A key part of Donald Trump’s policy for Latin America is the so-called Donroe Doctrine, which declares the fight against drug trafficking a priority of his national security and seeks to impose and expand the influence of the United States throughout the continent. The Pentagon points out that the new task force, named the Shield of the Americas, will be “the action arm” of the Southern Command, responsible for U.S. military activities in the region (except Mexico). Chile has not formally signed its integration, however, U.S. Ambassador Brandon Judd assured this Thursday that the South American country was “exercising” the Donroe Doctrine and that a government like José Antonio Kast’s facilitated its implementation. Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna responded this Friday that he does not know “what it means for Chile to accept the Monroe policy” and added that the country “has no statement in the sense of accepting that kind of thing.”
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“When I hear many saying that the Monroe Doctrine is bad, it makes me laugh, because Chile is exercising it as we speak,” Ambassador Judd stated in the panel The new role of the United States in Ibero-America, at the V Madrid Forum, the international far-right summit. Asked about Chile’s role in the Shield of the Americas, the regional strategy against drug trafficking promoted by Trump, the ambassador maintained that the Donroe Doctrine “is different in each country” and that the ambassadors themselves are “empowered to implement it as it fits” each reality. “The great thing about this is that when you have an administration like José Antonio Kast’s, it becomes very easy,” he pointed out.
Judd defined the Shield of the Americas as a new program that will “help Chile with the heart of the problem: organized crime” and that “will open opportunities.” He noted that the initiative is being built and “where we, united, can develop it and analyze how it will work in Chile and, subsequently, how Chile can, in turn, help other countries.” It is “a great program” that will allow President Kast “to do exactly what he was elected for: to go after organized crime and make Chile safer,” he concluded.
Asked about Judd’s statements, Pérez Mackenna explained this morning on T13 Radio that what exists are “open conversations with the United States on various topics, in matters of the broadest spectrum,” including the ongoing tariff negotiation, and stated that he did not know what the ambassador referred to with the Donroe Doctrine in Chile, but that he probably alluded “to the effort that we will make jointly with the countries of the region to combat transnational organized crime.” “That is what we are discussing to define what it means from a practical point of view” and acknowledged that it is “something in which Chile will have to participate, because alone we will not be able to defeat transnational organized crime.”
This is not the first time Ambassador Judd has been involved in controversy over this matter. A couple of weeks ago, in a rather unusual action, the U.S. diplomat shared on social media the Joint Security Declaration of the Conference of the Americas against Cartels signed by Defense Minister Fernando Barros on March 12, one day after he took office. The Defense Ministry ruled out that the signature implied Chile’s incorporation into coalition military operations and described the document as a “declaration of good intentions” or “interests,” not a binding agreement, while the Foreign Ministry has told local media that the possible adhesion to the Shield of the Americas is still under evaluation.
The Defense Ministry has been more distant from the Trump Administration. Barros rejected the Trumpian reversal of the Monroe Doctrine in mid-August by stating that “we are not anyone’s backyard,” and defended that “sovereignty, legislation, both the Constitution and the laws of each country, are respected first,” specifying that the fight against drug trafficking in Chile falls to the police, the Public Ministry, and the corresponding state agencies. The foreign minister, for his part, has been more generous. After meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pérez Mackenna described the United States as “Chile’s main strategic partner.” The definition caused discomfort in the opposition because the country’s main trading partner is China, with whom Washington maintains a tariff war that has also hit Chilean exporters. Additionally, according to the left, it confirms an ideological shift in diplomacy, away from the non-aligned pragmatism that has prevailed since the return to democracy in 1990.
