The Decibel - Unpacking the U.S. strategy to control the Western hemisphere

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Following the U.S. attack on Venezuela, President Donald Trump referenced the Monroe Doctrine – a centuries-old ideology that posits American control and dominance in the Western hemisphere. That idea was also cited in the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy outlining U.S. foreign policy. After campaigning on non-intervention, is this now Trump’s blueprint for dealing with the rest of the world?Vincent Rigby, a professor at McGill University’s Max Bell School for Public Policy and former national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, joins The Decibel to parse through the details of Trump’s national security strategy, what it tells us about the U.S. government’s next moves – and the potential threat to Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donro Document, I don't know. Ever since the U.S. military attack on Venezuela and seizure of President Nicolas Maduro, we've been hearing a lot about the Monroe Doctrine. It's a centuries-old ideology that has shaped both U.S. foreign policy and its dominance in the Western Hemisphere. And it provides the foundation for elements of the Trump administration's national security strategy. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western atmosphere will never be questioned again. This national security strategy was released back in December, and it tells us a lot about why the United States did what it did in Venezuela.

So today, we're going to get into the fine print of the strategy, what it tells us about, what Trump might do next, and whether Canada should be concerned. Vincent Rigby is our guest. He's a professor at McGill's Max Bell School of Public Policy and a former national security advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Vincent. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much. Glad to be here.

So before we get into how the national security strategy factors into the attack on Venezuela, can you just give us a sense of what the natural security strategy actually is? Well, these are strategies that are put up by the U.S. president on supposed to be an annual basis, but more recently they'd been periodic, I'd say, at best. They date back about 75, 80 years. You saw them occasionally pop up during the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Sometimes they were public. Sometimes they were classified.

But what happened in the late 1980s is that they were enshrined in legislation. So basically Congress mandated the president to produce a national security strategy every year, make it public, bring it to Congress. And that way Americans could know what U.S. national security interests were. What was the roadmap for U.S. foreign policy in terms of protecting national interests, protecting value? etc. So they have not been produced annually over the last 30 years or so, but the most recent one has obviously garnered a lot of attention. It's called a national security strategy, but it's a foreign policy document at the end of the day. And it's really how is the U.S. going to manage itself on the world stage? How is the U.S. going to protect its national security

interest? How is it going to protect its values on the world stage? And so let's get into what's in this document, this recent document. It's about 30 pages long. long, it's broken into two sections. Can we start with the first section on U.S. priorities? What does it say? I think first and foremost, what it says is that their national security strategy, their foreign policy is going to be about American first. So it's an extension of the America first strategy. You know, commentators will say, well, that's always been the case with U.S. foreign policy. They put America first. They do without a doubt. But I think what's different with Trump is that it's in the storefront window. It's bold. It's got lights around it. We, the U.S.

are no longer the world's cop, we are not going to intervene left, right, and center. We are about putting America first. We are about our national interest, in particular, our economic interests. We're about creating jobs at home. We're about prosperity. So there's less, I think, in terms of traditional American values about promoting democracy, about promoting the rules-based international order in this document. If there's talk about values, it's not the kind of values that you normally associate with the United States. And it's about what they call flexible realism. So this is a term that gets bandied about in the document that's been used since publicly by some administration officials. And what this effectively means, again, going back to values versus

interests, there are going to be countries out there that we don't necessarily share values with communist China, Russia, et cetera, some countries in the Middle East, Gulf states. We may not share those values. We may not agree with their former government. but we're going to find a way to get along with them. And so in previous national security strategies, that's not really being the case. And so you've had Russia identified as an adversary. You've had China identified as an adversary as a hostile state. You don't have that this time.

You talk about economic competition with China, but also trying to manage that economic relationship with China. They talk about strategic stability with Russia. They don't talk about competition or confrontation with Russia. so it's it's very much in that context that they define flexible realism and then that i think leads into the notion of spheres of influence so the term spheres of influence is not explicitly stated in the document at least i i couldn't find it but it's implicit throughout like china you're going to have to do what you have to do in your region just if it affects our national interest you'll hear

from us same with russia same in any other country none of the region but when it comes to the western hemisphere and this is where we get into the meat of the document in terms of the regional approaches, the Western Hemisphere is ours. Get your noses out of this region. Okay, so let's talk about those regional approaches. What does the national security strategy say about how the U.S. plans to deal with different regions? Well, it identifies, I think it's five regions altogether. And this, again, is very traditional for national security strategies. And what this administration actually says in this strategy is that previous strategies have been all over the map when it comes to these regional priorities and they have not

