America’s "running experiments" in American countries!

Raju Korti
I begin with Colombia because that is where the latest tremor was felt, and because it captures in a few careless sentences what decades of American policy in its own hemisphere have often conveyed through far graver means. When Donald Trump casually remarked that Colombia was “run by a sick man” and added that its leadership “won’t be doing it for very long”, before responding “sounds good to me” to a question about possible US action, it was not merely diplomatic indiscipline. It was a reminder that in Washington’s strategic subconscious, Latin America is still viewed less as a collection of sovereign nations and more as an extended theatre of American experiments.

For Colombia, a long-standing US ally in counter-narcotics operations, regional security and trade, the shock lay not only in the insult but in the implication. Allies, it seemed, were no longer immune from the language of intervention. President Gustavo Petro’s anguished response, invoking historical wounds, colonial memory and the need for Latin American unity, was as much an appeal to history as it was a warning about the future. Friends do not bomb friends, he said, and South America will not forget.

Pic US National Archives

Colombia’s anxiety comes in the immediate aftermath of what is already being described as the Venezuela experiment. When Trump ordered US troops to invade Venezuela on January 3, 2026 and capture President Nicolas Maduro, he was walking a path worn smooth by two centuries of precedent. Ever since James Monroe declared in 1823 that the Americas were off limits to European powers, the United States has interpreted the doctrine less as a shield for the region and more as a license to enforce its will within it.

The pattern is familiar. When Colombia refused to facilitate an inter-oceanic canal in the early twentieth century, Washington helped carve Panama out of Colombian territory and built the Panama Canal soon after. During the Cold War, ideological anxieties justified direct action, as seen in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, paradoxically carried out after its Marxist leader Maurice Bishop had already been killed by his own forces. Grenada today celebrates the invasion day as Thanksgiving, and its airport bears Bishop’s name, a neat illustration of how memory and power coexist uneasily.

Panama itself offered another lesson, this time stripped of Cold War ideology and dressed in the language of law and order. Manuel Noriega, once a prized CIA asset, became a liability when drug trafficking allegations surfaced and elections were annulled. Operation Just Cause removed him in 1989, after psychological warfare involving blaring rock music outside the Vatican embassy drove him to surrender. The message was unmistakable. Utility defined legitimacy, and legitimacy could be withdrawn overnight.

Venezuela fits squarely into this tradition. Like Noriega, Maduro was framed through the lens of criminality and narcotics, not ideology. What complicates the current episode is the question of legitimacy at home in the United States. Reports that a congressional panel has been divided, and in some cases reluctant, to formally endorse the Venezuelan operation and the dramatic capture of Maduro and his wife underline an important shift. This is not the Cold War era, when bipartisan consensus often smoothed the path for foreign interventions in the hemisphere. Domestic scepticism now shadows every external action.

Yet Trump’s rhetoric has not stopped with Venezuela and Colombia. Nicaragua and Honduras hover uneasily in the background, countries long entangled with US strategic interests, covert operations and regime preferences. Both have histories of American involvement that oscillated between support and sanction, depending on who held power and whose interests were served. The implication that Washington might again recalibrate its posture toward these nations reinforces a larger question. How many countries in the American continent does the United States believe it must actively manage before it feels secure?The repercussions extend well beyond Latin America. At a continental level, such actions revive old fears of sovereignty being conditional and alliances being transactional. They also strengthen voices calling for regional consolidation, even if past efforts like CELAC have faltered. Internationally, they complicate America’s claim to uphold a rules-based order. When intervention appears selective and unilateral, it provides rhetorical ammunition to rivals who accuse Washington of double standards.

For the global community, the stakes are not abstract. Latin America is a vital economic partner, a major energy source, and a geopolitical swing region where China and Russia have already tested influence. Instability or resentment born of perceived neo-imperial behaviour risks pushing countries to hedge their bets, diversify alliances, or retreat into defensive nationalism.

Stripped of history and rhetoric, the story is simple enough for a layman to grasp. The United States continues to act as though geography grants it special rights in its own hemisphere. Sometimes it dresses this impulse as ideology, sometimes as law enforcement, sometimes as offhand bravado. Each time, it leaves behind a residue of distrust. Acceptance of such policies in global corridors today is far thinner than it once was, and patience thinner still. The experiments may continue, but the margin for error is shrinking, and the audience watching is no longer confined to America’s backyard.