The Trump administration’s strikes off Venezuela’s coast may be an unprecedented escalation of the long-running war on drugs. But its rhetorical justification draws from an older playbook.
Since September, the U.S. military has reportedly staged more than a dozen strikes in the Caribbean Sea and “eastern Pacific” killing more than 60 alleged drug runners. The Trump administration, though, has not publicly identified any of the dead nor revealed any evidence the targeted boats were, in fact, carrying narcotics.
While this campaign may be a case of old-fashioned “gunboat diplomacy” to gain leverage against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Trump reportedly initiated it in July with a directive to the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels.
Save for social media posts by Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, details from the administration about these strikes have been sparse.
Yet Trump has been forthright in his public depiction of the targets. The terminology calls to mind some of the same kind of rhetoric evident in America’s various wars on terror over the last century.
For example, Trump has commonly referred to the individuals killed as “narcoterrorists.” The CIA in the 1980s coined the term, meant to link the violence of Latin American drug traffickers with leftist insurgents. Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, head of the infamous Medellín drug cartel, became the face of this phenomenon.
In response, the U.S. government helped Colombia take out Escobar using operatives from the Drug Enforcement Administration, CIA, and Special Forces, electronic surveillance, and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Moreover, the popular depiction of Escobar and his associates as villainous narcoterrorists justified the impunity with which Colombian authorities hunted them, ultimately killing Escobar in a 1993 shootout.
Trump also has defended the Venezuela strikes by calling the targeted individuals “unlawful combatants.” The George W. Bush administration used a similar line of rhetoric to devastating effect.
Applied during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the label denied captured insurgents international rights and protections otherwise afforded state-sanctioned “prisoners of war.”
It enabled the indefinite detention and torture of these individuals, which eroded America’s moral standing in the world and crippled judicial efforts to convict suspected 9/11 planners.
But it is Trump’s use of the word “savage” to describe drug cartels – as he told the United Nations last month – that has the longest history.
The term calls to mind U.S. settler clashes with American Indians waged over centuries. In the early-twentieth century it more often referred to non-white people in tropical regions who violently pushed back against American military interventions in their countries. It was a common way to describe Filipino insurgents resisting U.S. colonization of the Philippines as well as Augusto Sandino’s forces rebelling against U.S. Marine’s presence in Nicaragua.
Beyond denigrating and delegitimizing opponents’ platforms, the savagery discourse granted the United States license to pursue foes with impunity. It resulted in such tactics as the infamous “water cure” in the Philippines and the reported razing of villages in the Nicaraguan countryside to root out rebels.
Likewise, portraying drug cartels as savages, unlawful combatants, or terrorists has enabled the Trump administration to bend or break long-established rules of engagement. In previous encounters with suspected drug smugglers at sea, the U.S. Coast Guard has interdicted ships, checked the cargo, and arrested the suspects.
Now, they are being executed with dubious legality.
Trump claims that his position as commander-in-chief gives him the authority to use military means for self-defense or against an imminent threat. Such targets, though, do not appear to fit the bill. One former DEA agent told the Wall Street Journal that the strikes are “the equivalent of a police officer walking up to a drug trafficker on the street and shooting him.”
These spectacular displays of American power fit the kind of muscular image Trump and Hegseth have projected to the world. They also signal to adversaries abroad – like Maduro – that they might be next.
Nevertheless, framing suspected drug runners in this manner is useful in deflecting challenges of the administration’s aims and methods. As Trump rhetorically asked at a recent press conference, “What are they going to do? Say, ‘Gee, we don’t want to stop drugs pouring in?’”
This playbook has been used before. Calling opponents terrorists, unlawful combatants, or savages – regardless of validity – has enabled U.S. policymakers to project power, rally political support, and expand executive authority. The latest developments near Venezuela show all three of these utilities in action.
Michael E. Neagle, Ph.D., is professor of history, director of history & political science, and co-chair of the terrorism studies program at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass. He is the author of “Chasing Bandits: America’s Long War on Terror.”