The Return of Hard Security: The 2025 NSS, The 2026 NDS, and the New Strategic Scenario for Latin America
Introduction: The Return of Hard Security as the Backbone of the International Order
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) of the United States mark a structural shift in the architecture of global security. Both documents abandon the expansive, normative, and often abstract approach that characterized post–Cold War international policy and return to a classical logic of power: vital interests, sovereignty, deterrence, strategic balance, and the legitimate use of force when required.
This shift not only redefines the historical role of the United States as the guarantor of a unipolar international order but also reshapes expectations, incentives, and margins of maneuver for allies, partners, and peripheral states. For Latin America—and particularly for Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador—this new paradigm opens a strategic window of opportunity, while substantially increasing the costs of inaction, political ambiguity, and institutional weakness.
The NSS and the NDS: Implications for Global Security
From a strategic standpoint, both documents introduce three fundamental transformations:
1. Absolute Priority to National Interest
The United States makes it clear that it no longer intends to unilaterally sustain global stability or assume disproportionate security burdens on behalf of others. International stability ceases to be an end in itself and becomes a derivative outcome of the effective defense of concrete national interests.
2. Reassertion of the Nation-State as the Central Actor
The NSS and the NDS reinforce the state’s sovereign role as the guarantor of internal and external order. Dependence on intrusive multilateral frameworks is reduced, and the coordinated use of military, economic, technological, and coercive power is legitimized to protect borders, critical infrastructure, and social cohesion.
3. Integration of Internal and External Security
The fight against drug trafficking, transnational crime, irregular migration, and terrorism is no longer treated as a secondary or exclusively law-enforcement issue. These phenomena are formally incorporated into the core of U.S. national security, redefining U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere.
The result is a more competitive international system, less tolerant of power vacuums, and deeply hostile to “gray zones” where criminal actors and hybrid threats thrive.
Regional Impact: The Western Hemisphere Returns to Strategic Centrality
At the hemispheric level, the NSS explicitly identifies Latin America as a vital security space. The so-called “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” implies that Washington will not tolerate the consolidation of failed states, criminal economies, armed enclaves, or adverse strategic alignments with rival powers such as China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
This approach produces two direct effects:
- Increased political and operational pressure on Latin American governments to demonstrate verifiable results in territorial control and in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.
- Greater willingness to cooperate, in a pragmatic and conditional manner, with states that treat security as a matter of state policy rather than ideological rhetoric.
The region ceases to be peripheral and once again becomes a key strategic front, particularly given the convergence of drug trafficking, terrorism, irregular migration, and transnational criminal networks.
Colombia: Structural Deterioration and Strategic Opportunity
Colombia’s security situation continues to deteriorate. The conflict has not disappeared; it has fragmented, adapted, and expanded territorially. Organized Armed Groups maintain effective control over large areas, strengthened by illicit economies, low-cost technologies, and the state’s structural weaknesses.
The 2026 pre-electoral context amplifies risks: selective violence, armed pressure on communities, threats against political leadership, and attempts to interfere in the democratic process. These challenges are compounded by fiscal constraints that limit the sustainability of long-term security policy.
At the same time, the international environment is shifting. Globalist and progressive discourses are losing ground to narratives centered on order, sovereignty, and state control. Colombia is familiar with this language. During the governments of Álvaro Uribe, the principle of “peace through strength” was applied—now reincorporated as a conceptual axis within U.S. national defense strategy.
This requires abandoning ambiguous approaches such as “Total Peace” and moving toward an integrated strategy that combines:
- Sustained offensives against illicit economies,
- Genuine recovery of territorial control,
- Effective protection of the civilian population,
- Institutional and electoral shielding of the democratic process.
U.S. cooperation will be available, but only on the condition of measurable results.
A sound electoral decision in May, coupled with coherent alignment with U.S. defense and security strategy, could enable Colombia to recover real conditions of stability, order, and security—allowing the country to once again give meaning to the national anthem’s line “Cesó la horrible noche” (‘The horrible night has ended’).
Ecuador: Security Crisis and Redefinition of the State’s Role
If Colombia faces deterioration, Ecuador is undergoing a systemic security crisis. The year 2025 closed as the most violent in its recent history, with homicide rates comparable to armed-conflict scenarios. Violence is concentrated along strategic drug-trafficking corridors, particularly port areas and the coastal belt.
The fragmentation of criminal organizations and partial militarization of the state response have prevented an immediate collapse of public order. However, the persistent penitentiary crisis and the inability to dismantle illicit economies indicate that the structural trend has not been reversed. More than 70 percent of the population has been directly or indirectly exposed to organized violence, with profound effects on the social fabric, economic activity, and political stability. From the perspective of the NSS and the NDS, Ecuador occupies a critical position as a key logistical node in global drug trafficking—making it simultaneously a threat and a potential strategic partner.
Unlike other regional governments, President Daniel Noboa has begun aligning with this new strategic language. The declaration of emergency procurement for security capabilities, involving investments exceeding USD 170 million, along with a firm stance on cross-border dynamics, signals a change in direction.
With U.S. support, the emergence of a “Plan Ecuador” would not be surprising—focused on intelligence modernization, maritime and port control, penitentiary reform, and the construction of a more structural security architecture.
Colombia and Ecuador Facing Narcoterrorism: A Converging Agenda
The convergence of the NSS, the NDS, and the realities of Colombia and Ecuador leads to a central conclusion: narcoterrorism is no longer a criminal phenomenon but a regional strategic threat.
The intersection of drugs, weapons, corruption, irregular migration, and political violence demands coordinated, sustained, and operationally multilateral responses—while remaining sovereign in command and control.
Both countries stand to benefit from:
- Advanced strategic intelligence cooperation,
- Joint operations along criminal corridors,
- Electoral and institutional shielding,
- Integration of security policy with economic governance and territorial control.
The new U.S. posture does not offer blank checks, but it does provide clear incentives for those willing to treat security as a state policy.
Conclusion: A Strategic Window That Will Not Remain Open
The 2025 NSS and the 2026 NDS redefine the security
order under harder, more realistic, and more demanding parameters. For Colombia
and Ecuador, this environment is not neutral: it increases risks but also creates
unprecedented opportunities for hemispheric strategic repositioning.
Seizing this window will require political leadership,
strategic coherence, and real execution capacity. In a world returning to the
logic of power, ambiguity is no longer an option. Security reclaims its
historical place as the foundation upon which stability, governance, and sustainable
development are built.
