Trump's 'Shield of the Americas' Summit Draws Only a Dozen Leaders as Iran Crisis Overshadows Hemisphere Pivot
President Donald Trump gathered with leaders from roughly a dozen Latin American nations on Saturday at his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in what the White House billed as the 'Shield of the Americas' summit, a meeting designed to demonstrate renewed U.S. Commitment to the Western Hemisphere even as a widening war in Iran dominated global attention.
The summit was overshadowed almost from the outset. Trump started the day with a social media warning that Iran would face intensified strikes. 'Today Iran will be hit very hard!' he posted, just one week after the United States and Israel launched a military campaign against Tehran that has left hundreds dead and unsettled global markets. His time with the Latin American leaders was further curtailed by a scheduled flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where he was to attend the dignified transfer of six U.S. Troops killed in a drone strike on a command center in Kuwait the previous day.
A Selective Guest List
The leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago confirmed attendance. Conspicuously absent were Brazil and Mexico, the hemisphere's two dominant economies, as well as Colombia, long regarded as the linchpin of U.S. Anti-narcotics strategy in the region.
The summit emerged from the collapse of what had been planned as the 10th Summit of the Americas. That gathering was scrapped during a U.S. Military buildup off the coast of Venezuela last year, after host Dominican Republic, under White House pressure, barred Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending. When leftist leaders in Colombia and Mexico threatened to pull out in protest, and with no commitment from Trump to attend, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader postponed the event at the last minute, citing what he described as 'deep differences' in the region.
Richard Feinberg, who helped plan the original Summit of the Americas in 1994 while serving at the National Security Council in the Clinton administration and is now professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, offered a pointed comparison. 'The first Summit of the Americas, with 34 nations and a carefully negotiated comprehensive agenda for regional competitiveness, projected inclusion, consensus and optimism,' he said. 'The hastily convened Shield of the Americas mini-summit conjures a crouched defensiveness, with only a dozen or so attendees huddled around a single dominant figure.'
Countering China
Underpinning the gathering is Trump's drive to push back against Chinese economic and strategic influence across Latin America. His national security strategy promotes what it calls the 'Trump Corollary' to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, targeting Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation, and investment in the region's resource industries.
The administration's most visible early move was strong-arming Panama to withdraw from China's Belt and Road Initiative and review long-term port contracts held by a Hong Kong-based company, amid U.S. Threats to retake the Panama Canal. More recently, the U.S. Capture of Venezuelan then-president Nicolas Maduro -- seized in an audacious military operation ordered by Trump two months ago and transferred to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges -- threatens to disrupt Venezuelan oil exports to China, which had been the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude before the raid.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking to regional leaders and defense ministers gathered in Florida ahead of the summit, framed the effort in stark terms. 'Under previous leaders, we grew obsessed with every other theater and every other border in the world except our own,' he said. 'These elites reduced our power and presence in this hemisphere, opting for a benign neglect that was anything but benign.'
Yet even governments closely aligned with Trump have shown reluctance to sever economic ties with Beijing. Evan Ellis, an expert on Chinese engagement in the region at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that China's trade-focused diplomacy fills a critical financial void in a region grappling with persistent poverty and infrastructure deficits.
Kevin Gallagher, director of Boston University's Global Development Policy Center, was blunt about the competitive dynamic. 'The U.S. Is offering the region tariffs, deportations, and militarization, whereas China is offering trade and investment,' he said. 'Leaders in the region would do well to remain neutral and hedge, such that they can leverage increased U.S.-China rivalry to their own benefit.'
Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding a further dimension to the rivalry playing out across Latin America.
A New Envoy and a Promised Deal
Ahead of the summit, Trump announced the appointment of Kristi Noem, whom he had just removed as Secretary of Homeland Security, as his special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. Noem indicated that Trump planned to announce what she described as 'a big agreement' at the summit centered on coordinated action against cartels and drug trafficking across the Western Hemisphere.
The Doral resort, where Trump also plans to host the Group of 20 summit later this year, lent the gathering an unmistakably personal character that critics said underscored its improvised nature. The summit's name is meant to capture Trump's vision for an America First foreign policy in the region, one that would deploy U.S. Military and intelligence assets at a scale unseen since the end of the Cold War.
Whether the gathering translates into durable policy or remains a symbolic gesture will depend in large part on whether Washington can offer the region something more than security cooperation at a moment when economic ties with China continue to deepen.
