Could A Remnant Empire In The Western Hemisphere Be The True Goal Of The US Siege In The Caribbean?
By using a classic divide and conquer strategy to dismantle LACs regional unity this remnant empire across the Americas would be crucial to stabilize the US as it loses influence across the globe.
The recent United States military buildup in the Caribbean since August 2025 serves as a convenient live-fire exercise and drill for the Trump administration’s broader ambitions of reasserting a US-centric sphere of influence in the hemisphere. By using a classic divide and conquer strategy to dismantle Latin America and the Caribbeans (LAC) regional unity this remnant empire across the Americas would be crucial to stabilize the US as it loses influence across the globe.
From August 2025 onward, the Trump administration dramatically intensified its threats against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Leveraging allegations of criminal activity within elements of the Venezuelan state. Washington launched attacks on small vessels in the Caribbean Sea and has killed 76 people in 19 strikes with legal immunity against boats that still to this day there is no proof were taking part in drug trafficking. Yet, the scale of the deployment, featuring carrier strike groups, AWACS surveillance aircraft, amphibious ready group, several destroyers, a cruiser, a littoral combat ship, a fast-attack submarine, and a special operations ship and a flotilla of Coast Guard cutters acting as interdiction forces, far exceeded what would be required for law enforcement operations. The US show of force is really designed not just to intimidate or attack Caracas, but to send an unambiguous message to every state in the hemisphere that the US is back, and it is willing to use unilateral force.
The Geoeconomic Underpinnings of a Neo Monroe Doctrine
The Americas are rich in the resources critical for the 21st century, not merely oil, but lithium, copper, and rare earth minerals. In the last decade the region has deepened ties with US strategic competitors, namely China, Russia and with global south states. Which means that for US interests a unified, sovereign Latin America is an obstacle to a US-dominated economic sphere.Making the crisis with Venezuela has become the perfect tool to fracture this potential unity.
The Trump administration, throughout September and October 2025, has been courting regional partners, among them the government of Javier Milei in Argentina and other LAC nations, to join its “coalition against narco-terrorism” which is in reality opposing the Venezuelan government. This being, a divide and conquer strategy that seeks to rally a coalition of the willing in the region to replace the Pan-American ideal of solidarity with a hierarchy centered on Washington. For Trump’s vision of a US-remnant empire, threatening Venezuela is quite a useful call to arms as it tests the logistical chains for a potential future collective action. Identifying which regional governments are pliable and which are resistant and pressuring regional multilateral bodies.
In early September the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, in his current role as CELAC pro tempore president tried to create a unified front against the US military deployments in the Caribbean through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) by releasing a statement, but which served to reveal divisions among Latin American countries, effectively makes the text not a fully legitimate CELAC communication due to so many countries not signing. According to the text, LAC form a Zone of Peace, a concept based on the abolition of the threat or use of force, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. The text was signed by countries including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Cuba, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and Dominica. Nonetheless there were notable countries who did not sign the document, these being Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago who opposed the note.
Then on November 9, at a CELAC-EU summit in Santa Marta, Colombia, a final joint declaration which only indirectly condemned the recent US military strikes in the Caribbean, reiterating opposition to the use of force in violation of international law, fell short of explicitly naming the United States due to a lack of unanimous consensus. Venezuela refused to fully endorse it as it rang hollow showing an inability to form a united front against Washington’s actions.
For more context on this strategy curious readers might want to check out my prior articles:
Trump Seeks A Free Lunch From The Global Community Jan 11 2025
Could Trump’s Annexationist Talk Be Part Of A Great US Castling Strategy? Jan 13 2025
Not All Superpowers Desire Spheres Of Influence Feb 1 2025
Trump Recalibrates US Networked Empire Into A Tariff-Based Order Feb 2 2025
Panama’s BRI Exit Signals Trump Is Raising The Quanta Of Violence Feb 7 2025
Trump’s Tariff-Based Order Reshapes Global Trade April 3 2025
Trump’s Tariff-Based (Dis)Order Reshuffles Supply Chains Into Chaos April 11 2025
United States And Venezuela Deploy Caribbean Operations Amid Standoff Aug 28 2025
US Remnant Sphere of Influence In the Americas
Donald Trump’s vision of a Tariff-based economic order, when coupled with the aggressive military deployment in the Caribbean, creates a powerful economic-military pincer movement aimed at solidifying a neo Monroe Doctrine. This updated doctrine is a comprehensive geoeconomic strategy designed to give a lifeline to the United States by reorienting the Western Hemisphere as its exclusive and captive sphere of economic interest. By threatening punitive tariffs on recalcitrant nations while offering favorable terms to strategic regional vassals, the US wields commerce as a weapon, forcing regional economies to choose between absorption with Northern markets or an intensification of US aggression.
The ultimate goal of this dual-pressure campaign may not be the immediate toppling of the Venezuelan government. Instead, the more pragmatic and achievable aim is to re-establish a decisive foothold of uncontested American power within the hemisphere. By rallying a coalition of nations around its anti-Venezuela agenda, the US gains strategic partners, military access, and political cover, possibly rolling back decades of independent foreign policy and resurgent nationalism that had challenged its dominance.
While the Maduro government may endure, the larger strategic victory for the US would be the re-subordination of the Americas. A solidified US sphere of influence, which would include Greenland and Canada in its designs, providing a critical lifeline to the declining unipolar power. It guarantees preferential access to vital resources like lithium, oil, among other goods and could potentially create a protected market for US goods, forcing LAC states to limit trade and investment with China, Russia, EU and the Global South, re-establishing thus a strategic backyard free from rival great powers. Thus, even without regime change in Caracas, the combination of tariff threats and naval power would successfully lay the foundation for a US economic and strategic renaissance built on the forced integration and deference of its southern neighbors.