The new year arrived with a Latin American capital city invaded. Overnight, United States Special Forces, under cover of the early hours’ darkness and backed by an amphibious military force, captured the head of state, acting on drug trafficking charges. As the target state slides into turmoil, the United States president announces on live television: a dictator has been, at last, “brought to justice”. Such scenes unfolded in 1989, in Panama. And once again in 2026, in Venezuela. The pursuit of general Manuel Noriega by President George Bush on January 3, 1989, was the latest US intervention in Latin America until January 3, 2026, when Nicolas Maduro was captured alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, following President Donald Trump’s orders. Separated by 35 years, those events, on the surface, look strikingly similar. However, they represent distinct patterns of US foreign policymaking.

Bush’s assault on Panama City was not the prelude to an era of US interventionism in Latin America. The following decade (in the words of Bush, a “new world order”) was marked by a multilateral renewal and by a diplomatic rapprochement between Washington and re-democratized Latin American polities.

In contrast, the US profile in Latin America in 2026 looks smaller. No longer the biggest trading partner or investor in a region now economically intertwined with a rising China, the US also no longer extracts benefits from previous waves of re-democratization. After the early 2000s “Pink Tide”, different brands of authoritarian regimes established across Latin America. Symptomatically, Trump’s invasion of Caracas unfolded under a new National Security Strategy, which recognized the limits of US foreign policymaking in the 21st century, as well as its reduced influence. The document envisions a more prominent US role in Latin America, albeit in a selective manner: “the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests“.  

The recurring question of how US interests intermingle with patterns of world order sets Bush’s course of action at the end of the Cold War apart from Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA). Despite recurring attempts by the Trump administration to draw parallels between its decisions and pivotal moments from previous ages of American foreign policy (such as the significance of January 3), there are more differences than commonalities between the patterns of action of those Republican administrations. Drawing from previous episodes in Trump’s foreign policy, this contrast becomes more pronounced – and more relevant for understanding current world politics.

Before attacking Venezuela, Trump claimed the role of a peacemaker in the Middle East by sponsoring the Abraham Accords between Arab states and the state of Israel. However, this peacemaking portfolio was tainted by his support for Israeli-led genocide in the Gaza Strip and also by military actions against Iran. Apart from security issues, Trump got notoriety for imposing trade taxes on hundreds of states in April 2025, claiming that

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