By Phil Stewart
PANAMA CITY, Aug 12 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth welcomed Colombia on Wednesday into a military-led counter-narcotics coalition of like-minded Western Hemisphere nations following the inauguration of its conservative president last week.
Ahead of a meeting with Colombia's new Defense Minister Jorge Eduardo Mora, a retired major general, Hegseth said Colombia had also authorized "joint military operations to destroy terrorists and terror networks."
The meeting of the
so-called Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition took place in Panama, whose canal became an early focus of President Donald Trump's Latin America policy.
That U.S. policy has expanded dramatically since then with the launch of U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats last September that have killed more than 200 people so far and a U.S.-led commando raid in January that deposed Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela.
Critics say the U.S. strikes amount to war crimes worthy of the International Criminal Court but Hegseth blasted the organization and encouraged coalition allies attending the meeting in Panama to withdraw from it.
He compared drug traffickers to al Qaeda or Islamic State terrorists.
Speaking at a hotel in Panama City, Hegseth invoked a revamped Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century policy asserting U.S. primacy across the Americas that critics associate with decades of U.S. intervention. He called it the "Donroe Doctrine" — a play on Trump's name.
"We will defend our hemisphere from external threats," including from narco-traffickers or foreign influence, Hegseth said.
COLOMBIAN CRACKDOWN
Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella's vows of a security crackdown have been embraced by the Trump administration, which announced on Friday plans to provide $1 billion in U.S. security assistance to his government.
During his swearing-in address on Friday, De La Espriella vowed to "definitively eradicate the scourge of illicit crops" and committed to also joining the Shield of the Americas program founded by Trump.
De La Espriella has blamed his predecessor, leftist Gustavo Petro, for an expansion of armed groups.
De La Espriella's election was part of a rightward shift rippling across Latin America.
In Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama, weak economies and rising crime have reshaped voter priorities, allowing once-fringe hard-right candidates to gain traction by promising crackdowns amid a global rise of right-wing nationalism.
In Panama, Trump's administration won a major victory from the country's Supreme Court in January after voicing concerns about encroachment by China. Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison, through local unit Panama Ports Company, lost the port concessions it had held for nearly three decades.
The Panama Canal handles 5% of global maritime trade, making control of its entrance ports a flashpoint for geopolitical tension between Washington and Beijing.
Addressing the meeting, Panama President Jose Raul Mulino called drug trafficking the biggest threat facing the region and dismissed concerns that the U.S.-led coalition could infringe on members' sovereignty. He made no mention of China.
Instead, he said the transnational crime groups that traffic drugs and people are the real threats to sovereignty.
"There's never going to be a sustainable peace if this enemy (advances)," Mulino said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart in Panama City and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)
