On January 3, the U.S. military removed Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro, dislodging China’s closest ally in the region. It is now the proving ground for the so-called “Donroe Doctrine.”
Formalized in the 2025 National Security Strategy, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine casts Latin America as an exclusive domain of American “preeminence.”[i] It calls for expanded U.S. military force and alliances to confront migration, energy security, critical minerals, organized crime, and regional instability. Echoing past doctrines of containment and hemispheric primacy, the NSS declares that the United States must be both the military and economic partner of choice in Latin America and commits to denying rival powers, especially China, control over strategically vital assets.
The Trump administration is correct, and long overdue, to treat the Western Hemisphere as a strategic priority. As former Secretary of State George Shultz often reminded policymakers, “foreign policy starts in your own neighborhood.” After all, decades of neglect allowed China to expand its influence in a region central to the United States’ most immediate economic, political, and security interests.
Yet recent projections of American power in the region far outpace discussion of the political and economic order it seeks to build. Nowhere is this gap more evident than in the ambiguous plan for a U.S.-led transition in Venezuela following Maduro’s ouster. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the aim is for Venezuela to evolve in ways that align with American interests and serve the Venezuelan people.[ii] Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller framed it more bluntly: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.”[iii] President Donald Trump went further, saying the U.S. would “run the country” until a “proper transition” occurs, then adding, “You can’t have an election until you fix the country.”[iv]
As the Monroe Doctrine returns to prominence, we argue that another historical model of American leadership, the Marshall Plan, better serves U.S. interests in Latin America. Power built through partnership, not dominance, is what will secure long-term leadership in the region.
The Case for a 21st-Century Marshall Plan
The original Marshall plan, following Allied military victory in World War II, coupled American military security with extensive economic support, driven as much by strategic anxiety as by postwar idealism. By 1947, Europe was physically shattered and economically paralyzed. Industrial output remained far below prewar levels, currencies were unstable, food shortages were widespread, and winter fuel crises threatened social collapse. In France and Italy, powerful communist parties were gaining electoral strength. Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union was consolidating political control. Washington feared that economic desperation would make Western Europe politically susceptible to Moscow—not necessarily through invasion, but through democratic choice.
Secretary of State George Marshall’s response reframed containment. Rather than relying primarily on military deterrence, the United States would anchor political stability in economic recovery. Between 1948 and 1951, Washington invested $13.3 billion—roughly $150 billion in today’s terms—into sixteen European economies. The funds rebuilt infrastructure, stabilized currencies, revived industrial production, and integrated markets. By reducing scarcity and restoring growth, it undercut the appeal of communist movements and embedded Western Europe within an American-led economic order. The deep economic investment strategy found similar success in the U.S.-led reconstructions of post-war Japan and South Korea. Across these cases, military power may have been necessary to establish security temporarily, but economic engagement is what made American leadership synonymous with long-term recovery, stability, and empowerment. Now, these countries are among America’s closest and strongest allies.
We would be remiss to argue for a wholesale replication of the Marshall Plan today. Latin America is not beset by war and destruction. However, Maduro’s removal highlights a critical inflection point for a Venezuela in crisis, and a reset in U.S.-China competition for influence across the region.
A 21st-century Marshall Plan in Latin America should be grounded in mutual-benefit and genuine partnership with capable and reliable states, rather than fostering one-sided dependency–an approach that has failed repeatedly, from prolonged U.S. nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to previous initiatives in Latin America such as the Alliance for Progress that left many countries reliant on external support. Washington must seek transformational rather than transactional leadership in the region.
Clearly modeling effective statecraft, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent orchestrated a $20 billion currency swap to Argentina ahead of its pivotal October 2025 midterm elections.[v] This intervention provided crucial economic stability to President Javier Milei, a stalwart supporter of the United States, during a period of exceptional pre-election volatility. Milei’s party went on to secure a decisive and unexpected victory, consolidating Argentina’s free-market reforms and its strategic realignment toward Washington.
Importantly, Argentina fully repaid the $2.5 billion it had drawn from the swap line, generating millions of dollars in profits for American taxpayers and underscoring the country’s strengthened financial position post-election–a classic win-win.[vi]
Targeted economic investment and integration to build and maintain strategic alliances in Latin America is consistent with “America First” principles and can be financially profitable.
It is firmly in America’s best interests to not only be a powerful actor in the region, but a partner with the region. A Latin American Marshall Plan will enlist and expand exactly the kind of regional coalition the NSS calls for to confront the security challenges presented by Venezuela and China.
Reimagining Transition in Venezuela
First, a Latin American Marshall Plan strengthens Washington’s position to address a Venezuela embroiled in political and economic crisis. Venezuela’s economy is ravaged by decades of mismanagement and corruption. It has lost roughly a third of its population—one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. Its remaining citizens have no political representation and face violent government repression. Following the surgical execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, Venezuela’s recovery is now a responsibility of the U.S.
Yet the Trump administration appears unwilling to sustain a military presence in Venezuela, given the high human and financial costs of rebuilding the country alone. This reluctance has produced a gradual, transactional posture that risks accommodating a hostile regime opposed to meaningful political and economic reform.
This is where the coalition-building effects of a Latin American Marshall Plan become decisive.
Together, the U.S. and regional partners should combine efforts to rebuild Venezuela. Latin America shares a strong common interest in a peaceful and democratic Venezuela. Leaders throughout the region including Argentinian President Milei and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa have signaled their countries’ willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in Venezuela.[vii] Although the coalition will likely face significant resistance from the remnants of the Maduro regime left in power today, their coordinated efforts can reinforce both cooperation and coercion mechanisms. A multinational regional security force, paired with dynamic U.S. economic investment, could be the key to unlocking Venezuela’s transition into a hub of energy, innovation, and democratic governance in Latin America.
