The Trump administration told Congress this week that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight. Citizens aren’t in possession of the metrics by which to judge the administration’s pursuit of those goals.
We haven’t been told which specific drugs they seek to stop. We haven’t been told much about which specific groups they seek to destroy. We haven’t been told much about what legal authorities they are acting on.
Withholding this information from the American public is the administration’s way to escape scrutiny. At the very least, the country deserves some evidence of whether the military operation is working.
If stopping the flow of drugs is the goal, the actions taken so far have been unpersuasive. American forces, at the direction of President Trump, executed a lethal airstrike on Friday on a boat off Venezuela, killing four people on board. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video of the attack on X, saying, “The vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people,” adding that it was “affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations.”
This is the sort of vague language the administration has used in its campaign over the past two months as it directs the military to sporadically launch airstrikes — now totaling four — against boats in the region that the government says are running drugs. No corresponding evidence has been provided to the public to support the actions. The operation amounts to extrajudicial executions, according to U.N. officials.
Without delving into the strikes’ questionable legality again, the bombing runs fall well short of decisive military actions. It would be hard to convince anyone that blowing up a few motorboats — and all the people aboard them — will prove conclusive in winning the half-century-old war on drugs.
For one thing, this isn’t how the Pentagon combats enemy networks. Say what you will about the many failures of America’s global war on terrorism, but it’s undeniable the U.S. military became frighteningly proficient at penetrating and taking apart organizations over the past quarter-century.
Instead of systematically killing low- and midlevel henchmen in pinprick airstrikes, U.S. forces learned that more information could be gleaned through capturing those suspects and gathering, bagging and tagging their personal electronics for intelligence analysis. A phone from a suspect’s pocket in Iraq, for instance, would often include enough information, such as phone numbers and text conversations, so that a follow-on raid on other operatives could be planned. This is how U.S. forces mapped out countless terrorist groups’ leadership ranks along with the fighters under their command.
The infrastructure for ship interdictions already exists in the Caribbean. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have long interdicted vessels that they suspected of drug running.
Why the administration has opted to blow apart potential leads and sources instead of exploiting them is anyone’s guess.
So what’s the ultimate goal? The Pentagon has amassed a wide range of firepower in the region that indicates that its ambitions extend beyond destroying drug boats: F-35 stealth fighter jets, a Marine expeditionary unit and a flotilla of warships. Perhaps, as experts have speculated, the strikes are merely the opening salvo to push Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power. The Trump administration has formally identified Mr. Maduro as a leader of Cartel de los Soles, which experts say describes networks of elites who benefit from drug smuggling and is labeled a terrorist organization. The U.S. government is offering up to $50 million for information leading to his arrest.
There are a few odd things about all this. When it comes to drugs, Mr. Trump speaks loudest about fentanyl, a synthetic drug that Venezuela doesn’t play a major role in trading, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. So then you might surmise the objective is impeding the cocaine trade. But here again, Venezuela and the Caribbean account for less of how that drug enters the United States compared with other routes.
It isn’t that Mr. Maduro is a great guy. He brutally represses political opposition and oversees an economic nightmare. The Trump administration has made no direct threat to unseat Mr. Maduro, but the buildup of more than 6,500 troops in the region raises questions about what might come next.
And it’s not as if the United States has been afraid of deploying the U.S. military for regime change in the Caribbean. U.S. troops were involved in overthrowing Panama’s Manuel Noriega’s regime during Operation Just Cause in late 1989 and early 1990. U.S. forces joined coalition armies in 1983 to oust the government in Grenada during Operation Urgent Fury. Though the U.S. military didn’t have a ground role in the disastrous 1961 operation to overthrow the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, American-trained Cuban forces were crushed in the Bay of Pigs after they invaded.
Mr. Trump could have similar aims in Venezuela, opting for a more muscular action than the failed pressure campaign taken during his first term. The current deployment of U.S. forces, while sizable, still isn’t enough for a full-scale invasion. But we should know and hear more about the underpinning rationale for positioning them there.
Instead, we’re left piecing together a picture with the few shards of information that have been publicly offered. It’s good that Mr. Trump has decided to inform Congress that the U.S. military is engaged in an armed conflict. Now Americans deserve answers on what to expect next.
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W.J. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section.
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