U.S. President Donald Trump shows a lapel pin as he speaks during a meeting with U.S. oil company executives in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, January 9, 2026.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
The conversation in Washington right now is driven by discussions about President Donald TrumpIsrael’s new national security strategy and its so-called “Donroe Doctrine” that frames domination of the Western Hemisphere – a modern corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. This debate was already brewing in political circles before the end of last year, but it was energized by the recent US operation in Venezuela. Almost immediately, the familiar question resurfaced: What will China do now?
Much of this speculation has obsessed with Taiwan. Would Beijing use U.S. kinetic action in Venezuela as justification – or precedent – for action against the island? This question may be understandable and its implications worrying. However, many believe that this is also not the right question to ask.
China will not use Venezuela as a pretext to invade Taiwan. This is neither how Beijing thinks nor how it operates. Serious analysis requires putting aside the distraction of viewing China as a reactive power and addressing a more consequential – and far more uncomfortable – issue. This requires that we read and debate China’s own strategic documents on our region with the same rigor that is currently applied to U.S. national security strategy, and take them seriously on their own terms.
China has just issued The third policy document on Latin America and the Caribbean is not a press release or a reactive and reflexive impulse triggered by Washington. It is a long-standing, well-thought-out, forward-looking and deliberately structured approach to achieve China’s long-term goals. It understands the range of governance tools it intends to use and the avenues through which it plans to maintain its influence. It is an institutional model – rich in policy mechanisms, funding avenues, commercial incentives and a theory of the legitimacy of its engagement and presence in the region, rooted in Southern solidarity rather than overt claims to regional hegemony or 18th-century cosplay.
THE SNS is explicit about the intention. It commits the United States to keeping the hemisphere free of “hostile foreign incursions or ownership of key assets,” guaranteeing access to “key strategic locations,” and denying non-hemispheric competitors control of “strategically vital assets.” Venezuela, in this discourse, becomes proof: proof that Washington is willing to act kinetically to alter political realities when it believes access, stability, or strategic positioning are in danger.
But the Trump NSS also reveals a central analytical vulnerability. This implicitly assumes that the United States can grant spheres of influence – ceding a region here, consolidating one there – and that so-called “regional powers” will accept this arrangement. China does not consider itself a regional power. It sees itself as a global power with global interests, ambitions, investments and supply chain requirements – and with the agency to defend and expand those interests in America’s so-called backyard. The NSS can declare a corollary; it cannot reject the presence or objectives of another major power, especially one as deeply entrenched in the hemisphere as China already is. China’s strategy in Latin America is designed to withstand precisely this type of episodic shock.
Start with policy architecture. Beijing does not limit its engagement to trade or hydrocarbons, even if both matters a lot to Beijing. Instead, it pursues head-of-state diplomacy, exchanges between intergovernmental committees, exchanges between legislatures, political party engagement and deep institutional integration through CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a regional political bloc of 33 countries coordinating cooperation in trade, finance, infrastructure, technology and people-to-people ties. The objective is explicit: institutionalize influence through “multi-level and multi-channel” paths with a structure that dilutes any pressure campaign led by the United States. It is much more difficult to “turn around” a region when influence runs so deeply through presidents, parties, parliaments, technocrats, students, consumers, and subnational actors simultaneously.
The economy reinforces this architecture. China frames its engagement – accurately or not – as co-production and co-dependence rather than exploitation or charity. The strategy emphasizes infrastructure connectivity, logistics management, digital infrastructure, smart cities, industrial parks, manufacturing cooperation and export support. These projects create national constituencies: jobs, contracts, port throughput, wages and big political winners in the region. Financial cooperation further softens the model through local currency settlement, RMB clearing agreements, credit lines and debt swaps, and even the offering of Panda bonds. The goal is simple: reduce exposure to U.S. financial leverage, political pressure points and sanctions risk over time.
Trump’s push American oil companies to invest in Venezuela, offered a series of security guarantees, but exposed a familiar constraint: Leaders stressed that investment also depends on long-term financing, risk-sharing and enforceable contracts – the support that China routinely provides to its businesses through policy banks and export credits – while Washington has yet to demonstrate a clear willingness to deploy comparable tools through the US International Development Finance Corporation. (DFC), Ex-Im Bank or multilateral finance.
