Doral, Florida — DORAL, FL (AP) — President Donald Trump He is scheduled to meet with Latin American leaders on Saturday at his Miami-area golf club as his administration looks to prove it remains committed. Increased focus of US foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere Even as it deals with the five crises around the world.
The gathering that was called “Shield of the Americas” The summit comes just two months after Trump ordered a bold American military operation to seize it Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro He and his wife were transferred to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges.
What looms on the horizon is Trump’s decision to join Israel Waging war on Iran One week ago, the conflict that left hundreds dead, Turbulent global markets and Destabilization in the Greater Middle East.
Trump’s time with Latin American leaders will be limited: He is also scheduled to head to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, ready to conduct a dignified transfer for Latin American leaders. The six American soldiers were killed In a Drone strike At the command center in Kuwait, one day after the United States and Israel launched their attack Military campaign against Iran.
But with the summit, Trump will look to shift attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment. He has pledged to reassert American hegemony in the region and step back from what he sees as years Chinese economic excesses in America’s backyard.
“Under previous leaders, we became obsessed with every other theater and every other border in the world except our own,” the Defense Minister said. Pete Hegseth He told regional leaders and defense ministers Who gathered in Florida this week for talks on combating drug cartels. “These elites underestimated our power and our presence in this hemisphere, and chose benign neglect that was not benign at all.”
The leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago confirmed they will participate in the rally at President Trump’s National Doral Miami, a golf resort where it is also scheduled to host the G20 summit later this year.
The idea of holding a summit of like-minded conservatives from across the hemisphere arose from the ashes of what would have been the 10th edition of the Summit of the Americas, which was canceled during the US military buildup off the coast of Venezuela last year.
The host Dominican Republic, under pressure from the White House, banned Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending the regional gathering. But after leftist leaders in Colombia and Mexico threatened to walk out in protest – and with Trump not committing to attend – Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader decided at the last minute to postpone the event, citing “deep differences” in the region.
The Shield of the Americas moniker is meant to speak to Trump’s vision of an “America First” foreign policy toward the region that leverages U.S. military and intelligence assets unseen in the region since the end of the Cold War.
However, it is noticeable that the two dominant powers in the region – Brazil and Mexico – as well as Colombia, will be noticeably absent, a power that has long been the focus of the US strategy to combat drugs in the region.
Richard Feinberg, who helped plan the first Summit of the Americas in 1994 while serving on the National Security Council in the Clinton White House, said the contrast could not be starker.
“The First Summit of the Americas, which brought together 34 countries and a carefully negotiated comprehensive agenda for regional competitiveness, expected inclusion, consensus and optimism,” said Feinberg, now a professor emeritus at the University of California-San Diego. “The hastily convened Shield of the Americas mini-summit evokes a crouched defensive stance, with about a dozen attendees clustered around one dominant figure.”
Since returning to the White House, Trump has made countering Chinese influence in the hemisphere a top priority. for him National security strategy She is promoting what she calls a “Trump corollary” to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine — which sought to prohibit European incursions into the Americas — by targeting Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation and investment in resource industries in the region.
The first display of the more forceful approach was Trump strong-arming Panama into withdrawing from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and reviewing long-term port contracts held by a Hong Kong-based company amid US threats to take back the Panama Canal.
More recently, the US arrest of Maduro and Trump’s pledge to “manage” Venezuela threaten to disrupt oil shipments to China – the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude before the raid – and bring one of Beijing’s closest allies in the region into Washington’s orbit. Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
But even leaders closely associated with Trump have been reluctant to sever ties with China, said Evan Ellis, an expert on Chinese engagement in the region at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
For many countries, China’s trade-focused diplomacy fills a critical financial vacuum in a region facing major development challenges ranging from poverty reduction to infrastructure bottlenecks. In return, Trump has cut foreign aid to the region while rewarding countries behind his crackdown on immigration — a policy widely unpopular across the hemisphere.
“The United States is offering tariffs, deportations and militarization to the region, while China is offering trade and investment,” said Kevin Gallagher, director of the Center for Global Development Policy at Boston University, who has written extensively on China’s economic diplomacy in the Americas. “It is better for the region’s leaders to remain neutral and hedged, so that they can take advantage of the growing rivalry between the United States and China for their own benefit.”
Before the summit, Trump announced that he had appointed Kristi Noem, whom he had just fired as Secretary of Homeland Security, as his special envoy for Shield of the Americas.
Noem said that Trump will announce a “major agreement” at the summit centered around “how to go after gangs and drug trafficking in the entire Western Hemisphere.”