\n<\/p>\n
The United States-Israeli war with Iran continues to rage, as Washington pledges to send more troops and military assets to the Middle East and Tehran widens its retaliatory strikes across the region.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday, top officials under US President Donald Trump shifted focus to another military front: Latin America.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Since taking office for a second term, Trump has indicated he plans to exert US dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere. His push for control has coincided with military operations against alleged criminal networks across the region.<\/p>\n At Thursday\u2019s inaugural \u201cAmericas Counter Cartel Conference\u201d, speakers such as White House security adviser Stephen Miller assured reporters that Latin America would remain a top military priority for the US, regardless of events in the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not going to cede an inch of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or adversaries,\u201d Miller said, adding the US was \u201cusing hard power, military power, lethal force, to protect and defend the American homeland\u201d.<\/p>\n Miller further maintained there is no \u201ccriminal justice solution\u201d to drug cartels, which he likened to armed groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).<\/p>\n Organised crime, he concluded, \u201ccan only be defeated with military power\u201d.<\/p>\n Since Trump took office last year, his administration has applied what experts describe as a \u201cglobal war on terror\u201d approach to Latin America, including by labelling drug cartels \u201cforeign terrorist organisations\u201d.<\/p>\n Figures like Miller, a key architect behind Trump\u2019s hardline immigration policies, have championed the president\u2019s militaristic approach, even as critics warn it raises human rights and legal concerns.<\/p>\n Last September, for instance, the administration began striking alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, in what rights groups have decried as extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n And in early January, the US launched an extraordinary operation to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. It has since pursued a pressure campaign against Cuba designed to weaken its communist government.<\/p>\n Just this week, on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had launched joint operations with Ecuador\u2019s military \u201cagainst Designated Terrorist Organizations\u201d in the South American country.<\/p>\n The announcement indicated a new front for US military actions in the region, which officials have said could include land operations.<\/p>\n But the broadening scope of Trump\u2019s military involvement in Latin America, combined with the nascent war with Iran, has raised questions about the US\u2019s ability to sustain such intense military activity.<\/p>\n The \u201cAmericas Counter Cartel Conference\u201d came as Latin American leaders arrived in South Florida to attend a regional summit hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.<\/p>\n Attendees included officials from the Trump-allied conservative governments in Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n But despite support from several regional governments, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth nevertheless told the audience that the US was \u201cprepared to take on\u201d Latin America\u2019s cartels and \u201cgo on the offence alone, if necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, it is our preference \u2014 and it is the goal of this conference \u2014 that, in the interest of this neighbourhood, we all do it together,\u201d Hegseth added.<\/p>\n The secretary also praised Trump\u2019s take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which sought to establish a US sphere of influence, separate from Europe, in the Western Hemisphere. Administration officials have dubbed Trump\u2019s parallel approach the \u201cDonroe doctrine\u201d.<\/p>\n Hegseth framed the administration\u2019s attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats as a keystone of Trump\u2019s effort to maintain regional influence.<\/p>\n The US military has carried out at least 44 aerial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in an estimated 150 known deaths.<\/p>\n The identities of the victims have not been released, with several family members saying fishermen and informal workers were among those targeted.<\/p>\n The Pentagon chief said the approach was meant to \u201cestablish deterrence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the consequence was simply to be arrested and then released, well, that\u2019s a consequence they\u2019d already priced in a long time ago,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n He then pointed to a \u201cfew weeks\u201d in February in which there were no strikes on alleged drug boats.<\/p>\n The pause in attacks, he said, was evidence of the strategy\u2019s success. But that break notably came as the US surged assets to the Middle East.<\/p>\n Neither Hegseth nor Miller specifically referred to the war with Iran, but the pair touched on themes that have been present in the administration\u2019s messaging on the war.<\/p>\n Trump, for example, said Iran\u2019s government \u201cwaged war against civilisation itself\u201d. There have been reports, meanwhile, that US military officials have referenced the biblical \u201cend times\u201d as a\u00a0religious underpinning for the war.<\/p>\n Those remarks have reflected what critics consider Trump\u2019s embrace of Christian nationalism and his view of the Americas as a European-derived \u201ccivilisation\u201d threatened by outside forces.<\/p>\n At Thursday\u2019s conference, Miller himself referenced violence in European history as justification for the modern-day military actions in Latin America.<\/p>\n There were periods in European history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries during which \u201cruthless means were used to get rid of the people who were raping and murdering and defying established systems of order and justice,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n He also echoed Trump\u2019s allegation that Europe was facing \u201ccivilisational erasure\u201d as a result of left-wing leadership and immigration.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason why many Western countries are struggling today is they\u2019ve forgotten the eternal truth and wisdoms they once followed,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n Hegseth, meanwhile, described all the countries at Thursday\u2019s meeting as \u201coffsprings of Western civilisation\u201d.<\/p>\n Representatives in attendance, he said, faced a test \u201cwhether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics, Christian nations under God, proud of our shared heritage with strong borders and prosperous people ruled not by violence and chaos but by law\u201d.<\/p>\n He added that foreign \u201cincursions\u201d represent \u201cexistential questions\u201d for the region, seemingly referencing the growing influence of China as an economic and political partner in the Americas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The United States-Israeli war with Iran continues to rage, as Washington pledges to send more troops and military assets to the Middle East and Tehran widens its retaliatory strikes across the region. But on Thursday, top officials under US President Donald Trump shifted focus to another military front: Latin America. Recommended Stories list of 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Prepared to \u2018go on offence alone\u2019<\/h2>\n
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