Die hemisphärische Verteidigung ist zurück

“America has returned to the Americas,” write Hoover Fellow [Joseph Ledford](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/joseph-ledford) and coauthor Ryan Berg in a new essay at *Defining ideas*. “Yet not everyone agrees with the White House’s new emphasis on the Western Hemisphere: there is mounting anxiety over ‘hemisphereism’ as well as hyperbolic claims that American grand strategy is committing ‘superpower suicide.’” Ledford and Berg counter that a stronger Western Hemisphere security posture “does not mean sacrificing superpowerdom.” “Rather,” they maintain, “waging a great-power competition against China *requires* the United States to focus on the Western Hemisphere.” The piece goes on to analyze the Trump administration’s “strategic pivot” toward hemispheric defense, an approach which uses “hard power and diplomacy in tandem to resolve challenges that bear directly on America’s capacity to confront the Chinese Communist Party.” Among other issues, Ledford and Berg stress that upholding the “sovereignty and neutrality” of the Panama Canal and combating criminal narcotics organizations are two key goals in the region.