{"id":304067,"date":"2025-11-19T20:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/boat-strikes-off-venezuela-mark-shift-in-54-year-us-war-on-drugs\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T20:00:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:00:26","slug":"boat-strikes-off-venezuela-mark-shift-in-54-year-us-war-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=304067","title":{"rendered":"Boat strikes off Venezuela mark shift in 54-year US war on drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On a June day in 1971, President Richard Nixon stood behind a podium by an American flag and declared drug abuse to be the United States\u2019 \u201cpublic enemy No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive,\u201d Mr. Nixon announced. \u201cThis will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. war on drugs, launched during that speech, has endured through Republican and Democratic administrations for more than five decades.<\/p>\n
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Why We Wrote This<\/h2>\n
Richard Nixon\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs\u201d has always entailed a degree of U.S. pressure on foreign allies. But the Trump administration\u2019s strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats off Venezuela charts a new course of noncooperation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
President Donald Trump has opened the most recent chapter in that war, ordering military strikes against boats suspected of smuggling drugs from South America, and dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to a position near the Venezuelan coast.<\/p>\n
But one traditional element of U.S. drug policy has been missing from Mr. Trump\u2019s actions: international cooperation.<\/p>\n
Historically, Washington has carried out almost all its drug-war operations in Latin America with buy-in from regional governments. Whether they involved Colombian or Mexican forces tracking down a kingpin with an assist from U.S. intelligence and training, or U.S. aid packages to pay for local government action, a long line of American officials have considered this war possible only with foreign governments\u2019 involvement.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cMost of the time, throughout the history of the drug war, the U.S. has sought to cooperate with Latin American governments to get them to reduce production or reduce trafficking through their national territories,\u201d says Renata Keller, an expert on drug and security policies in Latin America at the University of Nevada, Reno.<\/p>\n
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Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro points to a map detailing drug-trafficking statistics during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 15, 2025.\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cSome of it has been somewhat coercive,\u201d she adds, \u201cbut it always has been under the guise of a cooperative effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
This month, both Britain, which has a handful of territories in the Caribbean, and Colombia announced that they had suspended some intelligence-sharing with Washington because of U.S. strikes against small boats thought to be smuggling drugs.<\/p>\n
If the U.S. were to resort to military action within Venezuela\u2019s borders, Dr. Keller says it would be clear that \u201cwe\u2019re not seeking to cooperate anymore in the war on drugs, and it would almost certainly provoke a backlash\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n
A new rupture<\/h2>\n
In Colombia, cooperation is already unraveling. For the first time since 1997, the U.S. administration declared in September that Colombia was falling short in the war on drugs, and started the process to decertify Bogot\u00e1 as a drug-control partner. That move, finalized last month, will deny Colombia more than $100 million per year in funds used to fight drug trafficking and insecurity, according to calculations by Michael Weintraub, director of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogot\u00e1.<\/p>\n
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Laundry dries on a clothesline in the middle of a coca field on a hillside of the Micay Canyon, in southwestern Colombia, Aug. 13, 2024. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re the United States, you definitely want Colombian cooperation\u201d in fighting drug trafficking, says Dr. Weintraub, because Colombia produces about 70% of the world\u2019s cocaine.<\/p>\n
Successive Colombian governments have been in \u201clockstep\u201d with U.S. administrations for the past 40 years, says Dr. Weintraub. Now, the Trump administration has changed the rulebook. \u201cThe uncertainty over international cooperation has increased dramatically,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
One of the few examples of the U.S. going it alone in the drug war was its 1989 operation in Panama to remove then-President Manuel Noriega, a known drug trafficker. But, despite his surrender to U.S. forces, dozens of people were killed and it made little difference in drug-trafficking operations into the United States. It also served as something of a turning point for direct U.S. meddling in the region.<\/p>\n
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