A New Kind of Alliance?: How the U.S.- El Salvador Alliance Indicates a Pivot in American Foreign Policy
June 19, 2025 - Written by Raphael McMahon
Introduction
The re-election of U.S. President Donald J Trump has profoundly destabilised the post-Cold War international order. Symptoms of this destabilisation include the evolving alignment of the U.S. and Russia, the increasingly fractious relationship between the U.S. and the E.U., the global economic shock caused by the Trump administration’s near-universal imposition of tariffs and the disquiet generated by Trump’s expansionist rhetoric regarding Canada, Greenland and the Gaza strip. Some academics now characterise Trump’s policy style as selectively isolationist, as Trump has repeatedly downplayed the importance of the Americans’ longstanding European alliances and has, instead, favoured a ‘deal-making’ style of foreign policy that prioritises immediate American interests and sidelines historically significant alliances. The Trumpist isolationism in matters European is not, however, universally applicable. As alliances with European partners have lost significance, the Trump administration has found and cultivated new alliances. This report posits that the Salvadoran-American alliance emblematises the selectively isolationist emphasis of current Trumpist foreign policy.
Contextual Analysis
The government of Nayib Bukele has garnered significant media attention in recent years. Bukele, who once branded himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’, has enacted various mass incarceration programs that have drastically reduced violent crime in El Salvador, a country that had the highest homicide rate in the world as recently as 2015. This ‘mano dura’ policy has proven domestically popular. However, Bukele’s incarceration programs have attracted widespread criticism from international observers, who allege that the programs allow for various human rights abuses. Bukele’s detractors cite the lack of due process and the poor prison conditions as proof of the authoritarian and unjust nature of the policy. Bukele’s extraordinarily and consistently high favourability ratings, the ongoing transformation of Salvadoran society and the efficacy and potential injustice of his measures have exercised the world’s media and significantly boosted the public profile of El Salvador. Bukele’s trailblazing policies have also caught Trump’s attention. The American leader recently invited his Salvadoran counterpart to the White House. The Trump government has already deported more than 200 migrants accused of being members of gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua to El Salvador for imprisonment. Trump has also mooted sending American criminals to El Salvador.
Core Arguments
The evolving partnership between the two regimes is of paramount symbolic significance insofar as it represents the new American administration’s prioritisation of extensive ideological alignment with Trumpism, the provision of services deemed immediately beneficial to the Trumpist vision for the U.S. (such as the accommodation of deportees) and mutual institutional distrust over historically significant alliances that have, since the end of the Cold War, made the U.S. the cornerstone of an liberal, democratic and globalist world order.
The nature of the current Salvadoran-American alliance is heavily ideological. Its very existence appears contingent on Trump’s presence in the White House. During President Biden’s tenure, the U.S. imposed sanctions on politicians close to Bukele, alleging their corruption. Trump and Bukele share significant ideological common ground; both have extensively downplayed the reliability of both national and international media outlets, supported major crackdowns on cartel- and gang-related crime and styled themselves as leaders who threaten a globalist establishment that seeks to undermine the integrity, both territorial and social, of their respective nations.
Furthermore, Bukele’s mass-firing of culture ministry employees, accused of promoting ideas incompatible with the government’s vision, resembles the Trump administration’s own offensive on government agencies, such as the Department of Education, accused of bureaucratic inefficiency and promotion of ‘woke’ values. This alignment of both domestic and foreign priorities means that, amidst a flurry of criticism of traditional allies, Bukele’s El Salvador has been consistently praised by the Trump administration, praise that has been reciprocated.
The reciprocity of this admiration contrasts the icy exchanges between the U.S. and European nations that have characterised transatlantic dialogue since Trump’s re-election. Where ideology means that El Salvador has been singled out for praise, it also means that the Americans’ European allies have been singled out for criticism. JD Vance, the American Vice President, launched a blistering ideological assault on European leaders at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, accusing them of failing to halt illegal migration, suppressing free speech in the name of political correctness and abandoning traditional European values. The conference had been touted as an opportunity to discuss the NATO allies’ future policy on the Russia-Ukraine war and other pressing foreign policy matters. Instead, the exportation of culture war issues that had defined much of the 2024 American Presidential election to a foreign, diplomatic setting laid the foundation for a right-wing ideologisation of American foreign policy under Trump that has been corroborated by the Bukele-Trump alliance.
