A Border Patrol vehicle drives by in Tecate, Calif., seen through a hole. Nov. 9, 2016 photo. Gregory Bull AP/Press Association Images. The United States has chosen a President whose key articulating principle is “America First”. Donald Trump’s underlying grand strategy is not a call for a reconfigured isolationism; it is an appeal to aggressive primacy. Nothing from his campaign assertions signaled a retreat from world politics or restraint in terms of foreign policy. His promises were for the greater and massive funds for defense, an overwhelming emphasis on terrorism and security issues, the abandonment of human rights promotion, positive messages for strongmen and reactionary parties abroad, sanctions-oriented and retaliatory-focused economic diplomacy, unilateralism as a guiding conduct vis-à-vis global affairs, dislike for multilateral forums, and no interest for international legality.
Initially his mandate generates more than anxiety; it is a cause of serious concern for many in Latin America. Several points support this assumption. First, open hostility towards Mexico is a cause for alarm in the region. The extension of the wall at the border between both countries as a means of complete frontier closure, the announcement of huge deportations of Mexicans, the accusations against Mexicans in the United States as criminals and violators, the menace of killing NAFTA, among others, are crude examples of coercive diplomacy against a non-threatening country that has been a good neighbor of the United States. Last July, Joseph Schmitz, former executive with the controversial private security contractor Blackwater and current Foreign Policy and National Security Advisor to Trump, said in reference to him and Latin America that Donald Trump wanted “to be honest and fair with our allies and honest and tough with our enemies”. Is Mexico an enemy then?
Second, on Cuba, as presidential candidate Trump asserted that “we are keeping [Guantanamo] open”, and that he would reverse President Barack Obama’s deal with Cuba, instead imposing a non-specified “stronger” agreement. According to the July 2016 Republican Party platform, Obama’s arrangement with Cuba “was a shameful accommodation to the demands of its tyrants”. The very gradual normalization of relations between Washington and Havana during the democratic administration may not have only reached a stalemate, but could even be reversed in the near future because of the obsolete ideological motives of hardliners in the White House and Congress: if the unnecessary Cold War in the continent is prolonged, the United States is the one to be blamed now.
