Nakamura: Peru's new U.S. opening hinges on institutions, not equipment

Ellis identifies four interconnected dangers facing Lima government

Peruvian analyst Gustavo Nakamura, writing in a UPI Voices column after Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Sept. 10 visit to Lima, argued that Peru’s new agreements with Washington will rise or fall on whether they strengthen Peruvian institutions rather than on the number of operations announced or the amount of equipment delivered. Nakamura, regional director in Peru for the Ibero-American Center for University Studies (CEFAS CEU), built the column around warnings from U.S. scholar R. Evan Ellis, who after an August visit to Peru and conversations with Peruvian experts identified an interconnected set of dangers facing Lima: organized crime and insecurity, corruption and political fragmentation, China’s growing strategic weight and the difficult task of rebuilding Peru’s relationship with the United States.

“Peru has mounted major security deployments before without changing the conditions that allow organized crime to flourish,” Nakamura wrote. “The test is not how many operations are announced or how much equipment arrives. It is whether state authority becomes permanent where it has been absent. That requires capable police, prosecutors and intelligence services, but it also requires institutions citizens can trust.”

The Sept. 10 meetings in Lima produced specific announcements. Fujimori announced that Peru will join the Shield of the Americas, a coalition designed to improve intelligence sharing and coordinated action against transnational criminal organizations. Washington announced a $35 million security package that includes two King Air 360ER fixed-wing surveillance aircraft for the Peruvian Navy, intended to strengthen maritime monitoring and efforts against trafficking and illegal fishing.

The two governments are also implementing a memorandum of understanding on critical minerals, and Washington has announced a $5 million development-finance investment in Peru’s mining sector. Discussions are advancing on U.S. support for the Callao naval base. During the Lima meetings, the two governments also highlighted an artificial-intelligence cooperation memorandum, a new space partnership and the intention to conclude a peaceful civilian nuclear energy agreement. “These initiatives give Peru more options,” Nakamura wrote, “which is precisely why they should be welcomed carefully rather than ideologically.”

The announcements come barely six weeks into Fujimori’s presidency. Her government had already launched security operations against illegal mining, narcotics networks and remnants of the Shining Path in the VRAEM — a remote jungle region sometimes called Peru’s “cocaine valley” — and deployed thousands of additional police officers in metropolitan Lima. Peru ranks 130th of 182 countries on Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, and its recent political history is filled with presidents investigated, imprisoned, removed or politically destroyed amid corruption accusations. Nakamura wrote that Fujimori therefore must prove that stronger executive action and closer security cooperation can occur without weakening democratic safeguards.

Peru’s illicit economy is no longer confined to cocaine production in remote regions, according to Nakamura. Illegal mining, timber trafficking, extortion and narcotics increasingly intersect with legitimate commerce, local politics and public institutions. Ellis drew particular attention, according to Nakamura, to the links between rural criminal activity and the urban economy, where illicit proceeds can be laundered through construction and informal commerce. Ellis flagged illegal mining as a danger not merely to the environment or the economy but to democracy itself, given its connections to political and economic interests. Nakamura framed the wider problem: “A state can confront criminals operating outside its institutions,” he wrote. It “faces a far harder problem once criminal money begins influencing the institutions meant to control it.”

The Lima talks also sharpened the question of how Peru balances deepening ties with Washington against its substantial economic engagement with China. Nakamura wrote that China holds major interests in Peruvian mining, electricity, telecommunications and infrastructure, and that the Chancay megaport — a Chinese-backed deepwater facility — may become one of the Pacific coast’s most important logistics hubs, creating real opportunities through lower transportation costs and expanded trade with Asia. Nakamura wrote that critical infrastructure “is never entirely neutral in an era of geopolitical competition,” because ports, telecommunications, energy distribution and strategic minerals carry commercial and national security implications at once.

Nakamura argued that Peru should not reject China, an “indispensable commercial partner,” nor should it “simply exchange dependence on Beijing for dependence on Washington.” The better objective, he wrote, is “strategic autonomy: productive relations with China alongside a stronger historic partnership with the United States and expanding ties with other democratic economies.”

Nakamura concluded that Peru “possesses enormous advantages: natural resources, a dynamic private sector, a strategic Pacific location and growing importance in the competition for minerals and transportation routes linking Asia and the Americas.” Strategic importance, he added, is not yet strategic strength — “strength comes from institutions capable of converting national assets into national development while protecting sovereignty, security and democratic stability.” The test for Fujimori, Nakamura wrote, is whether a stronger partnership abroad helps produce a stronger state at home. Ellis, for his part, concluded with uncertainty about whether Fujimori can survive politically where so many recent presidents have failed.