The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, appeared this Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defend the budget of the Department of State for the fiscal year 2027 and to outline the foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration. He took the opportunity during his testimony to highlight the consolidation of a hemispheric coalition of more than a dozen countries aligned with Washington.
Rubio described the progress as "an extraordinary story" and stated that the Western Hemisphere is now "a region filled with allies of the United States, with leaders who are friendly toward the United States, and with a favorable orientation toward our country."
However, the Secretary of State explicitly identified Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as exceptions to that regional trend, countries that fall outside the coalition of allies that Washington has built in recent months.
In his remarks before the Senate, Rubio stated: "Now we have in this hemisphere a coalition of friendly countries, more than a dozen, that are aligned to work not only on the security issues we all share but also on economic prosperity, because both go hand in hand."
In addition to the three dictatorships, Rubio mentioned Brazil —which is going through an election cycle with presidential elections scheduled for October 2026— as a case that presents "challenges," and labeled the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, as "problematic" in the context of hemispheric politics.
The Secretary of State warned that, despite diplomatic progress, it remains to translate that coalition into concrete actions, following what he described as "20 years of neglect" during which China and other global powers have "interfered" in the Western Hemisphere, "to the detriment not only of the national interests of the United States but also of the people in those countries."
Rubio's testimony before the Senate is part of the hemispheric strategy that the Trump administration has been consolidating since the beginning of its second term. The most visible precedent was the “Shield of the Americas” summit, held on March 7 at the Trump National Doral in Miami, where Trump and Rubio gathered leaders from 12 Latin American and Caribbean nations to formalize a regional coalition against drug trafficking, organized crime, and the influence of China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba.
Among the participants of that summit were Javier Milei (Argentina), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), José Raúl Mulino (Panamá), and Luis Abinader (Dominican Republic), among others. Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were explicitly excluded from that meeting.
The policy of maximum pressure on the so-called "authoritarian triangle" has been a constant of the Trump administration: Cuba was reinstated on the list of state sponsors of terrorism on January 20, 2025, the first day of the second term, and in January of that same year, new sanctions were announced against Cuban entities linked to the military conglomerate GAESA.
In April 2026, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned two sons of Daniel Ortega and Nicaraguan officials from the gold sector, to which the dictator responded by calling Trump “mentally deranged” and demanding an end to the sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.
Rubio also emphasized before the Senate the overall framework of the administration's foreign policy: "The government of the United States is not a charity. We are not here to act as social workers; we are here to win on behalf of the American people and in defense of the national interest."
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