The history of the global drug war is rife with murder and mayhem caused by United States military interventions.
Relentless US military interference in Latin America through the 20th century and beyond—take Operation Blast Furnace in Bolivia, the 1989 invasion of Panama or Plan Colombia in the 2000s—has destabilized the region, setting the stage for violent illicit markets to flourish. During the “War on Terror,” the US military bolstered the heroin market in Afghanistan while officially opposing it, creating a power vacuum for warlords and different factions involved in the drug trade to exploit.
As damaging as these campaigns have been, they involved efforts to, if not uphold international laws and protocols, at least cloak actions in placating language or come up with serviceable coverups.
“This is murder on the high seas, extrajudicial killing. They weren’t armed, posed no danger. They chose to execute these people.”
After the September 2 airstrike on a speedboat in the Caribbean, carried out by the US Navy, killed all 11 people on board, the Trump administration appears uninterested in pretending to maintain such norms. It seems ready to overtly go to war against countries in Latin America in order, supposedly, to curtail the flow of dangerous drugs into the US.
“This is murder on the high seas, extrajudicial killing. They weren’t armed, posed no danger. They chose to execute these people,” Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies think tank and director of its Drug Policy Project, told Filter.
Since the strike, senior figures in the Trump administration have issued increasingly bellicose statements signaling plans to escalate.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up—and it’ll happen again,” State Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on September 2, while visiting Mexico city. Intercepting drugs is not enough, he claimed. “What will stop them is when you blow them up.”
“What you’re doing right now—it’s not training,” Pete Hegseth, head of the newly renamed Department of War, stated in Puerto Rico on September 8. “This is the real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people.”
While signaling concern about the overdose crisis, the administration has been slashing budgets by the trillions for programs that help people who use drugs stay healthy and safe.
Still, “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vice President J.D. Vance posted on September 6.
The administration claims that the speedboat was being used by members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to transport drugs. Tren de Aragua has officially been labeled a terrorist organization, like other groups accused of drug trafficking, although it does not play a significant role in the international trade.
“It’s an extraordinary break in norms.”
Drug policy experts agree that the brazen Caribbean strike represents a new line being crossed.
“It’s an extraordinary break in norms. A contrast to scrupulous care the military has historically dealt with in this kind of drug interdiction,” Peter Reuter, distinguished professor at the School of Public Policy and Department of Criminology, University of Maryland, told Filter.
In the 1990s, he recalled, the US military colluded with the Peruvian airforce to stop small planes they suspected of drug smuggling. The Peruvian command would order the pilots to land—and could fire if they failed to comply.
In 2001, the US military identified an aircraft they thought was carrying drugs and alerted their Peruvian partners. When they realized they’d made a mistake, they tried to stop the Peruvians from firing. They were too late. The Peruvian shot down the aircraft, killing 35-year-old Roni Bowers, a US missionary, and her toddler Charity. The incident generated international outrage and the program was officially ended.
“This is a nightmare example,” Reuters said, but an anomaly. The September 2 strike was something else. “This is completely different. They claim they’re targeting drug smugglers, now labeling them terrorists, they’re unwilling to reveal any details about their identities.”
Tree, who has spent a lot of time in the Caribbean and Latin America, is skeptical of the administration’s official story. Like other experts, he pointed out that a boat carrying 11 people would be highly unusual for a drug-smuggling operation. “You want lots of room for drugs,” he said.
He noted, too, that with cheap gas available in the region, travel by boat for many reasons—to visit family, to transport rice and other goods—is common. “And even if they were drug smugglers, there’s no justification under international law.”
“There’s not really a dynamic where the growers stop growing, the traffickers stop trafficking, say, Let’s give up. That never happens.”
Another point on which experts agree is that the strike—and any follow-up military action—will do nothing to curtail drug flow, nothing to keep drugs away from the lucrative US market.
“Cocaine from Venezuela is a very minor source of the supply of cocaine that gets to the United States. It mostly goes through Mexico, from Colombia,” Reuter said, noting that other drugs are much more heavily involved in the US overdose crisis. “As far as sending a message, there are plenty of ways to smuggle drugs. Concealing it in cargo traffic is an obvious alternative.”
“So we have a violation of international law that also serves no good purpose,” he concluded.
Tree observed that the Trump administration is building on a long history of US governments trying to conflate terrorism, drug trafficking and drug use. Remember those ads accusing pot smokers of aiding Osama Bin Laden? The propaganda has clear political goals, but the futility of the ensuing violence is clear.
“If you kill a drug trafficker, you create a job opening, because it’s not really a skill, beyond you just have to move drugs from point A to point B,” he said.
As long as demand for drugs persists, “There’s not really a dynamic where the growers stop growing, the traffickers stop trafficking, say, Let’s give up. That never happens. We’ve been waging a war for decades against an enemy incapable of surrender.”
Image of the speedboat seconds before it was struck via United States government/Public Domain