being any priorities. Trump states very clearly that we're going to have priorities this time and we're going to focus on certain regions and less so on another region. So very quickly, there's two paragraphs on Africa at the end. And I think if you had to summarize it in a nutshell, it's Africa, not as a development partner, but Africa as a place to be exploited for resources as much as anything else. I'm being a little bit over the top in my language, but that's effectively what it says. We see a lot of natural resources there. We see oil. We see critical minerals. we'd like to get in there. The Middle East, it's almost like they're ticking the box with respect to the Middle East. Traditionally in national security strategies, the Middle East is front and center

and so much going on there is so much at stake. And now, I mean, the document as a whole is quite bombastic in tone, very triumphant with respect to what Trump has done. And so when it comes to the Middle East, it's like the president solved it. It's no longer the unstable region that it was. we have a peace deal, however tentative, between Hamas and Israel, we can move on now. And so we'll deal with the region still. Yes, Iran, we've got to watch them, and we'll bomb them back to the Stone Age if we have to. But at the end of the day, for the Middle East, it's about promoting our prosperity there, dealing with Gulf states on economic cooperation.

We're less concerned about the Middle East as a cauldron of instability. Europe, I think, surprised a lot of people in terms of the language that they use. it didn't really surprise me that much because, of course, Vice President Vance had given a speech at the Munich Security Conference last year in which he said a lot of the things about Europe that are more or less repeated in the national security strategy. And it's really a call out to the Europeans saying, listen, you guys better wake up because you are facing what they refer to in the document

as civilizational erasure. And it's bordering on outright racism, but what they're saying is your immigration policies, your suppression of democracy, freedom of speech, et cetera. and this is mostly in their view how some of the parties to the right of the political spectrum are treated in Europe, AFD in Germany, for example, you guys are going to hell in a handbasket if you don't wake up and you don't wake up soon and you will not be the power that we need you to be at the end of the day. So it's very stark. I talked before about how this is not a document

about traditional U.S. values. This is where it really, really stands out. They refer to, you know, you've really got to look to your patriotic parties for your vision for Europe. And they actually use that term patriotic parties. And the patriotic parties are the far right parties. I was going to say, which ones are those? Okay, far right parties. And so it's very interesting in that regard. So Europe, stand up and get things done. Indo-Pacific is interesting. Again, China is not identified as a hostile state actor. China is not identified as a potential adversary. This is a section that's really focused on economic preeminence. for the United States about how there's been this strategic shift to the Indo-Pacific region.

The U.S. has to be a player there. It has to pursue its economic interests with great determination. It has to work with allies to confront China in terms of some of their economic policies. This is the one and only place where Canada is mentioned in the entire national security strategy. Canada, Europe, other countries need to stand up to China with respect to some of their export policies, etc. And then finally, and this is probably where you want to focus, is the Western Hemisphere. And the Western Hemisphere is probably the biggest section in the entire document, and probably the most important. And so this is where you see this, this term, the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

And going back to that question of previous national security strategies, according to the Trump administration, had no priorities. We were going to have a priority. And our priority is going to be the Western Hemisphere. And so I think there are two messages for the Western Hemisphere and for the world. First, as per the Monroe Doctrine, way back in the 1820s, foreign states stay out of the region. region, whether it's economically, militarily, we're going to be watching you and watching you carefully. This is a message particularly to China, Russia, but others as well. But it's also a message, I think, to the states of the Western Hemisphere. And it's a message which is effectively

tow the line. And we want you to work with us. But if you don't work with us, we're going to have a little bit of an issue. And so there were two terms they say about their approach in the Western hemisphere enlist, and I think it's expand or enlarge, we're going to enlist those countries that are our traditional allies and partners and continue to work with them in supporting us in our national interests, but we're also going to expand or enlarge that list to reach out to those countries who perhaps haven't been so friendly in the past, but it's time for them to be a little bit more friendly. And so that, I think, segues very nicely into Venezuela. But, you know, fundamentally, it's about total line in the sense of we don't want irregular migration.

We don't want drugs coming into our country. We want strategic assets like oil, like critical minerals, and we want control over strategic locations. And again, nothing is mentioned explicitly, but read the Arctic, Greenland, read Panama Canal. We'll be right back. Okay, Vincent, let's bring Venezuela into the conversation because the national security strategy doesn't say anything explicitly here, but there seems to be a lot of parallels.

