U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the Government Palace in Lima, Peru, on Thursday.ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio may be the least sycophantic member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, but he is arguably also its most effective. Unlike many of his eager-to-please peers, he does not waste his time trolling Canada. Nor does he pander to MAGA influencers like his expected rivals for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
After all, he is far too busy running Venezuela and implementing the “Donroe Doctrine” – as the Trump corollary to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine is known – to reduce China’s influence in America’s backyard. The goal, laid out in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, is to “deny non-[Western] Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
The U.S. military raid in January that led to the capture of then Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, and his arrest and imprisonment on drug trafficking charges, provided a spectacular, if worrying, example of the means the Trump administration is willing to use to install friendlier leaders in Latin America and ensure U.S. control of its resources.
The Trump administration’s late-August deal to take a 35-per-cent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a privately owned company run by a controversial businessman with connections to the former Maduro regime, raised further questions about those methods. Alejandro Betancourt’s company was granted the rights to develop oil fields that hold an estimated 20 per cent of Venezuela’s crude reserves, considered the world’s largest.
Mr. Trump called the agreement signed by Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Mr. Maduro’s vice-president, the “biggest oil deal in world history.” Hyperbole aside, it has the potential to more than double Venezuela’s oil production from about 1.2 million barrels a day to more than 2.5 million barrels in coming years.
A man pushes a bicycle in front of abandoned oil wells in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on Monday.JOHN CHACON/AFP/Getty Images
How much of the wealth generated by that increased oil production would trickle down to the long-suffering Venezuelan people is another question. The country’s economy remains in tatters after years of corruption and mismanagement by the Maduro regime. Parts of the country are still reeling from a devastating June earthquake that killed thousands. And Ms. Rodriguez appears to lead a puppet government whose strings are pulled in Washington.
“These [oil] fields are going to be productive and they’re going to generate royalties and revenues for the Venezuelan people – eventually through a democratically elected government, hopefully sooner rather than later – and directly benefit the people of Venezuela, as opposed to going into the pocket of some corrupt government official or in the hands of American and Venezuelan adversaries,” Mr. Rubio insisted this week.
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While Mr. Trump has shown little interest in restoring democracy in Venezuela, Mr. Rubio’s very reputation is hanging on it. When he was a three-term U.S. senator, the son of Cuban immigrants railed against left-wing dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. But as Mr. Trump’s top diplomat, he has embraced right-wing governments in the region whose tactics against drug traffickers and petty criminals alarm human-rights advocates.
Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella and Mr. Rubio embrace during a bilateral agreements signing ceremony in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Tuesday.Fernando Vergara/The Associated Press
Mr. Rubio this week visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, now all led by right-wing presidents who have enrolled their countries in Mr. Trump’s Shield of Americas, a coalition aimed at combatting drug cartels that the U.S. has designated as terrorist groups. U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing aimed at helping those countries stem the flow of drugs into the United States also risks being used by autocrat leaders to target political opponents. Mr. Rubio sloughed off those concerns, saying: “We’re going to choose [to be] on the side of leaders that are going to be serious about taking these groups on and eliminating them once and for all. Otherwise, those terrorist groups will eat these countries up.”
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Mr. Rubio is also seeking to reverse China’s foothold in countries that had cozied up to Beijing under previous left-leaning leaders. This is particularly the case in Peru, where Chinese shipping giant COSCO owns the Chancay deep-water port north of Lima that U.S. authorities fear could house a future Chinese naval base. Earlier this year, a State Department official warned that Peru “could be powerless to oversee Chancay … which is under the jurisdiction of predatory Chinese owners.” The official added: “[C]heap Chinese money costs sovereignty.”
China’s embassy in Peru shot back on X in advance of Mr. Rubio’s visit: “China has never acted with geopolitical calculations, never interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and never demanded that other countries take sides … The Western Hemisphere is no one’s ‘backyard.’ Latin American countries have the sovereign right to choose their partners freely.”
The Donroe Doctrine is challenging that assumption in ways the world is now seeing. And Mr. Rubio, the one-time Trump rival turned ally, is its unlikely propagator.