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Donald Trump returned to the US presidency on January 20 with a flurry of executive orders. This included the designation of criminal gangs and drug cartels operating south of the Mexico border as “foreign terrorist organisations” – a first for a US president. The state department will now decide which groups are added to the list.
Trump’s disdain for the criminal fraternity in Latin America is not new. When announcing his first run for the presidency in 2015, Trump claimed the Mexican government was deliberately sending drugs, rapists and criminals to the US.
To keep them out, he floated and later implemented a rigorous border protection programme. This led not only to mass deportations, but also the building of a concrete and metal wall along the US-Mexico border that spans hundreds of miles.
In his new order, Trump claimed the “cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the western hemisphere that has not only destabilised countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the US with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs”.
How will this order, if it eventually becomes law, impact the people towards whom it is directed?
Fears of military action
A terrorist designation expands the government’s ability to collect military intelligence on the cartels and prosecute people deemed to be offering any “material support” to these groups. However, some fear the designation will also make it politically easier for the US government to order direct military intervention against the cartels without having to go through Congress.
During Trump’s first term, for instance, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation. Its head, General Qasem Soleimani, was killed by a US drone strike less than a year later. The Trump Administration cited its foreign terrorist organisation order as justification for its actions.
Trump has not yet ruled out similar military action in Mexico. On January 20, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office, Trump was asked whether he would send the special forces to confront Mexico’s cartels. “Could happen. Stranger things have happened”, he replied. In the past, Trump has also apparently suggested a missile attack on Mexican drug labs.
The idea of unilateral US military action against the cartels has always faced stiff opposition from Mexico. And in December, as plans to designate the cartels as terrorist organisations gathered steam, Trump’s Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum said: “We collaborate, we coordinate, we work together, but we will never subordinate ourselves … Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country and we do not accept interference.”
However, US military operations in Mexico may not be so far-fetched. The US has previously staged armed interventions in Latin America when it has felt its national interests were under threat. The ousting of Panama’s leader, Manuel Noriega, in 1989 is a good example.
That year, the then US president George H.W. Bush ordered 20,000 American troops to invade Panama in an operation to “protect the lives of American citizens”. Noriega, who was arrested after spending days hiding in Panama City’s Vatican embassy, was wanted by US authorities for racketeering and drug trafficking.
The invasion resulted in the deaths of 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians (though the unofficial count is closer to 1,000), and three American servicemen.
Power of persuasion
The terrorist designation could, on the other hand, simply be a tactic to pressure governments across Latin America into taking tougher action against the gangs. We have already seen the likes of El Salvador’s iron-fisted president, Nayib Bukele, do the heavy lifting for the US, so far as countering criminal gangs is concerned.
With US assistance, El Salvador currently operates the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security jail that holds high-ranking members of the country’s main criminal gangs. Its critics consider it a “black hole of human rights” and one of the harshest prisons in the world.
Over the past few weeks, Trump has rebuked Sheinbaum for not doing enough to curtail the power of cartels operating in her country. He claimed earlier in January that Mexico was “essentially run by the cartels”.
Trump’s proposed appointment of Colonel Ronald Johnson, a former Green Beret with extensive experience in US military intelligence, as ambassador to Mexico signals a potential shift in US strategy toward direct confrontation with the region’s governments to step in line.
Trump can also buy compliance from governments in Latin America to do his bidding against the cartels, as was the case with Plan Colombia. Launched in 2000, the US-funded US$1 billion project (equivalent to roughly £1.5 billion today) provided foreign and military aid to Colombia in an attempt to fight the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics in the country.
Plan Colombia was subject to considerable controversy. Its critics claim it led to gross human rights violations as well as the destruction of the environment and people’s livelihoods. But successive US administrations have maintained that Plan Colombia, which came to an end in 2015, was a success.
The terrorist designation will usher in seismic changes in Latin America. Should Sheinbaum embrace Trump’s initiative, in part or in its entirety, then it is likely to lead to a civil war-like situation in Mexico, given the firepower and deep pockets the cartels have.
In 2007, under the so-called Mérida Initative, the US donated at least US$1.5 billion to help the then Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, launch his “war on drugs”. The outcome of that war was disastrous, with tens of thousands of lives lost and its effects still being felt today.
Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Grants.
