On Saturday in Doral, President Donald Trump will host a hemispheric summit "promoting freedom, security and prosperity" — but the guest list is limited to leaders the president favors.
The Shield of the Americas Summit will be held at Trump's resort hotel in Doral. It will involve only a third of the countries in the Americas — such as Argentina, El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago, whose conservative leaders are aligned with Trump's agenda in the hemisphere.
That includes his controversial crackdown on criminal cartels — which critics say involves illegal and deadly military bombings of civilian boats that the Trump administration insists are fair game because they're suspected of ferrying drugs and "narco-terrorists."
The summit will also be hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is credited with turning Trump's foreign policy focus to the western hemisphere.
It comes at a fraught but historic moment, when the U.S. military has ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro — who is now behind bars in New York on drug-trafficking charges — and engineered a blockade of oil shipments to Cuba, where Trump this week promised the communist dictatorship will soon fall.
The gathering is meant to showcase what's being called the "Donroe Doctrine," Trump's revival of the two-centuries-old Monroe Doctrine emphasizing U.S. protection of the Americas but also its hegemony — if not carte blanche — to intervene in the hemisphere.
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Under the Donroe Doctrine, Trump has insisted the U.S. has the right not only to arrest leaders like Maduro but acquire places such as Greenland (an autonomous Danish territory) and the Panama Canal (which belongs to Panama).
In a statement on the summit, the State Department said the U.S. "will welcome our strongest likeminded allies in our hemisphere to promote freedom, security, and prosperity in our region.
"This historic coalition of nations will work together to advance strategies that stop foreign interference in our hemisphere, criminal and narco-terrorist gangs and cartels, and illegal and mass immigration. "
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted his counterparts from the Shield of the Americas nations at the U.S. military Southern Command (Southcom) headquarters in Doral.
Along with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a hardline Donroe Doctrine advocate, Hegseth urged those countries to step up the militarization of the hemisphere's drug war.
The summit will also include Kristi Noem, whom Trump fired this week as Homeland Security Secretary, but whom he has appointed as a special Shield of the Americas envoy.
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