The “Shield of the Americas” Summit and Donald Trump’s Latin America Strategy
The US can not maintain its affect in the Western Hemisphere by solely multilateral our bodies that the Trump administration chooses to have interaction with.
The Trump administration has made the Western Hemisphere a focus of its overseas coverage. From Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for an “Americas First” overseas coverage to the announcement of a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to the prominence of the Americas in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the administration has made clear that it sees the Americas as half of the US’ speedy sphere of affect. At the similar time, nevertheless, the administration has turned away from multilateral engagement with the area.
The administration has withdrawn from three regional our bodies and threatened to chop funding for a number of different key regional our bodies—whilst the lately handed price range secured a $75 million enhance in funding for the Inter-American Development Bank’s private-sector portfolio. Questions surrounding the administration’s strategy to the area and no clear dedication that President Donald Trump would attend additionally led to the postponement of the X Summit of the Americasslated for final December.
Rather than working towards a postponed Summit of the Americas, the Trump administration is hosting the “Shield of the Americas Summit” with choose Latin American leaders in Miami on March 7, 2026, suggesting that its strategy is to slim the alliance to like-minded leaders to assist US pursuits in the area. While this isn’t the first administration to attempt This strategy, the area’s challenges—and US pursuits in the area—require a collective, long-term dedication. This strategy fails to generate the mandatory assist and dangers failing to satisfy its longer-term aims.
Building a Right-Wing South American Alliance
In the 2025 NSS, the administration outlined its “Enlist and Expand” technique for the Western Hemisphere. The enlist-and-expand technique depends on the United States figuring out and partnering with like-minded nations and leaders in the area to collectively pursue US pursuits. Secretary Rubio has championed the strategy of discovering ideologically dependable companions even earlier than Trump gained the 2024 election.
As described in the NSS and in Rubio and different Trump regional advisors‘Previous writings, the goal of these efforts is to restrict Chinese engagement in the Americas whereas securing key commerce and funding alternatives for US companies—notably in nations seen as pleasant to the United States.
The growth element depends on leveraging these partnerships and pressuring others to hitch the US-backed bloc. We have already seen the Trump administration apply stress to nations by varied means to make sure that their allies stay in energy, comparable to providing Argentinian President Javier Milei with a monetary lifeline or trying to tilt the scales in elections to assist their most popular candidate, as in the 2025 Honduran election.
The reported Americas Shield Summit in Miami fits well inside this paradigm. Those invited to the summit embrace Presidents Javier Milei (Argentina), Rodrigo Paz (Bolivia), Rodrigo Chaves (Costa Rica), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Nasry Asfura (Honduras), José Raul Mulino (Panama), and Santiago Pena (Paraguay), in addition to Presidents-Elect José Antonio Kast (Chile) and Laura Fernández (Costa Rica)—all leaders which can be emblematic of the latest right-ward shift in the area. For the administration, these leaders signify essential allies, and the assembly is a chance to indicate why nations ought to facet with the United States.
Latin America’s Political Pendulum and US Short-Termism
While agreements reached by this group of leaders will doubtless yield short-term features for the Trump administration and taking part states, this minilateral, ideological strategy to regional affairs remains short-sighted—each for the United States and for accomplice nations in the area.
Relying on shut private or ideological relations between particular person leaders—notably in democratic societies the place the political winds will ultimately shift—runs the danger of undermining the improvement of longer-term bilateral relations. Within regional affairs, maybe the clearest instance of this danger performed out in US-Argentine relations.
In the Nineteen Nineties, then Argentine President Carlos Menem sought to enhance relations with the United States. Menem’s Argentina supported US commerce discussions, despatched troops to assist the first Gulf War, and even grew to become a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States. Menem as soon as described the bilateral relationship as so shut that the nations have been concerned in “carnal relations.”
While some have pointed to the improved bilateral relationship underneath Javier Milei as a resurrection of this level of view, it is very important be aware that regardless of the shut relationship that the United States and Argentina had in the Nineteen Nineties, the 2000s, and early 2010s, the relationship was marked by confrontation and animosity between Washington and Buenos Aires.
