At the Combined Jungle Training Center-South in Cristobal Colon, Panama, yesterday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with U.S. service members who are learning how to survive in the most brutal, unforgiving jungles of the Western Hemisphere, all while retaining their combat effectiveness.
The visit coincided with the secretary's address during the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, a U.S.-led multinational security and political alliance formed to combat transnational drug cartels, reduce illegal migration across the Western Hemisphere and limit foreign geopolitical interference. It also coincided with Exercise Panamax 2026, a multinational military exercise hosted by Panama and sponsored by U.S. Southern Command.
In the dense jungle on the northern side of the Panama Canal, Hegseth told service members at the training center that what they are doing is exactly what he likes to see when he meets with warfighters.
"I think this is what ... the warrior ethos looks like; it's what reestablishing it looks like," he said. "It happens in training centers like this, with Americans like this, who do really difficult things in really tough places."
While at the training center, Hegseth met with instructors assigned to the Jungle Operations Training Course-Panama, along with Marines assigned to Littoral Combat Force-24, who were in Panama to participate in Panamax.
The secretary said the service members who train at the center are willing to do things no other Americans are willing to do, to include helping U.S. allies in both Central and South America protect the nation's backyard.
"That's what we're doing here with the A3C [and with] Panamax ... expanding peace through strength in our hemisphere, right here in the jungles with our partners," he said.
Noting a big shift in the Southcom mission, Hegseth said that just 18 months ago, the command was less focused on protecting the Americas and deterring threats.
"This is a different Southcom; this is a different mission," he said. "We are focused on military capabilities against real threats who need to be deterred and defeated, and we're going to give them everything they need to do it, on behalf of the American people."
The secretary said that under President Donald J. Trump, Southcom's mission has focused on working with partners in the region to keep everybody safe from a variety of shared threats.
"We know exactly what that mission looks like," he said. "We're empowering commanders like [Marine Corps Gen. Francis L. Donovan] to do it in Southcom; we're working with partners like Panama, like Ecuador, like Colombia ... they're going to send students here soon to swim across this very same river, [to] be a part of this very same training."
The nations involved in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition — 19 nations in all, with Colombia signing on just yesterday — are going to be involved in the same training as U.S. service members in Panama. The secretary said that the same things that necessitate American jungle training also motivate every other nation in the region.
"It turns out, in the [Western] Hemisphere, they face the very same security challenges, the same threat of drugs, the same threat of criminal cartels that threaten their citizens, the same ones that threaten our citizens," Hegseth said.
U.S. law enforcement personnel stationed at the U.S. southern border to stop illegal immigration and drug traffickers, combined with training across Central and South America in places such as Ecuador, Colombia and Panama, puts increasing pressure on shared threats.
"That's going after the enemies of our country — designated terrorist organizations — unabashedly," Hegseth said.
Earlier in the day, the secretary announced the new motto of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition: "We do bad things to bad people."
"For too long, bad people did bad things to good people, inside the United States of America and across Central and South America," he said. "We're going to empower great Americans and great partners to do really good stuff and be very capable about bringing violence against drug cartels and designated terrorist organizations, because we're dead serious about securing the homeland."
A big part of that is the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1823, President James Monroe articulated a foreign policy, now known as the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the Western Hemisphere was off-limits to further colonization efforts or interference by European nations. Later, that expanded to include interference by any foreign power.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added to that doctrine that the U.S. could intervene in the affairs of Latin America to protect U.S. interests.
And now, Hegseth said, there is Trump's corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
"It is a recognition that [designated terrorist organizations] ... will not control our hemisphere ... and we will not allow foreign malign influence to take over ... key terrain like the Panama Canal," he said.
Hegseth said Colombia's inclusion in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition is significant.
"The A3C had formed, but in some ways, it missed part of its core," he said. "Colombia is going to be [an] incredible partner. They offered to be a headquarters or a hub for the A3C as the brand-new 19th member. They've got ... hundreds of thousands of capable members of their military and decades of training with the United States ... that mil-to-mil relationship has been long-standing, and that's why they're coming to this jungle course soon."