While Monroe dictates the U.S. unilaterally intervene in Latin America, Marshall strengthens U.S. leadership and empowers partners to assume greater risk and responsibility in securing hemispheric peace and prosperity. Partnership would radiate beyond Venezuela and consolidate America’s credibility as both the economic and security partner-of-choice across the region.
Lessons from China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Second, a Latin American Marshall Plan enables Washington to consolidate its credibility as the partner-of-choice in Latin America amid strategic competition with China. U.S. investments and integration in the region can effectively counter China’s economic leverage by strategically applying lessons from Beijing’s own approach.
Today, China is South America’s leading trading partner and lender, with trade exceeding $500 billion annually and $120 billion in financing since 2005.[viii] More than twenty countries in Latin America have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing’s global infrastructure project.[ix] Now several countries depend on trade with China. Nearly half of Chile’s exports, for example, are destined for the Chinese market.
Beijing’s economic pursuits in the region are strategic. The objective in China’s Foreign Ministry’s 2025 White Paper on Latin America is clear: to embed China at the center of the technologies and infrastructures that govern states now and in the future.[x] It prioritizes artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, satellite systems, and space cooperation, promoting Chinese telecommunications, reliance on the BeiDou system as an alternative to U.S.-controlled GPS, and collaboration on cybersecurity and digital governance. This extends to security ties. China commands a space base in Argentina’s Patagonia region, operated under a 50-year lease, and satellite ground stations in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela.[xi]
China’s inroads and ambitions in the region are a reminder that economic presence, once secured, becomes strategic access.
However, the recent setbacks of China’s BRI in Latin America marked by the fall of Nicolás Maduro also demonstrates the risks of large-scale economic engagement. China lent Venezuela more than $60 billion in loans.[xii] This vast amount of money fueled corruption and inefficiency, deepening the Maduro regime’s economic crises. China now finds itself on the defensive, burdened with tens of billions of dollars in toxic loans and disrupted access to Venezuelan crude.[xiii] This is just one example of how China’s economic initiatives raise concerns about creating overdependencies and debt traps that not only mire Latin American governments in financial distress but ultimately rebound on China itself.
China’s BRI illustrates both the strategic opportunities and economic risks inherent in a Marshall Plan initiative. To mitigate these risks requires sustained political will in Washington, robust safeguards against corruption, and disciplined conditionality to prevent dependency. Properly structured, with performance-based financing and regional burden-sharing, such a strategy could distribute risk while amplifying American influence. The alternative of ceding economic ground to China while relying primarily on episodic military intervention carries far greater long-term strategic costs.
Donroe’s Defining Moment
If the United States intends to outcompete China as Latin America’s economic and security partner of choice, it must do more than assert control through gunboat diplomacy. It must construct durable influence—through infrastructure, technology, and cooperation that translate power into partnership.
The removal of Maduro and a wave of recent political realignments across Latin America from Chile to Honduras temporarily weaken extra-hemispheric rivals such as China, opening a strategic window for the United States. This aperture, however, is fleeting.
As attention turns to the war in Iran—an altogether different strategic theater—Washington would also do well to draw from the Marshall playbook.
American investments and integration starting in our “backyard” will project U.S. leadership far beyond.
And it begins with rediscovering Marshall—not reinforcing Monroe.
[i] The White House, 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, December 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf.
[ii] U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio: U.S. National Interest and a Better Future for the Venezuelan People” YouTube Short video, 0:15, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JKr3T4A95p8.
[iii] Jake Tapper, “The Lead with Jake Tapper” Transcript, CNN, January 5, 2026, https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cg/date/2026-01-05/segment/01#:~:text=I%20want%20to%20know%2C%20you,I%20want%20to%20know.
[iv] Peter Nicholas, “Donald Trump’s U.S. Plan for Venezuela Oil, Democracy, and Elections,” NBC News, January 2026, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-us-plan-venezuela-oil-democracy-elections-rcna253054.
[v] R48780: U.S. Sanctions on Venezuela, Congressional Research Service, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48780.
[vi] Patrick Gillespie, Manuela Tobias, Ignacio Olivera Doll, “Bessent Says Argentina Repaid Drawdown on $20 Billion Swap Line,” Bloomberg, January 9, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-09/bessent-says-argentina-repaid-drawdown-on-20-billion-swap-line.
[vii] Andrés Oppenheimer, “Javier Milei: Venezuela, Estados Unidos Apoyo Maduro,” CNN Español, January 3, 2026, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2026/01/03/mundo/video/javier-milei-venezuela-estados-unidos-apoyo-maduro-oppenheimer-presenta-tv.
[viii] Margaret Myers, “China–Latin America Commercial Loans Tracker” (Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue, 2021), The Dialogue, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.thedialogue.org/MapLists/#/.
[ix] Diana Roy, “China’s Influence in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/china-influence-latin-america-argentina-brazil-venezuela-security-energy-bri.
[x] Ryan C. Berg, Henrietta Levin, Bonny Lin, “China’s Third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean: Expanding Influence and Ambitions,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-third-policy-paper-latin-america-and-caribbean-expanding-influence-and-ambitions.
[xi] Diana Roy, “China’s Influence in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/china-influence-latin-america-argentina-brazil-venezuela-security-energy-bri.
[xii] Diana Roy, “China’s Influence in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/china-influence-latin-america-argentina-brazil-venezuela-security-energy-bri.
[xiii] Lingling Wei, “China, Trump, Venezuela, Maduro,” Wall Street Journal, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/china-trump-venezuela-maduro-75e95551?mod=Searchresults&pos=3&page=1.