Trump’s counterterrorism strategy makes targeting drug cartels a top priority: NPR

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has signed a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that makes dismantling drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere a top priority for the administration, the White House announced Wednesday.

The document was released months after his administration published an updated National Security Strategy, which called for making the hemisphere a top US focus.

“We will not allow cartels, jihadists, or the governments that support them to plot impunity against our citizens. No terrorists of any kind will be allowed to find safe haven at home or attack us from abroad,” Trump wrote in the 16-page document.

The Trump administration has moved aggressively to reshape the region, with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro as Venezuelan president, dozens of U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats operated by cartels and renewed pressure on Cuba’s communist government.

White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, who leads the new strategy, said the change in priorities belies some simple math: Far more Americans have been killed by cartels pushing illegal drugs into American communities than American service members have died in conflicts around the world since World War II.

“Whether it’s strangling their illicit money, whether it’s tracking their drug boats, we will not allow them to kill Americans on a large scale,” Gorka said in a telephone call with reporters to announce the strategy.

It is the latest example of the administration’s efforts to sharpen U.S. foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere even as it deals with global crises.

The Republican administration’s campaign to blow up alleged drug-trafficking ships in Latin American waters has been ongoing since early September and has killed at least 191 people in total.

At the same time, Trump has sought to pressure regional leaders to work with the United States to target cartels and take military action themselves against drug traffickers and transnational gangs, whom he says pose an “unacceptable threat” to the hemisphere’s national security.

According to Gorka and the report, the administration’s other counterterrorism priorities include targeting and destroying Islamic military groups that have the capability to carry out operations against the United States; Identifying and neutralizing violent secular political groups with anti-American, radical pro-transgender, or anarchist ideologies; and promoting efforts to prevent non-state actors from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

Gorka said administration officials would meet with allies this weekend to discuss how they can strengthen their counterterrorism strategies.

“As the President has made clear, we will measure your seriousness as a partner and ally by what you bring to the table,” he said. “So we expect more from our partners in the Middle East as well as elsewhere.”