Gordon Carrera

There were elements of it which continued.

But I think what's been so interesting, isn't it, is that the Trump administration this time round are really, really right from the start asserting it very, very strongly, aren't they?

Yeah.

It was really interesting because when that strategy came out, it caused a lot of shock in Europe because of the way it talked about Europe, because it had all that focus on civilizational erasure in Europe.

It basically said nothing at all about Russia and China, but criticized European governments.

Of course, Europe was slightly freaked out by it.

But I remember people at the time saying, well, we just don't know whether this strategy is just a bit of political rhetoric and political positioning.

by the Trump administration, or whether it really reflects policy.

But of course, what we all should have read much more closely was that actually the focus of a lot of the strategy was on the Americas, on the Western hemisphere, and now we are seeing it being put in place.

And very explicitly, I mean, that's what I think is so interesting, is this desire from the administration to kind of exert power over its own backyard and the whole of the Americas.

And I mean, Donald Trump himself talks of not the Monroe Doctrine, but the Donro Doctrine, or as it's more formally known, the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

which is basically we are going to restore American preeminence in the Western hemisphere and deny it.

I think this is also interesting to competitors, namely, I suppose, particularly China, but others as well, and to deal with any kind of sources of threats to the United States.

and its security that exist all through the continent.

So it's a very explicit piece of strategy, which even goes to talking about the need to control strategically vital assets.

And you can see what those assets are.

They are things like oil and they are things like the Panama Canal.

They might also be strategically important assets like the territory of Greenland because of its critical minerals and its position in the world in terms of missile defense and national security.

And I mean, what I found interesting was just how, you know, we were talking about the different reasons and motives for this operation, but how explicit they were.

You had the legal justification, which is drugs, but that was also, you know, clearly a kind of relatively shallow.