Western Hemisphere Nations Meet to Advance Anti-Cartel Campaign Plan

Defense and security leaders from 19 nations across the Western Hemisphere worked to advance a campaign plan to dismantle dangerous transnational cartels and narco-terrorist networks during an Americas Counter Cartel Coalition forum in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Oct. 27.

The forum convened senior defense ministers, military chiefs and public security leaders, including Marine Corps Gen. Francis L. Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, and Eric Geressy, the senior advisor to the secretary of war for strategy. 
  
Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader also attended and addressed the attendees. 
 
During the forum, leaders spearheaded the development of an operational campaign plan and a governance charter. The goal is to establish how the coalition will coordinate multilateral cooperation, share information and intelligence, and conduct combined operations against narco-terrorist networks that threaten people, sovereignty and economic stability across the Americas and the Caribbean.  
  
During his opening remarks, Geressy highlighted the successes of Operation Southern Spear, stating that operations have degraded narco-terrorist maritime corridors by 64% in the western Caribbean, 58% in the eastern Caribbean and 40% across the Galapagos axis.

“Make no mistake about the nature of our enemy. Transnational cartels are violent extremist organizations. They operate as the al-Qaida and ISIS of the Western Hemisphere,” he said.

Geressy warned the leaders that narco-terrorists are adapting to recent operational successes and are now using lawfare to “attempt to paralyze our decisions.”

“Having lost parity on the physical battlefield, these cartels have opened an asymmetric line of effort — lawfare. In military doctrine, lawfare is not a legitimate legal discourse. It is the calculated weaponization of legal systems to achieve kinetic and operational effects,” he said.

Geressy said the terrorists want operators looking over their shoulders rather than looking down their sights, adding, “They want to collapse our operational tempo from the courtroom, because they cannot survive it in the battle space.” 
  
Geressy told the leaders that the War Department will never tie a commander’s hands by permitting criminal syndicates to exploit the United States’ adherence to lawful warfare. 
  
“When your combined forces execute combined operations alongside the United States, you must know that your tactical commanders and service members will be shielded,” he added.

Regional Leadership and Sovereignty

The Americas Counter Cartel Coalition launched at Southcom headquarters in Miami, where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and defense and public security leaders signed an agreement pledging to work closely together to combat cartel and narco-terrorist networks in March.  
  
The Santo Domingo forum marks the coalition’s third major milestone this year. The leaders met in Panama City in August to lay the groundwork for the operational frameworks agreed to this week.  
  
Moving forward, the coalition nations aim to aggressively target what the leaders call “criminal enablers” — the shadow networks that enable narco-terrorists to traffic drugs and spread violence throughout the Western Hemisphere through illicit financing, sophisticated logistics, arms procurement and public corruption.  
  
The Americas Counter Cartel Coalition supports the Shield of the Americas, led by heads of state and policy leaders working to strengthen the resilience of the Western Hemisphere through economic, security and multilateral cooperation. It defends coalition countries’ economies and democratic governance against cartel and narco-terrorist threats, while also defending and promoting mutual respect for national sovereignty and self-determination.