Addressing the UN General Assembly in September, Donald Trump gloated about his strategy toward “narcoterrorist” cartels, the menace du jour in the United States’ self-declared backyard. Pulling numbers out of his ass per usual, Trump claimed that the manic bombing campaign against alleged seafaring narcoterrorists (read: fishermen) in Central and South America has cut maritime drug trafficking by 97%, and called drug cartels the “ISIS of the Western Hemisphere.”
While it was by no means the president’s intention, he accidentally hit the nail on the head with the ISIS comparison. Both the Islamic State and Latin American drug trafficking outfits are a direct result of US policy—as well as a convenient excuse for the Americans to continue terrorizing people under the pretext of combating the very phenomena they caused in the first place. Just as ISIS owes its origins to the US invasion of Iraq, drug traffickers wouldn’t be in big business if not for—what else?—the US’s so-called “war on drugs” that renders the international movement of illicit substances so lucrative.
This year, the Trump administration has significantly ramped up its drug war beyond just randomly blowing people up in the ocean. In August, the Associated Press (8/17/26) reported on the government’s plans to expand operations to terra firma, quoting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth:
It will be “like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats,” Hegseth said during a military drill in the jungle in Panama. “Same effect on land.”
But since there are generally more people on land than in the middle of the sea, there will no doubt be far greater opportunities for extrajudicial execution in this new terrestrial phase of operations.
The escalated campaign takes place against the backdrop of the US-led “Shield of the Americas,” a hemispheric “anti-cartel coalition” inaugurated in March that now boasts the participation of 19 countries. Ecuador has been among the most gung-ho about joining forces with the US to launch “anti-cartel” raids, with such impressive feats to show for it as the joint bombing of a drug trafficking compound that turned out to be a dairy farm.
