Central America, particularly the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, is notorious for violence and drugs. The region acts as a transit point for drugs going from South America to the United States, and the flow of drugs northward shows no signs of easing as U.S. demand skyrockets. The Cipher Brief’s Kaitlin Lavinder asked Todd Rosenblum, former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs, how the U.S. is working to deal with this security issue.
The Cipher Brief: Do you agree with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s statement last month that most of the Northern Triangle’s violence comes from U.S. drug demand?
Todd Rosenblum: I do agree with it because the vast majority of drug cultivation and imports from South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean is just to feed the U.S. demand. So if the demand wasn’t there, we would not see these organized criminal organizations spending so much resources and executing so many acts of violence to get drugs into the United States.
TCB: How does the U.S. work with Central American countries to curb drug trafficking and U.S. drug demand?
Rosenblum: We don’t really work with Central American countries in terms of the demand piece. That’s a domestic activity, and there are lots of players involved in trying to curb demand in the United States. We have never done well in terms of curbing demand, and the situation, in terms of particularly dangerous narcotics, is getting worse. Both the use of prescription drugs and the use of opioids is really booming in a very bad way in the United States.
On working with Central American governments on drug trafficking, Central America is not a hub of growth. It is a transit point – and not even a major transit point relative to the air and maritime transit that occurs from South America going north. The Caribbean right now is a bigger hub than Central America. For aircraft, a lot of them stage out of Colombia or elsewhere, and they will stop either in Mexico or the Caribbean, or potentially Central America, but Central America is at most a transit stop. So our working with Central American countries is not on eradication. It’s really on citizen security programs, rule of law, making their very modest security forces a little bit stronger and better partners with us in the detection and monitoring of drug flows. But when you go there, you see how small their security forces are, and how overwhelmed and overmatched they are.
It’s more about them being a partner in a larger network where, if we’re going to do interdiction, they’re helping us with intelligence-gathering, more than anything else.
TCB: Has that relationship changed over the past decade for the better or the worse – specifically under the Obama Administration? How do you see it developing over the next four years under the Trump Administration?
Rosenblum: I’m negative in terms of our being able to stop the flow in general – and I’ve been negative on that for a long time. I’m not sure it has changed very much. We had a couple of initiatives in the Obama Administration to promote citizen security, rule of law, and general development and security in Central America, which were efforts well-intended, and they did have a bit of a positive impact. But in general, you’re talking about countries that are very poor, have extremely limited security forces, and just frankly are not able to do that much on their own. So if we spend a little bit more, we’re probably able to buy a little more security; but it still is – and Secretary Kelly talks about this a lot – the balloon effect. If we crack down in one area, it usually flows elsewhere. So if Central America became slightly less permissive for transit, then it might flow elsewhere. Overall, I don’t see our programs being particularly effective.
TCB: You said if we spend more on security, we might get a little more security, but not a lot. Is the reverse true that if you cut security funding, you may get a little less security, but not a lot? I ask because the Trump Administration plans on cutting around 39 percent of aid to Central America. A lot of people are upset about this – but do you think it may not have as big an impact as some may think?
Rosenblum: I agree it would not have as big an impact as some people may think. A dollar spent is going to buy you some return, but it’s not that much. So the converse, if you cut back, is not going to be a one-to-one reduction in capability because the starting point is so small.
For example, some of the assistance we provide to these governments, in terms of drug interdiction efforts, is they literally need gasoline to run their interdiction boats. They might have a few boats, but they can’t afford to operate them. It’s such a small force; and with the assistance we provide, it means they can do some more patrol hours and do a little more interdiction at sea or fly their helicopters a little more – and that’s important and good. But neither a reduction of some amount or an increase of some amount is going to be a game-changer either way.
If I was able to make these decisions, I would argue for giving them more assistance so they could spend more time out on patrol in the air and on their rivers, and control their borders a little bit better.
TCB: It seems like Secretary Kelly’s idea is to potentially get more assistance to Central America, but not through the United States, rather through Mexico instead – and there was a summit last week in Miami discussing this. Do you think that is a proper strategy?
Rosenblum: In terms of the border security of the United States, what has been most effective in terms of people transit – not drugs – is working with Mexico. That’s because there’s a natural geographic chokepoint in southern Mexico, where the flow of people comes across by land and then travels up north through Mexico to our border. So the more we could help Mexico secure its physical southern border, the more it will reduce the flow of people coming north. In that way, working with Mexico is very good.
In terms of drugs, there has been a longstanding issue of drug trafficking directly from Mexico into the United States. If we can work with Mexico, there could be an impact there.
Digressing a little bit, there has been a real shift in what’s going on with the types of drugs that are flowing. Where we in the U.S. have started to legalize recreational marijuana and seen the rise of domestic cultivation, it has really reduced the profit that the organized criminal groups are making transporting marijuana. Marijuana was never a big money-maker for them because it’s bulky and the cost of it is what it is – it’s not nearly as profitable as smuggling methamphetamines and opium and poppy, to make heroine. We are seeing a reduction in the transit of marijuana, but we’re seeing a skyrocket in cultivation and export of opium and opioids from Mexico. That’s high profit.
So going back to your original question, working with Mexico is going to be really important in trying to reduce the most dangerous drugs we have in the country. That’s actually a smart policy which I would agree with.
TCB: Are there any other hot spots in the world today where we see demand for opioids and other hard drugs increasing?
Rosenblum: There’s constant demand in Europe. I’m not recalling the percentage of supply that goes from South America to Europe. But the skyrocketing use – although I’m no longer completely firm on my knowledge of numbers – of methamphetamine and heroin in the United States, which has been going on for around 10 years and is now becoming much more openly discussed – that’s the big game-changer that’s happening. That’s where I think the crisis really resides. And then you compound that with the legalization of marijuana and you sort of take off the table the import of marijuana and lesser schedule drugs.
TCB: Do you have any final thoughts on this topic?
Rosenblum: Going back to Central America, they’ve got a tremendous problem with violence. The percentage of people killed in these countries is incredibly high and horrible – places like Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala – but it also hasn’t really spiked or changed in terms of the amount of violence over the past several years. It’s consistently very bad. When you look at the people flow, not the narcotics flow, the spikes that we have seen, the surges to our border, I don’t tie that much to a spike in violence like some people say. It’s a constant, and it also has to do with the perception of changes in U.S. law and access to the country that has led to these surges we’ve had – now we’re in a downward cycle, which is good. But it’s a steady state horrific situation that’s not getting better and not getting significantly worse.
