By GIANCARLO SUMMA & MONICA HERZ
The reaffirmation of Central America and the Caribbean as a zone of direct US influence reopens a long and bitter page in history and deepens the crisis of the multilateral system
Exactly 80 years ago today, the leaders of the three main Allied powers in World War II (the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain) met in Yalta, a resort town in Crimea on the Black Sea coast, for the last summit of heads of state before the military defeat of Nazism, which would occur three months later. Between February 4 and 11, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill and their respective delegations sealed agreements that would have fundamental consequences for the future of international politics.
Western leaders agreed that future governments of Eastern European countries bordering the Soviet Union should be “friendly” to the Soviet regime. The Soviets would also have a zone of influence in Manchuria after Japan's surrender. And finally, all parties agreed to the American plan for voting procedures in the Security Council of the future United Nations, which would have five permanent members (including China and France), each with a veto on all decisions.
Eight decades later, the British Empire and the Soviet Union are only in history books, and China has become the emerging global power. The UN and the multilateral system are in a crisis of identity and legitimacy, and are suffering an unprecedented attack from the very country that facilitated the creation of the Organization. Back in the White House, Donald Trump seems to want to turn back the clock of history. In his inauguration speech, he pointed to William McKinley, the last US president in the 1897th century (1901-XNUMX) and initiator of American imperialism, as his inspiring model.
William McKinley was a staunch protectionist and determined expansionist who defeated Spain in 1898, giving the United States control of Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines in Asia. In the same year, he annexed Hawaii, giving him control of shipping lanes in the Pacific Ocean. His successor, Teddy Roosevelt, continued his expansionist policy, articulating a strategy he called “the diplomacy of theBig stick“, whose motto was “speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far”. Donald Trump does not speak softly: in a matter of days he announced that he wanted to acquire Greenland (a territory of Denmark), regain control of the Panama Canal, and rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. In a joke and a jest, he also said that Canada should become the 51st state of the USA.
As for the cudgel, Donald Trump has been announcing daily bursts of aggressive and unilateral measures, both at the national and international level. On Inauguration Day alone, January 20, 2025, he signed 26 different “executive orders” which, among other attacks on the multilateral system, determine the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the exit from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the immediate freezing for 90 days of humanitarian assistance and international cooperation funds.
Two weeks later, billionaire Elon Musk, who is in charge of the newly created Office of Government Efficiency, announced that he and Trump would completely close the Agency for International Development (USAID), which was created in 1961 by then-President John F. Kennedy. On February 4, the exact anniversary of the start of the Yalta Conference 80 years ago, Donald Trump signed another executive order, announcing that in 180 days it should be completed “an analysis of all intergovernmental organizations international organizations of which the United States is a member […] and provide recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties.”
In the same move, Donald Trump also announced that the US would withdraw from UNRWA (the UN agency that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees) and the UN Human Rights Council, and that it would reconsider its membership in UNESCO. Two days later, the White House announced that the president would impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court, accusing it of targeting the United States and its allies, such as Israel.
Donald Trump has also threatened to burn the bridges of the trade globalization that has shaped the world in recent decades. On January 30, he announced the imposition of 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada (in direct contradiction to the North American Free Trade Agreement that dates back to 1994 and was amended by the first Trump administration in 2018). The tariffs against Mexico and Canada were provisionally suspended for 30 days on February 3 after the two countries promised to militarize their borders with the United States to stop migrants and illegal trafficking.
By constantly creating new facts and making explosive statements, Trump manages to control the news and the global (and domestic) political agenda, preventing his adversaries from organizing or attempting to react effectively. Beyond shock tactics, however, a clear strategy seems to be emerging in international politics, which aims to marginalize or even destroy spaces for negotiation, mediation and multilateral cooperation (the UN system and other international organizations), putting bilateral relations between states, the use of coercion (military or economic), and the areas of influence of the great powers back at the center of international relations.
