Greater North America: Rethinking the Geography of U.S. Security and Prosperity

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Persistent instability in the Western Hemisphere has often pulled Washington’s attention away from its priority foreign policy aims around the world. Within the region, the United States should focus its attention and resources on the foreign problems most likely to become domestic vulnerabilities. The United States has long prioritized migration, organized crime, infrastructure failures, and political instability in Canada or Mexico, recognizing they can quickly become domestic concerns, and has conceptually grouped the rest of the Western Hemisphere together as a lesser-prioritized single strategic unit.

That framing misreads the interconnected nature of migration routes, transnational criminal networks, supply chains, transportation networks, and sources of power for new technologies, and the consequences of China’s growing influence in America’s neighborhood. The United States is much more directly and quickly affected by dynamics in countries north of the Amazon River than in the region south of it. U.S. strategy should, therefore, revise its conception of prioritized geography to focus on Greater North America, spanning Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Caribbean-facing countries of South America.

Over the next decade, U.S. policy should aim to make Greater North America a stronger economic base for American power. Washington should harness its proximity, trade, diaspora ties, and decades of security cooperation to help the countries in Greater North America become stronger economic and security partners. Instead of treating trade, migration, counternarcotics, development, and competition with outside powers as separate portfolios, U.S. policymakers should approach them as integrated challenges.

To do so, U.S. policymakers should focus on increased integration and resilience within Greater North America by prioritizing:

Given that many of the countries prioritized under a Greater North American strategy hold historical distrust of Washington, U.S. policymakers should give them good reasons to choose the United States: financing, dependable market access, and commitments that will survive a change of administration. A more resilient neighborhood would leave Washington with greater capacity to invest, compete, and lead globally.

INTRODUCTION

U.S. policy is being pulled in two opposing directions. On the one hand, the United States seeks to advance U.S. leadership and foreign policy priorities around the world, while on the other, persistent instability in the Western Hemisphere pulls Washington’s attention and resources back toward its own borders. Simply put, what happens in the countries closest to the United States can quickly become a domestic concern. Migration, narcotics flows, transnational crime, and illicit financing are all examples of this phenomenon. Washington confronts each crisis as it arises and as a separate issue, but that is not a sustainable approach. U.S. strategy should, therefore, prioritize creating stronger economic and security partners across a Greater North America, spanning Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Caribbean-facing countries of South America.

This new strategy would include countries that are deeply integrated with the United States—principally Canada and Mexico—as well as those countries whose instability, infrastructure, or security directly affects the United States. Determining which countries have direct consequences for the United States requires examining complex, interconnected chains. For example, migration originating in Venezuela can move through Colombia, Panama, Central America, and Mexico before arriving at the U.S. border. Drugs produced in South America transit through the Caribbean and Central America and flow to Mexican organizations before they reach American consumers, a trade fueled by U.S. firearms and illicit finance along the way. Instability in Haiti quickly becomes a problem for the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security. Who controls the ports, power systems, telecommunications networks, and cable landing stations in the Caribbean matters for U.S. economic security. Countries farther south, beyond the Amazon, are also important. Brazil plays a global role, Chile and Peru are integrated into U.S. critical-mineral supply chains, and Argentina exports beef and oil to the United States. Yet events in those countries rarely reach the United States as quickly or as directly as developments north of the Amazon. Farther south, Washington generally has time to decide how to engage. Inside Greater North America, events often make that choice for it.

THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT: CRISES NORTH OF THE AMAZON QUICKLY BECOME DOMESTIC PROBLEMS

The United States emerged from the Cold War with overwhelming economic and geopolitical advantages throughout the Western Hemisphere. Democratic government was spreading, American trade and investment dominated much of the region, and no other power could offer comparable bilateral economic benefits. Accordingly, the United States grew close to Canada and Mexico, signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992. But as transnational crime and insecurity in Central America and the Caribbean began to impact the United States, foreign policy thinkers began calling for a North American response to Central American insecurity and greater cooperation in the Caribbean. Those voices were largely ignored. Over the past two decades, developments in Venezuela and the Caribbean have made the limits of a three-country strategy—that is, one focused on the United States, Canada, and Mexico—harder to ignore.

