Trump’s “Donro Doctrine” and China are headed for conflict in Latin America

The conversation in Washington right now is full of talk President Donald TrumpA new national security strategy and its framework for dominance in the Western Hemisphere known as the “Donroe Doctrine” is a modern corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This debate was raging in political circles until the end of last year, but it was intensified by the recent US operation in Venezuela. Almost immediately, the familiar question resurfaced: What will China do next?

There is a lot of speculation in this Fixed to Taiwan. Will Beijing use the kinetic US action in Venezuela as an excuse or precedent to move against the island? This question may be understandable, and its implications are relevant. However, many believe that this question is wrong to ask.

China will not use Venezuela as an excuse to invade Taiwan. That’s not how Beijing thinks, and that’s not how it works. A serious analysis requires moving away from treating China as a reactive power and engaging with a more consequential and far more uncomfortable question. It requires reading and discussing China’s own strategic documents regarding our region with the same rigor now applied to the US National Security Strategy, and taking them seriously on its own terms.

Newly released from China The third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean is not a press release or a reactive and reflexive impulse generated by Washington. It is a long-standing, well-thought-out, forward-looking and deliberately structured approach to achieving China’s long-term goals. It includes the range of public administration tools it intends to use and the ways it plans to support its influence. This institutional plan is closely related to political mechanisms, financing channels, commercial incentives, and a theory of the legitimacy of its presence and participation in the region based on Global South cooperation rather than overt claims of regional hegemony or 18th-century cosplay.

The NSS clear about the intention. It commits the United States to freeing the hemisphere from “foreign hostile attack or possession of key assets,” securing access to “key strategic locations,” and denying control of “strategically important assets” to non-hemispheric competitors. Venezuela becomes a case in point in this statement: evidence that Washington is willing to act kinetically to change political realities when it believes access, stability, or strategic position are threatened.

But the Trump NSS also reveals a central analytic vulnerability. It could give the United States spheres of influence – give a region here, annex a region there – and implicitly assume that “regional powers” would accept the deal. China does not see itself as a regional power. It sees itself as a global power with global interests, ambitions, investments and supply chain demands, and with an agency to protect and expand those interests in America’s backyard. The NSS may publish the findings; it cannot announce the presence or goals of another major power, especially one as deeply entrenched in the hemisphere as China. China’s Latin American strategy is designed to withstand just such episodic shocks.

How China shows its influence on the whole world

Start with political architecture. Beijing does not restrict trade or hydrocarbons, but both It is very important for Beijing. Instead, he coordinates head of state diplomacy, exchanges between intergovernmental committees, legislative exchanges, political party interactions and CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a 33-nation regional political cooperation, trade technology coordination and finance, people-to-people contacts. The goal is clear: to institutionalize influence in “multi-level, multi-channel” ways with a structure that dilutes any single pressure point campaign in the United States. It is much more difficult to “translate” a region when influence is simultaneously so profound through presidents, parties, parliaments, technocrats, students, consumers, and subnational actors.

The economy reinforces this architecture. China sees its involvement – real or not – as co-production and co-dependence rather than exploitation or charity. The strategy focuses on infrastructure connectivity, logistics management, digital infrastructure, smart cities, industrial parks, industrial cooperation and export support. These projects create domestic constituencies: jobs, contracts, port capacity, wages and broad political winners in the region. Financial cooperation further sweetens the model with local currency settlement, renminbi clearing arrangements, credit and debt swap lines, and even proposed Panda bonds. The goal is simple: reduce U.S. exposure to financial leverage, political pressure points, and the threat of sanctions over time.

Trump’s US encourages oil companies to invest Venezuela has offered a number of security guarantees, but a familiar caveat has emerged: leaders have stressed that investment is also dependent on long-term financing, risk-sharing and enforceable contracts – China regularly supports its firms through political banks and export loans, and Washington has not yet signaled a clear willingness to deploy US international financial partnership instruments. (DFC), Ex-Im Bank or multilateral finance.

And these financial support and aid instruments should not be conducted in a vacuum; when done well, they are designed to influence strategic physical assets—natural resources, ports, logistics hubs, energy infrastructure, and transit corridors—where economics and geopolitics inevitably intersect.

$500 billion trade, Panama Canal conflict

Scale is important. Trade between China and Latin America will exceed $500 billion in 2024, and the region represents more than 670 million consumers, many of whom are interested in Chinese products for price, availability and, increasingly, quality. These are not marginal markets. They are structural to China’s global growth model and export strategy.

Beijing is also open about its interest in strategic resources – if selectively. Along with language about long-term supply agreements and prices in national currencies, energy and essential minerals feature prominently. Access covers the value chain from production to disposal. For US politicians, investors and CEOs, this is a commercial pillar that NSS must contend with. This is not about nostalgia for the Monroe Doctrine; it is a 21st century strategy to achieve multiple results through modern tools and persuasive rhetoric.

The Panama Canal brings these strategies into direct conflict. China’s policy document sees ports, logistics and maritime cooperation as primary means of development and influence, and latent strategic assets to be used in the event of a crisis in a military conflict with the regional hegemon (the US). In addition, the NSS clearly identifies “key strategic locations” and recognizes how commercial infrastructure can be modified for military use. Panama – more so than Venezuela – is where these approaches collide the most. Ongoing debate over port concessions and terminal control Both Washington and Beijing emphasize that the canal itself and its nearby assets are strategic rather than commercial in nature.

So will US action in Venezuela change the calculus? In the long run, no.

This raises risk premiums for many—Chinese firms, regional leaders, and global companies caught between compliance regimes—complicating logistics and supply chains and further weaponizing market access. This prompts some governments to hedge carefully, demand higher “insurance” from Beijing, or seek stronger economic and security guarantees from Washington. But that won’t undo the foundations China has spent two decades building: trade corridors, credit relations, political networks, now a clear push for high-tech cooperation — from EVs, AI and satellites to aerospace and digital trade — and closer alignment with where many Latin American economies want to go.

Zoom out one level and the logic stretches north. Greenland and the Arctic are not separate stories; they are exactly the same set of arguments on ice. Washington limits Greenland through minerals, shipping routes and military access. Beijing views the Arctic as an international space with global stakes governed by international law, in which non-Arctic states have legitimate interests. If the US believes that industries can be secured through doctrine and decisive action, China’s operational assumption is the opposite. He argues that it focuses on the arguments that have been used for decades to justify US involvement in the Asia-Pacific region – that states have a right to global commons, that great states have global interests that must be protected, and that a long-term and stable presence in the region must be respected. China takes the same position regarding Latin America and Greenland.

Actions in Venezuela show that the Trump administration is more serious than its predecessors about restoring dominance in the hemisphere, and that the NSS is more than just rhetoric. But China is in no hurry to exit the Western Hemisphere. It lies deep. Small powers also have powers. Unless there are far richer incentives, defenses, or sustained pressures than a single Special Forces operation, they will not be ordered.

If Washington wants a hemisphere that chooses the United States over submission, it must compete with China’s full-stack approach: finance, infrastructure, technology, people-to-people exchanges, affordable products, political access, and a compelling narrative of partnership. A statement in the NSS and one dramatic operation are short-lived events. China’s involvement in Latin America is a long game, and the competition it unleashes will be neither quick nor simple.

—The author Devardrick McNeilManaging Director and Senior Policy Analyst at Longview Global and CNBC Contributor