President Trump’s targeting of boats in Latin American waters has kicked off a dramatic shift in the U.S. approach to the region, one that threatens to upend many partnerships long relied on by the White House.

The Trump administration has authorized military strikes on boats they claim are ferrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela and in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in at least 43 deaths.

The strikes have been highly criticized, and the actions prompted Gustavo Petro, president of neighboring Colombia, to accuse the U.S. of murder.

Trump responded by slashing security aid to Petro’s country, one of the closest U.S. partners on drug enforcement, and on Friday issued sanctions against Petro personally, accusing him of failing to clamp down on cocaine production.

“To see this kind of treatment of Latin America, this sort of very colonial way of treating the region, threatening military intervention, sending 10,000 troops to the Caribbean – I mean, these are things that we just don't have any real parallels in the last 100 years,” said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit that advocates for human rights in the region.

It’s also a massive shift from former President Biden’s “root causes” approach, which sought to stem migration in the region through investments in local economies, education and stemming violence and corruption.

Rebecca Bill Chavez, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said that while the Trump administration is giving appreciated attention to an area often overlooked by other administrations, they risk jeopardizing relationships with allies while unwinding decades of strategy meant to counter growing Chinese influence.

“The approach leans more on coercion than cooperation, heavy on sticks and light on carrots. It emphasizes the region’s problems instead of its potential,” she said, all things that could undercut U.S. efforts to be the “partner of choice” in Latin America.

The Trump administration claims it is taking out the boats to stop drugs that would otherwise flow to the U.S., but at the same time, Trump has said he approved covert CIA action in Venezuela and dedicated 10,000 troops to support counternarcotics operations, raising the specter the U.S.

© The Hill