In 2013 Gallup conducted polls in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, and in each case found the United States the top answer to "What country is the greatest threat to peace in the world?" In 2017, Pew conducted polls in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, and found between 56% and 85% believing the United States to be a threat to their country. If the Monroe Doctrine is either gone or benevolent, why haven't any of the people impacted by it heard about that?
In 2022, at the Summit of the Americas hosted by the United States, only 23 of 35 nations sent representatives. The United States had excluded three nations, while several others boycotted, including Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Antigua and Barbuda.
Of course, the U.S. government always claims it is excluding or punishing or seeking to overthrow nations because they are dictatorships, not because they are defying U.S. interests. But, as I documented in my 2020 book 20 Dictators Currently Supported by the United States, of the world's 50 most oppressive governments at that time, by the U.S. government's own understanding, the United States militarily supported 48 of them, allowing (or even funding) weapons sales to 41 of them, providing military training to 44 of them, and providing funding to the militaries of 33 of them.
Latin America never needed U.S. military bases, and they should all be shut down right now. Latin America would always have been better off without U.S. militarism (or anyone else's militarism) and should be liberated from the disease immediately. No more weapons sales. No more weapons gifts. No more military training or funding. No more U.S. militarized training of Latin American police or prison guards. No more exporting south the disastrous project of mass incarceration. (A bill in Congress like the Berta Caceres Act that would cut off U.S. funding for military and police in Honduras as long as the latter are engaged in human rights abuses should be expanded to all of Latin America and the rest of the world, and made permanent without conditions; aid should take the form of financial relief, not armed troops.) No more war on drugs, abroad or at home. No more use of a war on drugs on behalf of militarism. No more ignoring the poor quality of life or the poor quality of healthcare that create and sustain drug abuse. No more environmentally and humanly destructive trade agreements. No more celebration of economic "growth" for its own sake. No more competition with China or anyone else, commercial or martial. No more debt. (Cancel it!) No more aid with strings attached. No more collective punishment through sanctions. No more border walls or senseless impediments to free movement. No more second-class citizenship. No more diversion of resources away from environmental and human crises into updated versions of the archaic practice of conquest. Latin America never needed U.S. colonialism. Puerto Rico, and all U.S. territories, should be permitted to choose independence or statehood, and along with either choice, reparations.
A major step in this direction could be taken by the U.S. government through the simple abolition of one little rhetorical practice: hypocrisy. You want to be part of a "rules-based order"? Then join one! There is one out there waiting for you, and Latin America is leading it.
Of the United Nations' 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5. The United States leads opposition to democratization of the United Nations and easily holds the record for use of the veto in the Security Council during the past 50 years.
The United States does not need to "reverse course and lead the world" as the common demand would have it on most topics where the United States is behaving destructively. The United States needs, on the contrary, to join the world and try to catch up with Latin America which has taken the lead on creating a better world. Two continents dominate the membership of the International Criminal Court and strive most seriously to uphold international law: Europe and the Americas south of Texas. Latin America leads the way in membership in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Virtually all of Latin America is part of a nuclear weapons free zone, out ahead of any other continent, apart from Australia.
Latin American nations join and uphold treaties as well or better than anywhere else on Earth. They have no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons -- despite having U.S. military bases. Only Brazil exports weapons and the amount is relatively tiny. Since 2014 in Havana, the over 30 member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States have been bound by a Declaration of a Zone of Peace.
In 2019, AMLO rejected a proposal from then-U.S. President Trump for a joint war against drug dealers, proposing in the process the abolition of war:
"The worst that could be, the worst thing we could see, would be war. Those who have read about war, or those who have suffered from a war, know what war means. War is the opposite of politics. I have always said that politics was invented to avoid war. War is synonymous with irrationality. War is irrational. We are for peace. Peace is a principle of this new government.
Authoritarians have no place in this government that I represent. It should be written out 100 times as punishment: we declared war and it did not work. That is not an option. That strategy failed. We will not be a part of that. . . . Killing is not intelligence, which requires more than brute force."
It's one thing to say you oppose war. It's another entirely to be placed in a situation in which many would tell you that war is the only option and use a superior option instead. Leading the way in demonstrating this wiser course is Latin America. On this slide is a list of examples.
Latin America offers numerous innovative models to learn from and develop, including many indigenous societies living sustainably and peacefully, including the Zapatistas using largely and increasingly nonviolent activism to advance democratic and socialist ends, and including the example of Costa Rica abolishing its military, placing that military in a museum where it belongs, and being the better off for it.
Latin America also offers models for something that is badly needed for the Monroe Doctrine: a truth and reconciliation commission.
Latin American nations, despite Colombia's partnership with NATO (unaltered apparently by its new government), have not been eager to join in a U.S.- and NATO-backed war between Ukraine and Russia, or to condemn or financially sanction only one side of it.
The task before the United States is to end its Monroe Doctrine, and to end it not only in Latin America but globally, and to not only end it but to replace it with the positive actions of joining the world as a law-abiding member, upholding the rule of international law, and cooperating on nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, disease epidemics, homelessness, and poverty. The Monroe Doctrine was never a law, and laws now in place forbid it. There's nothing to be repealed or enacted. What's needed is simply the sort of decent behavior that U.S. politicians increasingly pretend they're already engaged in.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
