Nicolai Haugsted
Trump unveils tougher vision for the Americas as military force becomes part of the anti-cartel strategy.
Donald Trump has spent much of his second presidency making it clear that America’s neighborhood is moving rapidly up his priority list.
Military strikes on suspected drug boats, pressure on governments across Latin America and a revived vision of US dominance in the Western Hemisphere have already given the policy considerably more muscle than diplomacy alone.
Speaking before world leaders at the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump went further.
The US president compared drug cartels to ISIS and promised that Washington was prepared to use its military power wherever it believed American interests were threatened.
“Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, and if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States,” Trump said according to Reuters.
Trump’s language left little ambiguity about how he wants allied governments to view the region’s most powerful criminal organizations.
Cartels, he argued, should no longer be treated simply as gangs or conventional organized crime networks.
Trump described them as “the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere,” placing them rhetorically alongside the terrorist organization that once controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria.
His proposed response was equally uncompromising.
“Like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release,” Trump said, “which is what we’re doing.”
Later Tuesday, Trump took that message into a meeting of the Shield of the Americas, the US-led coalition created earlier this year to coordinate efforts against cartels and other transnational criminal groups.
“For years, cartels have waged war on the people of this hemisphere. Now we’re waging war on them,” Trump told the gathering.
Washington wants allies to target 24 groups
Trump asked participating governments to formally treat 24 US-designated organizations as common threats and hit them with what he called “crushing sanctions.”
Members subsequently issued a joint statement pledging steps including asset freezes, visa restrictions and criminal action against people providing support to the targeted organizations. Each country will still need to follow its own legal procedures to implement the measures.
Groups on the list include MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, along with Mexican cartels, Colombian armed organizations and major Brazilian criminal groups.
Trump also made clear that countries struggling to handle such organizations could expect American involvement.
“You let us know and we take them out, or you take them out yourself. I like that even better. But if you can’t, we’ll do it for you,” he said.
Such language gives the coalition a harder edge than an ordinary agreement on police cooperation.
Washington’s campaign has not been limited to sanctions and meetings.
US forces have carried out dozens of deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since last year. American officials say the vessels were transporting narcotics toward the United States.
According to the source account, more than 220 people have been killed in those operations.
Rights groups have challenged the legality of the campaign and described the deaths as extrajudicial killings. The Trump administration maintains that it is engaged in an armed campaign against organizations it has designated as terrorist groups.
Trump presented the operations at the UN as part of a wider effort to reclaim American influence across the hemisphere.
“For decades, other administrations allowed much of this region to be dominated by vicious gangs and bloodthirsty drug cartels, destabilized by uncontrolled migration, and infiltrated by hostile foreign adversaries – foreign sick, demented adversaries – but not anymore,” Trump said.
Venezuela has changed the equation
Venezuela provides the clearest example of how far Washington is prepared to go under Trump’s regional strategy.
The US operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, followed by an oil agreement with the country’s interim authorities, was explicitly cited by Trump as evidence that threats in the hemisphere would no longer be tolerated.
That approach fits with the administration’s broader revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century policy traditionally associated with asserting US primacy in the Americas.
Trump has adopted a considerably more personal name for his version: the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Previous comments about reclaiming the Panama Canal and annexing Greenland and Canada have added to concerns among critics that the policy goes far beyond combating drug trafficking.
Tuesday also brought a diplomatic agreement over Greenland that stopped short of Trump’s previous demand for the island to become US territory.
Brazil tells Trump where the backyard ends
Not every major government in the region wants a place inside Trump’s coalition.
Brazil and Mexico remain outside the Shield of the Americas, while governments including Argentina, Ecuador and El Salvador have joined. Colombia and Peru also became members following recent changes of government.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva delivered his own unmistakable response from the UN podium Tuesday.
Lula warned that Latin America was experiencing renewed “hegemonic temptations” and rejected outside interference in the region.
“Brazil does not belong in anyone’s backyard,” Lula said.
The Brazilian president argued that cooperation rather than intervention should form the basis of efforts against organized crime. Brazil, he said, does not need foreign military power patrolling its waters.
“We do not need aircraft carriers watching our waters,” Lula said. “We need cooperation to stop the flow of weapons and money that fuels crime.”
Mexico receives a warning of its own
Trump reserved some of his sharpest language for Mexico.
Powerful cartels controlling territory immediately south of the US border represented an “unacceptable” situation, he said.
Mexico’s government “must reclaim control of its soil from the enemies of humanity,” according to Trump.
Cuba also featured prominently in his remarks. Trump accused the communist government of helping spread “subversive and radical” left-wing movements inside the United States while revealing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “deep into negotiations with Cuba.”
Taken together, the remarks outlined a much broader regional doctrine than a conventional anti-drug campaign.
Cartels remain the immediate target, but Trump’s message at the UN stretched from organized crime and Cuba to Venezuela and the question of who ultimately calls the shots across the Western Hemisphere.
Washington’s answer under Trump is becoming increasingly clear: American power is back at the center of the equation.
