The United States targets Latin American cartels as the central enemy

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed this Wednesday a new national counter-terrorism strategy that places the elimination of drug cartels from the Western Hemisphere as the absolute priority of his government in terms of security. The 16-page document displaces for the first time jihadist terrorism from the top of the threat hierarchy and turns into official policy a military campaign underway since September 2025.

The strategy arrives in parallel to a military campaign that has already accumulated at least 191 deaths. The US attacks on vessels allegedly dedicated to drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean have been going on since September 2025. The administration presents them as blows against narco-terrorism; critics, jurists and international organizations call them extrajudicial executions.

“We will not allow cartels, jihadists, or governments that support them to conspire against our citizens with impunity”, Trump wrote in the document. The presidential advisor for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, senior director of the National Security Council, defended the shift with a numerical argument: cartels have killed more Americans —through fentanyl and other drugs— than all the military fallen in conflicts since World War II. “Whether by strangling their funds or tracking their vessels, we will not allow them to kill Americans on a large scale”, he added in a call with journalists.

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Gorka listens to President Donald Trump speaking with reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, April 23, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Archive)

The document establishes a hierarchy of threats beyond drug trafficking. Secondly, it mentions the neutralization of Islamic military groups with the capacity to attack the United States. Next, the text identifies as a target the dismantling of organizations with “anti-American, radically pro-gender or anarchist” ideology. The list closes with the strengthening of mechanisms to prevent non-state actors from accessing weapons of mass destruction. The new doctrine arrives at a time of accelerated transformation in the hemisphere. The administration captured Nicolás Maduro on January 3 and removed him from Venezuela. Washington has intensified pressure on Cuba and deployed military assets in the Caribbean since last summer. Attacks on vessels hit targets in the eastern Pacific, the Caribbean, and, in at least one case, within Venezuelan territory.

The US Southern Command stated that “intelligence confirmed that the vessel was traveling through known drug trafficking routes”

The Trump administration attributes to Operation Southern Spear — the formal name of the campaign of attacks on vessels — a 56% reduction in the flow of fentanyl to the southern border compared to the same period last year, and a nearly 20% drop in overdose deaths in the United States, according to statements before Congress by Pentagon official Joseph Humire. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, also stated in February that the attacks had led “some of the major drug traffickers” to cease their operations “indefinitely”. Independent experts question that attribution: they point out that fentanyl seizures have been declining since 2023 and that the operation primarily affects cocaine trafficking, not fentanyl trafficking, which is introduced through the land border with Mexico. Republican Senator Rand Paul called the attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean “extrajudicial executions.” Gorka announced meetings with allies in the coming days to coordinate strategies. “We will measure their seriousness as a partner and ally by what they contribute“, he warned. The new doctrine not only redefines Washington’s priorities, but also raises the demands on its partners at a time when the conflict with Iran is attracting attention and resources in other latitudes.