Trump encourages Latin American leaders to use military action to help U.S. fight cartels

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.

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,” 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 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 Trump’s de­ci­sion to join with Is­rael to launch a war on Iran one week ago, a con­flict that has left hun­dreds dead, con­vulsed glob­al mar­kets and un­set­tled the broad­er Mid­dle East.

Trump’s time with the Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers was lim­it­ed: Af­ter, he was set­ting 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 cen­tre in Kuwait, one day af­ter the U.S. and Is­rael launched their mil­i­tary cam­paign against Iran.

But with the sum­mit, 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.

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.”

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 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 Trump’s vi­sion for a “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.

No­tably miss­ing at the event 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.

Richard Fein­berg, who helped plan the first Sum­mit of Amer­i­c­as in 1994 while work­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in the Clin­ton White House, said the con­trast could not be stark­er.

“The first Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, with 34 na­tions and a care­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed com­pre­hen­sive agen­da for re­gion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness, pro­ject­ed in­clu­sion, con­sen­sus and op­ti­mism,” said Fein­berg, now pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego. “The hasti­ly con­vened Shield of the Amer­i­c­as mi­ni-sum­mit con­jures a crouched de­fen­sive­ness, with on­ly a dozen or so at­ten­dees hud­dled around a sin­gle dom­i­nant fig­ure.”

The chal­lenge from Chi­na

Since re­turn­ing to the White House, Trump has made coun­ter­ing Chi­nese in­flu­ence in the hemi­sphere a top pri­or­i­ty. 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 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 Maduro and 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. Trump is sched­uled to trav­el to Bei­jing lat­er this month to meet with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping.

But even lead­ers close­ly aligned with Trump have been re­luc­tant to sev­er ties with Chi­na, said Evan El­lis, an ex­pert on Chi­nese en­gage­ment in the re­gion at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies.

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, 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.

“The U.S. is of­fer­ing the re­gion tar­iffs, de­por­ta­tions and mil­i­ta­riza­tion where­as Chi­na is of­fer­ing trade and in­vest­ment,” said Kevin Gal­lagher, di­rec­tor of Boston Uni­ver­si­ty’s Glob­al De­vel­op­ment Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, who has writ­ten ex­ten­sive­ly about Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic diplo­ma­cy in the Amer­i­c­as. “Lead­ers in the re­gion would do well to re­main neu­tral and hedge, such that they can lever­age in­creased U.S.-Chi­na ri­val­ry to their own ben­e­fit.”

Be­fore the sum­mit, Trump named Kristi Noem, whom he just re­moved as his home­land sec­re­tary, as his spe­cial en­voy for the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as.

Noem said Trump will an­nounce “a big agree­ment” at the sum­mit cen­tred on “how we’re go­ing to go af­ter car­tels and drug traf­fick­ing in the en­tire West­ern Hemi­sphere.” —DO­RAL, Fla. (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI and JOSHUA GOOD­MAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Alan­na Durkin Rich­er in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.