From the moment Donald Trump took office as US President he cast his anti-drug-cartel campaign as a war— not a mere policing effort. He proclaimed that the malignant networks shipping fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit substances into the USA were not simply criminal syndicates, but enemy forces undermining the homeland. In one address he declared: “We are waging war on the cartels.” And indeed his campaign has moved beyond rhetoric: this year a special Homeland Security Task Force, fully operational in all 50 states, has been credited with 3,000 arrests of cartel leaders, operatives and gang members in “a matter of weeks”— a historic figure, according to his announcement. Among the seizures: more than two million pounds of fentanyl pills and over 1000 illegal firearms removed from US streets.
In the domestic theatre the stakes could not be higher. Each addict, each life destroyed by a fentanyl pill or cartel-driven gang violence, represents not only a personal tragedy but a quiet collapse of productivity, hope, and trust. In 2023 about 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, almost 73,000 of them from fentanyl alone– roughly 200 deaths every single day; even after a record 27 percent drop in 2024, provisional data still show around 80,000 overdose deaths a year in the USA.
Behind those bodies stand an estimated 48.5 million Americans living with a substance-use disorder– about one in six people aged 12 and over– meaning that tens of millions of families now have addiction at the dinner table and in their paychecks.
Economists in the Trump White House calculate that illicit opioids, primarily fentanyl, drained about $2.7 trillion from America in 2023 alone– roughly 9.7 percent of GDP– including $107 billion a year in lost labour-force productivity, as workers are killed, disabled, or pulled out of the workforce by addiction and incarceration.
The cartels feeding this plague are no longer small-time gangs but industrial-scale employers: one study in Science estimates around 175,000 people working for Mexican organised-crime groups, making them the country’s fifth-largest “employer” and anchoring a wider ecosystem of smugglers, enforcers, and front men that stretches deep into the US supply chain. It is this machinery that Trump brands the “ISIS of the Western Hemisphere”, and it underpins his argument that the supply side must not merely be intercepted at the border, but hunted and dismantled at its source.
The war did not end at the US. coastline. Rather, Trump’s strategy pushed into the sea lanes, airspace and political arenas of Latin America. In August 2025 he ordered a naval deployment, including an aircraft carrier strike group, into the Caribbean Sea, as part of what military analysts now call Operation Southern Spear. The goal: choke off maritime cocaine, heroin and fentanyl conduits reaching America’s shores through Venezuela and Colombia. According to one recent analysis, by mid-October the USA had carried out at least 20 strikes on vessels off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia, killing some 80 suspected traffickers.
A sustained, trans-national fight against drugs, gangs and human-trafficking demands that Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and the USA stand shoulder to shoulder. Only then can the promise made by Donald Trump— that no gang member, cartel leader or trafficker will continue poisoning US communities— be fulfilled in a way that does not undermine the laws, alliances and principles the USA stands for. The urgency is real. The moment is now.
Relations with both Caracas and Bogotá have now entered dangerous territory. The USA has accused Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro regime of using the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” to traffic cocaine in exchange for military loyalty, and in August Washington doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has publicly condemned US strikes that killed civilians— alleging one victim was a fisherman, not a cartel member. This has triggered a full-scale diplomatic rift, with Trump calling Petro an “illegal drug leader” and suspending US aid.
Why such urgency? Because the human cost is catastrophic and mounting. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in its 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment identifies the Cártel de Sinaloa as one of the world’s most significant suppliers of fentanyl precursors destined for the USA, and warns that criminal groups are now operating sophisticated cargo-networks, submarines, drones and semi-submersibles. Trump argues that each illicit shipment not intercepted means countless American lives lost, families ruined, communities hollowed out.
At the same time, the domestic crime war is deeply personal. Many of the gang-and-cartel foot-soldiers he says have been dismantled were once street-level traffickers, exploiting underage girls and vulnerable young people in rings of trafficking, sexual exploitation and drugs.
Here lies the central dilemma. Trump’s strategy is unrelentingly kinetic: he believes only overwhelming force will disrupt the financial-terror axis of the cartels. The military build-up, the naval strikes, the “armed conflict” classification of cartel networks are therefore logical extensions of the ‘war’ paradigm.
But critics warn of blowback: when you accuse a neighbouring country of criminal complicity, send warships into its waters, and strike vessels without transparent judicial process, you risk inflaming regional conflict, undermining US alliances and triggering unintended casualties. Indeed, Colombian officials are calling the operations violations of sovereignty.
And for diplomacy, the logic is unavoidable: drug supply chains involve multiple states, loosely regulated maritime corridors, and corrupt financiers. If the USA insists on unilateral strikes, it may generate short-term tactical wins but provoke long-term strategic losses— turning partner states into adversaries, pushing traffickers into ever more remote or violent terrains, and perpetuating the cycle.
The best path, therefore, combines force with coordinated diplomacy. The USA should continue targeting cartel leadership, cutting off supply, interdicting weapons and chemicals. But it must also bring in Colombia, Venezuela (even if indirectly), Mexico and other transit states as full partners— sharing intelligence, legal frameworks, financial tracking and extradition treaties. A joint task-force could focus on dismantling entire networks: transport vessels, drone corridors, safe houses and financial flows. Through such a coalition, traffickers would face fewer safe havens and higher risks wherever they operate.
The USA faces a critical test. President Trump’s war on the cartels is bold and sweeping— 3,000 arrests, millions of pounds of drugs removed, naval strike groups deployed, and dramatic accusations leveled at regimes once considered partners. Yet the ambition also carries grave danger: state-on-state confrontation, civilian casualties, regional alienation.
The cartel networks are not just criminal— they are quasi-terrorist, in the Trump lexicon—operating global supply chains, corrupting officials, exploiting vulnerable human beings, and undermining national sovereignty. To defeat them, the USA must neither rely solely on missiles nor merely on treaties—but on the rare combination of force, law, coalition, and morality.
A sustained, trans-national fight against drugs, gangs and human-trafficking demands that Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and the USA stand shoulder to shoulder. Only then can the promise made by Donald Trump— that no gang member, cartel leader or trafficker will continue poisoning US communities— be fulfilled in a way that does not undermine the laws, alliances and principles the USA stands for. The urgency is real. The moment is now.