Venezuela illustrates what happens when the United States ignores the domestic effects of events north of the Amazon. During the Biden administration, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans already displaced to Colombia and Peru headed north after the pandemic eliminated job opportunities in the informal sector. This turned a crisis emanating from Caracas into a challenge at the U.S.-Mexico border. By the end of 2025, Venezuela’s political, economic, and security crisis had driven away nearly 7.9 million people, more than 6.9 million of whom had gone to Latin America and the Caribbean. The U.S. operation that removed President Nicolás Maduro from office in January 2026 did not dismantle the criminal networks built under Chavismo or resolve the conditions that drove migration. Going forward, only sustained reform of Venezuelan institutions can resolve those problems.

Over the past two decades, Beijing has become increasingly assertive around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. Although the United States cannot compete with China everywhere, it should at least aim to be the partner of choice in Greater North America. Washington’s advantages in proximity, trade, diaspora ties, and decades of security cooperation have been challenged by Beijing’s steady diplomatic engagement, financing, and infrastructure projects. That dynamic has translated into Chinese influence over ports, telecommunications networks, and other critical systems that are close to the United States and interconnected with U.S. interests. Caribbean governments, for example, have responded to the offers before them, and Washington’s engagement has too often been patchy.

Over the next five to ten years, U.S. policymakers will struggle to separate strategic competition from regional instability; in this period, the world economy is likely to become less organized around efficiency and more around resilience and reliability. U.S. officials will be challenged to respond to the demands of artificial intelligence (AI) for reliable electricity, computing infrastructure, secure fiber, and data centers. AI, combined with new financial tools, will empower criminal groups and increase insecurity. At the same time, climate shocks will place greater pressure on Caribbean and Central American populations, and migration routes will shift in response to changing policies and conditions.

The United States will confront those pressures under greater fiscal constraints and with more domestic skepticism about foreign commitments than at any point since the Cold War. Washington, therefore, must prioritize its focus. Intense concentration on Canada and Mexico while neglecting the rest of the Western Hemisphere misunderstands geography and the nature of the U.S. relationship with the countries of the region. It also does little to help Washington decide where to focus its limited attention and resources.

U.S. INTERESTS AND OBJECTIVES

The United States should focus its attention and resources on those foreign problems that are most likely to become domestic problems. Canada and Mexico are the obvious starting points, due to their economic interdependence. In 2025, the United States traded approximately $1.84 trillion in goods and services with Canada and Mexico; as such, a major rupture in either relationship would have widespread effects on the U.S. economy. The fallout of the recent tariff fight with Canada has demonstrated the extent of this economic interdependence.

Problems in Mexico and Central America can increase migration, creating opportunities for criminal groups to exploit. For example, Haiti’s continued collapse could trigger maritime migration, requiring emergency U.S. action. Problems in Panama, which controls the canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific, can disrupt global trade, as the severe drought that forced restrictions on canal traffic in 2023 demonstrated. Meanwhile, Colombia cooperates with the United States on counternarcotics operations, and Bogota’s support will be essential to any sustained response to Venezuela’s crisis. Fentanyl and organized crime are high on the U.S.-Mexico agenda, and state failure in the Caribbean has often required immediate U.S. action. The more Washington has to manage those problems, the less attention it can devote elsewhere.

The American public is directly affected by events in those countries: manufacturing workers depend on North American supply chains; farmers and energy producers depend on regional markets and transportation networks; and communities across the United States suffer the consequences of illicit drugs. Although border states encounter migration most immediately, immigration is a national political issue. And diaspora communities sustain strong connections to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Over the next decade, U.S. policy should strengthen the regional foundations of American power by helping the countries in Greater North America become stronger economic and security partners. Trade rules and investment tools—including rules-of-origin cumulation and financing from the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the Export-Import Bank—can enhance Caribbean and northern South American contributions to North American production and supply chains. U.S. policymakers can reduce dangerous dependencies and bolster resilience by allowing qualifying inputs from those countries to count toward regional content requirements while financing the power, ports, and logistics needed to support production. To address irregular migration, Washington must address the failures of the underlying regional system, including the mismatch between American labor demands and lawful channels for entry. A functioning border is necessary to move commerce efficiently, enforce U.S. law, protect national security, and provide predictable channels for lawful migration.

