Brazil, Venezuela show limits of Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’

The electoral triumph of Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva and the jubilant return of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have brought in sharp focus that the US President wields less influence over Latin America than he and his team believe.

Both cases dealt a blow to the Donroe Doctrine, a plan first articulated in last November’s National Security Strategy. It is meant to establish a US “sphere of influence” and takes its name from the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine, originally was established to keep European powers out of the Americas. The Donroe doctrine goes further.

Let’s start with Brazil, Latin America’s most populous country, where the elections pitted de Silva, popularly known as Lula, against Flavio Bolsonaro, whose father, Jair, was president from 2019 to 2023. Self-described as the Trump of the Tropics, Jair was sentenced to 27 years in prison for planning a coup to keep in power after losing elections.

According to Reuters, quoting current and former US officials, the US Department of State led a campaign to tilt the elections in Flavio’s favour. State Department officials told diplomats it was US policy to back a member of the Bolsonaro family.

While Flavio won the first round of the vote, Lula won the second and overall, more than five million votes ahead of his right-wing opponent. Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Flavio to surrender his passport. But before that happened, he fled the country to Miami. The US immediately granted him and his family visas.

With Lula in charge for the next four years, the Donroe Doctrine’s aim “ to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere,” as the National Security Strategy put it, remains wishful thinking. Washington fears that Brazil will tilt further to China, which overtook the US as Brazil’s largest trading partner in 2009.

How far that tilt will go and what Washington can do to stop it remains to be seen. The result of the October 25 elections brought to mind a statement by Lula at the end of a G-20 meeting he hosted in 2024—“Trump was elected president of the United States, not emperor of the world.”

In his victory speech, Lula told thousands of supporters that “we are no one’s backyard,” a reference to a US habit over the years to describe Latin America as the backyard of the US. But it also means that the leftist Brazilian leader does not want to tie his country too closely to any of the world’s superpowers.

The other country that throws doubt over the efficiency of the Donroe Doctrine and Trump’s influence is Venezuela, in particular its most popular politician, Maria Corina Machado. She won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.”

Machado had been under a strict travel ban imposed by her country’s dictatorial ruler, Nicolas Maduro and had to be smuggled out in December 2025 by a complicated route worked out by a private rescue team to travel to Oslo to receive her prize. Blocked from returning, she spent 10 months in self-exile in Panama.

While she was there, a team of US Special Operations forces captured Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a meticulously planned and meticulously executed operation that lasted just two and a half hours on January 3. They were flown to New York to face charges of narco-terrorism and cocaine trafficking.

Two weeks later, Machado visited the White House and presented her prize, in a gold-framed plaque, to Trump. The dedication read “presented as a symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”

The Nobel committee swiftly commented that while it was legitimate to hand over the medal, the prize itself could not be shared.

If Machado expected that a grateful Trump would push for her to return to Venezuela in a leading role on the way to democracy, she was disappointed. Washington instead opted to make Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, Acting President.

The repressive state institution she and Maduro built up over years remained unchanged. Trump has established close ties with Rodriguez who is eager to comply with Trump’s wishes and swiftly changed Venezuela’s hydrocarbon law to invite more American investment.

She made a deal, denounced as questionable by critics, to give the US government, through a private company, the rights to exploit 17 oilfields. Large shares of Venezuela’s oil wealth will go to the US in line with Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “to the victor belong the spoils.”

Where does the cosy Rodriguez-Trump relationship leave Machado, who returned to Venezuela on Sunday (Nov.25) to greetings by thousands of jubilant supporters.

Her return can be seen as an act of defiance because Trump repeatedly made clear he would prefer her to stay away. His comment on the joyous welcome she received spoke volumes: “She’s a very nice woman. But we are doing really well in Venezuela.”

I translate that as “Delcy will do what we say. Corina probably won’t.”