HOST: Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my distinct pleasure to introduce our Secretary of War, the Honorable Pete Hegseth.
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, good morning, everybody. Well, General Donovan and I are pleased to welcome all of you to Southern Command this morning. I'm honored to be the first Secretary of War to lead a hemispheric defense conference like this in more than 30 years. This conference is about you. This conference is about us. This conference is not called the America 'apostrophe S' -- America's Counter Cartel Conference. It's the Americas Counter Cartel Conference. This is about what we together can do.
You know, it's been more than 200 years since our nations struggled for independence from foreign rule. The War of 1812 was about the United States defending its independence and protecting its territory. A 47-year-old Carolinian who was a major general in the Army, as was mentioned, Andrew Jackson, defeated a British Army almost double the size.
Addressing his troops after victory at the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson declared, "Natives of different states, acting together for the first time have reaped the fruits of an honorable union." His success galvanized a young country. In 1816, our country elected a Revolutionary War hero as president. James Monroe fought in the Continental Army. Leading a charge against German mercenaries fighting for the British, the enemy fired a musket ball at him.
It severed his artery and he almost died. But the young captain rallied and grew to be governor of Virginia, Secretary of War and one of our greatest presidents. In 1823, President Monroe said that the United States owed the success of that young country to the candor and amicable relations with other powers to affirm our national policy.
President Monroe declared, "we should consider any attempt on malign countries to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." It was the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. And today, some 200 years later, we still marvel at the wisdom of President Monroe's declaration.
We, like you, want borders and sovereign territories that are secure. We want unfettered access to key terrain and trade so that our nations can industrialize. And we want to prevent external powers from threatening our peace and independence in our shared neighborhood. This is the essence of the Monroe Doctrine. No external power will interfere in this hemisphere.
Ours should be a region of strong sovereign nations. It's the same principle that animates President Trump's defense approach today. President Trump and his Department of War are ushering in a new era of Homeland and hemispheric defense – rooted in the unique heritage of our nation and your nations.
Under President Trump, we restored the Department of War. You see, the Department of War was established by General George Washington and served our nation from its founding through our hard-fought victory in World War II. Many of your countries also once had Ministries of War.
Under President Trump, our nation has a newfound resolve that our founders would recognize, as Stephen alluded to and spoke to, they would recognize it and they would appreciate it. We are at long last putting America, Americans and the Americas first, ensuring peace through strength and restoring common sense. At our department we're doing it by restoring the Warrior Ethos, rebuilding our military to historic levels and reestablishing deterrence in this hemisphere and around the world.
For too long leaders in Washington and their foreign policy functionaries abandoned the simple wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine. They were consumed with the United States only going abroad. They ignored the warnings of President John Quincy Adams who said that if our nation went overseas only "in search of monsters to destroy," that we would cease to be the ruler of our own spirit and our own backyard.
Under previous leaders, we grew obsessed with every other theater and every other border in the world except our own. These elites reduced our power and presence in this hemisphere, opting for a benign neglect that was anything but benign. In your countries, many leaders accepted the status quo to coexist with narco-terrorism or for a law enforcement-alone approach that failed to deter and dismantle threats – same happened in our country under the previous administration.
And the result of this collective neglect was fatal. More than 1 million Americans were killed by fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs, numbers greater than any casualties we've sustained in war. Millions of illegal aliens invaded our borders and destabilized nations across the hemisphere.
Under Joe Biden's administration, the human smuggling industry exploded by more than 2,000 percent, from a $500 million so-called industry in 2018 to $13 billion by 2022. Cartels of terrorists across our hemisphere, enabled by adversaries, created and profited from chaos. What creates chaos? No leadership creates chaos.
In our nation, narco-terrorist groups like Tren de Aragua prospered. They raped, they poisoned, they murdered innocent Americans. They terrorized our cities, our towns and our neighborhoods like they do yours. Across this region, these gangsters control and terrorize large swaths of your territories, kill thousands of your people and promote chaos that makes normal life sometimes almost impossible.
Crimes spiked massively. Our hemisphere has one-eighth of the population, yet one-third of the violent crime. There's a reason for that. America's retreat from protecting its citizens and the complacency of many neighbors in this hemisphere was a great betrayal. That's what it was, a great betrayal against our people and our nations.
Well, President Trump recognizes the wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine and the days of us betraying and endangering our own citizens are finished. President Trump has reestablished the Monroe Doctrine. The Trump Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine or if you'd like for short, you can just call it the Donroe Doctrine.
Under President Trump, securing America's interest in the Western Hemisphere and keeping our Homeland safe are our top national security priorities. The President's historic National Defense Strategy ensures that the Department of War will prioritize resources around the threats and objectives that are core to homeland defense and the people and prosperity of the American people.
And to start, the Department of War is once again defending our borders as a priority of our national defense. With our law enforcement partners, we are defending our borders and making our streets safe again. Crossings at our southern border, at the U.S.-Mexico border, have dropped to the lowest number in history.