A NEW APPROACH: A GREATER NORTH AMERICAN STRATEGY

A strategy oriented around a Greater North American geography would allow the United States to prioritize and better integrate its resources for this priority region. For most of the post–Cold War period, the U.S. government has treated trade, migration, counternarcotics, development, and competition with outside powers as separate portfolios. In fact, they are closely linked: for example, development decisions and labor policy can both affect migration. Most of the necessary authorities to respond already exist in trade law, development finance institutions, immigration programs, and security cooperation agreements. Washington need only better integrate its tools and responses in those sectors. A Greater North American strategy would enable the United States to provide more reliable financing and market access in return for agreed standards. Importantly, those standards would incorporate the wishes of partner states and afford them discretion over their larger foreign policy.

A major area of focus for the Greater North American approach should be expanding regional economic integration through the revision and expansion of regional trade agreements. U.S.-Mexico-Canada integration, as manifest in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade (USMCA), should be the starting point. The United States declined in July 2026 to renew the agreement in its current form, although its provisions remain in force. The ensuing negotiations should seek to strengthen North American production, address economic problems around anticompetitive practices, and give firms the predictability they need to invest for the long term.

The bipartisan Americas Act, S. 3878, introduced by Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) on March 6, 2024, proposed a mechanism for additional countries to join USMCA and called for a study of aligning rules of origin (which qualify goods for preferential treatment) and allowing cumulation (which qualifies certain inputs from one country toward another’s content requirements) in selected sectors across trade agreements. Policymakers should consider how to align these rules so as to better connect Central American producers to North American supply chains. For example, a textile mill in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, can sell goods in the United States under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), and if its qualifying materials could also count toward USMCA content requirements, the mill could bolster a broader North American production network. Congress and trade officials should identify the sectors most likely to benefit, assess the legal changes needed, and negotiate terms that permit cross-agreement cumulation.

A second area essential to greater economic integration is expanding investment in key sectors. Foreign direct investment, project finance, and development finance can help the United States build on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada base. The DFC, the Export-Import Bank, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency should concentrate on projects in Greater North America that reduce clear vulnerabilities for the United States or its closest partners. Such efforts can build on recent efforts to strengthen these investment tools. In December 2025, Congress reauthorized the DFC through 2031, raising its maximum contingent liability from $60 billion to $205 billion. Congress also created a $5 billion equity revolving fund and expanded its ability to take minority equity positions. In addition, the reauthorization explicitly broadened the DFC’s authority in energy, critical minerals, and information and communications technology, including undersea cables.

The DFC and other investment tools should prioritize projects that reduce U.S. dependence on vulnerable external supply chains, including reliable power supplies, port and logistics capacity, cable redundancy, secure digital infrastructure, and production capacity. The criteria should focus on whether control or disruption of an asset would have national security implications. That distinction is important: if Washington treats every Chinese investment as a threat, it will waste attention and capital on projects that pose no serious risk.

A third critical area of focus for a more integrated Greater North America is the legal movement of labor. Washington should expand the legal ways for foreign workers to fill American jobs in sectors where demonstrable U.S. demand exists, working with willing Greater North American partners. Temporary-worker authorities can meet this need if admissions become more predictable and are paired with tougher enforcement against illegal employment and abusive recruitment. The United States should also work with Canada, Colombia, Mexico, and willing CAFTA-DR countries to streamline the entry of qualified professionals in occupations facing sustained shortages. Employers, technical institutions, and universities should build partnerships around specific North American workforce needs.

