- US National Security Strategy limits American influence to the Western Hemisphere
- Fareed Zakaria says Trump’s vision shrinks US global power to a regional role
- The NSS reaffirms Monroe Doctrine focusing on Latin America as US sphere
US President Donald Trump's recently published National Security Strategy narrows the country's geopolitical influence to the Western Hemisphere and self-downgrades it to a regional power, according to foreign affairs expert Fareed Zakaria.
"The US has been the most dominant power in the world and yet Trump's vision of America is to retreat, to shrink, and to shred its influence," Zakaria told NDTV Network's Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal in a televised interview.
The NSS, put out by the White House earlier this month, defines Latin America as an exclusive zone of US influence, reorients the country toward the Western Hemisphere and reiterates the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine and a 'Trump Corollary' to it.
After reading the NSS, Zakaria said he thought the title of the 29-page document should be 'Make America A Regional Power Again', a quip on Trump's political slogan 'Make America Great Again'. "For 80 years, the US has been a global power, now we want to be a regional power."
He said Latin America, economically, is of no consequence to the US as China is a larger trading partner with most countries in the region.
"Trump is obsessed with the region. The only thing world's most powerful country could now think about is migrants and drug boats," Zakaria said, referring to the current tensions with Venezuela's Maduro regime.
The Trump NSS explicitly defines all migration from Latin America as 'undesirable', insists that the US can militarily strike 'drug cartels' and counter the multifaceted elements of China's presence by pushing it out of ports and other critical infrastructure and limiting its economic engagement with the region.
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