The United Nations was originally an initiative conceived and directed by the United States: following Roosevelt's instructions, the State Department began preparing secret plans for the post-war period in 1939, shortly after the invasion of Poland by Nazi troops. From 1942 onwards, Roosevelt began to promote the idea of the “four policemen” who, after the end of the war, would guarantee global peace – the “big four” being the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China. When the UN was finally created, at the San Francisco Conference (April-June 1945), the Cold War was not yet fully on the horizon, and the purpose of the new organization was essentially limited to “preserve succeeding generations from the scourge of war".
Over the decades, a web of dozens of agencies, funds and specific programmes has been built around the United Nations Secretariat, the number of member countries has grown from the initial 51 to the current 193, and the scope of the UN system has become much broader and more ambitious. The expansion of the agenda of multilateral organisations, particularly since the end of the Cold War, however, has made clear a stark contrast between the practice of multilateralism and the authoritarian project of society defended by Trump and other far-right leaders, such as Javier Milei, Nerendra Modi or Viktos Orbán.
In general terms, the multilateral agenda is cosmopolitan and socially progressive; it supports the promotion of gender equality, sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, global human mobility, sustainable development and a green economic transition to combat the climate crisis. The idea of progress in terms of development, inclusion, freedoms, rights and democracy clashes with the aspiration to return to clear social, racial and geographical hierarchies and uncontested patriarchal dominance, with the traditional family and religion as cornerstones of national (and nationalist) projects.
The far-right worldview directly conflicts with one of the main pillars of the post-World War II system of global governance: cooperation among member states in the United Nations system and other regional and international organizations. The underlying principle of this collaboration is that a relative, mutually agreed and fully negotiated loss of national sovereignty is necessary to face global challenges (such as the climate crisis) and achieve international public goods and shared objectives (such as the Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the UN).
Donald Trump’s “America First” policy ignores this deep interdependence in ways that are both grotesque and dangerous. In concrete terms, the diplomatic efforts of far-right-led national governments have focused on creating obstacles to specific issues or agendas (such as gender equality or the phasing out of fossil fuels) or on attempting to redesign entire sectors of the multilateral system that are deemed to be contrary to conservative moral values or a narrow view of national interests.
Donald Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021), like Jair Bolsonaro’s government in Brazil (2019-2022), was somewhat hesitant in its attacks on domestic democratic institutions and the multilateral system. Both Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro oscillated between respecting established procedures and norms and attempting to throw the board up in the air and try to establish new rules consistent with their authoritarian and reactionary vision. Attempts at radical rupture, both in Washington and in Brasília, only occurred at the time of the transition to democratic normality, and were defeated. Back in the White House, Donald Trump metaphorically wielded the chainsaw wielded by Javier Milei in Argentina, determined, this time, to destroy entire sectors of the state apparatus and not leave standing any rules, domestic or international, that could limit his actions. There will be no dialogue or gradualism in the implementation of his project of returning to the era of brutal unilateralism.
In bilateral relations with countries considered smaller or less threatening, a combination of threats and the imposition of tariffs and sanctions has already emerged as the preferred instrument for exercising power by the new US administration. Donald Trump's brutal stance in the face of Colombia's attempted response to the deportation of illegal immigrants on military planes marked the hallmark of these new times: Colombia was threatened with tariffs and sanctions if it did not adapt to Washington's plans, and President Gustavo Petro ended up bowing.
Likewise, in Panama, the destination of the first international mission of the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to appease Donald Trump and his threats to reoccupy the canal, President José Raul Mulino ended up announcing on February 3 that the country would leave the New Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative), the gigantic global infrastructure investment plan promoted by Beijing.
In relations with Russia and China, however, Donald Trump has been adopting very different tones. He has already shown some sympathy for the Russian position regarding the invasion of Ukraine, declared that he would not have allowed the conflict to begin if he had been president in 2022, and announced that the US is talking “very seriously” with Russia in order to “end the war.” Vladimir Putin returned the favor by embracing the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden’s election was a fraud.
