Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has sought to establish a new world order. In this vision, the idea of America First coexists with the legitimation of other imperial spheres of influence, such as those of Russia and China, with the weakening of the alliance between the United States and Western Europe, and with support for authoritarian and illiberal political regimes around the globe.

Clearly, the order Trump aims to supplant was never just. The United States’ defense of a so-called “democratic” principle has long served as a cynical shield for successive interventions, acts of aggression, and war crimes. But U.S. imperialism now finds itself in a crisis of legitimacy and in relative economic decline. Domestically, public sentiment reflects this scenario in the form of persistent discontent. This perception of crisis, combined with the sense that alternatives are urgently needed, lends support to the president’s neo-fascist rhetoric—while, on the other side of the coin, also expanding the audience for socialist left ideas.

The recent release of the administration’s National Security Strategy consolidated these coordinates while highlighting an axis of Trump’s policy that had previously received less attention: Latin America. Under the hierarchy of its own economic interests—the golden rule for containing China’s rise—U.S. imperialism is reviving the Monroe Doctrine. Once again, this means the idea summed up in the formula “America for the Americans,” that is, the attempt by the United States to treat Latin America as its backyard.

No official document would be needed to demonstrate this. For months, the Trump administration has carried out criminal attacks in the Caribbean Sea under the cynical pretext of a “war on drug trafficking.” The world’s largest aircraft carrier was deployed near Venezuela, and the U.S. government declared a blockade on Venezuelan oil tankers, even seizing one of them. In that country, governed by the authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro, Trump has placed his highest bets, coordinating bourgeois interests around oil. Not by chance, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, a coup-minded opponent of Maduro committed to handing over Venezuelan wealth to the United States. The Financial Times reported that foreign investors are buying Venezuela’s defaulted debt, betting on the end of the current government.

In Panama, Trump threatened a military takeover of the Panama Canal—and extracted a capitulation agreement from the local government. In Honduras and Argentina, through different means, the U.S. president interfered in domestic electoral processes. In Paraguay, he announced a new military cooperation agreement. In El Salvador, he operates in close coordination with dictator Nayib Bukele, scaling up xenophobic and racist repression against immigrants. From the Venezuelan case, Trump has issued threats against Colombia and Cuba. As for Brazil, he imposed excessive and illegal tariffs as instruments of intimidation and blackmail—now partially reversed, but at the cost of restraining the Lula government’s rhetoric, which so far has been insufficiently assertive in response to the situation in Venezuela.

The revival of the Monroe Doctrine must provoke international rejection and mobilization. As obvious as it may be, it must be stated plainly: the United States does not have, and never has had, the authority or the right to interfere in the affairs of sovereign countries in Latin America.

Within the United States itself, early signs of discontent emerged weeks ago, when statements by Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth became public, ordering “kill them all” in reference to survivors of a vessel attacked in the Caribbean Sea. Hegseth has since been accused of a war crime, and the Trump administration’s false “pacifist” and “isolationist” discourse has been called into question.

Any form of domestic opposition is relevant to exposing Trump’s plans of neocolonial plunder, and no equivocation is acceptable in rejecting the ongoing aggression against Venezuela.

On the international front, the First International Anti-Fascist Conference for the Sovereignty of Peoples, to be held in March 2026 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, promises to present an organized response to the current situation (https://antifas2026.org/en/). It is crucial to remember that this is not the first time U.S. imperialism has sought to control Latin America through the most abhorrent means. Even so, Latin American peoples have never submitted. On the contrary, they possess a rich history of struggles, uprisings, and revolutions in defense of their sovereignty, dignity, and wealth. The time for new uprisings is now.

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