Physical Connections

In addition to expanding trade, investment, and legal labor movement to spur economic integration, the United States should also use a Greater North American approach to reduce the country’s direct security vulnerabilities related to the region’s physical infrastructure. If compromised or exploited by hostile actors, telecommunications networks, cable landing stations, power systems, or cloud environments connected to sensitive U.S. systems could become vulnerabilities. To protect those physical networks, policymakers should begin by identifying those that would pose the greatest risk to U.S. interests if disrupted or put under external control. Once identified, the United States could work with Greater North American partners to secure them through financing, technical support, cybersecurity protections, and access to trusted suppliers.

Natural disasters also threaten critical infrastructure. U.S. law currently distinguishes between domestic and foreign disaster responses, which makes it harder to coordinate preparedness across the region. Domestic natural disasters mobilize the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Stafford Act, which empowers the president to coordinate federal disaster response. Foreign natural disasters, meanwhile, run through the State Department and foreign-assistance authorities. In the Greater North American context, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands receive access to federal mitigation programs, while other Caribbean countries receive support through smaller programs from multiple agencies and appropriations. The resulting mosaic is ineffective at addressing vulnerabilities in the region’s economy. Congress should create a more reliable authority for financing pre-disaster resilience in the region.

Underlying those reforms is the need for a U.S. policy organizational structure better suited to integration across Greater North America. Although the military has begun to improve its coordination across the hemisphere, its restructuring has not gone far enough. The U.S. Army activated Western Hemisphere Command in December 2025, bringing Army Forces Command, Army North, and Army South under a theater headquarters that supports both U.S. Northern Command (which is responsible for the United States, Canada, and Mexico) and U.S. Southern Command (which covers Central and South America and most of the Caribbean). That categorization has resulted in inefficiencies: for example, counter-cartel operations target networks and markets that span Greater North America, but the regional division in the commands separates Mexico from Central America and much of the Caribbean. A revised Unified Command Plan would result in more cohesive planning and coordination with partners.

The military is just one example of a wider organizational problem in U.S. foreign-domestic policy structures. Trade and investment tend to run through the National Economic Council, migration and border policy through the Domestic Policy Council and Homeland Security Council, and diplomacy and security through the National Security Council. Cabinet departments reproduce the same divisions. Only after a problem has become a crisis do these entities collaborate more fully. To improve U.S. bureaucratic integration, the president should appoint a deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for Greater North America, supported by a small team drawn from the National Security Council, National Economic Council, Domestic Policy Council, and Homeland Security Council. With that cross-departmental team, the deputy assistant could manage Greater North American strategy across jurisdictions with foresight. The deputy assistant would be responsible for daily operations, while the vice president could also be involved to lend the portfolio political capital.

Washington’s Choice

One alternative to a Greater North American strategic framework would be a hemisphere-wide framing. But this option is too imprecise to guide the allocation of scarce resources. For example, the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP) is a useful coalition, but its membership does not tell Washington where to focus attention. APEP brought together twelve governments prepared to pursue an agenda aimed at deeper economic integration and greater regional competitiveness, including Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay, while leaving out the Bahamas, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Jamaica. That composition may have suited APEP’s purpose, but it does not lend itself to addressing the developments that most directly affect the United States.

Another alternative is an updated sphere-of-influence framework, which would aim to keep external powers out without necessarily requiring territorial control. Such an approach, however, would seek to preserve privileged U.S. access to markets, infrastructure, technology, and security relationships in the Western Hemisphere, which the United States still enjoys in important respects but no longer commands. It would, therefore, push U.S. policymakers to prioritize competing with China rather than addressing the issues that are the most direct threats.

