The key is not in the original doctrine, but in how it is reinterpreted. Throughout the 20th century, the Monroe Doctrine mutated into an instrument of ideological containment. The enemy was communism. Under that umbrella, open and covert interventions in Latin America, coups d’état, financing of irregular forces and economic pressures were justified, all in the name of hemispheric security. The speech was simple and effective: if one country fell into the hands of communism, the entire region was at risk.
Trump has changed that ideological enemy, replacing it with the cartels. We are not talking about rival ideologies, but about States supposedly incapable of controlling their territory, governments overtaken by criminal organizations and direct threats to the internal security of the United States. Fentanyl, drug trafficking and transnational violence play the same role that communism previously played: constructing an emergency scenario that normalizes the exception.
The difference is that now the enemy is not a State or an ideological bloc, but rather non-state actors. But the political effect is similar. When it is stated that a country does not control its territory or that organized crime governs, the implicit message is that sovereignty becomes negotiable. And when sovereignty is relativized, intervention stops looking like aggression and begins to be sold as a necessity.
This logic is observed on three different, but connected, fronts. In South America, the narrative revolves around the restoration of order and democracy, combined with the control of strategic resources. In the North Atlantic, territorial ambition is justified for reasons of security, geopolitical competition and access to critical minerals. In Mexico, the discourse is articulated around the frontal combat against cartels and the protection of American society against drugs.
This is not about denying the seriousness of the real problems. Drug trafficking exists, fentanyl kills, failed states generate instability and energy resources are strategic. The problem is what to do with that diagnosis. Trump does not propose multilateral cooperation, institutional strengthening or shared solutions. It proposes direct action, unilateral pressure and, ultimately, the use of force as a legitimate foreign policy tool.
That is where the Monroe doctrine reappears, not as a written norm, but as a legitimizing story. Before, interventions were made to stop the advance of communism; today, to eradicate the cartels. Before we talked about containment, today we talk about preventive attacks. The vocabulary changes, but the same mental structure remains: the United States as a hemispheric arbiter, with the right to decide when a country has crossed the line.
For Mexico, this narrative is especially delicate. The fight against organized crime has historically been an area of bilateral cooperation, but also of deep tensions. Turning it into an argument to justify extraterritorial actions breaks a fragile balance and places the country in an uncomfortable position. Mexico must not accept the loss of sovereignty, it must adopt a firm, diplomatic and legally well-articulated response.
The greatest risk is not that the Monroe Doctrine will be revived, but that its use as a flexible pretext will be normalized. Today it is the cartels, but it could also be migration, water, energy or any other crisis turned into a threat by Trump.
