Explaining Washington’s renewed focus on its traditional backyard
According to Atlas of Diplomacy, an analytical commentary titled “Redefining Hegemonic Priority in U.S. Foreign Policy,” written by Morteza Bananzadeh and published in Iranian Diplomacy, explains that the sudden prominence of Latin America—and Venezuela in particular—in the foreign policy of Donald Trump’s second administration is not a personal or episodic decision. Rather, it is the result of the convergence of structural transformations in the international system, a shift in the U.S. hegemon’s tolerance threshold, and the escalation of chronic regional crises to the level of direct threats to American order and interests. What follows is a summary of this commentary.
The growing importance of Latin America, and especially Venezuela, in U.S. foreign policy in 2025, during Donald Trump’s second term, signals a gradual change in America’s hegemonic priorities. This shift stems from the simultaneity of several structural trends within both the international system and the U.S. domestic arena, including the role of the president in a presidential system, the relative decline of global rivals, and the transformation of chronic threats into acute crises. Historically, Latin America has been part of the United States’ traditional sphere of influence. From the Monroe Doctrine through the Cold War, the region functioned as Washington’s geopolitical backyard and security buffer. After the end of the Cold War, U.S. focus shifted toward West Asia, Central Asia, and the containment of China, pushing Latin America to the margins. This reduction in attention was not the result of neglect, but rather of a rational assessment that, absent a direct threat, active intervention was unnecessary.
Within the U.S. presidential system, the president plays a decisive role in transforming potential priorities into executable policies and in determining the timing, intensity, and direction of intervention. When threats become open to competing interpretations, the president’s role becomes especially pronounced. In Trump’s second administration, the emphasis on security‑centered, border‑related, and economic interests, coupled with a departure from liberal internationalist traditions, led issues such as migration, state collapse, energy instability, and the influence of global rivals in Latin America to be perceived as direct threats to America’s domestic order and hegemonic position. Within this framework, Venezuela became the symbol of Washington’s renewed attention to its traditional backyard. In previous years, the Venezuelan crisis had been managed as an internal or regional issue, with the United States preferring limited sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and the delegation of responsibility to regional actors in order to reduce the costs of intervention. However, as the consequences of the crisis expanded—including mass migration, instability in energy markets, and the weakening of regional order—the cost of non‑intervention surpassed the cost of direct engagement.
The relative weakening of Russia following the Ukraine war further facilitated U.S. intervention. Russia’s military capabilities remain significant, but the country lacks key elements of a sustainable global power, including a dynamic economy, a cohesive alliance network, and the capacity to manage multiple crises simultaneously. Russian foreign policy is based on opportunistic exploitation of crises and ad hoc opposition to U.S. hegemony, rather than on constructing an alternative order or providing durable support to client states. Consequently, Russia’s influence in Venezuela and Latin America is limited, episodic, and largely symbolic, and the hypothesis of a Washington–Moscow bargain over Venezuela is considered to lack serious theoretical grounding.
China, as another important variable in this equation, pursues an economic and non‑security‑oriented strategy and does not seek to build a political or military empire. China’s deep economic interdependence with the United States constrains Beijing from entering into direct confrontation over governments such as Venezuela’s. China is neither a fundamental obstacle to U.S. intervention nor a guarantor of the status quo in that country. Taken together, Washington’s return to Latin America is the outcome of a set of gradual trends reaching a critical point, not a sudden maneuver. Venezuela has moved beyond the level of a regional crisis and has become a symbol of the erosion of U.S. hegemony in its closest sphere of influence. The shift in 2025 thus reflects a transformation in the hegemon’s tolerance threshold—a threshold that has now collapsed in Latin America.