“We have always had a business-like, pragmatic, but also trusting relationship with the current US president,” Vladimir Putin said on January 23. in an interview to Russian state television. “I cannot disagree with him that if he had been president, if they had not stolen his victory in 2020, the crisis that arose in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”
Speaking via video conference to business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 23, Donald Trump said he might try to negotiate a new arms control agreement with Vladimir Putin and possibly with China. It seems highly unlikely that China would agree to such negotiations until its nuclear development reaches some parity with the United States and Russia, something that can take up to two decadesUntil then, any agreement will likely be bilateral between Washington and Moscow.
China is, for now, a powerful economic adversary more than a military one. But even on the issue of tariffs, Donald Trump has acted more softly with China than with Mexico and Canada. He announced an additional 10% tax on imports of Chinese products; China, for its part, replied that it would file a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and that, if necessary, it would take “countermeasures”. With this reaction, China has publicly demonstrated its interest in preserving at least some of the rules of multilateralism that Donald Trump intends to undermine.
Trump's stance towards other major powers seems to indicate a search for negotiating spheres of influence, along the lines of negotiations in the 19th century between European colonial countries, or between the victorious powers of the Second World War at the Yalta Conference and throughout the Cold War.
The “return of geopolitics” to the center of international relations has been discussed by power experts such as Stefano Guzzini since the end of the Cold War, more than three decades ago, but at this moment the theme assumes new relevance by crushing other forms of organization of international relations as norms or shared values. Geoeconomics accompanies the competition focused on territory with disputes for technological, productive and commercial hegemony.
In this context, balance and stability can be achieved through deterrence with a demonstration of military force and as the great powers negotiate (or renegotiate) old and new zones of influence. During the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the convergence on the need to avoid a nuclear war at all costs ended up generating a certain respect for the Soviet and North American zones of influence – at the time, China was a marginal player in the dispute for global supremacy.
The aggressiveness of the Trumpist far right, however, did not occur in a vacuum. In Ukraine and Crimea, as before in Iraq, Libya and Kosovo, the unilateral use of force has reopened a Pandora's box that had been closed for decades. States have returned to using their military machines based on more or less short-sighted or cynical political calculations, without reference to multilateral institutions and avoiding prior negotiations that exhaust all possible diplomatic solutions to latent conflicts.
The invasion of Ukraine has once again highlighted the inability of the multilateral system to respond to threats to security and international law when they are caused by the actions of one of the nuclear powers with a permanent seat and veto power on the UN Security Council. The behavior of these powers is also reflected in the attitudes and actions of smaller states – from Israel to Ethiopia, from Saudi Arabia to Rwanda – which do not hesitate to use weapons against neighboring countries, confident in the impunity guaranteed by force and in the political protection offered by some of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
In a world of new disputes and negotiations over zones of influence, Latin America has acquired an unprecedented relevance for US foreign policy for over a century; Marco Rubio is also the first Secretary of State of Latin origin (his parents were Cuban) in the history of the United States. The dispute for economic and political influence between China and the US is part of the recent geostrategic scenario in the region. The possibility of reaffirming Central America and the Caribbean as a zone of direct US influence and the Western Hemisphere as a sort of controlled neighborhood reopens a long and bitter page in history that seemed closed since the end of the cycle of US-backed military dictatorships during the Cold War.
Latin America and the Caribbean have a long multilateral diplomatic tradition: 19 countries in the region were among the 51 founding members of the UN in 1945. But over the decades, all attempts at greater regional political integration have failed, including during the “pink wave” of progressive governments between 1999 and 2015. The institutions that still exist are paralyzed or impotent. The president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, tried to call an emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss the mass deportations of Latin immigrants ordered by Donald Trump, but was forced to cancel it “due to lack of consensus,” as she explained on her social media account X.
Donald Trump’s two most enthusiastic allies in the region – Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayb Bukele – have been responsible for thwarting any attempt to find a common response to this first diplomatic crisis. The message is clear: each country is on its own in the face of renewed US aggression.
*Giancarlo Summa, journalist and political scientist, is a researcher at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and co-founder of the Latin American Institute for Multilateralism (ILAM).
*Monica Herz is a full professor at the Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
Originally published on the website The Conversation.
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