‘Gunboat diplomacy on steroids’: US signs security deals across Latin America

While all eyes are on the four-month-long US military campaign against Venezuela, the White House has been quietly striking security agreements with other countries to deploy US troops across Latin America and the Caribbean. Donald Trump announces the US Navy’s new Golden Fleet initiative at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images 'War on drugs' or political agitation? Assessing Trump's actions in Venezuela – video explainer US fighter jets at the former Roosevelt Roads naval base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.Photograph: Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters As Donald Trump announced a blockade on oil tankers under sanctions and ordered the seizure of vessels amid airstrikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the US secured military deals with Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago in the past week alone. The agreements - ranging from airport access, as in Trinidad and Tobago, to the temporary deployment of US troops for joint operations against “narco-terrorists” in Paraguay - are being signed under the banner of a so-called “war on drugs”, the same rationale Washington has used to justify its offensive against Venezuela , although White House officials and Trump himself has said that the goals also include seizing the country’s vast energy reserves and bringing down the dictator Nicolás Maduro . Although Washington has long maintained similar agreements in the region, the scale and timing of the new deals are seen by analysts as a further escalation amid what would be an unprecedented US invasion of a South American country. “If the US were to launch a larger offensive that included airstrikes on Venezuela or other countries that have been mentioned, such as Colombia or Cuba, it would want operating locations around the region,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities thinktank. “Constructing a network of locations would be important for the sustainability of any type of operation. So we can’t say for sure that these activities are directly targeting Venezuela , but I think it’s naive to suggest that they’re not somehow related,” she added. Recent agreements include the “temporary” deployment of US air force troops to Ecuador - despite Ecuadorians having rejected in a referendum the establishment of foreign military bases - and a decision by Peru’s congress, after a request from the White House, to authorise US military and intelligence personnel to operate armed in the country. “And this has nothing to do with drugs,” said Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador and a research professor at Boston University’s School of Global Studies. “Paraguay is not considered a major centre for either drug production or distribution, nor is Venezuela. This has much more to do with the US national security strategy document,” he added. In what it calls a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine - the “America for Americans” foreign policy set out in 1823 by the US president James Monroe and later used to justify US-backed military coups in Latin America - the recently released document calls for...

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