The Trump administration’s war (of pretext) against Latin America’s drug cartels is further isolating the US on the world stage.
I started writing this post yesterday (as in Thursday) afternoon, GMT+1. However, just after I called it a night, when the article was more or less finished, the United States’ Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Operation Southern Spear, a mission ostensibly to defend the US homeland from drug trafficking organisations throughout the Western hemisphere.
The key quote: “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it.”
In other words, this military operation, bearing the name “Southern Spear” appears to be aimed at the entirety of the US’ southern “neighbourhood”, from Mexico’s Rio Bravo to the southern tip of Tierra de Fuego, where the US is reportedly developing a “joint” military base with Argentina’s Milei government (which is opposed by 71.5% of the local population).
For the moment, there is little information about Operation Southern Spear beyond Hegseth’s 60-word tweet. As NC reader Ben Panga pointed out on yesterday’s links page, Operation Southern Spear was actually originally announced on January 27 — almost ten months ago — by US Southern Command. A press release by the US Fourth Fleet described it as “the latest development in operationalizing robotic and autonomous systems” in the naval theatre:
U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. 4th Fleet is advancing the Navy’s Hybrid Fleet Campaign through Operation Southern Spear, which will start later this month in U.S. Southern Command Area of Responsibility (USSOUTHCOM AOR) and at U.S. 4th Fleet Headquarters at Naval Station Mayport.
“Southern Spear will operationalize a heterogeneous mix of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) to support the detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking while learning lessons for other theaters,” said Cmdr. Foster Edwards, 4th Fleet’s Hybrid Fleet Director. “Southern Spear will continue our (4th Fleet’s) move away from short-duration experimentation into long-duration operations that will help develop critical techniques and procedures in integrating RAS into the maritime environment.”
Specifically, Operation Southern Spear will deploy long-dwell robotic surface vessels, small robotic interceptor boats, and vertical take-off and landing robotic air vessels to the USSOUTHCOM AOR. 4th Fleet will operationalize these unmanned systems through integration with U.S. Coast Guard cutters at sea and operations centers at 4th Fleet and Joint Interagency Task Force South. Southern Spear’s results will help determine combinations of unmanned vehicles and manned forces needed to provide coordinated maritime domain awareness and conduct counternarcotics operations.
In other words, as Ben Panga notes, it seems that “Venezuela is about to be a proof-of-concept / show-of-force / testing-ground for US drone war capabilities.”
For now, there’s not much else to report on Operation Southern Spear, apart from the fact that it coincides with the arrival in the region of the US’ largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, where it joins other naval vessels, B-1 bombers and thousands of troops to intimidate — and quite possibly attack — Venezuela.
It also coincides with the release by the House Committee of thousands of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein estate. The first response to Hegseth’s original tweet (below) sums the situation up nicely.
Now for the original post…
Thanks to its near-daily strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, Washington is further alienating itself on the world stage. Even the United States’ staunchest ally, the United Kingdom, which covertly facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza, wants nothing to do with the Trump administration’s campaign of extrajudicial killings on the high seas.
CNN reported on Tuesday that London has stopped sharing intelligence with Washington about vessels suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in the US military attacks, which it considers illegal:
The UK’s decision marks a significant break from its closest ally and intelligence sharing partner and underscores the growing skepticism over the legality of the US military’s campaign around Latin America.
For years, the UK, which controls a number of territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, has helped the US locate vessels suspected of carrying drugs so that the US Coast Guard could interdict them, the sources said. That meant the ships would be stopped, boarded, its crew detained, and drugs seized.
The intelligence was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, a task force stationed in Florida that includes representatives from a number of partner nations and works to reduce the illicit drug trade.
But shortly after the US began launching lethal strikes against the boats in September, however, the UK grew concerned that the US might use intelligence provided by the British to select targets. British officials believe the US military strikes, which have killed 76 people, violate international law, the sources said. The intelligence pause began over a month ago, they said.
The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said last month that the strikes violate international law and amount to “extrajudicial killing.” The UK agrees with that assessment, the sources told CNN.
Another key NATO ally, France, has publicly criticized the boat strikes, describing them as a “violation of international law.” At a G7 summit of foreign ministers in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said:
“We have observed with concern the military operations in the Caribbean region, because they violate international law and because France has a presence in this region through its overseas territories, where more than a million of our compatriots reside… They could therefore be affected by the instability caused by any escalation, which we obviously want to avoid.”
Canada is also distancing itself from the US’ escalatory actions in the region. In a response to CBC News on Oct. 31, a Global Affairs spokesperson said the Canadian military has had no involvement in the US military operations in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific.
