At the start of September 2025, US President Donald Trump sent a naval task force into the Caribbean to tackle drug trafficking in the region. The initiative has led to strikes on four alleged drug boats off the Venezuelan coast so far, killing at least 21 people.
The strikes have been condemned by Venezuela and Colombia, while some international lawyers and human rights groups have questioned their legality. Human Rights Watch, for example, has suggested the strikes amount to “unlawful extrajudicial killings.” However, these attacks are unlikely to stop.
In a post on X on October 3, after US forces killed four people in an attack on a suspected drug boat, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth wrote: “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!” Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that this boat was carrying enough drugs to kill 25,000 to 50,000 people.
The Trump administration now looks to be considering moving its campaign in the Caribbean to a second phase. On October 5, while speaking at a US Navy base in Virginia, Trump boasted that drug traffickers are “not coming in by sea anymore, so now we’ll have to start looking about the land.”
Earlier this morning, on President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the… pic.twitter.com/QpNPljFcGn
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 3, 2025
A leaked memo sent to Congress a few days earlier also suggests the US government has decided it is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Trump’s threats to escalate military pressure against the cartels may be part of a broader campaign to force Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, from office. The White House sees his government as illegitimate and has consistently accused Maduro of being a central figure in the Latin American drugs trade. There is little proof that this is the case.
A wider military confrontation with cartels across the region may therefore be unlikely. But it should not be discounted. On October 7, CNN reported that the Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion that seeks to justify lethal strikes against a list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers.
The opinion argues that the president is allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels, beyond those the US government designated as terrorist organizations in early 2025. But is a direct military confrontation really a viable strategy to curtail the power and reach of cartels in the region?
Striking the cartels
Some observers, including the US-based Washington Office on Latin America, have suggested that “the US military’s overwhelming capacities would allow it to disrupt the activities of a specific criminal group, destroy complexes of drug labs and capture kingpins.”
These moves would not be without their challenges. In response to direct military action, it is possible that the cartels may look to attack US military personnel and civilians across the region. The cartels are vindictive in nature and have a history of targeting law enforcement, military personnel and government officials throughout Latin America.
Shortly after becoming president of Mexico in 2006, Felipe Calderon declared a “war on drugs” and deployed military force against the cartels. They retaliated violently, with many public officials assassinated in broad daylight. The cartels may well respond in a similar way if US forces launch operations against them.
This could include retaliation within US borders. In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) detailed how the cartels have deep networks within the US. These networks, which span from large cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago to rural areas, provides them with the infrastructure to carry out retaliatory attacks.
A member of the Bolivarian militia, a rag-tag civilian force created in 2009 that has been called up to defend Venezuela in the event of US military action. Photo: Miguel Gutierrez / EPA via The Conversation
The US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, revealed in an interview with Fox News on October 5 that “cartels, gangs and terror groups” had already “put bounties on the heads of several federal immigration agents, offering US$10,000 to kill them and $2,000 for their capture.”
“They’ve released their pictures; they’ve sent them between their networks”, Noem added. “It’s an extremely dangerous and unprecedented situation.” The cartels engage in various other criminal activities in addition to trafficking drugs, including the smuggling of migrants into the US.
The killing of a high-value drug kingpin or the arrest of a cartel boss also does not necessarily bring an end to that organization. It only leads to fragmentation and the emergence of new tiers of leaders and groups that are often more violent than their predecessors.
Research supports this argument. The killing of the Los Zetas cartel leader, Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano, in October 2012 by Mexican marines was followed by higher levels of gang violence in the subsequent years as internal conflict between different factions intensified.
Addiction at home
Fentanyl and other opioids entering the US from Latin America have fuelled the worst drugs crisis in the country’s history. According to the US National Institute of Health, more Americans were killed by fentanyl-laced pills and other addictive drugs in 2021 alone than in all the wars the US has fought since the end of the Second World War.
The DEA says Mexican criminal organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, play a key role in producing and delivering fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the US. But, to truly be successful in its war against the cartels, the US government needs to first address the problem of drug addiction at home.
According to a national 2023 survey on drug use in the US by American Addiction Centers, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and older have battled a substance use disorder. This corresponds to 16.7% of the total population.
A war on drugs needs to be a war against addiction in the US. Anything short of that will only fix the problem temporarily.
Amalendu Misra is professor of international politics, Lancaster University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
