President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States and Latin American countries are banding together to combat violent cartels as his administration looks to demonstrate it remains committed to sharpening U.S. foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere even while dealing with five-alarm crises around the globe.
Mr. Trump encouraged regional leaders gathered at his Miami-area golf club to take military action against drug trafficking cartels and transnational gangs that he says pose an “unacceptable threat” to the hemisphere’s national security.
“The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our militaries,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to use our military. You have to use your military.” Citing the U.S.-led coalition that confronted the Islamic State group in the Middle East, the Republican president said that ”we must now do the same thing to eradicate the cartels at home.”
The gathering, which the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit, came just two months after Mr. Trump ordered an audacious U.S. military operation to capture Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolás Maduro, and whisk him and his wife to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges.
Looming even larger is Mr. Trump’s decision to launch a war on Iran with Israel one week ago, a conflict that has left hundreds dead, convulsed global markets, and unsettled the broader Middle East.
Mr. Trump’s time with the Latin American leaders was limited: Afterward, he set out for Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, to be on hand for the dignified transfer of the six U.S. troops killed in a drone strike on a command center in Kuwait, one day after the U.S. and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran.
Mr. Trump called the American deaths a “very sad situation” and praised the fallen troops as “great heroes.”
With the summit, Mr. Trump aimed to turn attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment. He has pledged to reassert U.S. dominance in the region and push back on what he sees as years of Chinese economic encroachment in America’s backyard.
Mr. Trump also said the U.S. will turn its attention to Cuba after the war with Iran and suggested his administration would cut a deal with Havana, underscoring Washington’s increasingly aggressive stance against the island’s communist leadership. “Great change will soon be coming to Cuba,” he said, adding that “they’re very much at the end of the line.”
Cuban officials have said on several occasions that they were open to dialogue with the U.S. as long as it was based on respect for Cuban sovereignty, but they have never confirmed that such talks were taking place.
Who was there
The leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago joined the Republican president at Trump National Doral Miami, a golf resort where he is also set to host the Group of 20 summit later this year.
The idea for a summit of like-minded conservatives from across the hemisphere emerged from the ashes of what was to be the 10th edition of the Summit of the Americas, which was scrapped during the U.S. military buildup off the coast of Venezuela last year.
Host Dominican Republic, pressured by the White House, had barred Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from attending the regional gathering. But after leftist leaders in Colombia and Mexico threatened to pull out in protest – and with no commitment from Mr. Trump to attend – the Dominican Republic’s president, Luis Abinader, decided at the last minute to postpone the event, citing “deep differences” in the region.
The Shield of the Americas moniker was meant to speak to Mr. Trump’s vision for an “America First” foreign policy toward the region that leverages U.S. military and intelligence assets unseen across the area since the end of the Cold War.
To that end, Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this week against organized crime groups in the South American country. Ecuadorian and U.S. security forces attacked a refuge belonging to the Colombian illegal armed group Comandos de la Frontera in the Ecuadorian Amazon on Friday, authorities reported.
This joint fight against drug traffickers “is only the beginning,” said Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa.
Notably missing at the summit were the region’s two dominant powers – Brazil and Mexico – as well as Colombia, long the linchpin of U.S. anti-narcotics strategy in the region.
Mr. Trump grumbled that Mexico is the “epicenter of cartel violence” with drug kingpins “orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere.”
“The cartels are running Mexico,’ Mr. Trump said. ”We can’t have that. Too close to us. Too close to you.”
The challenge from China
Mr. Trump made no mention of his administration’s insistence that countering Chinese influence in the hemisphere is a top priority for his second term.
His national security strategy promotes the “Trump Corollary” to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which had sought to ban European incursions in the Americas, by targeting Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation, and investment in the region’s resource industries.
The first demonstration of the more muscular approach was Mr. Trump’s strong-arming of Panama to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and review long-term port contracts held by a Hong Kong-based company amid U.S. threats to retake the Panama Canal.
More recently, the U.S. capture of Mr. Maduro and Mr. Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela threatens to disrupt oil shipments to China – the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude before the raid – and bring into Washington’s orbit one of Beijing’s closest allies in the region. Mr. Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
For many countries, China’s trade-focused diplomacy fills a critical financial void in a region with major development challenges ranging from poverty reduction to infrastructure bottlenecks. In contrast, Mr. Trump has been slashing foreign assistance to the region while rewarding countries lined up behind his crackdown on immigration – a policy widely unpopular across the hemisphere.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the leaders for a working lunch after Mr. Trump left for the event in Delaware. The lunch gave Kristi Noem, whom Trump fired as homeland security secretary on Thursday, the chance to make her debut in her new role as a special envoy for the “Shield of the Americas.”
“We want our hemisphere to be safer, to be more sovereign, and to be more prosperous,” Ms. Noem told the leaders.
Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this report.
