For decades, Washington has cast its gaze across the oceans—fixated on wars in the Middle East, rivalries in Asia, and crises in Europe. But as global challenges stretch America thin, a growing chorus inside the Trump administration is asking a different question: What happened to our own hemisphere?

That’s the theme running through a recent Breaking Battlegrounds conversation with Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas Program and Head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone pressed Berg on how the Trump administration views the Monroe Doctrine—and whether “America First” might now mean reclaiming influence closer to home.

A Return to the Monroe Doctrine — with a Modern Twist

Berg didn’t hesitate to say it: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.
While it may look different in the 21st century, its core principle—keeping great-power rivals out of the Western Hemisphere—remains a guiding force.

“What this administration is doing,” Berg explained, “is bringing our attention back to the Americas in a way that many administrations in the past haven’t.”

He pointed to early drafts of the National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy, which prioritize the Western Hemisphere as a core focus of U.S. policy.
For the Trump team, that’s not nostalgia—it’s strategic necessity.

“When I teach international relations,” Berg said, “I tell my students: you can’t be a globally influential power unless you’re a regionally influential power.”

And for two decades, the U.S. has been anything but. While America’s attention was fixed on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, China quietly built its economic and political footprint across Latin America, investing billions and winning influence where Washington retreated.

Refocusing the Map

Berg argued that it’s “sound foreign policy” to shift focus back to the Western Hemisphere—not as a retreat from global engagement, but as a way to strengthen America’s foundation of influence.

The idea isn’t to abandon global priorities like China or Ukraine, but to make the Americas a co-equal focus in the era of great-power competition.
“If we clean up our own neighborhood,” Berg noted, “we’ll have more leverage everywhere else.”

This renewed regional focus could help the U.S. counter Chinese advances in Latin America’s infrastructure, digital, and energy sectors—all areas where Beijing has gained ground while the U.S. looked away.

The Challenge: Partners and Capacity

But as Sam Stone and Chuck Warren pointed out, there’s a catch: America is stretched thin.

With crises in Ukraine, ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and Chinese aggression in the Pacific, Washington’s foreign policy bandwidth is near its limit.
That’s where, Berg said, partners must fill the gaps.

The Trump administration, he argued, needs to articulate a clearer framework for how allies—from Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea—can complement U.S. objectives in the Western Hemisphere.

“There might be areas where we want to compete with China,” Berg said, “but frankly, we don’t offer a particularly good alternative. So we should welcome that a European or a Japanese company fills that role—just not a PRC state-owned one.”

It’s a practical, layered vision: the U.S. doesn’t have to build everything itself—but it must ensure the right players are doing the building.

America First, Region First

In essence, the Trump administration’s evolving approach to Latin America isn’t isolationism—it’s prioritization.
It’s the belief that global power begins in the neighborhood.

The Monroe Doctrine may be nearly 200 years old, but as Berg put it, its logic still holds: to lead abroad, America must first lead at home—and that starts in the Americas.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Continuing on now with Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas Program and Head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Follow him on X at Ryan Berg, PhD.

**Chuck Warren: **Ryan, when we post on social media, the things that really get a lot of attention for, you we have about 150 million engagements a month is anything on Iran and the Monroe Doctrine really gets a lot of engagement and likes. This seems to be a very MAGA thing. This is our backyard. Stay out of our backyard.

**Sam Stone: **That is so MAGA.

**Chuck Warren: **Yeah, it’s just, you know, it’s America first is the Monroe Doctrine. How do you see that and how do you think the Trump administration sees that?

**Ryan Berg: **Well, I think that the general precepts of the Monroe Doctrine are still very much guiding principle for the United States, but also for this administration. And what this administration is doing is bringing our attention back to the Americas in a way that many administrations in the past haven’t. The reporting on the National Defense Strategy document and the National Security Strategy document, which should be released in short order here, basically indicate that the Western Hemisphere is going to take a pride of place.

And you know, when I teach my university students over at Catholic University, we do IR 101. And IR 101 is that you can’t be a globally influential power unless you’re a regionally influential power. And I think the administration feels as though we’ve been for 20 years and under various administrations of both parties focused on other geographies of the world and other issues. And that has accrued to China’s benefit mostly in our own shared neighborhood.

And so we need to come back closer to home and focus on cleaning up some of those issues. In order to then accrue more global influence, capability of being able to focus on issues in other theaters of the world. I think it’s sound foreign policy. I think there’s a good reason to swing our attention back to the Western hemisphere, potentially make it a co-equal concern with the Great Power competition with China. And I’m looking forward to seeing the national defense strategy and national security strategy operationalize much of that instinct.

**Sam Stone: **I would tend to agree that it is high time that the US re-engages as the central authority or central figure throughout the Americas. But I wonder, from what you’re seeing, if the Trump administration is doing enough to get buy-in from our international partners around the globe and the understanding that we cannot be stretched to every corner of the globe.

In other words, we have crises in Ukraine, we have the situation still in Gaza and Israel, you have China moving in the East, we have Latin America we’re dealing with. At some point, our focus has to be narrowed to be effective and our partners have to step up. Are they really getting that message across?

**Ryan Berg: **Well, I think there’s still there’s still a way to go. And I think we could we need to articulate, of course, how we want partners to complement some of our strategies. I mean, there’s even room for partners in Latin America, for example. There might be areas where we want to compete with China, but frankly, we don’t offer a particularly good alternative.

And we should welcome that a European or a Canadian or a Japanese or a South Korean company would play that role instead if there isn’t an American company, just that it’s not a PRC or even worse, PRC state-owned enterprise building out, the infrastructure or doing the partnerships on ICT infrastructure or on cloud computing or AI.

Whatever the issue might be where we want to compete, I think we need to be clearer about where partners can complement some of those US instincts to compete. I think that’s some of the next steps in articulating this interest in the Western Hemisphere, figuring out which kind of gaps partners can fill and ultimately complement U.S. policy.

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