And these financial support and assistance tools should not be sought in isolation; When executed well, they are designed to anchor influence over physical strategic assets – natural resources, ports, logistics hubs, energy infrastructure and transit corridors – where economics and geopolitics inevitably intersect.
$500 billion in trade and confrontation over the Panama CanalScale matters. Trade between China and Latin America surpassed $500 billion in 2024, and the region represents more than 670 million consumers, many of whom are attracted to Chinese products because of their price, availability and, increasingly, quality. These are not marginal markets. They are structural to China’s global growth model and export strategy.
Beijing is also outspoken – even if selectively – about its interest in strategic resources. Energy and essential minerals feature prominently, alongside mentions of long-term supply agreements and local currency prices. Access covers the entire value chain, from extraction to use. For American policymakers, investors and CEOs, this is the commercial backbone that the NSS must contend with. This is not a question of nostalgia for the Monroe Doctrine; it is a 21st century strategy designed to achieve many of the same results through more modern means and more seductive rhetoric.
The Panama Canal puts these strategies in direct collision. The Chinese policy document treats ports, logistics and maritime cooperation as prime instruments of development and influence – and, in a crisis, as latent strategic assets to be exploited in a military confrontation with the regional hegemon (the United States). The NSS, meanwhile, explicitly flags “key strategic locations” and recognizes how commercial infrastructure can be repurposed for military purposes. It is in Panama – more than in Venezuela – that these approaches clash the most. Ongoing debates over port concessions and terminal control point out that Washington and Beijing view the canal itself and adjacent assets as strategic and not just commercial in nature.
Crew members of the Chinese container ship Cosco Shipping Rose wave the Chinese and Panamanian flags in front of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Juan Carlso Varela of Panama, arriving at the Cocoli Locks in the expanded Panama Canal, in Panama City, Panama, December 3, 2018.
Luis Acosta | Afp | Getty Images
So, does US action in Venezuela change the calculus? In the long term, no.
It will increase risk premiums for many – for Chinese companies, regional leaders and global businesses caught between compliance regimes, complicate logistics and supply chains and promote the militarization of market access. This will push some governments to protect themselves more cautiously, to demand higher “assurance” from Beijing or to seek stronger economic and security guarantees from Washington. But that doesn’t erase the fundamentals of what China has spent two decades building: trade corridors, lending relationships, policy networks and now an explicit push toward high-tech cooperation — from electric vehicles, AI and satellites to aerospace and digital commerce, and aligning closely with the direction many Latin American economies want to take.
Zoom out one level further and the logic extends north. Greenland and the Arctic are not separate conversations; it’s the same arguments, just on ice. Washington frames Greenland through minerals, shipping routes and military access. Beijing presents the Arctic as an international space with global issues, governed by international law, in which non-Arctic states have legitimate interests. If the United States believes these areas can be secured through decisive doctrine and action, China’s premise is the opposite. He believes in focusing his resistance on the arguments the United States has used for decades to justify its presence in the Asia-Pacific region – that states have a right to the global commons, that large states have global interests that must be protected, and that a persistent, long-term, well-established presence in a region must be respected. China adopts the same positions towards Latin America and Greenland.
The action at V enezuela effectively shows that the Trump administration is more serious than its predecessors about reasserting hemispheric dominance – and that the NSS is more than just rhetoric. But China will not rush out of the Western Hemisphere. It’s deeply ingrained. Small powers also have power. They will not be imposed without incentives, protections, or more sustained pressure than a single special forces operation can provide.
If Washington wants a hemisphere that chooses the United States rather than submits to it, it must compete with China’s comprehensive approach: finance, infrastructure, technology, people-to-people exchanges, affordable products, political access and a compelling narrative of partnership. A declaration in an NSS and a dramatic operation are short-term events. China’s engagement in Latin America is a long-term game, and the competition it will trigger will be neither quick nor simple.
—By Dewardric McNealmanaging director and senior policy analyst at Longview Global, and CNBC contributor