report SRA 2019 / summary executive[PDF version].

APRIL 2019-The present global geopolitical tension is being played out in the near abroad of the three major powers. That term applies specifically to the space that was once part of the USSR and today surrounds Russia: the Kremlin's foreign policy is aimed both at securing its influence in those areas and at preventing some of them from becoming the pawn of others. But such a struggle, like the one taking place in Ukraine or the Baltic republics, is also taking place in China's near abroad: the East and South China Seas. And in the same way, although 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 to the Equator.

In the last year, the security region of the United States has entered fully into this new phase of acute geopolitics. This is especially due to Russia's increased presence in that environment, especially in Venezuela, where economic aid has been replaced in recent months by a succession of military gestures that challenge the US. In addition, the agreement signed by Cuba to install a Glonass station, the Russian satellite navigator, fuels the possibility that Moscow may again want to use the island for intelligence work, as in the Cold War. Similar suspicions exist in relation to a station already opened in Managua, where also a police academy managed by Russia has been pointed out with suspicion by the Pentagon.

Alongside this Russian activity in the region, Washington sometimes places China's activity. Although without seeking to anger the US, as can be attributed to the Kremlin in its desire to reciprocate the pressure received in Ukraine, Beijing's commercial moves are perceived by the Americans as unfriendly. This is especially the case in Central America, where in a few years China has been displacing the peculiar influence that Taiwan used to have, a country that in 2018 lost the support of El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Throughout the year, various U.S. authorities expressed discomfort with China's taking positions in the Panama Canal environment. For the rest, after a 2016 with hardly any credits to Venezuela and a blank 2017, Beijing granted in 2018 an loan of 5,000 million dollars to the chavista regime (now 67,200 million).

The Venezuelan crisis is not only generating friction between the three main powers, but is also a focus of insecurity for the surrounding countries. The space that the Maduro government has continued to give to Colombian guerrillas has contributed to the fact that 2018 can be considered as the year of consolidation of the criminal activity of the FARC dissidence, in partnership with the ELN, a guerrilla still active as such that is also increasing its radius of action in Venezuela. The last year also saw a strengthening of the ELN, which after the failure of its negotiations with the Government carried out an attack in Bogota in January 2019, causing 21 deaths. FARC dissidents reached around two thousand by the end of 2018, including demobilized elements returning to arms and also new recruits. Their coca production activity, concentrated in southwest Colombia, spilled over into violence across the border with Ecuador throughout 2018, in part due to 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 the corruption of maritime authorities and coastal municipalities and pushed the inhabitants of these localities to seek means of subsistence. As a result, piracy off the coasts of Venezuela and its eastern neighbors has increased significantly. In a single attack carried out in April 2018 in Surinamese waters, fifteen Guyanese fishermen died; for their part, 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 disbandment of ISIS jihadists that the pacification of Syria is entailing 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 more fighters to Syria: a total of 130, out of a population that may reach two million inhabitants, of which barely 5% are Muslims. Authorities arrested four suspected jihadists in February 2018 for planning an attack on the capital's carnival. Urged by the US, which fears a dissemination through the region of Trinidadian extremists, the island government developed in 2018 a new anti-terrorism strategy.

International success in ending the ISIS "caliphate" thus shifts the risk to other parts of the world. Also, the Trump Administration's pressure on Iran may be encouraging greater Hezbollah activity in certain enclaves in South America - this would be the case of the Triple Frontier - to compensate for the reduction in funding that could result from the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions on Tehran. The year 2018 marked, in any case, a reactivation of the White House's interest in disrupting drug trafficking, money laundering and smuggling networks carried out by Hezbollah operatives in Latin America: the department of Justice reconstituted a specific research unit and the department of State labeled the group, already qualified by the US as a terrorist organization, as a transnational criminal organization. The last year also saw a leap in the cooperation of the three countries of the Triple Border -Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay-, which allowed the arrest of Assad Ahmad Barakat, an important financial operator of Hezbollah, and some fifteen 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 departed from Honduras towards the border with the United States 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 U.S. unnoticed. The truth is that Washington has paid attention to the Central American route of people from other continents.

Thus in 2018 it agreed to help Panama increase control of the Darien Pass, a jungle region on the border with Colombia where nearly 9,000 migrants, 91% African and Asian, were located that year. Of these, 2,100 were entering the U.S. grade of "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 effort to eradicate poppy crops in Mexico, whose B increase in heroin production had pushed up consumption in the US (in mixture with the synthetic fentanyl, mostly also coming through Mexico) and the greater legislative and sanitary control by the US authorities, seem to give signs that the problem has stopped growing.