The Americas as a Strategic Battleground

We are entering a dangerous phase in global politics, one where speed, force, and unilateral action are beginning to matter more than law, legitimacy, or restraint. Great powers are increasingly willing to test the boundaries of sovereignty.

Just hours after we recorded this episode of The Great Power Show, the United States carried out a military operation in Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The operation sent a troubling signal of how power may be exercised in an emerging, more brutish international order. This is something that I intend to explore in future episodes.

In this episode, however, we step back and examine the deeper strategic context shaping American policy in the Western Hemisphere. To do that, I reached out to Dr. Evan Ellis, Latin America Research Professor and the General Douglas MacArthur Research Chair at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, and a former member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean.

We begin by looking at how the United States is re-prioritising the Western Hemisphere as a core strategic theatre. How are older ideas, such as the Monroe Doctrine, shaping contemporary American thinking? What does this have to do with strategic competition between the US and China? What are Chinese interests in Latin America and the Caribbean region? Are we entering a phase where great powers, including the US, are looking to secure their spheres of influence and perhaps will we see some sort of trade-offs between them in this context?

You can subscribe to Dr. Ellis’ substack here.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, don’t hesitate to reach out.