What is being presented to the world as a campaign against “narco-terrorism” is the construction of a hemispheric military apparatus, integrating the region’s armed forces under US command.

The A3C, launched in March 2026 at US Southern Command headquarters in Florida, now brings together 19 nations of the Western Hemisphere. The Santo Domingo conference, organized by the Dominican Ministry of Defense and US Southern Command, was convened to “operationalize” the coalition, to approve a military campaign plan and a governance charter that will define the organization and to coordinate joint operations.

The 19 nations now enrolled in this coalition are, with few exceptions, ultra-right and fascistic regimes ideologically aligned with Trump. In addition to the US, the pact includes Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, Belize, Chile, Guatemala, Jamaica, Peru, and most recently Colombia, following the August election victory of the far-right president Abelardo de la Espriella. These are the political heirs of the military dictatorships of the 1970s, now back in power throughout the region.

The deployment of 300 US soldiers to Colombia is the concrete expression of this program. The exercise, Southern Vanguard 2027, will run from October 30 through November 11 at the Tolemaida military base in Nilo, Cundinamarca, bringing together US Army mountain infantry with Colombia’s Counter-Narcotics Battalion No. 1. The training will focus on maritime interdiction, ground security operations, cyber defense, and responses to drone attacks.

The choice of Tolemaida itself is an obscenity. It was at and around this base that US soldiers and contractors sexually abused children between 2003 and 2007, protected by bilateral immunity agreements that have never been struck down. Not one US soldier or contractor has ever been prosecuted in Colombia for any crime.

The importance of Colombia for Washington lies not in its cocaine but in its geostrategic position: a country with both Atlantic and Pacific coasts, bordering Venezuela, astride the gateway to the Andes and the Amazon. It is the pivot of Washington’s drive to dominate the hemisphere’s resources—lithium, copper, oil, rare earths—and to counter Chinese influence. The billions poured into Colombia over eight decades have served not the Colombian people, but the interests of US imperialism and its comprador bourgeois clients.