Hemispheric Tropism

ANA PALACIO

Former Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain, and
Visiting Professor at Georgetown University

Published in El Mundo, 15 November 2025

In political vocabulary, labels are rarely value-neutral. The term “America” in the United States reaches the apotheosis of this phenomenon, because it is commonly used not to denote the continent, but a single country.

Hidden in this linguistic slippage is a hemispheric tropism: the tendency of the American hyperpower toward self-referential observation, to see itself as exceptional and, consequently, to conceive of the world from the retreat between the two oceans that embrace its territory. The rest—from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic—is grouped under the expression Western Hemisphere, dragging behind it the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine (proclaimed in 1823 as a warning to European powers that Washington claimed the entire expanse as its own exclusive sphere of influence), with its burden of tutelage and hierarchy.

This mental geography hovered especially over the summit held between the European Union and CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) on Sunday the 9th and Monday the 10th. With Gustavo Petro in the sights of the White House, there were notable absences (“better not to go—just in case something snaps,” a Brussels official told me, needing no further explanation).

The task of damage control was saved by António Costa, President of the European Council. Thus, the meeting that was meant to revitalize the bi-regional partnership ended up unfortunately confirming Europe’s diminishing stature.

The rest—from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic—is grouped under the expression Western Hemisphere, dragging behind it the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine (proclaimed in 1823 as a warning to European powers that Washington claimed the entire expanse as its own exclusive sphere of influence), with its burden of tutelage and hierarchy.

On the table were agreements that—if functioning correctly—could help articulate a true transatlantic economic zone: the modernized agreement with Mexico still awaiting ratification; the Mercosur deal, practically blocked by environmental and agricultural disputes; the provisional pact with Chile; and the already consolidated agreements with Central America and the Andean countries (Colombia and Peru, plus Ecuador’s accession protocol).

For Europe, within the varied mosaic of the “Global South,” Latin America and the Caribbean constitute a region close to us in culture and regulatory patterns. In a context of structural uncertainty, strengthening complementary ties should go beyond rhetorical flourishes in official remarks. Our counterparts “over there” approached the dialogue with pragmatic interest—expansion and diversification—tinged with mistrust toward Europe, perceived as a fatigued partner, more moralizing than committed. The meeting ended in a vacuum: no shared message, no forward-looking narrative. A missed opportunity.

Meanwhile, hemispheric tropism permeates U.S. foreign policy under Trump. It is an inclination to view the world through the logic of borders and neighborhood: protecting the “domestic” sphere by projecting hard power outward.

Indeed, there is no dominant doctrine or strategy. The various “chapels” orbiting Trump—isolationalists, advocating strict withdrawal; restrainers, focused on the hemisphere; prioritizers, seeking to rank rivalries; and nostalgists of global leadership—cancel each other out. As H.R. McMaster noted in At War with Ourselves (2024), the result is a policy in which the president’s personal instinct prevails over analysis, and decisions are dictated by the mood of the day or by whoever manages to be heard last.

Trump does not conceive multilateral order as a system of balances, but as a sum of self-contained theaters of operation. In each one, he establishes a ledger of debts owed and payments due; international politics is reduced to crude bookkeeping: allies who do not pay, “badly negotiated” treaties, partners who take advantage. In Europe’s case, the accusation is that the EU built a common project precisely to “run tabs” on the United States—the paradigm of the hegemonic-victimist fable.

This simplistic logic focuses on goods, ignoring the weight of services, investment, and capital—areas in which the U.S. has also reaped enormous second- and third-order benefits. It also disregards the substantial dividends of its leadership: stability, markets, the dollar’s legitimacy, and the spread of values. In Trump’s narrative, the country has been the victim of its own naivety.

The space between the Atlantic and the Pacific is viewed as an extension of the domestic sphere. It is the conviction of a country that sees Canada as a dependent actor—thus far compliant and docile; the Rio Grande as a seam of anxiety through which the invader enters; and the Caribbean as a locus of threat. Trump’s fears are projected onto this topography: immigration, drugs, the enemy within. There is no global vision—only obsession with the perimeter. A retreat that links back to America’s founding history: the North’s victory over the South in the Civil War and the subsequent westward expansion, with its sequelae of extermination and the myth later re-crafted by Hollywood.

The result is an impulse-driven policy. In the Caribbean, Venezuela is framed less as a democratic transition effort than as part of the anti-drug crusade; in South America, relations with Brazil or Argentina fluctuate with personal sympathies or grievances; and the fixation on Greenland illustrates the transformation of the hemisphere into a symbolic stage for self-assertion. Everything responds to the concentration of command: improvised measures imposed without congressional control and, in some cases, without that of the states—as shown by the ruling of a federal judge prohibiting the deployment of troops in Portland.

For decades, the United States projected universalism: open markets, freedom of navigation, collective security. Today it operates according to a logic of territorial and emotional defense.

The result is an impulse-driven policy. In the Caribbean, Venezuela is framed less as a democratic transition effort than as part of the anti-drug crusade; in South America, relations with Brazil or Argentina fluctuate with personal sympathies or grievances; and the fixation on Greenland illustrates the transformation of the hemisphere into a symbolic stage for self-assertion.

This is not the weariness of an empire, but the fear of a nation that doubts itself. Leadership—when not confused with the glorification of the leader—has been reduced to the inertia of a power apparatus that intervenes more out of habit than purpose, as reflected in its behavior in multilateral forums.

Europe watches from its marginality. The summit with CELAC made this clear: neither Washington’s central partner nor a reference point for the South. We need a more active, nuanced, and differentiated policy toward the Americas—because Canada is not the Southern Cone—but driven by a similar idea of presence. Reinforcing alliances not to replace old Atlanticism, but because today’s fragmented world needs actors capable of building bridges.

The task is not to compete with the United States, nor to accept wholesale its “backyard” framework, and even less to lecture Latin America, but to occupy a space for dialogue and cooperation that China is currently filling with its Latin American Silk Road—visible in infrastructure, credit and technology. If Trumpism distills the hemispheric tropism of a country closing in on its own map, Europe risks the opposite: dissolving into irrelevance. Between the politics of fear—America’s trench-like posture—and the politics of resignation—Europe’s shrinking stance—lies a significant part of the international balance of our time.