The Iran war might dominate headlines, but for President Donald Trump’s long-term strategic vision, it remains a diversion. The November 2025 National Security Strategy designated the Western Hemisphere as America’s strategic priority. “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere,” the document declared.
Trump’s targeting of drug cartel speedboats, his capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and the tightened embargo against Cuba demonstrate the White House is not merely posturing. But the Pentagon must create an infrastructure for action.
While the United States has, over the past half-century, built up an infrastructure in the Middle East with both permanent basing and turnkey facilities, in an age of ballistic missiles and drones, these facilities are now as much liabilities as assets. With aircraft carriers, amphibious assault vessels, and more secure basing options in Greece, Cyprus, and Somaliland, the Pentagon could shutter its facilities in Turkey and Qatar and be more secure as a result.
The same is not true in Central and South America. The Clinton administration ended the U.S. military presence in Panama in 1999. A decade later, President Barack Obama abandoned the U.S. forward operating location at the Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Ecuador after leftist President Rafael Correa refused to extend its lease. Following the rise of former leftist guerrilla leader Gustavo Petro in Colombia, U.S. access to bases in that country is also increasingly uncertain. U.S. facilities in Puerto Rico and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, provide only limited reach.
If Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to roll out the National Security Strategy, they must reframe the U.S. presence in South America. Too many South American countries are ideologically unstable, swinging between right- and left-wing governments who in one administration embrace the U.S. and in the next condemn it. Many with which the U.S. have partnered also have limited utility due to their geography. The bases in Colombia were useful for local counterterrorism operations, for example, but their operational reach did not extend far.
Seldom is there a magic formula that can almost instantly resolve all U.S. policy concerns and needs, but in Paraguay, Trump has one. There is no country more centrally located within South America. Paraguay could become a hub for counterterrorism operations in the triple frontier region with Brazil and Argentina and is within operating range of Chile’s lithium-rich Antofagasta. Paraguay also has the continent’s most ethnically and religiously homogenous population; many of the social tensions that destabilize other regional countries simply do not exist in Paraguay.
Similarly, its President Santiago Peña is conservative and pro-American; not only he, but also the political opposition understands that wealth comes from free market growth of capital, not redistribution. Most importantly, Paraguay is ready and willing to amplify its partnership with Washington. In March 2026, Paraguay approved a Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S., which governs the temporary presence of U.S. military and civilians in the country for joint security operations and exercises. Transforming that into a more permanent agreement is simply a matter of Trump and Rubio signaling their desire.
If Paraguay could be the cornerstone of U.S. presence in the center and south of the continent, Guyana could become a hub for its north and Caribbean. Trump’s operation against Maduro was a success, but Venezuela’s trajectory is far from certain. Even if his Vice President Delcy Rodriguez follows Trump’s orders, the ideological component of Maduro’s army remains. The problem with reliance on a single strongman or strongwoman is that a coup or assassination can reverse that partnership in an instant. Guyana is the new gas giant of South America, however, and faces the looming threat of a Venezuelan land grab over its resource-rich Essequibo region or interference in its offshore Stabroek Block.
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The sheer vulnerability of Guyana makes it a willing partner.
Trump can secure his legacy in South America not with one-off military operations but rather by creating infrastructure to cement a partnership for decades to come.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.