So how does the U.S. actions in Venezuela fit into what's written in the national security strategy? Well, it's a great question. And when the strategy first came out, there was a lot of debate about, okay, it's a strategic document, but to what extent is he actually going to implement it? To what extent is he actually going to follow through on it? So I think everybody was waiting with bated breath. I mean, to some extent, we'd already seen that a lot of the stuff in the national security. security strategy he was doing rhetorically or concrete action. But I think when Venezuela popped up over the weekend, I think for most of it, it was like, wow, you could have literally

taken this right out of the national security strategy. So again, it's a strategic document at a high level. They don't mention specific countries that they're going to target. But when he talked about strategic assets equals oil, when he talked about strategic locations, when you talked about we don't want your drugs, we don't want your irregular migrants. Venezuela kind of fits the bill. And so we'd been seeing all of the actions in the Caribbean over the last weeks and months leading up to this. We're all wondering whether he was going to take this a step further, go from gunboat

diplomacy to actually invading a country, and he did it. And so in many respects, yeah, I think he's ripped a page out of the national security strategy and he's waving it around now and going, see, I meant what I said. I don't want to overplay this in terms of a bit of a threat to other countries in a region, but I think it is a message. We said we were going to do this and we did it. And we took out this guy because he was a bad guy, but this wasn't about values. This wasn't about democracy. This at the end of the day was taking out somebody whose country has a strategic asset, which I think is the term used the national security strategy. And I don't want to oversimplify it, that it was all

about oil, but let's be honest, every time Trump talks about Venezuela, oil pops in about every second or third sentence. So there you go. To answer your question, yes, I think this is a manifestation of the strategy, and the big question is what next? Yeah, I mean, some points that stuck out to me from the security strategy that kind of relates to this, too, is that one point that says a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking and to control key transit routes in a crisis. I mean, that really speaks to what's happening in Venezuela. Well, it doesn't, it doesn't, right?

A lot of people, I think, have noted, and I've noted it as well, that there are some parallels with what happened to Canada and tariffs. You'll recall that Trump went on and on and still it goes on about all the fentanyl that's coming across the border and all the irregular migrants that are coming across the border, no matter how many times we said that it's a trickle at most, and it's a very, very low percentage compared to what's coming across the southern border. He did what he did with the tariffs. The fact of the matter is, and this is being stated publicly by lots and lots and lots

of other commentators and even government officials, not in the U.S., obviously. But the amount of fentanyl that's coming from Venezuela is negligible. Most of the fentanyl is coming through Mexico. Do they produce cocaine? Yep, they do produce cocaine, but most of it is going to other parts of the world. So the drug issue is a bit of a red herring.

And so, again, I think to a considerable extent, he's used this as a pretext for going after Maduro. I mean, the thing with Trump is, he's got a strategy and that's all good. Global politics, politics general, they're very personal for him and he seems to have taken a strong personal dislike for Maduro, did not like him and decided that it was time to go. He did not like the fact that Venezuela had nationalized its oil industry and he keeps on referring to the fact that they've stolen all this American oil, which again is a bit of an oversimplification, but there is an element of truth to it. This is about taking out a country

that has a strategic resource or taking out a government and grabbing a strategic resource that is extremely important for the United States. So I wouldn't overplay the drug issue, even the irregular migrant issue. Vincent, something we've been hearing a lot about is the centuries-old policy called the Monroe Doctrine, which really hasn't been talked about much for quite a while.

But it is referenced in Trump's national security strategy. Tell me what the Monroe Doctrine is all about and why it's become such a point of discussion today. So this has actually been a point of discussion throughout American foreign policy. So a lot of people have been saying this is quite new and Trump is adopting this is something as a radical departure for U.S. foreign policy. I'm not sure it is completely. He's certainly put an exclamation mark on it and he's certainly accentuating it. And he's put his typical Trump spin on it. But it's been there for a while.

It dates back, as you say, a couple of centuries, 1823. James Monroe, who's the American president in his State of the Union address, sent out a little bit of a message to European powers that, listen, we'd like you to basically keep your hands off with respect to the Western Hemisphere. So this was just as a lot of Latin American states were gaining independence from Spain and Portugal. And so the U.S. was saying to Spain, Portugal, other European powers, including England, France. This is our region. We do not want you in our neighborhood. We're not going to go. into your neighborhood, so don't you come into ours. And if you do, we are going to interpret that as a hostile act, and we are going to interpret that as a direct menace or threat to our national interest. It didn't start getting called the Monroe Doctrine until the 1850s, but then it became something that U.S. presidents would occasionally reference over the next 150 years or so. And so, again, Trump's not the first to invoke it. Other presidents have Kennedy did, Reagan did. And I don't think that any president would ever have said that they don't have

a special interest in the Western Hemisphere. So there's always been a certain theme there in terms of whether we mention it explicitly or not, we are the top dog in the region. And certainly, you know, when we talk about Venezuela and what Trump has just done there, there are lots of other examples of the U.S. using very, very hard-edged policies in countries like Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, la Grenada in the latter half of the of the 20th century. So that's the doctrine. There have been other corollaries by other presidents. But Trump, you know, Don Roe and this notion now that he's putting a particular spin on it. And I think he is because it's what he's basically saying is that not only do we not want other countries in the region, but we are going to do what we want

