Can Trump’s State and Defence Nominees Reset Relations with Latin America?

Too little, too late. President Joe Biden’s trip to meet regional and world leaders in Peru and Brazil for the APEC and G20 meetings brought to a close his relationship with Latin America, leaving many with a sour taste. Local and foreign outlets and commentators suggested that the US had failed to obtain any major wins over the last four years in a region that has seen humanitarian and political crises from Haiti to Venezuela, and that it had been unable to stop China’s economic inroads or the spread of Russian disinformation regarding the invasion of Ukraine. Most vividly, Biden has felt the heat on homeland security due to concerns over migration and rampant insecurity at the southern border.

The Western Hemisphere has remained tough for US foreign policy, despite a history of fertile regional free trade and military-to-military diplomacy that has characterised decades of quasi-unopposed US hegemony in the Americas since the Cold War. The White House’s fight against international terrorism and its focus on global power competition have pushed attention and monetary resources away from Latin America and the Caribbean, where new anti-Western voices have filled the vacuum of influence. 

US-Latin American relations have become messy, and Washington can count only a few steady partners in the region, such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador. But even in these countries the White House has struggled to keep its national security and economic interests aligned without losing out to China, mostly on the latter. A few others have broken ties with Washington since the early 2000s that have subsequently proven unrepairable (for example, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela), while a handful of countries sit on the fence, most notably Brazil – which Biden visited recently and whose President Lula da Silva has ‘courted’ Xi Jinping on global institutions reform – and Peru.

Xi Jinping’s inauguration of the Chancay Port in Peru made world headlines as he appeared front and centre in a well-timed photo session alongside Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. The outgoing Joe Biden was placed in a corner on the second row, ‘fading’ into the background in the words of by the Wall Street Journal. The US Trade Department team responded with fresh interest in other maritime commercial zones, such as in commercial rival to Peru and southern neighbour Chile, where port capacity is reaching a peak but could open up if local authorities cleared the way for new companies to enter the port infrastructure market.

A Roadmap for Trump

Could the transition offer a plausible reset in US-Latin American relations? While Biden pushed hard for Southern Command – stationed in Florida – to embark on operational missions including countering drug trafficking in Peru and expanding bilateral efforts in Southern Cone countries such as Argentina, other strategic attempts to counter Russia, Iran and China in the region were evidently less effective. Trump might play his cards differently.

During Trump’s previous administration, he and his advisors were wary of the Colombian peace process, and time may have proven him partially right as the demobilisation of guerrilla and other combatant groups has led to a fight between new splinter criminal groups controlling territories on the border with Ecuador, a peaceful but corruptible country that in the last four years has seen an increase in drug, gold and people trafficking. 

The elected president might continue his staunch support for the Venezuelan opposition, as manifested in 2019 when he praised opposition leader Juan Guaidó in his State of the Union address. With Argentina, Biden scored a major win by approving the sale of F-16 jet fighters to the Javier Milei administration. Trump will be ever more popular with Milei, who enjoys cosy relations with soon-to-be Director of Government Efficiency Elon Musk and is considered a VIP guest in Mar-a-Lago. 

Some of Trump’s main challenges will remain fixated in places where his conservative agenda clashes directly with anti-US sentiments and ongoing security threats. Haiti, for example, became a matter of national political debate in the US as migration under protected status was widely discussed during the final leg of the campaign. Trump promised to revoke such privileges, but recent calls for a new UN peacekeeping mission for the Caribbean country could force the US to be more benevolent towards the poorest country in the Hemisphere. 

Trump has called Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro a dictator, and the clearest signal on how his government will treat the region was probably given by his nomination of Marco Rubio – a staunch hawk towards Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela – for Secretary of State. Maduro, who practically deceived the Biden administration into believing he would honour the results of the July presidential elections in exchange for oil restrictions being lifted, has said that the Trump election offers a ‘new start’. It’s expected that Maduro will try to negotiate once more with the US government to try to find a way out of the disastrous position he is in. Rubio (born in Miami to immigrant parents from Cuba), whose senatorial experience on Latin American issues make him a tough counterpart, shouldn’t fall for any of Maduro’s tricks.

Pending Matters

While the southern border will be a major security issue for Trump, it would be shortsighted not to attend to the root causes of the insecurities flowing north via Central America. Among Rubio’s many challenges, he will have to deal with allies such as El Salvador’s recently re-elected Nayib Bukele, whose measures on crime – in the eyes of Republicans – have drastically alleviated the outgoing migration and associated criminality that otherwise reach US soil. Bukele’s crackdown on gangs, including the violent MS-13, pleased Trump’s inner circle before and still find admiration in Washington. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General who withdrew his nomination, suggested that Bukele’s iron-fist incarceration policy was a model to emulate. In July, Gaetz visited El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, a maximum security prison built for holding organised crime leaders.

Rubio will have to deal in the short term with left-wing presidents in Chile and Colombia who have not aligned completely with the White House on issues such as the Ukraine war and Israel’s conflict against Hamas. There will be rough edges to smooth out with Gabriel Boric and Gustavo Petro until both countries elect new leaders in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Trump will have a longer time to improve relations with Mexico, especially on trade tariffs, with the recently elected Claudia Sheinbaum inheriting a foreign policy of give and take with the US from her predecessor Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). After initial criticism, AMLO changed gears with the first Trump administration, aiming to nurture good relations and eventually signing the US, Mexico and Canada trade agreement in 2020. He even recently called Trump ‘a friend’. With Biden, Mexico centred its diplomatic efforts on migration control and keeping commercial policy towards China at a level comfortable enough not to irritate the US Trade Department. If Trump rows back on the trade tariff threats he’s been issuing towards Mexico, bilateral relations could become based on nearshoring talks to integrate North American value chains.

Rubio, Hegseth, Trujillo and the Admiral

On 7 November, Admiral Alvin Holsey became the new US Southern Command chief in a ceremony marked by firsts as the previous commander, General Laura Richard – the first ever woman to lead SOUTCHOM – passed the baton to the first ever African-American commander. An overhauled SOUTHCOM could offer the region a fresh sense of partnership to tackle shared military and security concerns. 

More importantly, Holsey could enjoy support from his political boss in Washington. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon, spent a tour as a National Guardsman in Cuba where he served in Guantanamo Bay as an infantry platoon leader. Another man to be looking at is Carlos Trujillo, Trump’s ambassador to the Organisation of American States between 2017 and 2021. Born in New York to Cuban-exile parents, Trujillo had a key job in securing the Latino vote during the recent presidential campaign. He is rumoured to have a new role in dealing with the Western Hemisphere. 

The combination of both Hegseth and Rubio’s experience could become a dominant force in the Washington establishment when it comes to revamping Latin American and Caribbean relations. The mixed diplomatic and military agenda led currently from Washington and Florida might go well beyond the usual foreign affairs and defence areas to include wider topics such as irregular migration, climate change and digital security. Cyberspace was one of the first issues the Pentagon pushed under the first Trump administration, with a string of partnerships signed with Chile, Argentina and Brazil. Politics aside, if Hegseth and Rubio are eager to do more policy work in the Western Hemisphere, the US-Latin America relationship could quickly turn from one of neglect to mutual appreciation.

© RUSI, 2024

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