Strategic Analysis from
the Field to Policy
AADI's Research Blog delivers practitioner-informed analysis on hemispheric security, U.S. policy in Latin America, and the evolving threat landscape — written from the perspective of operational experience, not the ivory tower.
Editorial note: All analysis published on AADI's Research Blog represents the independent professional judgment of AADI's founder and advisors, grounded in operational experience and open-source information. Views expressed are those of the author.
AADI Research Blog
The Trump Corollary and What It Means for Hemispheric Security
The 2025 NSS declared a "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine." For those who operated in Latin American security environments, the implications are significant and not fully understood in Washington.
Venezuela After Maduro: What Comes Next for Regional Stability
Operation Absolute Resolve ousted Maduro in January 2026. The military operation succeeded but the security vacuum it created is a more complex challenge than the regime itself.
Colombia Under Petro: A Security Landscape in Transition
Colombia's post-accord security environment has shifted under Gustavo Petro with consequences for U.S. bilateral cooperation, cartel activity, and the gains made under Plan Colombia.
Cartel Evolution: Why the FTO Designation Changes and Doesn't Change the Game
The Trump administration's FTO designations created new legal tools. Whether those tools match the operational reality of how cartels function is a different question.
SOUTHCOM Reorganized: The Western Hemisphere Command and What It Signals
The activation of the Western Hemisphere Command in December 2025 is a structural shift with real operational implications and a signal about how Washington now views its own backyard.
Migration as a Security Issue: The Latin American Dimension Washington Keeps Getting Wrong
The 2025 NSS frames migration as a national security threat. The operational reality of what drives migration flows suggests a more complex picture one military tools alone cannot address.
The Trump Corollary and What It Means for Hemispheric Security
The December 2025 National Security Strategy introduced what the Trump administration called a "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine," a formal declaration that the United States would reassert preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, deny non-hemispheric powers access to strategic assets, and authorize targeted military deployments against cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
For those who spent decades operating in Latin American security environments, this represents a significant rhetorical and strategic shift. The question is not whether the diagnosis is correct, it largely is, but whether the prescribed treatment matches the operational reality of the threat.
Read Full AnalysisVenezuela After Maduro: What Comes Next for Regional Stability
Operation Absolute Resolve, executed on January 3, 2026, captured Nicolás Maduro at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela's largest military complex in Caracas, and removed him from the country. He is currently held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, facing narco-terrorism charges in the Southern District of New York. The operation succeeded in its immediate objective. What follows is more complicated.
Venezuela under Maduro had become less a functioning state than a hollow security apparatus sustained by external patrons, primarily Cuba, Russia, and transnational criminal networks including the Colombian ELN and remnants of FARC dissidents. Removing Maduro does not remove these networks. In many cases, it removes the constraint that kept them nominally within a state structure.
Read Full AnalysisColombia Under Petro: A Security Landscape in Transition
Colombia occupies a unique position in U.S. hemispheric security policy. It is simultaneously the greatest success story of bilateral security cooperation in the Western Hemisphere and, currently, one of its most diplomatically complicated relationships.
The gains made under Plan Colombia, a program that transformed the country from a near-failed state in the early 2000s to a functional democracy with significantly reduced violence, are real and documented. But those gains were built on a specific institutional partnership between the Colombian and U.S. militaries that the Petro administration has systematically distanced itself from.
Read Full AnalysisCartel Evolution: Why the FTO Designation Changes and Doesn't Change the Game
On February 20, 2025, the Trump administration formally designated eight cartels and transnational criminal organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The list included the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the Cartel del Noreste, the Gulf Cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and Carteles Unidos. In November 2025, Venezuela's Cartel de los Soles was added to the list. Since September 2025, U.S. forces conducted over 35 strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 115 people.
The FTO designation was designed for organizations with a primarily political or ideological agenda. Cartels are criminal enterprises, driven by profit, structured around business logic, and embedded in local governance systems in ways that terrorist organizations rarely are. This distinction matters operationally, and understanding it is essential to evaluating what the designation can and cannot achieve.
Read Full AnalysisSOUTHCOM Reorganized: The Western Hemisphere Command and What It Signals
On December 5, 2025, the U.S. Army activated the Western Hemisphere Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in a ceremony that also marked the inactivation of U.S. Army Forces Command, the Army's largest command established in 1973. The new four-star headquarters, commanded by Gen. Joseph A. Ryan, unifies U.S. Army Forces Command, U.S. Army North, and U.S. Army South into a single operational structure serving as the Army Service Component Command for both NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM. Full operating capability is expected by June 2026.
From an organizational standpoint, the consolidation addresses a genuine structural problem. The previous division of hemispheric responsibility between SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM created bureaucratic seams that complicated unified policy, particularly on the Mexico question, which belongs to NORTHCOM geographically but is deeply connected to SOUTHCOM's counter-narcotics mission.
Read Full AnalysisMigration as a Security Issue: The Latin American Dimension Washington Keeps Getting Wrong
The 2025 National Security Strategy frames migration from Latin America as a national security threat. The framing is not wrong. Criminal organizations do exploit migration routes, profit from smuggling networks, and use migration flows as operational cover. These are documented realities.
But the securitization of migration without understanding its underlying drivers produces policies that address symptoms rather than causes, and often generate blowback that makes the underlying security environment worse.
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