The new war on drugs

FOR TWO decades Roosevelt Roads, a sprawling American naval base in Puerto Rico, stood abandoned. Now the roar of fighter jets and whirring of helicopters have returned to fill the humid air. Over the past month air-force personnel have laboured to restore the airstrip’s control tower and decrepit infrastructure, while hulking cargo planes ferry in crateloads of supplies and equipment.

America is reviving the base as a staging ground for its expanding war against Latin America’s drug gangs. Since August it has moved assets to the Caribbean (see chart). A naval flotilla now sits off the coast of Venezuela, boasting three destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, an attack submarine and amphibious assault ships. F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones and a handful of advanced spy-planes have also deployed to nearby air bases. Drone strikes have blasted away five speedboats in the southern Caribbean and killed at least 27 people so far. American officials allege they were all “narco-terrorists” from Venezuela, a claim based on intelligence.

That combination of high-tech intelligence gathering and aerial strikes is emblematic of America’s new war on drugs. Since returning to office in January, Donald Trump has vowed to smash the drug gangs and traffickers. Curbing the trade was previously a matter of law-enforcement. Now Mr Trump is throwing the armed forces at it, and riding roughshod over the law. “The cartels are waging war in America,” the president told Congress in March. “And it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels.”

In recent years America’s armed forces and spy agencies have concentrated on being prepared to fight a war against China or Russia. Now they are being asked to focus on closer threats. An assessment published in March by America’s 18 intelligence agencies elevated the threat of drug gangs over that of jihadists. Reports suggest that the Pentagon’s forthcoming National Defence Strategy may prioritise “homeland defence” missions like counter-narcotics, above threats like China. “The government is finally using all the tools of national power to go after our greatest threat,” says Derek Maltz, who led the Drug Enforcement Administration from January to May. “The handcuffs are off.”

This is not the first time America has adopted a muscular approach to the region’s drug traffickers. President George H.W. Bush deployed thousands of troops to invade Panama in 1989 and arrest Manuel Noriega, the country’s president, who had been indicted on drug-trafficking charges. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, America supported unsuccessful Colombian efforts to eradicate coca, by providing signals-intelligence and offering ride-alongs in its Black Hawk helicopters. A recent investigation by Reuters, a news agency, found that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has for years helped run covert operations with Mexican military units to hunt down drug bosses.

But Trump officials believe America has gone soft in recent years. They point to uncontrolled illegal immigration and record overdose deaths during the Biden administration as evidence of the drug gangs running riot. The gangs are extremely unpopular in America, not least because more than 80,000 of its citizens died of overdoses last year. Polls show that about half of Americans would support military action against the gangs in Mexico. Mr Trump has characterised his fight against “savage drug cartels” as a moral imperative. “They’re the enemies of all humanity,” he told the United Nations in September.

The administration’s plan seems inspired by the war on terror, when America hunted and destroyed jihadist groups across the Middle East. On the first day of his new term, Mr Trump signed an executive order branding the drug gangs as “foreign terrorist organisations” (FTOs) and called for their “total elimination”. “We’ve built a finely tuned machine since 9/11 to find, fix and finish terrorist targets,” Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the CIA, explained on a recent podcast. “Now we’re turning it to the cartels—it might mean the Arabic speakers need to learn Spanish.”

Parts of the armed forces are supportive. “Many in the Department of War are absolutely vying to take this fight to the cartels,” enthuses a recently retired special-operations commander. A former Pentagon official, who worked on counter-narcotics under Joe Biden, notes that a faction of officers who made rank during the era of counter-terrorism “have convinced themselves that the war on drugs is a similar fight”. The next stages depend on whether American strikes stay limited to picking off boats in international waters, or move to juicier targets deep inside Latin American soil. The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up strike options on potential targets, such as drug labs and gang leaders, inside Venezuela.

The president mused more than once during his first term about firing missiles at Mexican drug labs. Supporters argue that strikes on gang leaders, drugmaking facilities or depots could interrupt the flow of drugs over the border. “It may not completely solve the supply problem,” concedes Jack Devine, who led the CIA’s counternarcotics programme in the early 1990s. “But boy, you can make it really, really difficult for the cartels.”

For now, however, the Trump administration has taken a less bombastic approach to Mexico, the main source of the drug threat facing America. Mr Trump has pressed President Claudia Sheinbaum both to step up action against the drug gangs, and to break collusion between officials and narcos. Mr Trump can claim a win: Mexico is seizing more fentanyl on its side of the border, while seizures at the border have edged down. Bilateral co-operation is often tense, but joint intelligence gathering—including from America operating more surveillance drones over Mexican territory, with Mexico’s permission—are helping map financial and logistics networks. A string of arrests have netted mid-level gang members. Mexico’s dispatch of 55 alleged kingpins to America could yield further intelligence. Ms Sheinbaum is, broadly, a willing partner.

Focusing on Mexico makes sense. America’s deadliest drug problem is not cocaine but fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of its citizens each year. Almost all of it is synthesised in Mexico and trafficked up north over land. Blowing up boats in the southern part of the Caribbean may create viral images that project toughness, but it does nothing to reduce opioid overdoses. At any rate, over three-quarters of Latin America’s cocaine is actually shipped through the Pacific, and most of it is made in places like Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

Eliminating low-level drug mules may also be tactically unhelpful. During its counter-terrorism wars, America often resorted to killing al-Qaeda and Islamic State operatives when local governments would not, or could not, arrest and prosecute them. Busting the drug gangs is different. It is better to capture traffickers and then question or recruit them to prosecute their bosses. Killing potential informants destroys a valuable source of information.

America’s chosen hardware seems unsuited to the task of drug interdiction, too. Using Reapers and pricey Hellfire missiles and destroyers to blast drug boats is like “trying to cook an egg with a blowtorch”, says James Storey, a former American ambassador to Venezuela. The logistical cost of maintaining the navy’s flotilla in the Caribbean, which currently runs at about $7m per day, will only rise. Where this was tried before, the use of strategic surveillance assets like U-2 spy planes and RC-135 Rivet Joints never proved particularly effective in tracking down drug labs or leaders, admits an official familiar with past operations.

A show of military force may temporarily deter smugglers, but narcos will adapt. Many are already using stealthier delivery methods, like unmanned submarines, and stashing drugs on container ships. Even strikes on land targets may fail to deliver a decisive blow. The gangs would probably hunker down, dispersing and concealing more of their facilities in cities. In fact they could literally go underground: they have extensive experience digging tunnels. That blunts America’s preferred way of war, which relies on whacking targets from the air. The war on drugs requires the consent of allies. And that is pretty easy to blow up with a missile. ■