The present second runs the similar dangers. The Trump administration’s efforts to construct relations with (principally newly elected) leaders with an ideological affinity may very well be a dangerous and short-sighted prospect. While some of the Trump administration’s forceful actions in the area (like the capture of Nicolás Maduro) have discovered support from regional publics, many analysts have argued that his heavy-handed strategy to the area is prone to generate a backlash in the future by making a political motion that’s against US intervention in a lot the similar means as US actions throughout the Cold War impressed the anti-imperialist tendencies in Latin America’s Pink Tide leaders. While the United States was capable of cooperate with some of these leaders, each the Bush and Obama administrations confronted challenges in participating with the area on account of the legacies of US imperialism.
Trump’s strategy has already created nationalist backlash in some nations and undermined their very own efforts, most notably in Brazil and Canada. While final yr’s Canadian elections appeared to favor a extra pro-Trump candidate, Trump’s comments on making Canada the 51st state and powerful line on commerce negotiations led to the election of Mark Carneya pacesetter who has been one of the staunchest Trump critics. Likewise, efforts to assist Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro surrounding his trial for undermining Brazilian democracy bolstered Trump criticized Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva‘s recognition, permitting Brazil to climate Trump’s tariffs on the nation.
The Western Hemisphere’s Crowded Field of Multilateral Bodies
At the similar time, efforts to develop minilateral mechanisms to deal with regional affairs face key challenges. The Miami assembly may establish the Americas Shield Alliance—a company that can enter an already crowded discipline of regional establishments. Today, there are over 40 organizations and our bodies—together with commerce blocs, formal political organs, and subregional entities—which can be particular to the Americas.
The proliferation of regional our bodies creates distinctive challenges that undermine the credibility and effectiveness of totally different organizations as they search to deal with collective challenges. One means that that is executed is by creating areas for nations to “forum shop” for a company that meets their particular pursuits or political preferences reasonably than addressing the underlying construction of regional our bodies or discovering consensus on tips on how to tackle a selected problem.
The problem is much more daunting when regional organizations are based mostly on ideological cleavages. For occasion, in 2008—at the top of the left-wing Pink Tide in Latin America—South American leaders created the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to advertise integration of the continent. As the Pink Tide receded and right-wing leaders have been elected in a number of nations in the area, nations withdrew from the group and, in 2019, changed it with the Forum for the Progress of South America (PROSUR)—an alliance of right-wing leaders in the area.
The creation of further advert hoc our bodies which can be ideologically aligned however lack mechanisms to watch or keep progress on regional integration efforts can undermine the capability of any regional physique to deal with the collective motion issues which can be all the time evident in world governance.
How to Recalibrate US Engagement with the Americas
US re-engagement with the area is a optimistic signal for regional affairs and may enhance US standing in the Hemisphere. However, the strategy taken by the Trump administration may create a backlash in the area that will undermine US pursuits and weaken collective motion to deal with regional challenges.
If Trump needs to have a long-lasting legacy in the Americas and one which improves US standing in the Hemisphere, the administration might want to rethink its strategy. The administration wants to make sure that it doesn’t undermine these features by being seen as an imperialist bully or by undermining the regional organizations that enable the United States to collaborate with the area, tackle collective challenges, and develop long-term methods to advertise a secure and productive area.
While the mini-Latin American assembly in March might yield symbolic victories for the administration and even some significant concessions, the administration could be smart to not suppose of this as an alternative to growing a Hemispheric consensus or attending the Summit of the Americas.
About the Author: Adam Ratzlaff
Adam Ratzlaff is the founder and CEO of Pan-American Strategic Advisors—a boutique consultancy and suppose tank centered on the Western Hemisphere—and a member of Diplomatic Courier’s World in 2050 Brain Trust. Ratzlaff carried out political and financial evaluation for organizations together with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Southern Pulse Correspondents. His analysis pursuits embrace US-Latin American overseas coverage, Sino-Latin American overseas coverage, Pan-American cooperation, the protection of democracy in the Americas, fiscal coverage, and financial and social improvement in Latin America. He has revealed extensively on these subjects in common venues, together with Diplomatic Courier, The National Interestand Charged Affairs.
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