacific. The logic is almost classical: before projecting power outward, consolidate strength within one’s sphere of influence.
In this conception, the Western Hemisphere is the indispensable core from which the United States can compete effectively with China abroad. This explains the parallel emphasis on hemispheric defense and Indo-Pacific containment.
The administration’s new naval posture in the Caribbean, its scrutiny of Chinese port investments in Panama and the Caribbean, and its quiet support for Latin American governments seeking to push back against Beijing’s influence all serve the same purpose — to deny China strategic depth in America’s neighborhood while reinforcing U.S. freedom of action across the Pacific.
What emerges is a two-front strategy defined not by expansionism but by disciplined geography: control the hemisphere, deny the adversary’s periphery, and maintain maritime advantage in both oceans.
This also helps explain the reorientation of American diplomacy toward transactional realism. Trump has little interest in multilateral moralizing or global crusades. He views power through the lens of geography and leverage. By focusing on the hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, he is redefining what it means for America to be a global power in the 21st century: not omnipresent, but unassailable in its core regions and unyielding where vital interests are at stake.
Redefining Hemispheric Defense
The emerging doctrine of hemispheric defense fuses military presence, economic leverage, and border control into a single system of deterrence. Migration flows, energy corridors, data networks, and supply chains are no longer treated as separate policy arenas — they are integrated components of national defense.
This is the new realism of power: defending the homeland means managing the arteries through which people, goods, and influence flow. The Western Hemisphere is being recast as a platform for global competition, a staging ground for future economic and technological contests as much as for military ones.
This grand strategy is a return to very deep-rooted traditions in American statecraft, updated to suit the current era. Just as the architects of containment during the Cold War saw Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as the epicenters of the struggle, Trump’s strategists see the hemisphere as the indispensable homeland of American power in an era of global contest.
The same instincts that once drove continental expansion now drive the consolidation of continental defense. The United States is again acting like a great power that understands its geography: surrounded by oceans, connected to allies by trade and migration, and vulnerable where those flows are uncontrolled.
There are obvious risks in this revival of hemispheric strategy. But these dangers, in Trump’s calculus, are manageable compared to the alternative — ceding strategic ground in the Americas while overextending elsewhere. His administration sees the hemisphere as the one theater where America can still dictate terms. Everything beyond it, from the South China Sea to Eastern Europe, must be approached from that foundation.
When the World Comes Home
The Ford’s steady advance toward Venezuelan waters captures the essence of America’s new grand strategy: to defend the hemisphere, contain China, and root great-power competition in geographic reality. The long-standing American habit of trying to shape events on every continent has been refocused — not as a retreat, but as a consolidation of power providing far greater flexibility and reach.
The Western Hemisphere is no longer a neglected periphery; it has become the front yard of great-power politics.
Whether this rebalancing endures will depend on Washington’s ability to wield power with restraint, transforming proximity into stability rather than crisis.
One thing, however, is clear: the era of the open-ended liberal empire has ended. A new age of hemispheric power has begun, and the world will now have to reckon with an America determined to defend its dominance from within its own, far more secure neighborhood.
— Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. This essay originally appeared in National Security Journal.
A tremendous article by Andrew Lantham! Thank you, Dr. Martin, for publishing it! The arrival of the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford in the Caribbean marked a turning of the page and a new chapter in the history of U.S. foreign policy. President Trump has made it clear he's done with America nation-building and playing global policeman but he's also not an Isolationist either. I would describe the Trump foreign policy as Neorealist, Hamiltonian and Internationalist. Oh, he believes in being involved in the world, but he doesn't conflate overuse of the military with exercising global leadership. He believes the United States should lead the world and fight Russia, China and Iran primarily through non-military means. Diplomacy, sanctions, surgical strikes, shows of force, etc. During his first term I don't think he felt confident enough in his own views on foreign policy to do what he really wanted to do, and he relied on Neocon cabinet members to advise him on it. In his second term it's been a different story. He now has gone all in on reforming U.S. foreign policy and has hired others who think like him and implementing policies he sees as in America's best interest. Trump grew in the time between his first and second terms. Joe Biden's foreign policy was a disaster; there's no disputing that. Biden abandoned Israel and had a totally incoherent policy on the Gaza War that was supposed to please everyone but instead pleased no one. He gave six billion dollars to Iran some of which they gave to Hamas to help fund October 7th and put returning to the failed Iran Deal back on the table.
Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster! He did not abide by the pull-out date set by the Trump administration and didn't putting any conditions on the withdrawal the Taliban would have to follow. The result was the end of the Vietnam War all over again and Kabul in 2021 looking just like Hanoi in 1975. He handed the country over to the Taliban on a silver platter. Joe Biden and Antony Blinken did diddly squat to make a serious effort at peace between Russia and Ukraine. In a totally reckless act that could've led to World War III, he sent the 101st Airborne to train right across the border from Ukraine. He also ratcheted up tensions with the Russians by continuing to float NATO membership for Ukraine and supporting the expansion of NATO into Scandinavia and President Biden saber-rattled with China over Taiwan. President Trump came in and corrected these mistakes fundamentally transforming U.S. foreign policy. He made it clear the U.S. stands behind Israel all the war in the Gaza War, set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to feed the people of Gaza, brought all the living and some of the dead, Israeli hostages home, achieved a ceasefire, and created the first and only serious plan for Gaza's future. He pulled U.S. troops out of Africa, declared us out of the business of regime change, negotiated four peace treaties, has made aggressive efforts to hammer out a Russian Ukrainian Peace Accords, got Panama to pull out of the Belt Road Initiative using economic pressure, got the NATO nations and Japan to increase defense spending, bombed the Houthis in Yemen into submission, has stood up for besieged Christians in Nigeria, and did Operation Midnight's Hammer which helped destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. All without getting us into any forever wars.
Recently, the Trump administration started drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Syria. His strategy has been keeping Russia, China and Iran out of our backyard and economic nationalism by means of tariffs. Even allies like Canada have not been spared. I will admit I am not a fan of protectionism and I question whether Trump's tariffs and the Trade War with China is the right way to go. But I understand what he's trying to do. Trump is trying to correct trade imbalances, protect American goods and workers and make America economically strong again. He has revived the Monroe Doctrine sans the 19th-century paternalism towards the nations of Latin America; he is fighting America's enemies by rolling back their influence in Latin America and taking a strong stand against authoritarian regimes like in Venezuela and Cuba, assisting Mexico in fighting the cartels and taking an aggressive stance toward the drug trade in South America. He has shifted America's focus away from the Middle East and towards the regions that are most important for us: the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific region. He seeks to contain our enemies in both those regions. Contrary to what one might think, these two things go together. Trump has also strengthened and reinforced our borders, pushed Canada and Mexico to help do so as well and ended the Southern border crisis which is why the cartels have been forced to now operate out of the interior of Texas.