India, July 9 -- The Pentagon has launched a sweeping diplomatic and military campaign to rally Latin American governments behind what officials are calling the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, a modernised version of the two-century-old policy aimed at countering drug cartels, curbing Chinese influence and reasserting direct US military primacy across the Western Hemisphere.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out the strategy's regional ambitions at what the Pentagon billed as the first "Americas Counter Cartel Conference," held at US Southern Command headquarters in Miami and attended by defence officials from more than a dozen governments closely aligned with the Trump administration, including Argentina, Honduras and the...