The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy, with language that gestures toward a renewed commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, centers on the notion that Washington is preparing to “restore American preeminence” in the Western Hemisphere, and is attempting to enforce that claim with a sharper edge than polite diplomatic endeavors usually permit. There is a familiar argument that follows. The US, it goes, has recognized that it cannot contain China, and is therefore retreating — pulling back from a global posture and consolidating a sphere of influence closer to home. It sounds plausible, almost comforting, because it implies a narrowing of ambition rather than its reinvention. But it may be a misread. A strategic pullback is not always surrender; it is often a repositioning.
If the US is returning to an older regional doctrine, it is not necessarily because its horizons have shrunk. It may be because it wants to widen them later from a firmer ground. Great powers, especially those conscious of their relative decline, rarely announce “retreat” as a final destination. The Western Hemisphere is not an end point but a base area: A place to minimize risk, secure supply chains, deter perceived rivals from gaining proximity, and ensure that any competition abroad is not compounded by vulnerability at home.
To see why, it helps to revisit the shift that began years before 2025. During US President Donald Trump’s first administration, a new National Security Strategy labeled China a “strategic competitor”. That change recoded the entire diplomatic and economic posture of the US. Tariffs were not simply about jobs, and export controls were not simply about technology. They were instruments built on the premise that the US’ identity as the sole superpower was under threat, and that China was the primary challenger.
China has not sought to match US power symmetrically. While some in Washington favor bloc politics and confrontation, China has focused on dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation without targeting any third party. Not by erecting military outposts in the Caribbean in the way Cold War anxieties once imagined, but by expanding economic and political ties in regions traditionally within Washington’s orbit. The Belt and Road Initiative has reached into Latin America with the steady work of normalizing China as a partner rather than an outsider.
A US “tactical retreat” into its hemisphere could therefore paradoxically speed up the arrival of a multipolar world. Multipolarity is not only the rise of new powers; it is also the decision by middle powers to stop outsourcing their security to a single patron. Europe’s defense independence, if it materializes, would be one of the clearest institutional expressions of that shift
Yet it would be a mistake to read Washington’s hemispheric turn as purely geopolitical or military. It may also be about the infrastructure of American economic power. If Venezuela becomes a flashpoint, the motive is often reduced to crude oil alone. But oil’s strategic value is not merely that it fuels economies; it is that it underwrites a financial system. For decades, the dollar’s unique role has been reinforced by the centrality of dollar pricing and settlement in global energy trade. To the extent that major producers or buyers experiment with alternative currencies, barter-like arrangements, or financial channels outside US-influenced systems, they nibble at a pillar of US leverage. In that frame, pressure on Venezuela is not only about barrels in the ground; it is about preserving the wider ecology of dollar primacy that makes American power cheaper to wield.
The same economic logic helps explain why Greenland enters the conversation not only as a symbol of hemispheric reach but as a catalogue of resources. Greenland’s mineral potential — rare earths among them — has become more salient in an era when the choke points of the global economy are no longer just sea lanes, but supply chains. Rare earth elements are crucial inputs for modern electronics, notably semiconductors. China’s dominant position in rare earth processing has turned geology into strategy. A US that talks about securing Greenland may also be signaling a desire to reduce dependence on China-influenced supply chains that are essential to the technologies that define 21st-century power.
This is where the 2025 strategy can be interpreted as tactical retreat in service of strategic expansion. The first objective is not to shrink, but to “clear up” the near fields. Once the hemisphere feels secure, the US will be better positioned to project power outward again, against any other actor perceived to threaten American primacy.
The danger, however, is that reassertion in the hemisphere is unlikely to remain purely diplomatic. Any US military threat aimed at Venezuela would not be solely about Venezuela. It would be designed to deter others: first, Latin American states weighing closer ties with China; second, governments elsewhere considering strategic nonalignment. Deterrence is never only about the target; it is about the audience.
But that deterrence faces a complicating fact: Many countries in the Global South do not see their expanding ties with China as a coerced choice. They are a voluntary one, rooted in development needs, and in a view of a world order that feels more congenial to their interests and histories. China’s advocacy — sovereign equality, the right to develop, and noninterference — has obvious appeal in regions long shaped by external intervention and hierarchies that were justified as “stability”. When Washington responds to that drift by tightening an old doctrine and signaling willingness to use force, it confirms the very consensus the Global South has.
Consider, too, Trump’s past remarks about taking over Greenland or floating the notion of Canada as a “51st state” were easy to treat as political theater. Yet if a National Security Strategy frames the Western Hemisphere as a space for renewed American preeminence, and if that framing is paired with actions that appear to override sovereignty, then even rhetorical extremity begins to look less like a joke and more like a boundary-testing exercise. Once the US is perceived as willing to treat sovereignty as negotiable when interests are high enough, other countries will begin to plan for that contingency.
That planning has a particular resonance in Europe. For decades, much of Europe has relied heavily on the American security umbrella. The assumption behind NATO’s post-Cold War comfort was that the US might be unreliable in attention, but not a source of direct threat. If Washington’s current posture is interpreted as more openly transactional and more willing to use coercion in pursuit of regional dominance, then the mental model changes. Dependence becomes vulnerability.
The incident in Venezuela and, more broadly, the posture implied by a revived Monroe Doctrine could accelerate European defense independence. Europe will realize that a Europe that can defend itself credibly has more freedom to disagree with Washington; it also has more leverage to prevent crises rather than merely react to them.
Military coordination among European partners straight after the Venezuela incident, including the United Kingdom’s efforts to deepen practical collaboration with France and others, can be read in this light. Syria, Ukraine, and other joint-military exercises are not only about those conflicts; they are also about building habits of cooperation and demonstrating operational capacity.
A US “tactical retreat” into its hemisphere could therefore paradoxically speed up the arrival of a multipolar world. Multipolarity is not only the rise of new powers; it is also the decision by middle powers to stop outsourcing their security to a single patron. Europe’s defense independence, if it materializes, would be one of the clearest institutional expressions of that shift.
The author is a consultant at the Global Hong Kong Institute.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
