Ecuador as a Geopolitical Laboratory: Criminal Governance and the Resurgence of the "Donroe" Doctrine

Since the 2024 declaration of an "internal armed conflict," Ecuador has ceased to be a peripheral transit point, becoming a central stage for hybrid warfare in the Americas. This paper investigates the Ecuadorian crisis not merely as a domestic security failure, but as a pivotal case study for the "Donroe Doctrine"—the strategic fusion of neo-Monroeism and punitive interventionism characteristic of the current U.S. administration. I argue that the labeling of local criminal structures as terrorist organizations has catalyzed a "securitized internationalization" of the Andean region. In this context, Ecuador functions as a laboratory where national sovereignty is actively being recalibrated to fit a "plural security field" (Bowden, 2019). By conducting a critical discourse analysis of bilateral security agreements and presidential rhetoric from 2023 to early 2026, this research explores how the "Donroe" paradigm shifts the fight against transnational crime from a multilateral judicial concern to a unilateral military imperative. The study moves beyond descriptive analysis to address two fundamental tensions: First, how the alignment with Washington’s latest hemispheric directives reshapes the domestic power balance between the Ecuadorian state and non-state violent actors. Second, the extent to which this "crime-as-war" framework harrows out state institutions, creating a dependency on external symbolic and military capital. The findings aim to redefine our understanding of contemporary warfare, where the boundaries between drug trafficking, terrorism, and geopolitical influence have become fundamentally indistinguishable.