Murders nationwide have plummeted by more than 20 percent. We now have operational control of our southern border; zero people are crossing our southern border. We will not rest until we have complete operational control of every inch of all of our borders. So, it starts with us. We're addressing it, but we're not stopping there.
Under President Trump for the first time in history, the Department of War is on the offense against narco-terrorists as well. I should back up a step though – in order to get 100 percent operational control of our border, we didn't just look at Border Patrol and say that's your job, it's a law enforcement function. We deployed the United States military.
Right now, the division command of the 101st Airborne is in operational control of the southern border. We ensured that the most capable assets we had in our country were deployed to our own border to defend that border against the narco-terrorists and drug dealers seeking to enter our country. Not treating it simply as a law enforcement function – working with our partners but recognizing it's a core military function.
But going on offense with Operation Southern Spear has restored deterrence against the narco-terrorist cartels that profited from poisoning Americans. Last month, we went a few weeks without targeting a single boat. Why? Well, because we couldn't find a whole lot of boats to sink, and that's the whole point is to establish deterrence from narco terrorists who have been able to traffic almost unfettered.
And if the consequence was simply to be arrested and then released, well, that's a consequence they'd already priced in a long time ago. A new dynamic had to be put in motion in order for their decision cycle to change. And when adversaries are forced to move out of comfortable positions, as you know, as military men and women, they're more vulnerable when they're moving in a different direction, which is also the point.
Drug overdoses that kill our citizens have dropped; flows of fentanyl, a weapon of mass destruction, are down 56 percent. We will continue to destroy these threats. In January, U.S. forces raided and arrested the most dangerous house in the most dangerous compound inside the most fortified fort in the capital city of Caracas of two indicted individuals, Nicolas Maduro and his wife, fugitives of the U.S. – of U.S. law.
Operation Absolute Resolve showed the bravery of America's best, our warfighters. Nobody can do what the United States of America can do, it's not even close. President Trump has shown what is possible when you reject the status quo delusion that threats to our Homeland and our hemisphere are somehow secondary.
America is prepared to take on these threats and go on the offense alone, if necessary. However, it is our preference, and it is the goal of this conference, that in the interest of this neighborhood, we all do it together with you, with our neighbors and with our Allies who are eager and willing and capable.
To do this, to work together, we must first acknowledge what was lost and then understand what needs to be restored. All the nations represented in this room are offsprings of Western civilization. Our nations are and always will be united by our heritage, our history and geography in this new world.
We share the same interests, and, because of this, we face an essential test – whether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics, Christian nations under God, proud of our shared heritage with strong borders and prosperous people, ruled not by violence and chaos but by law, order, and common sense. Or whether we are permanently torn apart by something else, led astray by competing forces, radical narco-communism and narco-tyranny, which threaten our people, borders and sovereign lands in the name of a false sovereignty or a false peace.
Uncontrolled mass migration, which overwhelms domestic resources intended for deserving citizens, and drives unchecked crime, and unchecked violence. Or the belief in so-called globalism that seeks to erase our distinct national identities in the name of tolerance. Erase our borders in the name of compassion. And erase our Warrior Ethos and that which makes us strong in the name of so-called diversity and political correctness.
One of the dumbest phrases in military history, which used to be echoed from the former Defense Department in the previous administration, they would say it over and over and over again, was "our diversity is our strength." It's the single dumbest phrase in military history because what is our strength is our unity.
Our strength is in our shared purpose, in the training we do together, the capabilities we can do together. In our context, the Constitution, we swear an oath to defend together, the uniform we wear together. That is our strength. We reject other notions and offer a new choice.
We must defend our national interest and restore our national identities. Otherwise, the outcome is the same. Our hemisphere will be poorer, more dangerous and weaker. This matters not because we seek to preach to you about culture wars or ideologies, or to tell you how to run your countries. We're not here to tell you how to run your countries. Instead, it matters how we assess the threats facing us and the choices that we make on how to overcome them – that is what will define our destiny.
President Trump understands that today's threats to border security and key terrain in our hemisphere are existential questions for our nation and for all of yours. When adversaries conduct incursions in this hemisphere off the coast of a U.S. state, Alaska, or off the coast of Greenland, or in the Gulf of America, or the Caribbean, that is a direct threat to the United States Homeland and to peace in this hemisphere.
When adversaries control ports or infrastructure along strategic choke points for U.S. and hemispheric trade, such as the Panama Canal or installed military facilities just miles off our shore, that is a threat to the United States Homeland and peace to this hemisphere. When terrorists, killers, and cartels capture strategic infrastructure, resources and entire towns or cities close to U.S. borders and U.S. shores or profit from mass illegal migration, that is a threat to the United States Homeland and a threat to all of you as well, to the Americas.
The same adversaries that threaten our shared heritage, threaten our shared geography as well. They seek to displace the historic "North-South" relationship that we've always shared with some sort of a new "Global South" that excludes the United States and other Western nations but includes non-Western powers and other adversaries.
The answer to our challenge is not to ignore our geography in the name of global interests, but to embrace our shared geography in the name of national interests. That is why President Trump has drawn a new strategic map from Greenland to the Gulf of America to the Panama Canal and its surrounding countries.
