Donald Trump insists he wants no “new wars.” In Latin America, however, that line is wearing thin. His administration has revived the language and logic of forceful intervention even as he maintains that the era of U.S. adventurism abroad is over. The result is a foreign policy that races to prop up allies like Argentina’s Javier Milei and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro while threatening adversaries like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro. It’s a pattern both familiar and revealing. Behind the slogans about sovereignty and restraint lies a willingness to use economic, diplomatic, and even military coercion to shape the hemisphere in Washington’s image. Trump is anomalous in so many ways, but his domineering approach to the rest of the Western Hemisphere is not unprecedented.
What makes this approach striking is not its novelty but its selectivity. When Trump praises Milei’s radical libertarianism or defends Bolsonaro’s far-right populism, he is endorsing governments that mirror his own ideological instincts. In those countries, Trump sees reflections of himself—leaders railing against globalism in general and the elites and institutions that spurned them in particular. Friendship, in this logic, is as much about shared enemies as it is about shared interests. It means protection from pressure and a blank check to govern as one pleases. For others—Maduro above all—the tone is menacing. Over the past several months, the White House has escalated rhetoric and action toward Venezuela, sending warships into the Caribbean and hinting at operations against drug cartels supposedly protected by the regime. In Trump’s parlance, “no new wars” is best understood as a mantra for a new kind of hostile intervention: undeclared, incremental, and plausibly deniable.
In Caracas, those signals are impossible to miss. When the Nobel Committee awarded Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize on October 10, U.S. officials cast it as a vindication of Venezuela’s opposition (when they weren’t complaining about the selection committee snubbing the U.S. president). The question of how Trump will respond to the prize remains open, although it seems likely that he will treat it as a moral license to act. Citing anti-drug trafficking efforts as a pretext, Trump has destroyed several small vessels in the Caribbean this year – the latest last Tuesday – killing all those aboard without presenting clear evidence that they were engaged in any wrongdoing. Each new incident creates the conditions for escalation, and each escalation tests the boundaries of Trump’s own rhetoric. What he calls law enforcement looks, in the region, like the heavy-handed imperial interventions of yesteryear dressed up in modern MAGA attire.
There’s a reason so many Latin Americans take this seriously. An editorial in O Globo, one of Brazil’s largest daily newspapers, warned that Trump’s “interventionism must be taken seriously.” As Venezuela’s neighbor and the largest country in the region, Brazil has long been attuned to the regional fallout of Venezuela’s domestic travails. Trump’s efforts spell trouble not just for Venezuela, where he seems eager to play an even more active role, but for the region. Framing Latin American crises as threats to U.S. security and disguising coercion as protection are not Trumpist innovations. The way that they are being justified, however, does reflect the novel conditions of today’s geopolitical landscape. By casting interventions as part of a “war on drugs” rather than regime change, Trump seeks to avoid the public backlash that followed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while keeping much of the machinery of power intact.
The contradictions are glaring. Trump rails against “forever wars” yet surrounds himself with advisers eager to reassert U.S. dominance in the hemisphere. He condemns “globalists” yet, by embracing a belligerent unilateralism, makes the case for coordination against a U.S. government that acts in open defiance of international law. He promises to defend American workers yet imposes punitive tariffs on Brazil in retaliation for the conviction of his friend Bolsonaro, punishing a democracy for applying the rule of law. In his view, allies deserve impunity, enemies deserve punishment, and sovereignty is negotiable as long as it does not conflict with his distinctive view of how the world should operate. His White House has even floated the idea of extending counter-narcotics operations into Colombian and Venezuelan territory without authorization—reviving memories of Plan Colombia and other U.S. security initiatives that blurred the line between cooperation and occupation.
To many observers, Trump’s selective belligerence exposes the hollowness of his supposed realism. What he calls restraint is, in fact, recalibration. The United States no longer needs to send Marines ashore to shape outcomes as it did over a century ago. Today, it can use drones, tariffs, and sanctions instead. Intervention now means strangling economies, freezing assets, and using counter-terrorism as a capacious legal umbrella for strikes beyond borders. It’s cheaper, quieter, and easier to sell at home, particularly considering that the Democratic Party remains in disarray. The danger, as commentators throughout the region have pointed out, is that “limited” U.S. actions are rarely limited in effect. Every act of coercion reinforces the perception that Washington views Latin America not as part of a shared community but as a trouble spot to be constantly brought to heel.
Trump’s defenders argue that a show of strength deters instability. His critics counter that it invites it. Both may be right. The Trump Doctrine, if one can call it that, depends on permanent tension—just enough pressure to project power, not enough to trigger all-out war. But such a balance is fragile. The longer the United States relies on intimidation instead of diplomacy, the more it normalizes the idea that force is the first resort rather than the last. The supposed “peace” of no new wars becomes the peace of constant crisis.
Latin America has seen this cycle before: the rhetoric of partnership followed by the reality of undue pressure, the promise of respect followed by the assertion of dominance. What’s new is the confusion it generates against the larger backdrop of shifting geopolitical tides. As he pushes on virtually every pillar of the postwar global order—a system that has not always served the interests of Latin Americans, it must be said—Trump can sound anti-interventionist one day and threaten intervention the next. He calls for “American strength” even as he decries “foreign entanglements.” The mixed signals are not a bug; they are the strategy. Ambiguity gives him room to maneuver—to punish, to provoke, to retreat—without ever admitting inconsistency.
But Latin Americans are not confused. They have learned to read between the lines. They know that even though Trump says he doesn’t want war, he wants to exert control by other means. His actions thus far signal as much. Trump’s “no new wars” is less a pledge than a pretext, a way to engage in bullying shows of force at smaller scale without incurring the political cost of starting a new formal conflict. This is the latest chapter in a very old story. The difference now is that the hemisphere is less deferential and more defiant. Geopolitical calculations are no longer defined simply by what Washington wants. Trump obviously wields an enormous amount of power, but U.S. leverage outside of military assets simply isn’t what it used to be. Trump promised to end America’s wars abroad. In Latin America, he may be proving that wars don’t need to be declared to be fought. They only need to be reclassified.
Cover photo: Supporters of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro carry a Venezuelan flag during a protest outside the United Nations headquarters in Caracas on October 6, 2025. (Photo by Juan Barreto / AFP)
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