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Since returning to the White House in 2025, President Trump has made the Western Hemisphere a top priority in U.S. foreign policy. After a buildup of naval forces in the Caribbean accompanied by public rhetoric of “narcoterrorism,” the 2026 new year witnessed the capture and detention of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on weapons and drug trafficking charges. Trump capped off Operation ABSOLUTE RESOLVE with threats of similar action against Greenland, Colombia, Iran, and Mexico, and suggested that Cuba would self-destruct without its Venezuelan lifeline.

With the declaration of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” and the return to open U.S. military interventionism in Latin America, the American public is once again paying attention to a region that has generally been neglected since the end of the Cold War. Much of the news media commentary suffers from a blinkered historical view. The purpose of this article is to correct some of the most common misunderstandings in contemporary public discourse and to apply insights from over a decade of historical research on U.S.–Soviet–Latin American relations.

The Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary

The first popular misconception relates to the Monroe Doctrine and its history. Many are declaring the “Donroe Doctrine” to be a return to form for the United States. These commentators tend to mischaracterize the Monroe Doctrine as a statement of U.S. “ownership” of the Western Hemisphere. The declaration, drafted by John Quincy Adams and buried in the text of President James Monroe’s 1823 speech to Congress, was crafted in the context of South American wars of national liberation from Spanish colonialism and was intended to signal to the Europeans that any attempt to reclaim their colonies in the Western Hemisphere via force of arms would be unwelcome. In 1823, the United States was very far from possessing the sort of naval power necessary to enforce this challenge to the European great powers, and though diplomats initially protested, the “doctrine” was largely ignored.

The “Donroe Doctrine” is much more akin to the Roosevelt Corollary, issued at the turn of the twentieth century, which asserted the U.S. right to police the hemisphere. Inspired by Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the expansion of the U.S. Navy and transformed the United States into an empire. After the war of 1898, the United States assumed colonial or quasi-colonial control over Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and would go on to invade and occupy several other Caribbean countries, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Additionally, Mahan and Roosevelt both agreed that the United States must secure ownership of any future transoceanic canal. In 1903, the state of Panama was born through a U.S.-instigated secession from Colombia after the country’s Senate rejected the terms of the proposed Hay-Herrán treaty, which would have granted Washington a 100-year lease on the narrow isthmus of Panama, which was part of Colombia at the time. The United States obtained leasing rights and held them until President Jimmy Carter finalized a new treaty with Panamanian President Omar Torrijos in 1977. Current accusations that the Panamanian government has allowed the canal to be taken over by the Chinese are unfounded and out of touch with the enormous value the Panamanian people place on sovereignty and control of their own territory and resources.

The Role of Oil

Another topic that has gotten much play in the public debate and news media is oil. Venezuela is home to the world’s largest untapped crude oil reserve. However, many commentators are missing the point that U.S. control of Venezuelan oil is aimed more at denying access to U.S. adversaries than supplying domestic markets. The United States is a net energy exporter and does not rely on Venezuelan crude. The Cuban communist regime, however, is dependent on Venezuelan oil, and the island’s economy is currently weathering the most disastrous economic conditions since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though Venezuelan oil shipments were already declining due to Maduro’s severe economic mismanagement, conditions in Cuba have deteriorated even further, and the Cuban regime is cracking down on human rights activists who may feel emboldened by Maduro’s overthrow.

The presence of oil is a necessary but not sufficient condition for explaining the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. Washington has long opposed Latin American leaders who refuse to support U.S. policy. After Hugo Chávez was elected in 1999, the George W. Bush administration objected to both his left-populist economic policies and his foreign policy agenda. Chávez criticized the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as an imperialist war for oil, and forged alliances with Cuba and Russia. He formed a close friendship with Fidel Castro, who served as a mentor to the younger leader and offered guidance on navigating relations with both the United States and Russia. Castro had learned key lessons from his experiences with the superpowers during the Cold War, including the importance of South-South solidarity in the face of great-power accord, like the one negotiated between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the missile crisis in 1962.

Lessons from the Cold War

Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries had also learned lessons from the 1954 CIA-backed military coup in Guatemala. Ernesto “Che” Guevara had been in Guatemala at the time and left convinced that if only President Jacobo Arbenz had armed the workers and peasants, they would have fought to keep him in power. For Guevara, the most urgent task facing any revolution was to disband the regularly constituted armed forces and arm the people to fight the forces of reaction, which would be swift and merciless. After taking power in Cuba in 1959, Castro applied these lessons, purging the armed forces and establishing revolutionary defense committees to serve as the “eyes and ears” of the revolution. He would go on to help Chávez “coup-proof” the Venezuelan armed forces.

U.S. support of the unsuccessful military coup against Chávez in 2002 replicated a repeated error of Washington’s Cold War foreign policy, radicalizing the government it failed to replace. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961, Cuban public support coalesced around the regime, which Castro declared communist for the first time. The ill-fated invasion was the proximate cause of the missile crisis, as it convinced Khrushchev that Washington would not tolerate the existence of the Cuban revolution. Not only did the United States fail to dislodge Castro, but its repeated efforts to do so only strengthened his regime. Economic sanctions, assassination attempts, and support for Cuban exile attacks provided the Cuban communists a lightning rod for domestic criticism. Ultimately, Washington facilitated the regime’s survival by enabling it to avoid accountability for its own disastrous economic policies.

In 2014, President Barack Obama enacted targeted sanctions on Venezuelan officials in response to concerns over corruption and human rights violations. Despite decades of evidence from the Cuban example that sanctions are incapable of achieving regime change, in 2017, Trump vastly expanded the sanctions against Venezuela. The express intent was to create so much suffering that the people and the armed forces would rise up and overthrow Maduro. The same logic was employed against Castro.

The Fate of Communism in Latin America

Viewing hemispheric problems primarily through the lens of security, U.S. policymakers have tended to neglect underlying causes of violence and instability: poverty, inequality, and state oppression, all of which enhanced the ideological appeal of Marxism. The U.S. response to the rise of armed guerrilla movements was to empower the armed forces and security services of U.S. allies, creating opportunities for despotic rulers to govern through force and intimidation. This has led to cycles of revolution and counterrevolution.

For their part, the Russians have tended to view relations with Latin America as partly open to negotiation with the United States for concessions in what Moscow considers its own “sphere of influence” or “near abroad.” Although the Russian foreign minister condemned the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Putin has so far remained uncharacteristically silent. Those who are suggesting the overthrow of Maduro is a strategic blow to Moscow are missing the point. Freedom of action in Ukraine and the former Soviet space is far more important to Putin than Latin America will ever be.

The chance of a peaceful collapse of communism in Cuba is not nil. The long-suffering Cuban people are ready for a change, though their identity is rooted in being the David to Washington’s Goliath and in a humanitarian foreign policy that provides aid (especially in the medical field) to countries around the world. U.S. bellicosity, furthermore, only fuels the anti-American ideology that fires the communist left in Latin America. Regardless of what comes next, long-term stability in the region requires a serious and sustained commitment to regional multilateral diplomacy and respectful cooperation with U.S. allies and partners.

Dr. Michelle D. Paranzino is T.C. Sass Chair in Maritime Irregular Warfare and Director of the Latin America Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College. The opinions expressed here are hers alone and do not represent those of her employer or any other part of the U.S. government.