At the Department of War, we call this strategic map the Greater North America. Why? Because every sovereign nation and territory north of the Equator, from Greenland to Ecuador and from Alaska to Guyana, is not part of the "Global South." It is our immediate security perimeter in this great neighborhood that we all live in. Each one of these countries border either the North Atlantic or the North Pacific.
Each one of these countries sits north of the two basic geographic barriers that exist in this region, the Amazon and the Andes Mountains. This is basic geography that we don't teach in schools as much as we should. And it restores our North-South relations, and we must get it right. In the North, the United States must enhance posture and presence in cooperation with you and our sovereign partners to defend our shared immediate security perimeter.
In the South, meaning south of the Equator, the other side of this great neighborhood, we will strengthen partnerships through increased burden sharing. This will enable you to take a greater role to defend the South Atlantic and the South Pacific, and to secure critical infrastructure and resources in partnership with us and other Western nations.
This is what we did in World War II, just like we sunk ships with torpedoes in World War II. At the Department of War, we called it the "quarter-sphere" defense, and we will do this again. If we're serious about our national security, and if we prioritize geography, business as usual will not stand. This means that for every country in this hemisphere border security must be your top priority.
Border security is national security. President Trump said it when he first started to run; you're not a country if you don't have borders, and he's right. President Trump sealed our border by directing the military to mobilize resources and personnel to stop invasion by cartels and other criminal actors.
You can do this as well, and many of you have. This also means that you too can and must go on the offense against narco-terrorists. We've had great collaboration with many countries in recent months, and I want to thank every country in this room that has supported our access to find, fix and finish cartel targets.
We have only just begun to work with you. More must be done by you and by us to target narco-terrorist groups across all domains. We will dismantle narco-terrorist networks in this hemisphere, and we will deny access to the state adversaries who support them. We will correct the mistakes of the past, the mistakes of the so-called "Global South."
I want to thank General Donovan who has been an excellent partner and a great new leader here at Southern Command. One of the great mistakes of the past was that our leaders didn't provide the U.S. Southern Command with the support that it needed. It was a command chock full of lawyers, and social workers, and NGOs, law enforcement.
That's changing. General, I'm directing my team to correct these historic failures to ensure that your command has the resources and staff that you need for this robust mission ahead. It's the least we can do. I want to – absolutely, thank you.
[Applause]
It's about time, but it's not just us at the Department of War and it's not just Southern Command. This is across the Trump administration. This is across the Department of War as well. Stephen Miller, thank you for your support and your leadership, for your clarity in understanding why this matters to each American citizen and why the War Department is central to ensuring that it happens. It doesn't happen without President Trump, and it doesn't happen without your clarity and your leadership.
I want to thank General Nordhaus as well for your support at every level. There's so many to thank. I see Corey Lewandowski here from the Department of Homeland Security, doesn't happen without the Department of Homeland Security. Of course, Joseph Humire, the other part of the new bromance between him and General Donovan.
Eric Geressy, who from day one in my office – he was my first sergeant in Iraq. He's one of my senior advisors. Day one, he worked at SOUTHCOM for a long time, said we need to be focused on the cartel threat, and he built a team to help put us in that direction. A lot of which manifests to this day. Patrick Weaver, Phil Hegseth, who I happen to know, and Ricky Buria, my chief, for doing a great job putting this together.
Tony Salisbury, thank you. So many folks that every single day in Washington, I hope you know, are working hard to run as fast as you are to stand alongside you in this mission. This is not a conference with flags so we can pat ourselves on the back. I can tell you that if I sold that to President Trump as the objective, he'd kick me out of his office.
This is an operational conference to bring our countries more closely together to achieve a shared objective and do so aggressively. This is not a one-way street. Every partner in this region has to do more and invest more in your security as well. We, like you, want a hemisphere of sovereign, secure, and prosperous nations. We like you want what another great American president, Teddy Roosevelt, called the "Permanent Peace" on this hemisphere and it will require action from all of us.
You know, our schools used to teach American schoolchildren about our blessed history. Every child in grade school grew up knowing the remarkable story of this country. They knew that President James Monroe was once an orphan, that at a mere 16 years old, he had to look after his siblings. I've got an almost 16-year-old, he couldn't look after anything. It's remarkable. Well, that orphan grew to be not just one of the greatest Presidents, but one of our greatest Americans.
After his presidency when his wife died and he became frail and ill with heart failure, but he still spoke about what he called our shared cause of liberty, still talked about the toils and the perils of our war for independence. James Monroe, our seventh president, died on July 4th – the 4th of July, Independence Day 1831, 50 years after 1776. What I like to say is, here at the Department of War, we're in the 1775 business, which is when Americans took up arms before they even declared independence.
All of you are also in the 1775 business. Without the force of arms, without our militaries, we cannot keep our countries safe. That's my responsibility and it is yours. With Donald Trump in the Oval Office and with all of you here, we can still realize that long ago dream of James Monroe in our time. We will make the Americas great again. Thank you and God bless you.