Those operations included strikes against nine boats in the Eastern Pacific, seven in the Caribbean and two in the SOUTHCOM area, reportedly resulting in the deaths of 75 people. There have so far been three survivors, all of whom were repatriated to their respective countries since the US justice system had no case against them.
It is perfectly possible that European countries are publicly objecting to the US’ military actions as a way of pressuring Trump administration on Ukraine. After all, it took over a year for many European governments to raise a whiff of protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and some such as Germany and the UK continue to facilitate Israeli war crimes.
In other words, Europe’s denunciations of Trump’s boat strikes should be treated with caution. However, it is also true that the attacks in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific are blatant war crimes — and, as already mentioned, the chain of command could not be clearer.
“These attacks appear to be unlawful killings carried out by order of a Government, without judicial or legal process allowing due process of law,” said UN human rights experts earlier this month. “Unprovoked attacks and killings on international waters also violate international maritime laws. We have condemned and raised concerns about these attacks at sea to the United States Government.”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s response so far has been to tell European leaders that they have no say on what is or isn’t permissible by international law while (quite rightly) highlighting their hypocrisy over arming Ukraine with nuclear-capable missiles.
The last sentence — “But when the United States positions aircraft carriers in our hemisphere where we live, somehow that’s a problem” — suggests that Rubio cannot even identfy the main source of the problem. It is the extrajudicial killings of unknown people on boats, not the mobilisation of aircraft carriers, that European leaders are specifically objecting to.
And it’s not just European leaders. According to Infobae (in Spanish), more than 50 other countries, through joint statements, have condemned Washington’s illegal use of force. This is one of those rare issues on which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is more or less on the same page as European foreign ministers:
“I can’t conclude my comments on Venezuela first without mentioning our position on the unacceptable measures adopted by the US, on the pretext of combatting drug trafficking — destroying, without trial or investigation, or indeed presenting any proof to anybody, boats that according to them are transporting drugs. That’s how countries that operate outside the law, who consider themselves above the law, behave. I’m sure this path the Trump administration has chosen with regard to Venezuela will not lead to a good place and will do further harm to the US’s reputation in the world.”
The New Age of the Hemispheric Presidency
Washington, it seems, is long beyond caring about that. It is now in the grip of what Jose Atiles calls the “hemispheric presidency”:
Long treated as a secondary concern, including during President Donald Trump’s first term, when attention centered on China, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, [Latin America] has returned to the forefront of US global strategy. But what is emerging is not a revival of Cold War containment or the Monroe Doctrine. It is the consolidation of a new US doctrine, one that aims to fuse emergency powers, economic warfare, and militarization into a unified hemispheric order.
This emerging doctrine is anchored in the expansion of presidential authority. It represents the full extension of the unitary executive theory or the imperial presidency into the sphere of foreign policy, an effort to normalize executive unilateralism as the organizing principle of US governance at home and abroad. Trump’s approach reveals how emergency powers techniques, such as executive orders, emergency declarations, and budgetary discretion, are being implemented as instruments of foreign policy.
This realignment is only possible because of the profound transformations generated by the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, which over the last three decades expanded the legal and institutional capacity of the US executive branch to govern through permanent emergency. What began as exceptional counterinsurgency frameworks, asset seizures, sanctions, and military authorizations without congressional approval has evolved into the standard operating logic of the US government….
The Trump administration’s foreign policy rests on a single assumption: that the president can act independently of Congress, international law, and long-standing diplomatic norms. This logic manifests through unilateral bailouts, economic and financial sanctions, and militarized interventions.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is also well versed in the vernacular. Asked how the bailout of Argentina is of benefit to Americans, he says: “of course it is good… because we are taking back Latin America through our economic leadership. There will be no bullets (NC: as long as the natives do what they are told). The whole hemisphere is coming our way.”
As this stark reality of the US’ hemispheric ambitions becomes apparent, the pushback is growing. Even in the US, the chorus of opposition, particularly among Trump’s MAGA base, is rising to any potential regime change operation in Venezuela.
A recent article in Time magazine warns that opposition groups in Venezuela, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado, are using “misinformation” to promote regime change. Even regular FOX News commentator General Jack Keane has cautioned about the risks of the US pursuing another regime change war.
Back in late August, just before the boat strikes began, we asked whether the US was trying to cobble together a new “coalition of the willing” for another resource war, this time against Venezuela. The answer to that question is yes, but it has done a shockingly bad job of it…
Nick Corbishley 