COMMENTARY | To Win Latin America, the US Needs a Sound Hemispheric Security Strategy

Inauguration ceremonies in the US don’t give away too much on how incoming presidents will pursue international ties, simply because foreign heads of states don’t usually attend. Donald Trump’s second term, however, is a game-changer. Trump’s guest list included Argentina’s President Javier Milei, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, China’s Vice President Han Zheng, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, among other representatives. While some observers have called for Trump-proofing the world from US abandonment, clearly others are looking to befriend the US centre of power. 

Among potential allies to Trump, Latin America is predicted to become a ‘priority for US foreign policy’. Trump’s desire to reengage with the region comes after decades of what scholars describe as Washington’s ‘benign neglect’ approach to the hemisphere. The border issue, the arrival of China, and the spread of authoritarianism in Latin America worry Trump and his close advisors, suggesting that such neglect might soon be over. But under what terms will the US and Latin America reengage?

The perceived misalignment of long-term policy between the US and the Americas is a decades-old debate which comes to the surface with every presidential election. It became prominent in the mid-1970s when Jimmy Carter did not succeed in his efforts to promote human rights and democracy in a region then ruled by many dictators. Since then, counterparts to US diplomats and other career personnel realised they could oppose US policy without suffering political retribution. This trend has continued for over 50 years, and today Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela lead an anti-US movement in connection with the global counter-West movement. 

Can Trump Lead on Regional Security? 

Trump’s incoming administration purports to have learned from its past mistakes. In his first term, Trump took too long to appoint ambassadors to the Americas, withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, and left many unfinished policies including his migration and asylum deals with countries from the Northern Triangle, the border wall dispute with Mexico and sanctions on Cuba – not to mention the real stone in his shoe, Venezuela’s anti-democratic regime headed by Nicolás Maduro. Under Joe Biden, the White House reversed some of these programmes, lifted sanctions, and renegotiated the border issue. Later on, Biden got tougher on security measures and eventually reinstated sanctions on Venezuela (after the failure of the Barbados Accord), while enforcing a crackdown on the US–Mexico border. Trump’s new administration follows, therefore, a series of trial-and-error runs that should give secretaries Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth momentum to revamp US diplomacy and military alliances in the Western Hemisphere.

Designating cartels operating within and outside the US as terrorist organisations could open an operational door for the US security forces to directly attack these criminal organisations if not done covertly

Trump’s executive order designating cartels as foreign terrorist organisations means that his administration will push for greater cooperation to combat actors believed to pose a threat to US national security. Targeting the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran MS-13 could convince many other countries in the region where both organisations have perpetrated violence, assassinations and terror and spread corruption that has infiltrated governments. ‘The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere’, stated the executive order. 

Designating cartels operating within and outside the US as terrorist organisations could open an operational door for the US security forces to directly attack these criminal organisations if not done covertly. ‘These sophisticated transnational terrorist organisations have operational and functional control over huge swaths of territory bordering the United States’, said Marco Rubio at his nomination for the State Department. ‘It’s important for us not only to go after these groups, but to identify them and call them out for who they are and that they are terrorists by nature’, he added.

Although the former Republican senator sanded down his comments by stating that the ideal would be to cooperate with the Mexican military, his was clear that one of the US’s priorities would be regional insecurity hotspots. The cartels ‘terrorise with mass migration and drug trafficking’, Rubio explained.

The US and Mexico have a complex history of security relations, which includes reciprocal complaints about control of the 3,200-kilometre border which has become a two-way highway of drugs entry from Mexico and arms smuggling from the US. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum refused to link the phenomenon of terrorism and organised crime, warning that her country is ‘sovereign’ and that it is willing to ‘coordinate’, but not be ‘subordinate’. The above is understandable.

The Legacy of Old ‘Wars’

The global war on terror launched by George W Bush after the 2001 attacks in the US had no geographical limits. Wherever the enemies were, the necessary punishment was to be applied, with special forces, drones, contractors and whatever else was necessary. The war on drugs launched by Richard Nixon in 1971 tended to be more frontal and was concentrated above all in Latin America and the Caribbean – for obvious reasons – including a strong police and military component. 

Both ‘wars’ were connected and have been connected in different ways across successive US national security policies. The hunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, which led to his death in 1993, was the product of a complex operation that included Colombian forces, US agencies (the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and others) and rival groups from the Medellín cartel. In addition to trafficking thousands of tons of cocaine, Escobar was the mastermind of bombings against airplanes and shopping malls, as well as assassinations of ministers, judges, presidential candidates, and police officers. Many lessons on locating and eliminating terrorist leaders were learned from the pursuit of drug lords which continue to be applied, for example, to fight the drug cartels in Mexico and Central America.

When the US-funded plan to combat drug trafficking and internal conflict in Colombia known as Plan Colombia was launched in 2000, there was an initial debate about whether equipment donated by the US, such as Black Hawk helicopters, could be used for purposes other than combating drug trafficking – that is, attacking guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It was enough for Al-Qa’ida to hit New York and Washington for the discussion to disappear. Anything that smelled of terrorism could and should be eliminated.

Criminal groups across the region have the capacity to attack state bureaucracies, citizens and adversarial groups due to the fact that they now possess military structures more typical of insurgencies

From a legal point of view, the State Department can designate those that carry out a series of activities established by specific regulations (sabotage, assassinations and attacks, among others) and whose effect is a threat to ‘US citizens or the national security (defence, foreign relations, or economic interests) of the United States’ as foreign terrorist organisations. Institutions or individuals who have a financial relationship with the group are also punished. Recently, the Biden administration recently put a $25 million reward on information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro based on his responsibility for trafficking narcotics to the US.

Terrorism and organised crime are two very different phenomena. The first is a method of exercising violence that serves to intimidate its target. The second has to do with criminal associations whose ultimate objective is to profit through the production of goods or the sale of services. Can a cartel intimidate through terror? Of course, and there are plenty of examples. Mexico’s current Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, was attacked by hitmen from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in 2020 when he worked in the metropolitan mayor’s office. Mexican authorities have failed to tackle organised crime, and the previous administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador became the bloodiest of any presidency on record. García Harfuch wants to strengthen the intelligence and investigative capabilities of the Mexican state to reverse the unruly violence.

What Can the US Do?

Rubio and Trump will put pressure on the Mexican government and others in the region including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to directly attack the vice of transnational crime. According to the U.S. Southern Command, illegality and violence stemming from the region has reached a global scale thanks to the broad portfolios of criminal groups. Their firepower has led them to develop armed wings for asymmetric warfare, which can handle everything from drones to narco-submarines. The US view is shared by other like-minded countries including the UK, as indicated recently by government authorities touring Latin America and the Caribbean. 

But, above all, a realistic reading of what is known in security studies as convergence should be considered by policymakers. Criminal groups across the region have the capacity to attack state bureaucracies, citizens and adversarial groups due to the fact that they now possess military structures more typical of insurgencies, which has allowed them to exercise a certain territorial control. The US now argues that international cartels constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organised crime given the ‘convergence between themselves and a range of extra-hemispheric actors, from designated foreign-terror organizations to antagonistic foreign governments’.

So when cartels are designated as terrorist organisations, the message is clear: the Trump administration wants to have all options on the table to restore its strength – or as Rubio put it in an essay in 2015, to attack them and not just watch them grow. Whatever the plan is, there are political, operational and, of course, ethical implications that need consideration – and most definitely, Latin American countries’ say in the matter cannot be ignored.

© RUSI, 2025

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors’, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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