CONSTRAINTS AND RESOURCES

The countries that Washington would have to prioritize under this Greater North American strategy are among those with the strongest historical reasons to distrust it. As a consequence, consent could be one of the biggest constraints on its implementation. According to the leading historian John Coatsworth, there were at least forty-one successful U.S.-supported changes of government in Latin America between 1898 and 1994, including seventeen involving direct U.S. military or intelligence intervention. Coatsworth’s findings illustrate the degree to which Washington’s past intervention in the region could generate resistance to its future involvement. Thus, the United States should concentrate on offering neighboring countries U.S. market access, financing, diplomatic attention, security cooperation, and political capital, rather than trying to dictate country choices or impose punishments. Partner countries will inevitably maintain economic relationships with China, Europe, and the Gulf, among others. The United States should accordingly court them with financing, dependable market access, and commitments that will survive successive administrations.

Another limitation is the capacity of some Greater North American countries. While every country in the corridor warrants sustained attention, integration cannot proceed at the same pace everywhere. Some governments may not be able to immediately support deeper integration. Some countries lack credible project pipelines, and others have weak regulatory institutions, which could make large infrastructure investments risky. Organized crime has penetrated states and financial systems throughout the region. Small Caribbean countries often lack the fiscal space to absorb shocks or finance resilience. Where governments lack the capacity to put financing to work, U.S. policymakers should prioritize project preparation and regulatory support.

The United States has capacity problems of its own. The Trump administration’s government cuts in 2025 weakened foreign-assistance agencies and eliminated expertise that will take years to rebuild. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s combative approaches to Canada and Mexico have somewhat soured the historical goodwill between the United States and its immediate neighbors. Yet restoring the old bureaucracy and taking a conciliatory diplomatic approach would not be enough to meet future challenges. Governments in the region now have more outside options, and U.S. influence increasingly depends on variables outside of the government: technological advances, private firms, diaspora networks, and cross-border institutions.

Thus, a future administration should rebuild selectively, focusing diplomatic staffing, intelligence collection, project-development expertise, commercial advocacy, and law-enforcement cooperation on countries that most directly affect the United States. The DFC has increased financial capacity, but finding and developing viable projects will require people with local knowledge and technical expertise. Further, presidential attention will remain scarce. The proposed Greater North America–focused deputy assistant and staff would need enough authority to keep agencies working together between crises, with the vice president available when a disagreement requires a decision above their level. U.S. policymakers will need to be sensitive to the political aspects of Greater North American integration. The memory of fights over NAFTA still lingers in Washington, and any proposal that appears to encourage firms to move production out of the United States will face resistance. Greater North American integration will therefore need to be shown to strengthen U.S.-based production through expanding regional supply chains. That is the only way to move beyond the old arguments for trade liberalization.

CONCLUSION: STRENGTHENING THE REGIONAL BASE OF AMERICAN POWER

North America has long been a durable source of American strength. Integration with Canada and Mexico has created a relationship qualitatively different from ordinary foreign relations, and a continental base from which the United States can compete and lead globally. Inside Greater North America, the more immediate challenges of migration, organized crime, infrastructure failures, and political instability can rapidly affect the border and American communities, causing domestic crises.

Canada and Mexico remain central to the strategy, but developments in Central America, the Caribbean, and the northern coast of South America also affect the United States directly. The Caribbean-facing countries to the north of the Amazon are connected to Central America and Mexico, which migration and criminal networks use to reach the United States. Meanwhile, the region’s ports and cable connections are crucial for U.S. shipping and communications. A similar, though less urgent, story is found south of the Amazon. The United States has important interests in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and elsewhere, but those interests can be treated through a more typical foreign policy approach.

The announcement of an ordinary Chinese commercial project in South America is not automatically a challenge to the United States. Washington should commit diplomatic or financial resources when a project creates a dependency or strategic vulnerability, rather than treating Chinese participation alone as a reason to act.

Washington’s relations with the Western Hemisphere have been mixed, ranging from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro under President Trump. Every U.S. administration has, whatever its approach, had to contend with the fact that crises in the countries closest to the United States can quickly become domestic problems. By knitting those countries together through mutual advantage and economic benefit, the United States can reduce the likelihood that those problems reach its borders. A more resilient hemisphere would also leave Washington with greater capacity to invest, compete, and lead globally.