AMERICAN REGIONAL SECURITY, report 2019

The report American Regional Security (ARS) that we are launching has the purpose to address annually the most recent threats to the security of American countries. It deals with a space that is largely the security region of the United States, so that many aspects transcend the national sphere and become a geopolitical consideration. The security of the Western Hemisphere is therefore also the concern of the European Union or Spain, which have an interest in stability and prosperity on the other side of the Atlantic. Our SRA is a radar-like sweep of the most significant issues that have occurred in this field over the past year.

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The present global geopolitical tension is being played out in the near abroad of the three major powers. This term applies specifically to the space that was once part of the USSR and now surrounds Russia: the Kremlin's foreign policy is aimed both at securing its influence in these areas and preventing some of them from becoming the pawns of others. But such a struggle, like the one occurring in Ukraine or the Baltic republics, is also taking place in China's near abroad: the East and South China Seas. And similarly, albeit with less drama, the geopolitical game has also reached that near abroad of the United States, which goes beyond the backyard of the Greater Caribbean and could extend at least as far as the Equator.

Over the past year the security region of states has fully entered this new phase of acute geopolitics. This is due in particular to Russia's increased presence in the region, especially in Venezuela, where economic aid has in recent months given way to a succession of military gestures that defy the US. Furthermore, the agreement signed by Cuba to install a Glonass station, the Russian satellite navigator, raises the possibility that Moscow may once again want to use the island for intelligence work, as in the Cold War. Similar suspicions exist regarding a station already opened in Managua, where a Russian-run police academy has also been viewed with suspicion by the Pentagon.

Alongside such Russian activity in the region, Washington sometimes places China's activity in the region. While not seeking to anger the US, as can be attributed to the Kremlin's desire to reciprocate the pressure it has received in Ukraine, Beijing's commercial moves are perceived by the Americans as unfriendly. This is especially true in Central America, where in a few years China has been displacing the peculiar influence of Taiwan, which in 2018 lost the support of El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Throughout the year, various US authorities expressed discomfort with China's position-taking in the Panama Canal area. Moreover, after a 2016 with hardly any loans to Venezuela and a blank 2017, Beijing granted in 2018 a 5 billion dollar loan to the Chavista regime (now 67.2 billion dollars).

The Venezuelan crisis is not only generating friction between the three main powers, but is also a source of insecurity for the surrounding countries. The space that Maduro's government has continued to give to Colombian guerrillas has contributed to the fact that 2018 can be considered the year of consolidation of the criminal activity of FARC dissidents, at partnership with the ELN, a guerrilla group that is still active as such and is also increasing its radius of action in Venezuela. The last year also saw a strengthening of the ELN, which, following the failure of its negotiations with the government, carried out an attack in Bogotá in January 2019, causing 21 deaths. FARC dissidents numbered around 2,000 at the end of 2018, including demobilised elements returning to arms as well as new recruits. Their coca production activity, concentrated in southwestern Colombia, spilled over into violence across the border with Ecuador in 2018, in part because of the activity of "el Guacho", a former FARC member eventually killed by Colombian security forces.

The worsening of the Venezuelan status , on the other hand, has reduced surveillance at sea, increased corruption of maritime authorities and coastal municipalities, and pushed the inhabitants of these localities to seek livelihoods. As a result, episodes of piracy off the coasts of Venezuela and its eastern neighbours have increased markedly. In a single attack in April 2018 in Surinamese waters, fifteen Guyanese fishermen were killed, while the authorities of Trinidad and Tobago decided to create an elite air unit to combat these actions.

It is not the only special alert in Trinidad and Tobago. The outflow of ISIS jihadists that is resulting from the pacification of Syria has put both Washington and Port of Spain on guard against the possible return to the Caribbean country of those who went to fight in the Middle East. Trinidad and Tobago was the nation that sent proportionally the most fighters to Syria: a total of 130, out of a population that may reach two million, of whom barely five per cent are Muslim. Authorities arrested four suspected jihadists in February 2018 for planning an attack on the capital's carnival. Urged by the US, which fears the spread of Trinidadian extremists in the region, the island government developed a new counter-terrorism strategy in 2018.

International success in ending the ISIS 'caliphate' thus shifts the risk to other parts of the world. The Trump Administration's pressure on Iran may also be encouraging greater Hizbollah activity in certain enclaves of South America - such as the TBA - to compensate for the reduction in funding that could result from the effectiveness of US sanctions on Tehran. In any case, 2018 saw a revival of the White House's interest in disrupting the drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling networks carried out by Hezbollah operatives in Latin America: the Justice department reconstituted a specific research unit and the State department labelled group, already classified by the US as a terrorist organisation, as a transnational criminal organisation. Last year also saw a leap in the cooperation of the three TBA countries - Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - which led to the arrest of Assad Ahmad Barakat, a major Hizbollah financial operator, and some 15 members of his clan.

While migration issues are constantly topical in the Americas, 2018 can be described as "the year of the caravans", due to the various marches that left Honduras for the US border and which met with a harsh response from the Trump Administration. One of the controversial aspects was the denunciation of the possible use of these marches by alleged Islamic extremists in order to reach the US unnoticed. What is certain is that Washington has been paying attention to the Central American route of people from other continents.

Thus, in 2018 it agreed to help Panama increase control of the Darién crossing, a jungle region on the border with Colombia where almost 9,000 migrants were located that year, 91% of them Africans and Asians. Of these, 2,100 entered the US grade as 'persons of concern' (from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, among other countries).

The region has also seen some progress, such as halting the rise in opioid overdose deaths in the United States, an epidemic that set a record high in 2017. Throughout 2018, the eradication of poppy crops in Mexico, whose B increase in heroin production had pushed up consumption in the US (mixed with the synthetic fentanyl, mostly also coming through Mexico), and greater legislative and sanitary control by the US authorities, seem to show signs that the problem has stopped growing.