Compared to the superficial narratives surrounding issues such as drugs, immigration, and crime, the deeper strategic intent of Absolute Resolve lies in reasserting and consolidating the United States' absolute dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Through specific coercive actions, it seeks to validate its capacity to reshape regional order centered on the Donovan Doctrine and to establish a clear strategic deterrent and exclusionary global strategic concept against other global powers attempting to enter the region. In the face of this strategic pressure from the United States, the responses of major Latin American countries have been fragmented and complex. The U.S. military blockade of the Caribbean region has persisted, extending beyond the single objective of Venezuela to effectively establish control over the Panama Canal and its surrounding strategic passages, significantly increasing the costs and uncertainties of trade and supply chain cooperation between China and Latin America. From a global geopolitical perspective, U.S. entanglement in Latin American affairs could lead to substantive strategic contraction on the Ukraine issue, potentially resulting in some form of tacit understanding or trade-off resembling a backyard swap with Russia, thereby securing freedom of action in their respective core spheres of interest. Judging from current trends, Absolute Resolve resembles more of a sphere-of-influence reassertion exercise using Venezuela as a fulcrum: establishing deterrence through coercive action, leveraging spillover effects via channel control, and reshaping regional choice through norms and narratives. Its impact is not confined to Latin America but extends globally through passage security, supply chain costs, and great-power competition, becoming a critical component in the United States' recalibration of global priorities and retrenchment from non-core theaters of engagement.

Translated by Yiqian YANG

Full text in Chinese available at:

https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/b3/97/c18965a766871/page.htm