THE TRUMP administration is stripping tens of millions of dollars in US military assistance from countries in Europe and West Asia to support conservative-leaning governments in Central and South America.
The State Department on Tuesday notified Congress that it will reprogram $52 million in foreign military financing from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq to Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru last week and pledged to them additional support as the Trump administration has prioritized the Western Hemisphere in its foreign policy with an emphasis on combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
It is just the latest in a series of moves that have reduced either money or troop deployments to Europe in response to President Donald Trump's complaints about NATO allies not spending enough on their defense budgets and other matters. Both North Macedonia and Slovakia are NATO members.
The State Department said the funds would be used to "combat narcoterrorism in our backyard and help continue to secure the Panama Canal," adding that the Western Hemisphere has been historically neglected in US military assistance.
"These funds will prevent adversaries from establishing strategic footholds in our hemisphere," the department said in a veiled jab at China, which has increasingly sought to boost its presence in Latin America.
Meanwhile in a separate development: The United States has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told the Air and Space Cyber Conference in Maryland on Monday that the US has fielded "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."
Meink did not detail what the weapons were or how they work. In 2024 the US said Russia was developing a new anti-satellite weapon that could be launched from space.
Two moves, one doctrine: America First means Hemisphere First. Reprogramming $52M from NATO members Slovakia and North Macedonia to Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia is small money but huge signal - Trump is punishing allies who don't pay up and rewarding those who help on migration, drugs and canal security. Rubio, himself a hawk on China in Latin America, frames it as anti-China. The space weapons confirmation is the other flank - after years of warning about Russian anti-satellite work, US now openly says it has on-orbit weapons. Combined, it shows Trump's foreign policy is not isolationist but transactional: pull from Europe/West Asia, invest in backyard and orbit.