WASHINGTON — The White House revealed Wednesday that President Donald Trump has approved a new counterterrorism strategy placing the elimination of drug cartels throughout the Western Hemisphere at the forefront of national security priorities.
This strategic document follows the administration’s previously released national security framework that identified the hemisphere as America’s primary area of focus.
The Trump administration has taken bold steps to transform the region, including efforts to remove Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela’s presidency, conducting numerous military operations against suspected cartel vessels, and applying fresh pressure on Cuba’s communist leadership.
Sebastian Gorka, the White House’s counterterrorism czar who led the development of this new approach, explained that the priority shift reflects a stark reality: drug cartels have caused more American deaths through illicit narcotics than the number of U.S. military personnel killed in overseas conflicts since World War II.
“Whether it is strangling their illicit funds, whether it is tracking their drug boats, we will not permit them to kill Americans on a massive scale,” Gorka said in a telephone call with reporters to announce the strategy.
This initiative represents another demonstration of the administration’s dedication to concentrating U.S. foreign policy efforts on the Western Hemisphere while simultaneously managing global challenges.
Since early September, the Republican administration’s campaign of destroying suspected drug-trafficking boats in Latin American waters has continued, resulting in at least 191 total fatalities.
Simultaneously, Trump has worked to encourage regional leaders to collaborate more extensively with the United States in combating cartels and conducting their own military operations against drug traffickers and international gangs that he characterizes as an “unacceptable threat” to hemispheric security.
According to Gorka, the administration’s additional counterterrorism objectives include targeting and eliminating Islamic military organizations capable of conducting operations against the United States; identifying and neutralizing violent secular political groups with anti-American, “radically pro-gender,” or anarchist ideologies; and strengthening efforts to prevent non-state actors from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Gorka indicated that administration officials plan to meet with allies later this week to explore ways they can strengthen their counterterrorism approaches.
“As the president made very clear, we will measure your seriousness as a partner and ally by how much you bring to the table,” he said. “So we expect more — from our partners in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere.”
