18 November 2025

Control the Hemisphere, Contain China: Inside America’s Two-Front Strategy

Andrew Latham

The USS Gerald R. Ford’s gray silhouette cutting across the Caribbean horizon marks a decisive shift in American statecraft: U.S. foreign policy, long focused on policing the planet-wide Rules-Based International Order, is narrowing to a more restrained focus on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific.

From the Ford’s slow approach to Venezuelan waters to escalating trade tensions with Canada and early signs of a harder U.S. line toward Mexico and migration, Washington’s attention is once again concentrated on the regions most vital to its security and power.

This is no tactical coincidence. It reflects a deliberate recalibration under President Trump—one that binds hemispheric defense to the broader logic of great-power competition. The United States is refortifying its neighborhood not as a retreat from global leadership, but as the bedrock from which it intends to sustain it.

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