Why Trump has been building a ‘new backyard’ in South America
Why Trump has been building a ‘new backyard’ in South America![]()
Donald Trump’s massive military build-up in the Caribbean has reignited some of the most aggressive elements of the United States’ imperialist policy towards South America.
Trump has been ordering deadly attacks on “narco boats” in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific under the false pretence of combatting drug trafficking. But it’s not a “war on drugs”—it’s a signal that the US is looking to maintain its dominance. US secretary of war Peter Hegseth gave the game away, announcing, “With President Trump, we are going to reclaim our backyard.”
What he means is that the US is seeking to revive the Monroe Doctrine, a two century old policy that deems South America the “backyard” of the US imperialist influence.
The US government first declared the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 as it began to expand its imperialist influence. It wanted to send a clear message to European powers that South America would be part of the US sphere of influence.
Trump’s recasting of the doctrine is part of broader shifts in US imperial strategy. The priority has been opposing the US’s biggest imperial rival—China. To do so, he’s been tearing up the US foreign policy playbook, breaking with the US’s previous recent imperial strategy.
After 1945, US imperialism built a liberal capitalist world order based on free trade and the free market. It established the “rules-based” international system through institutions created during and after the war—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Nato.
These international institutions underpinned a different type of empire to old forms of colonial control. They ensured the dominance of the dollar and US corporations while the US used its military advantage to discipline potential rivals to its interests.
In South America, US imperialism ransacked the region with “free trade” agreements that gave its multinational corporations access to cheap labour and raw materials. From Cuba to Panama, Nicaragua to Uruguay, between 1898 and 1994 the US openly intervened in Latin America 41 times.
It was always with the intention to pursue US interests in the region. US forces backed countless coups, invasions and civil wars. The US history in Latin America has been one of violence and bloodshed.
Throughout the 20th century, the US continued to dictate South America’s politics. When social movements threatened to undermine US investments or markets in South America, it intervened to try and force regime change.
To that end, US military intervention supported Latin American dictators or military regimes to overthrow the governments it opposed. In Chile, the US’s bloodshed was successful as it backed Augusto Pinochet in the 1973 coup against left wing Salvador Allende, who was democratically elected in 1970. More than 30000 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced, by Pinochet’s US-backed forces. Pinochet went on to lead a brutal military regime for 17 years.
Following the election of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1951, a US-backed coup installed far right Carlos Castillo Armas in 1954. He was the first of a series of US-backed dictators—but the ensuing civil war caused by US intervention killed 200,000 people.
Trump’s resurgent interest in Latin America is pushed by the decline of US power elsewhere. Following the military failures of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, the US’s relative decline opened space for China’s rise. This has put pressure on the US to find new ways to increase its influence and maintain its place at the top of the pecking order.
Relations between the two superpowers appear stable at the moment after Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, made a trade deal at the G2 summit earlier this year. Xi agreed to suspend, for a year, controls on the export of rare earths on which modern production and warfare depend. Trump did the same for new restrictions on US advanced technology exports.
But the US cannot escape the logic of imperialist competition. Its rivalry with China is the main fault line of imperialism today.
While the US national security establishment may be worried that Trump is dropping the focus from China, he is not retreating. Trump’s desire to cement control of the Americas is shaped partly by competition with China. He wants to control everything from Greenland and then down to the southern tip of South America.
This has meant ramping up threats of war, such as taking over Greenland, and trade wars with other states that are strategically important to the US. Greenland has deposits of 43 of 50 of the world’s “critical minerals”. The US Department of Energy says these minerals are “essential for technologies that produce, transmit, store and conserve energy”. Dominance here will help the US compete with China over rare earth metals, which are essential for producing things such as computer chips.
US imperialism has its sights firmly placed on Latin America for the same reason. In South America, China is already the number one trading partner, amassing £393 billion of trade in 2024.
Since 2018, China has invested £8.3 billion into Latin American lithium extraction. In Chile, Chinese companies own 57 percent of electricity distribution. While China’s overseas ending has slowed, it is – building trade agreements and targeting strategic sectors. The US wants China out of its “backyard” and for it to be placed firmly back under its control. But the US is not just resorting to military aggressiveness. It has placed tougher economic sanctions on several countries in South America and is openly backing the pro-US far right.
Trump has hit Brazil with high tariffs after far right former president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted for plotting an armed coup against the president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In Argentina, Trump bailed out far right president Javier Milei with a currency swap of £15.2 billion. And he has threatened to forcibly “take over” and colonise the Panama Canal.
With the recent attacks off the Caribbean coast, US imperialism chose Venezuela as a priority in its battle for control. Venezuela has one of the world’s largest known oil reserves—a market that China is already exploiting. In September, China installed the first Chinese-run oil platform in the country. Chinese loans to Venezuela now total £45.6 billion, and the country is now the biggest buyer of Chinese-made armaments.
Both in Venezuela and the Middle East, the US wants control of oil, not for its own use but to stop others gaining control. The US aims to seize control of Venezuela’s oil wealth and place the country at the mercy of the predatory US corporations.
As the Wall Street Journal recently wrote, Trump is “treating the hemisphere as an extension of the US homeland—loyalty is rewarded, and defiance can carry a price”. And nowhere is this truer than in Venezuela. Trump wants to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro, who has a £38 million bounty on his head, with the aim of installing a pro-US regime.
But previous attempts by US imperialism to engineer regime change in Venezuela have failed. The Bolivarian Revolution of the 1990s and 2000s threatened the US interests. Left leader Hugo Chavez rode to power in 1999 with mass support. When the US and Britain backed a coup in the 2002, mass mobilisations defeated it. Chavez’s success led the “pink tide”, which saw a surge of left victories, fuelled by popular revolt, in Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua in the early 2000s.
But Maduro, the successor to Chavez, has betrayed the radical hopes of the Bolivarian Revolution. He heads up a corrupt and authoritarian regime under which the rich have become richer and the poor increasingly poorer. Although it lays claim to the name of Chavez and the revolution, it consistently attacks the gains of the revolution and the rights of workers.
Ordinary people feel alienated and disillusioned. Support for the government has waned, forcing it to cling to power by the simple device of falsifying election results. But the overthrow of this regime must not be at the hands of the imperialist gangsters in the US and their local agents.
Working class people, and all the poor in South America, must mobilise against both the local ruling classes and the brutal bullies like Trump and Hegseth, who would set back the cause of liberation.
Hope lies with movements fighting for social justice and against the US.
Republished from socialistworker.co.uk, Sunday 16 November 2025
