By Phil Stewart, Ryan Patrick Jones and Doina Chiacu
MIAMI, March 5 (Reuters) – White House official Stephen Miller told a gathering of Latin American military leaders on Thursday that drug cartels can only be defeated with military force.
The comments make explicit a shift in U.S. policy under President Donald Trump, whose administration has blown up suspected drug boats, seized the president of Venezuela in January and aided Mexico last month in its operation to capture that country’s most wanted cartel boss.
“We have learned after decades of effort that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem,” Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, told Latin American defense leaders gathered at the U.S. Southern Command headquarters.
“The reason why this is a conference with military leadership and not a conference of lawyers is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.”
Legal experts and Democrats have questioned the legality of the U.S. strategy, disputing the Trump administration’s policy that equates drug traffickers with members of terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and Islamic State.
‘JUST AS BRUTALLY’
Miller said there was no difference, adding that drug cartels “should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those organizations.”
The U.S. policy has unnerved some traditional U.S. military partners in Latin America, including Colombia, which did not send a delegation to the gathering. Brazil and Mexico also did not send delegations.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wanted the conference to focus on operations that lead to closer cooperation against drug trafficking.
He drew applause for promising to make available resources to Southern Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Latin America and for years has complained about being short on resources. It will now need to compete for U.S. troops, warships and aircraft as the U.S. war against Iran unfolds.
Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the goal was to gather like-minded, pro-Washington governments to provide more structure to new kinds of cooperation in the region.
That includes this week’s announcement that U.S. military forces are assisting Ecuador combat drug trafficking.
“The very recent example of Ecuador will serve as the model for other countries attending the conference,” Berg said.
Berg said the conference would also set the stage for an Americas summit hosted by Trump in Miami this weekend where the U.S. is expected to advance a counter-China agenda.
CHINA’S INFLUENCE
Many Latin American nations now see China, not the United States, as their top trading partner, and Trump has taken aim at Chinese ties there. That includes Panama, home to a strategic canal that Trump has threatened to take back by force, if necessary.
Trump’s national security strategy, published in December, argued that the U.S. should revive the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine declaring the Western Hemisphere as Washington’s zone of influence. Hegseth joked this could be called the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ to laughter in the crowd.
Critics say the rhetoric represents modern-day imperialism and that U.S. military actions in Venezuela and the Caribbean have added to fears in a region where Washington has a troubled history of military interventions.
Addressing a region with many religions and ethnicities, Hegseth said it remained to be seen whether Latin American nations will remain Western and Christian.
“We face an essential test whether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics, Christian nations under God,” Hegseth said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart in Florida; Writing by Phil Stewart and Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Susan Heavey, Chizu Nomiyama and Deepa Babington)
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