US’ pre-eminence as the sole global hegemon is perhaps non-negotiable for it. It still has the world’s most formidable military, its largest economy, world-beating innovation, unrivalled “soft power” and a historic record of assisting and benefitting allies and partners. President Trump is apparently undertaking a form of geopolitical engineering, building and strengthening alliances, partnerships, relationships in all major regions of the world, especially in the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR).

In the western hemisphere, President Trump has literally enforced the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt corollary to it. Whereas the former declares the western hemisphere as the uncontested sphere of influence of the US, the latter expresses the intent to intervene, whenever necessary. The Trump corollary takes it a step further; he has already employed military coercion/gunboat diplomacy as a major foreign policy tool for this region. Venezuela, which has Chinese presence and humungous oil reserves, has been subjected to it, rather ruthlessly. The US has declared “fentanyl, a weapon of mass destruction” and might use this as a casus belli for the invasion of Venezuela - a la the invasion of Iraq on similar, concocted grounds! He intends to block unrestricted illegal migration and the supply chains of drugs into the US, too. The US will deny non-hemisphere competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities (Cuban Missile Crisis with the USSR, 1962) or to own or control strategically vital assets (Panama Canal) in the region. The US will not brook any external presence in the western hemisphere that it deems detrimental to its vital national interests. Period.

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