Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy makes targeting Western Hemisphere cartels the top priority

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has signed off on a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that sets eliminating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere as the administration’s highest priority, the White House announced Wednesday.

The document was released months after his administration published an updated national security strategy that called for the hemisphere to be the top U.S. focus.

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

Sebastian Gorka, the White House counterterrorism czar who spearheaded the new strategy, said the shift in priorities acknowledges some simple math: Far more Americans have been killed by cartels pushing illicit drugs into U.S. communities than American service members lost in conflicts around the globe since World War II, he said.

“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.

It is the latest example of the administration’s efforts to demonstrate it remains committed to sharpening U.S. foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere even while dealing with worldwide crises.

The Republican administration’s campaign of blowing up alleged drug-trafficking vessels in Latin American waters has persisted since early September and killed at least 191 people in total.

At the same time, Trump has sought to press regional leaders to work more closely with the U.S. to target cartels and take military action themselves against drug traffickers and transnational gangs that he says pose an “unacceptable threat” to the hemisphere’s national security.

Gorka said the administration’s other counterterrorism priorities include targeting and destroying Islamic military groups that have capabilities to execute operations against the United States; identifying and neutralizing violent secular political groups with ideology that are anti-American, “radically pro-gender,” or anarchist; and boosting efforts to prevent nonstate actors from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

Gorka said administration officials would meet with allies later this week to discuss how they can bolster their counterterrorism strategies.

“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.”