My experience at the 2017 Hemispheric Security Conference at Florida International University

This week I had a tremendous chance during my visit to the city of Miami, Floirida to attend the 2017 Hemispheric Security Conference organised by the Jack Gordon Institute for Public Policy and the Kimberly Green Latinamerican and Caribbean Center of the Florida International University campus, where many different heavyweight academics, former military officers of the U.S. and experts on political risk from the well renowned consulting firm Eurasia Group were giving their assessments about the current geopolitical situation in Latinamerica and the best ways for the current Trump administration at the White House to deal with the ongoing shifting geopolitical landscape in the region, which is interestingly changing and shifting towards the right specter of the political scene. 

It is relevant to point out the most relevant issues that were touched by the different panelists during the whole day of conferences and dissertations, which were a wide array of them like for example the critical regional security implications of the situation in Venezuela; also the issue of the crisis going on in the south american giant Brazil touched by the director of Latin America desk at Eurasia Group, Phd Joao Augusto de Castro Neves, who stressed out the grave consequences that the phenomenon of corruption will leave in Brazil and its economy and its projection in the world. 

At the same time, the sensitive issue of the influence of external actors like Russia, China and Iran was discussed and how the U.S. should deal with this in order to cope and coexist with this existing reality and where the overall conclusion and assessment was that the current Trump administration should not displace the presence of these power players in the region but rather learn to live and cooperate in order not to lose more grounds in this critical area of the world. 

And also other critical and important aspects of the region were touched like the situation of the criminal gangs in El Salvador and the phenomenon of corruption and financial threats and how the White House has been fighting against this and the use of irregular channels for money laundering, drug smuggling by terrorist organisations like ISIS and Al Qaeda and other irregular groups and governments, being mentioned specifically the accusations impinged on the Vice President of Venezuela, Tarek al Aissami, who is allegedly linked with irregular groups and currently is under the radar of the White House. 

Overall the event was a tremendous experience both for the panelists and the ideas exposed and the arguments discussed, which were brief and straight to the point of each issue and also a great venue for networking and exchanging ideas on the current geopolitical challenges facing the Trump administration in Latinamerica. Thumbs up to the institutions responsible for this conference and to Florida International University for such a great event.