The Army has activated a new command to reflect the Trump Administration's new priorities for the military: a focus on the Western Hemisphere and the nation's borders.
The Western Hemisphere Command is based at Fort Bragg, N.C. and is the Army's largest. It was created by merging three existing commands -- U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South, both in Texas -- and U.S. Forces Command already located at Bragg. Hundreds of troops and civilian positions will be transferred to the base, many from Fort Sam Houston in Texas.
The military has been retooling in several ways in recent months, including merging other Army commands. The Western Hemisphere command's first leader, General Joseph Ryan, said it's part of a crucial Army restructuring.
"The Army is transforming because our adversaries increasingly aim to exploit vulnerabilities in the homeland and throughout North, Central and (South) America, to constrain the United States of America and prevent us from projecting military power across the globe to combat threats that only we can deal with," Ryan said during the ceremony standing up the new command.
Geopolitical rivals including China and Russia have long worked to gain influence in Latin America. And the Trump Administration's main military focus has been immigration enforcement and targeting suspected drug cartels in the Caribbean.
The details of how the new Western Hemisphere Command will handle its mission aren't all clear yet. Being an Army command, it will be focused on the military's efforts on land across the hemisphere. And it will have instant access to some of the nation's fastest-deploying light infantry units, because the nation's rapid response force, the 18th Airborne Corps, has been moved under its control.
The ceremony creating the new command came just hours after the Trump Administration unveiled a new National Security Strategy that emphasizes the Western Hemisphere and controlling the nation's borders.
In it, the Administration said the United States was returning to the two-centuries-old Monroe Doctrine, which treats interference in the Western hemisphere from countries outside it as a national security threat.
Speaking earlier this month at the Reagan Defense Forum, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the U.S. will protect military and commercial access to places such as the Arctic, Greenland, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and what the Administration calls the "Gulf of America."
"After years of neglect, the United States will restore U.S. military dominance in the Western Hemisphere," he said. "We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region. We will also deny adversaries' ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities in our hemisphere."
Against the backdrop of the U.S. building its largest combat force in Latin America in decades, threatening Venezuela, Hegseth also struck an ominous tone. He said the Pentagon will work with like-minded neighbors, but is also ready to take decisive action to advance U.S. interests.
At the same forum, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said "protecting the homeland" would no longer be empty words, and that Homeland Defense is national security.
"If you look back over the arc of our deployment history, over the last few years, we haven't had a lot of American combat power in our own neighborhood," Caine said. "I suspect that's probably going to change."
Experts warn that using force the wrong way in Latin America could quickly undermine U.S. security and commerce.
"There's a reputation in many parts of Latin America about Americans with big sticks and a resentment and a historical legacy there," said Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank on foreign policy and national security.
"And if we come in in a way that is arrogant and unnecessarily aggressive and militaristic, then we risk feeding those unhelpful stereotypes and giving a self-inflicted wound to ourselves and a gift to the People's Republic of China," Bowman said.
He says one risk of the new geographic emphasis can be described as an opportunity cost.
"They're trying to do less in Europe to facilitate doing more elsewhere, namely in the Pacific, but especially in the Western Hemisphere, and to defend our homeland," he said. "I respect the desire to establish priorities and allocate finite resources in a prudent manner, but I think we see ample evidence that as we reduce both with our statements and our actions our perceived commitments in Europe, we're seeing more aggression from Vladimir Putin."
But Bowman says creation of the new command makes sense in several ways, including the Pentagon's efforts to increase efficiency by shrinking the number of officers and headquarters so that its resources can be biased more towards fighting forces.
"We've actually seen a decrease in the size of the U.S. Army overall in terms of its end strength and an increase in the number of general officers and headquarters personnel, and so that's a bad combination," he said. "From an efficient efficiency standpoint, I think that makes sense to periodically do scrutinize these details and try to make reforms."
U.S. Army South and U.S. Army North were run by a two-star general and a three-star, respectively. Ryan has four stars. Bowman says that points to another potential positive aspect of the new Command, because a major part of U.S. Army South's role in Latin America has been closer to diplomacy than war-fighting.
"They've focused on security cooperation, building the capabilities of partner militaries," Bowman said. "Trying to help them solve non-military issues, kind of being an initial point of contact."
And now, the U.S. general will have more clout, both when visiting his counterparts in Latin America and meeting with other U.S. Army leaders.
"When you show up in a meeting of four-stars and you're a two-star, you get less respect," he said. "By and large, what's on your shoulder really, really matters in terms of your access, your leverage, and your influence."
And the other nations in the hemisphere already are paying close attention. The military attachés of four - including Chile and Brazil - traveled to Fort Bragg to attend the ceremony as the new command was created.
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
