also good from them, and related:

GameChangers 2020: Conflicting US Approach to Latin America Organized Crime

Written by Parker Asmann and Seth Robbins, DECEMBER 22, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden has a chance to reset the table on US-Latin American relations, but the Trump administration’s schizophrenic, transactional approach may leave some lasting scars that will be hard to cover.

Trump was sometimes bellicose, sending warships to the Caribbean in a clear bid to intimidate Venezuela and demanding that Mexico and Colombia continue hard-line measures against drug trafficking in spite of little evidence this approach was working. In fact, cocaine production continued to soar in Colombia, overall security in Mexico deteriorated into unprecedented violence and Venezuela did not flinch.

He was sometimes transactional, forcing the presidents of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to acquiesce to his demands on immigration, his principal and arguably only concern as it relates to the region. They agreed, perhaps because in return they got diplomatic cover as they flouted anti-corruption efforts.

Trump was nearly always incoherent. US federal prosecutors indicted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges, but Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández retained his status as a key partner in US counter-drug missions, despite being an unnamed co-conspirator in his brother’s cocaine trafficking ring in a US courtroom.

But above all, the US president remained stubborn, tethered to his domestic political base more than reality. Along the US-Mexico border, at least 640 kilometers of fencing was constructed, even as traffickers continue to smuggle the vast majority of drugs through legal ports of entry.

Into this chaotic panorama enters President-elect Biden. He will likely bring a return to broad diplomacy with a focus on going after corruption and using various traditional forms of drug interdiction in a region he knows well from his years as a senator and vice president. But he may have a hard time rebuilding a State Department that Trump gutted, and he will not rock any diplomatic boats.

In other words, Biden is a return to the status quo, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

Doubling Down on Immigration [.....]