Mike Pence Latin America Tour: What It Means For The Changing Region

US Vice President Mike Pence took a four-country tour of Latin America in recent years, visiting Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Panama. But while most of the media has focused on Pence's efforts to clarify Donald Trump's comments about a "military option" in Venezuela, Global Americans' Christopher Sabatini delves into what the Vice President's tour says about the changing region. 

Pence was lectured on how military intervention is a thing of the past in a region of peace, and heard some of the US' key partners take a principled, human rights-based stance on the issue of Venezuela. Indeed, while Sabatini's piece is a personal opinion, he emphasizes the region's willingness to collaborate on issues as corruption, trade, education, peace, and democracy. The interesting story is not the VP's efforts to tell leaders abroad they should ignore his boss' bluster, Sabatini writes. Rather, we should focus on how "the U.S.’s influence and partnerships in the hemisphere remain, and are in fact complex and multifaceted, extending beyond the misguided, clumsy rhetoric coming out of a golf resort in New Jersey".

What America First Means Abroad

To better understand the "Trump Doctrine" for Latin America, provided there is such a thing, we must then turn to Greg Weeks' take — also on Global Americans. There, we find "two essential elements: first, strong and sometimes bellicose rhetorical opposition to the Obama Administration’s policies; second, significant substantive continuity with Obama Administration policies combined with threats to change that fact".

That leaves Latin America perplexed. And if these mixed signals further undermine the trust in the US as a solid partner, Pence's phrase that "America First does not mean America alone", may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.