From Terror Sanctions to Military Strikes? Trump’s Cartel Policy Sidesteps Congress
Sometimes the slide down a slippery slope is very fast. Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump designated several Mexican, Salvadoran, and Venezuelan gangs as terrorist groups. Many observers, including myself, thought that the listing could be a pretext to start an unauthorized war in Latin America. On Friday, The New York Times reported that Trump was doing exactly that.
The president “has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations,” according to the Times. It’s not clear exactly which cartels will be targeted or what kind of U.S. military force will be brought in; the Times reports that the military is drawing up plans for “direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels.”
As usual, Congress and the American people aren’t being given a chance to deliberate on the war they’re being committed to, and the media has to play guessing games about what that war will look like.
It’s possible that these attacks on cartels would be carried out in cooperation with friendly governments, along the lines of the joint U.S.-Columbian hunt for cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1993. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is quite eager to be in Trump’s good graces. Although Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denounced foreign “interference” in Mexico’s war on drugs, she has also brushed off reports of U.S. drone overflights as just a “little campaign.”
But Trump could also be opening the door to hostile acts of war. In 1989, the U.S. used Panamanian President Manuel Noriega’s ties to the drug trade as a pretext for a regime change war in Panama. The Trump administration certainly seems like it could be ginning up similar justifications for action against Venezuela.
Despite intelligence to the contrary, the Trump a
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