WILL KRISTI NOEM BECOME THE NEW FACE OF TRUMP’S DONROE DOCTRINE?

This was a very precarious moment, not just for Colombian democracy, but for democracy and freedom across the Western Hemisphere. Though Colombia has historically been one of the United States’s most critical trade and security partners in the region, Petro’s administration has overseen a precipitous rise in violence, coca cultivation, and narcotics trafficking, while he has also sought to deepen ties with tyrants such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. It would not be hard to imagine Petro and his party seeking to pull a Maduro-style effort to override the results, threatening to plunge Colombia into crisis and further compromising the long-standing U.S.-Colombia relationship.

But before this fraud narrative could take off, our IRI observation mission issued our own statement, making clear that there was no evidence of fraud and the process worked as intended. These findings from IRI, the only American EOM in Colombia, were confirmed by all the major international and Colombian election observation and electoral expert missions, as well as the leaders of Colombia’s electoral institutions. Though Petro continued to stand firm in his lies, by the next day, Ivan Cepeda, the candidate from Petro’s party who finished in second place, uncharacteristically and unexpectedly split from Petro and admitted that no evidence of systemic fraud had been found.

With his Donroe Doctrine, Trump has corrected years of the U.S. neglecting the Western Hemisphere and made clear America will no longer tolerate threats to our interests inside our own backyard. Not only did his bold arrest of Maduro remove one such threat from the board, but it also put others on notice that the U.S. is not afraid to use hard power to secure American interests.

However, for the Donroe Doctrine to succeed, hard power alone is not enough. President Ronald Reagan recognized that the ideological battlefield needed to be contested just as much as any other space, and he created organizations such as IRI and the NED to advance American interests by taking the ideological fight to authoritarian regimes. Reagan understood that the more we can do with soft power, the less we need to use hard power.

Since the days of Reagan, things, of course, have changed. Many organizations now claim to support democracy and human rights, when in reality they simply push progressive policy preferences, often in direct opposition to actual democracy and individual liberty. Americans have every right to ask questions related to what exactly the U.S. government is funding and, where appropriate, cut off funding to organizations advancing causes not aligned with our interests and values.

RUSSIA AND CHINA SEE DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY IN THE FUTURE OF TRUMP’S ‘DONROE DOCTRINE’

However, our IRI observation mission in Colombia is a perfect example of why effective, principled American soft power is still needed. IRI’s important and timely statement prevented anti-democratic, anti-American voices from pushing false allegations of fraud and fueling tensions inside Colombia. Whether Cepeda or de la Espriella ultimately wins the runoff, IRI played a big role in checking Petro’s efforts to bias the outcome and sow instability in the Western Hemisphere.

The Donroe Doctrine recognizes that a Western Hemisphere that is stable and flourishing is good for the U.S. Achieving this will require the full range of America’s power. Keeping soft power options such as IRI and the NED in the toolkit is a smart, necessary step.

Carrie Filipetti is the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition, a Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow, and a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. She previously served as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in the first Trump administration.