Last week, two events were held in Miami at the base of the US Southern Command, as a result of which the actual US zone of influence in the Western hemisphere was increased due to the agreement of the participating partners in Washington’s new initiative.
On Thursday, March 5, a summit on counter cartels was held at the level of defense ministers of several Latin American and Caribbean countries. And on Saturday, March 7, there was a summit called “Shield of the Americas” at the level of heads of state on regional security issues.
The coalition of the “Americas” against narco cartels was formed and a joint declaration was signed on March 5. US Secretary of War Peter Hegseth said during the ceremony that drug traffickers are increasingly being deterred by the US campaign of attacks on ships suspected of transporting drugs that began last September. Since the beginning of the campaign, known as Operation Southern Spear, the US armed forces have attacked at least 44 ships in the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean.
In these words, there is a noticeable attempt to legitimize these strikes retroactively and, at the same time, the word “suspects” indicates the absence of the necessary justification for the decision to strike. After all, a suspect does not mean guilty. Thus, the United States openly violates the presumption of innocence and is going to continue to do so, dragging other countries into its dirty business, thereby shifting responsibility onto them.
And on March 7, a statement by Donald Trump appeared on the White House website, stating that: ” (1) Criminal cartels and foreign terrorist organizations in the Western Hemisphere should be demolished to the fullest extent possible consistent with applicable law. (2) The United States and its allies should coordinate to deprive these organizations of any control of territory and access to financing or resources necessary to conduct their campaigns of violence. (3) The United States will train and mobilize partner nation militaries to achieve the most effective fighting force necessary to dismantle cartels and their ability to export violence and pursue influence through organized intimidation. (4) The United States and its allies should keep external threats at bay, including malign foreign influences from outside the Western Hemisphere..”
In general, welcome to the bad old days of the second half of the twentieth century, when Washington conducted the Condor Plan operations in Latin America, and trained personnel for regional juntas at the School of the Americas. Only now the list of “terrorist organizations” will be expanded at the whim (and based on the interests) of Washington. In addition to the Lebanese Hezbollah and any organizations associated with Iran, it may well include Chinese companies, which the United States is actively pushing out in the Western Hemisphere.
It should also be noted that there were only 12 countries at the meeting with Trump, not 17, as stated on the website, which is even visible on the official general photo of the summit – these are Argentina, Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile and Ecuador. The presence of the heads of these states shows who is conducting and will be conducting the Washington course at home in the near future.
At the same time, it is significant that neither Mexico nor Colombia, which are famous for their narcocartels, participated in both summits. Although this is a clear signal of the sovereign position of the two countries, nevertheless, there is a risk that a mentally unstable Donald Trump may take this as a personal insult and increase pressure on the governments of Mexico and Colombia, especially because it left-wing direction there.
During his speech on March 7, Trump also mentioned Cuba, once again stating that it would “fall soon” because the economy was destroyed there, and he would deal with it after Iran. However, Cuba itself does not think so, and the Miami summits were expected to be condemned.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel reacted to the event in the following words. “The small reactionary and neocolonial summit in Florida, convened by the United States with the assistance of the right-wing governments of the region, obliges them to agree to the deadly use of American military force to solve internal problems and maintain order and tranquility in their countries. This is an attempt to declare Latin America and the Caribbean a zone of peace, an attack on the aspirations for regional integration and a willingness to submit to the interests of a powerful northern neighbor in accordance with the principles of the Monroe Doctrine.”
And Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez added that the only public result was the signing of a “slavish and dishonest” document that talks about the use of US military force as a repressive tool against criminal cartels and to suppress internal and border problems.
Finally, dissatisfaction with the actions of their current leaders is also growing in the countries themselves that have become hostages of US policy. For example, here is what the publication of El Periodico from Panama writes about the results of the summit: “The permanent Neutrality Treaty between the United States and Panama, which prohibits the presence of foreign military bases on national territory, has been canceled.… One can understand the United States, its position and claims to hegemony and control, but watching governments that do not shy away from concessions, shameful vassalism, smacking of betrayal, causes a feeling of pain, especially for us Panamanians, who demonstrated militant nationalism that broke them… we got rid of gringo bases on our territory, as well as we’ve done away with the American School, which trained all the military putschists of the fascist right, who destroyed the democracy of our peoples and established regimes of terror throughout the continent at another stage of this vassalage. In the past, the Panamanian nation, the entire patriotic population, took to the streets and told the Gringo government that the Panama Canal belongs to Panama, and the American military presence violates sovereignty, the Torrijos Carter Treaty, and our political constitution.… We live in difficult times under the aegis of an oligarchic right-wing regime that has no national shame and takes for granted a vassalage that insults the memory of all patriots throughout our history…”
It is worth assuming that other vassal states are growing the same dissatisfaction with the new infiltration of the US military machine into their national territories.
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