The alliance’s aforementioned dependence upon the political incumbency of Trump’s Republican party epitomises an American domestic-oriented politicisation of foreign alliances that significantly breaks with tradition. Trump’s consistent praise for Bukele and derision of historical European partners appears to represent a blueprint for a new style of American foreign policymaking, one that dictates that current ideological alignment supersedes historical partnership. This seismic shift in foreign policy priorities may herald the end of an era of bipartisan American alliance-building, one which has seen the U.S. prioritise its relations with European partners to counter Soviet and then Russo-Chinese influence, that can trace its origins to the end of the Second World War.
The contrast between European and Salvadoran relationships with Trump extends beyond rhetoric. American Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first foreign tour took place in Latin America, rather than Europe or Asia, a historical first. This historical shift further indicates the gravitation of American alliance-building towards its so-called geopolitical ‘backyard’ and away from its partners further afield. Although most modern American Secretaries of State have reserved the honour of their first international visits for traditional U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Germany, El Salvador and Panama were the first to welcome Rubio. Rubio’s Latin American trip is further proof that the second Trump administration is pursuing a simultaneous policy of disengagement from transatlantic organisations such as NATO, of which it has traditionally been the geopolitical nucleus, and re-engagement with regional issues that are of import to the American administration’s current domestic ideological agenda. This duality underpins Trump’s policy of selective isolationism and the Trump-Bukele alliance is key to this philosophy.
The Trump team foregrounded the alleviation of the migration crisis at the American southern border and mass deportations of illegal immigrants to (mainly) Latin America during and after the 2024 election campaign and those domestic priorities have been externalised; halting migration and increasing deportation have become paramount American foreign policy objectives. Therefore, foreign, particularly Latin American, leaders willing to accept the new American administration’s ideological agenda and its tough stance on migration and deportation, such as Bukele, are fast becoming more significant allies of the new United States than its official and traditional NATO and Major Non-NATO Allies.
Key Players and Stakeholders
United States: The American administration’s current policy towards Latin America has three key objectives: the limitation of the growing Chinese influence in the region, the reduction of the supposed importation of Latin American irregular migration and organized crime to the U.S. and expand American influence in the region in a policy reminiscent of the Monroe doctrine. The U.S. has warned against Chinese military use of the Panama Canal and pressured the Panamanian government to distance itself from Chinese companies in the region. The Americans have also threatened the Brazilian administration with tariffs if, under the auspices of the Sinophile BRICS organisation, they economic cooperation with the Chinese and expand economic transactions in yuan to the detriment of the American dollar. The Americans have also used the threat of tariffs to achieve their migrant-related and crime-related objectives, as that threat pushed Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum into sending 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and has meant that various Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala and Cuba. Many speculate that this increasingly aggressive policy towards Latin America represents a return of the Monroe doctrine of the 1800s, a policy which saw the U.S. reject external intervention into Latin American affairs and instead consolidate its influence in the region. Trump explicitly stated in a 2018 speech to the UN that the Monroe Doctrine was the ‘formal policy of our country’.
El Salvador: Current Salvadoran gang violence can trace its origins to 1989, when the U.S. began deporting young men with gang affiliations and criminal convictions to various Latin American nations. El Salvador, weakened as it was by a civil war that started in 1979 and ended in 1992, was ill-prepared to receive 4000 deportees who hailed from organised, sophisticated gangs. Those 4000 became the genesis of the current Salvadoran gangs, whose members now number in the tens of thousands and are present in all Salvadoran states. To combat the aforementioned dramatic rise in gang-related homicides, Bukele’s government has so far detained some 75,000 people accused of gang activity since his administration declared the ‘state of exception’, a policy that significantly increased the power of the Salvadoran police and military, and shows no signs of stopping. In spite of the criticism of Bukele’s policy by various international organisations, other Central American leaders of various political affiliations, such as Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro and former Guatemalan Presidential contender Zury Ríos, have praised Bukele’s crackdown and suggested that it is a policy worth emulating.
