Distinguished Fellow Carrie Filipetti says that while President Trump’s National Security Strategy correctly prioritizes the Western Hemisphere, there are still steps the Administration can take to bolster the "Americas First" agenda.
"The President’s National Security Strategy seems to carve the right balance between the foreign and domestic and at least within the Western Hemisphere section, seems broadly aligned to the policies his administration has pursued thus far.”
President Trump’s latest National Security Strategy (NSS) upended the expectations of the National Security community. Rather than prioritizing the Indo-Pacific, as most observers expected, it focused primarily on the Western Hemisphere. But this should not have been a total surprise, given Trump’s campaign rhetoric and policy actions over the last year. Already in the early days of the Trump administration, Latin America watchers popularized the phrase “Americas first” – recognizing President Trump’s principal focus on the Western Hemisphere.
In his NSS, President Trump outlines a few key priorities: countering illegal immigration, curbing drug trafficking, expanding the US military presence, creating safe opportunities for American businesses, particularly in the energy sector, and pushing foreign malign influence out of the region. This isn’t mere rhetoric. Notably, each of these priorities were at play in President Trump’s recent execution of Operation Absolute Resolve.
One aspect of his Western Hemisphere policy that has so far escaped significant attention, despite its clear articulation in his NSS, is that final priority: America’s commitment to pushing out foreign malign influence in the region.
There’s little more consistent in US history than this foreign policy objective.
It is the natural extension of the logic of Monroe Doctrine strategist John Quincy Adams, who argued for an “American cause” to be maintained “inflexibly” in order to keep European powers out of Latin America. Once intended to keep Europe out of our Hemisphere, this logic is now applied to keeping China out.
And yet, if we want to achieve this goal, there are three things still missing from both the NSS and President Trump’s policy actions so far.
First, there is no discussion of China as an adversary. In his campaign, President Trump pledged a degree of strength against China that to date has not materialized, even while China has ramped up its threats against Taiwan and has weaponized supply chains to gain its preferred policy outcomes. It is hard to take a commitment to keep China out of the Western Hemisphere seriously when we fail to advance our other pledges, such as removing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence from TikTok.
Second, the President’s early decision to cease funding for the US Agency for International Development and other soft power programs has undermined his objectives to keep America safe and counter China in the Hemisphere. While these programs were rightly targeted for reform, a narrower approach may have better served US interests. Key programs designed to safeguard American assets like the Clean Network, which President Trump’s first administration established to replace CCP-controlled telecommunications hardware with trusted ones, have since been defunded. This opens the region’s telecommunications infrastructure to CCP intrusion.
Finally, while the NSS speaks of enlisting partners in the Western Hemisphere, little is offered for what the United States can do for them – a gap intentionally exploited by the CCP’s recent Latin America White Paper, which attempts to frame its manipulative practices as beneficial to the region.
Overall, the President’s NSS strikes the right balance between the foreign and domestic. When it comes to the Western Hemisphere, the NSS is also broadly aligned to the policies that Trump Administration has pursued thus far. To advance critical aspects of the President’s agenda as laid out in the NSS, the Administration would do well to fill these three remaining gaps and secure a long-term, mutually prosperous relationship with the region to replace the CCP’s incursions.
