On Thursday, the Quincy Institute and the Conservative Partnership Institute hosted a debate on the subject. The event brought together Quincy’s George Beebe, the Heritage Foundation’s Daniel McCarthy (who is a board member at The American Conservative), Defense Priorities’ Jennifer Kavanagh, and the CATO Institute’s Katherine Thompson to discuss “The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Will It Advance U.S. Interests?” The conversation provided an illuminating look at the heart of the controversy growing over the Trump administration’s approach to the Western Hemisphere.
The principal objection raised to this assertion was that the militarized approach the administration has taken to the region has, in fact, created no progress towards the stated goal of creating a stable and cooperative system conducive to American interests. Kavanagh argued that the removal of Maduro, for example, has produced no material improvement in American national security, and it is not clear that facilitating investment in Venezuelan oil fields is preferable to greater investment in the American energy industry. Moreover, the message being sent to other countries in the region may be that they should counterbalance American power and increase their integration with China in order to avoid being at the mercy of the U.S.
Drawing on her research, Kavanagh concluded that military interventions are almost always a net negative for accomplishing political objectives. Rather than taking a primarily military posture towards intervention in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. should lean on economic investment, diplomacy, and law enforcement partnership to pursue its interests in the region, a model more similar to the current Chinese method of international engagement.
Read at The American Conservative
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