at the end of the day. And I think there's a harder edge. I mean, again, the U.S. is not going to use language like a vassal state, but that pops up to me again, again. I've talked to some of my colleagues about this. It's almost like certain countries in the Western Hemisphere are going to be treated as vassal states now. And they're there to promote and support the U.S. national interest. There to provide, again, going back to the strategy itself, the strategic locations, the strategic assets that the U.S. needs in its America First strategy. So I'd say the Trump corollary is a harder edge. It's more assertive. And it's, again, it's in the storefront window, as I said before, as opposed to the past where I think it was a little bit more. Yes, there's this Monroe Doctrine

thing and we're going to invoke it. It's now, no, the Trump corollary. It's big. It's front of mind. And again, in the strategy, the Western Hemisphere is the first geographical priority. So what does this all mean for Canada, right? We've been talking about Canada sovereignty for a while now and now that this thing happened in Venezuela. Should Canada be worried? don't think this fundamentally changes the context. It puts an exclamation mark on what we already knew. We had the national security strategy a couple of weeks ago, and everybody read it and went, whoa, boy, this is not good. This is not good. There are some not so hidden messages there, potentially about Canada. And so now he's gone and done something with respect to Venezuela.

And I think that we should be looking at this and going, okay, this is serious, serious stuff. And so should we be paying attention? Should we be concerned? Absolutely, of course. We've been hearing all this rhetoric. We've been seeing some of the actions with respect to tariffs and other things over the last year. And now we're seeing him go in and actually decapitate a government in Venezuela. But I think it's also extremely important that we put it in context.

Canada is not Venezuela. But we do need to be concerned. And I think that they are, I mean, notwithstanding the military action over the weekend, they are pursuing a form of economic imperialism in the Western Hemisphere and globally to a certain extent, but in particular in the Western Hemisphere. And they are looking at quasi-vassal states and potentially including Canada. So, yeah, we do have to be very, very careful and we have to be preparing for what comes next. But I'm always wary of people who go out there and say, well, we're next on the hit list.

And this is a warning to Canada. But I think we have to prepare for all kinds of different scenarios in the coming. weeks, months, and years with respect to Trump and we'll see where it goes. I think it's important for Canada right now to continue to pursue. I think they're pursuing a two-track strategy, which is the diversification of our economic interests and our security interests globally and trying to build up our own domestic capabilities and really trying to achieve some degree of strategic autonomy. But we're still going to have to work with the U.S.

And so as much as they are a threat, and I've stated publicly, that they do act like a hostile state actor with respect to Canada. And they are a threat. There's no doubt about it. But we're still going to have to find ways to work with them. So the one area I am concerned about in the context of Venezuela and territory and things like that is the Arctic. So we can do two things here and they can converge. We can do what we have to do on our own to protect the Arctic and increase our military presence out there or we can work with the U.S. together and we can do both. Can you just briefly explain to me why the Arctic, why you think that the focus for Canada should be there. I think that just the rhetoric over Greenland is so telling. And it's, you know, literally a day

within Maduro being seized. You had Stephen Miller's wife putting on X, the map of Greenland with the U.S. flag superimposed on it and saying soon. And then I think she posted something else the next day that we've now got Venezuelan oil. So we don't need Canadian oil anymore. So you just lost one of your leverage points. So I think that the, the Arctic. Miller talked about it, Miller's wife, but Trump doubled down. And he's doubled down over the last couple of days. We want Greenland. And, you know, China's a threat, Russia's a threat up there. So we're going to, we're going to take it if we have to. And again, it's a completely and utterly different kettle of fish from Venezuela. Greenland is a territory of Denmark.

Denmark is a NATO member. If he takes Greenland, he is basically going to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter. And countries are going to be obligated basically to defend Greenland. So it's, it's, the scenario is just wild and it's, and it's crazy. But putting aside that, whether he's going to pursue Greenland or not, I think he's made it perfectly clear that he, he wants a greater U.S. presence in the Arctic. He sees that as a strategic theater of great, great importance. So we need to protect it on our own, in our own national interest, but I still think there are ways that we can work with the U.S. in, in the Arctic, in terms of the military, in terms of critical minerals, in terms of potential participation in a

ballistic missile defense program, Golden Dome, et cetera, et cetera. So there's, So there's lots of opportunities there. So again, Prime Minister Carney was getting a lot of criticism on Saturday night for the press statement that he put out that it was mealy mouth and that it was gibberish and this and that. He's walking a tightrope. And we're going to have to continue to walk that tightrope between telling the U.S. has got to respect international law. While at the same time, whether we like it or not, geography is going to rule. We are going to have to find ways to work with him. So I don't think, in my view, that's fundamentally changed.

Vincent, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been really interesting. Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you. That was Vincent Rigby, professor at McGill's Max Bell School of Public Policy and former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.