US President Donald Trump’s administration has lashed out at Europe over the migration crisis in its counter-terrorism report, released on Wednesday.
In a 16-page report prepared under the leadership of Trump’s ally Sebastian Gorka, drug cartels in North and South America take centre stage in counter-terrorism efforts. Beyond that, the strategy intensifies political attacks on its opponents, who are more conciliatory on many issues. Indeed, the harshest language in the document is directed at Europe.
Trump has been harshly criticising his European NATO allies for some time now for failing to assist him in the war against Iran. Now, however, Europe is facing criticism over its long-standing issue: migration. The report said European nations remained the US’s “preeminent and long-term counterterrorism partners,” but stated that “The world is safer when Europe is strong, but Europe is greatly threatened and is both a terror target and an incubator of terror threats.”
“As the birthplace of Western culture and values, Europe must act now and halt its willful decline,” said the strategy.
This new round of criticism directed at Europe came just a few months after Trump’s new national security strategy claimed that the continent faced the “civilizational erasur” due to immigration.
Since the start of the year, the US has taken a series of decisive and controversial actions, ousting Nicolás Maduro from the presidency of Venezuela, carrying out dozens of military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels belonging to drug cartels, and stepping up pressure on the communist government of Cuba. In addition, the US has been blowing up allegedly drug-smuggling vessels in Latin American waters since September, an operation that has claimed the lives of at least 191 people.
Meanwhile, Trump has sought to pressure regional leaders to cooperate more closely with the US in the fight against the cartels and to take military action themselves against drug traffickers and transnational gangs. Administration officials will meet with allies later this week to discuss how they can strengthen their counter-terrorism strategies, Gorki said.
Left-wing radical groups remain one of the main issues facing the Republican president’s administration, and the strategy is directed against those it describes as “violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The report states that says US counter-terrorism efforts will “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
