Trump encourages Latin American leaders to use military action to help US fight cartels

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — 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 US 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 US-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 US 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 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.

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 build-up 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 an “America First” foreign policy toward the region that leverages US 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 US security forces attacked a refuge belonging to the Colombian illegal armed group Comandos de la Frontera in the Ecuadorian Amazon on Friday, authorities reported.

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 US troops killed in a drone strike on a command centre in Kuwait, one day after the US and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran.

Trump called the American deaths a “very sad situation” and praised the fallen troops as “great heroes.”

With the summit, Trump aimed to turn attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment.

He has pledged to reassert US 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 US 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 President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Saturday described the summit as “small, reactionary, and neocolonial.” He wrote in a social media post that the US has committed right-wing governments from the region “to accept the lethal use of US military force to resolve internal problems and maintain order and tranquility in their countries.”

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