Military, Economic and Social dimensions
Military: In April 2025 René Merino Monroy, the Minister of National Defense of El Salvador, met with Pete Hegseth, the American Secretary of Defense, to discuss increasing regional security cooperation and increasing joint efforts to combat transnational crime. Further cooperation on matters of intelligence gathering and training was also discussed. Their meeting signalled reinforcement of the increasingly militaristic nature of the alliance between the two nations.
Economic: In exchange for housing American prisoners and deportees, the U.S. has pledged to help El Salvador develop nuclear energy. The Salvadoran administration hope that nuclear energy will supply 26% of El Salvador’s electricity by 2050. The U.S. paid the Salvadoran administration approximately $6 million to receive 238 deportees accused of membership in the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. The Trump administration has also reportedly pledged a further $15 million dollars to the Bukele administration to detain more deportees, including Abrego Garcia.
Social: The repercussions of this new alliance in both North and Central America are already tangible. In early 2025 Bukele agreed to house deportees from the U.S., of any nationality, in Salvadoran prisons. This agreement has caused significant controversy; in March 2025 Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran resident in Maryland, was deported from the U.S., a move that American Supreme Court judges have deemed erroneous. These judges have stipulated that Garcia should be returned to the U.S., but the White House has so far rejected calls for his return. Bukele also offered to take in criminals with American nationality during his visit to the United States. Trump has capitalised on Bukele’s offers; his administration released a propaganda campaign warning U.S.-based would-be criminal migrants that they could face extradition to the Central American nation.
Opportunities and Risks
The Salvadoran-American partnership could significantly benefit the populace of the historically maligned nation. El Salvador has indeed been the site of brutal gang conflicts, primarily between MS-13 and Barrio 18. This gang culture represents an existential threat to Salvadorans; as recently as 2019 it was estimated that up to 500,000 of 6.5 million Salvadorans had some kind of affiliation, whether through participation or coercion, with the gangs. Gang violence propelled the Salvadoran homicide rate to over 100 murders per 100,000 residents in 2015. A strong relationship with the global hegemon would allow the Salvadoran government to continue to prosecute its successful campaign against the gangs and thus maintain the current peaceful status-quo - in 2024 there were 1.9 murders per 100,000 Salvadoran residents.
However, the increasingly extrajudicial nature of the alliance concerns many international observers. Critics allege that, since some deportees have no connection to El Salvador, Trump is using the Salvadoran deportation deal to prevent deportees from accessing American legal protections and challenging their deportation in American courts. This, they argue, entails both individual and political risks; they warn that cases such as that of Abrego Garcia could become increasingly frequent and that Trump’s decision to outsource fundamentally American legal cases to a willing foreign ally sets a dangerous political precedent as it normalises the executive circumvention of judicial scrutiny and thus risks destabilising the balance of power between the American judiciary and executive.
Furthermore, maintaining this alliance with the current U.S. administration is crucial to Salvadoran social stability. The Bukele government is keenly cultivating American investment and the Americans’ deportation-friendly stance could backfire on El Salvador if the U.S. decided to begin deporting the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Salvadorans currently resident in the U.S. to El Salvador. Such a policy would likely trigger economic recession.
Concluding Geopolitical Implications
The Trump-Bukele alliance has become a geopolitical blueprint for a selectively isolationist style of American alliance-building. The alliance has two critical foundations; the importance of Bukele’s El Salvador to the American domestic agenda and the ideological likeness of Bukele and Trump. These are the two foundational criteria which aspiring close allies of the Trump administration will likely have to meet. American isolation from and ideological criticism of supposedly ‘globalist’ organisations such as the WHO, NATO and the UN is likely to continue. In conjunction, Trump is likely to further cultivate alliances with foreign governments whose ideologies coincide with his populist conservatism, such as Nawrocki’s Poland and Fico’s Slovakia. However, it is those Latin American, rather than European, leaders who conform to this ideology that are most likely to form close relationships with the American leader given the administration’s regional focus. Milei’s Argentina, as well as Noboa’s Ecuador, are nations that will likely join the right-wing populist, Latin America-based axis that Bukele and Trump have begun to form. Their combined influence will act as a geopolitical counterweight to the increasingly Sinophile left-wing autocracies (Cuba and Venezuela) and democracies (Brazil and Colombia) of Latin America.