Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first trip abroad signals to the world that the Monroe Doctrine is back. Rubio is visiting five nations in Central America and the Caribbean, including El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Panama, where the Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Rubio noted in a Wall Street Journal article that “It’s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state will keep me in the [Western] hemisphere.”

Unsurprisingly, Rubio’s first stop is in Panama, where Rubio addressed the topic of U.S. control of the Panama Canal and China’s growing influence in the region. U.S. special envoy to Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said that China’s presence at the Canal raises important national security concerns for the United States. Other topics of discussion with the region’s leaders will include immigration and drug trafficking.

A little more than a decade ago, the Obama administration declared that the Monroe Doctrine was dead. In a continuation of Obama’s apology tour, then-Secretary of State John Kerry told the Organization of American States that our relationship with Latin America is “not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It’s about all of our countries viewing one another as equals … adhering not to a doctrine but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests we share.” “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” Kerry said. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were undoubtedly turning over in their graves.