Gunboats and Drones: Trump’s Dangerous New Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean

The United States has once again taken up its old role as the self-appointed police of the Western Hemisphere. Under the disingenuous pretext of combating “narco-terrorism,” US forces have launched a violent campaign across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that has already killed at least 76 people—most of them unidentified—in a series of so-called “anti-narcotics” strikes on small boats.

Washington claims these are precision military operations targeting narco-traffickers who are directly attacking the US with their illegal contraband. But in reality, they are extrajudicial, indiscriminate executions on the high seas. There is no due process, no physical threat to the United States, and no legal justification under either domestic or international law. It’s murder, plain and simple—moral, legal, and strategic failures disguised as national security policy.

The Moral and Legal Abyss

Most legal experts would agree that killing unarmed suspects in international waters—without trial, warning, or accountability—is a violation of the most basic principles of international law. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights called the attacks “unacceptable,” while Daphne Eviatar, Amnesty International USA’s director for human rights and security, went a step further in condemning these bellicose actions.

“Intentionally killing people accused of committing crimes who pose no imminent threat to life is murder, full stop,” she posted on Amnesty’s website.

Trump’s response to this “national emergency” is to pursue “gun-drone diplomacy”—the 21st-century version of the same old policy of domination, intervention, and militarism that has led to the high levels of distrust towards the United States from Latin American nations since the mid-19th century.

Even during the height of the so-called “War on Drugs” in the 1990s and 2000s, a period when I was closely following the tragic human rights toll US-led drug policies were having on places like Colombia, such unilateral actions carried out by US forces would have been considered unfathomable. The Pentagon usually relied on their proxies in the Colombian military to carry out such atrocities.

Yet President Donald Trump—backed by his reckless minions Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the self-described Secretary of War Pete Hegseth—has declared a “national emergency” that gives itself the authority to kill anyone it deems an “enemy combatant.” This irresponsible declaration has not been accompanied by any transparent, systematic policy review from those with the power to do so, from the Congress to the military’s own high command.

“It is well past time for Congress to exercise its oversight role over the administration’s unlawful behavior, put an end to these illegal air strikes, and hold those responsible for these murders accountable,” Amnesty’s Eviatar stated.

To be clear, there is no “war” here, no declaration, no battlefield—just ocean, silence, and the corpses of alleged smugglers who might have been fishermen, migrants, or civilians. This is not law enforcement. It’s execution without evidence, and it serves no legitimate purpose.

The Strategic Failure of a Militarized Drug Policy

The US claims these attacks are meant to “cut off supply.” But every serious study—from the United Nations to a wide range of independent nongovernmental organizations that monitor the international drug trade like the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)—shows that militarization does nothing to stem the flow of narcotics. It hasn’t been successful in the past, and today seems to be doomed to repeat this failure. The speed boats being blown up in the Caribbean are not the source of America’s fentanyl crisis; that supply comes overwhelmingly from Mexico and the Pacific, not Venezuela.

If Washington were serious about addressing the drug problem, it would have to think comprehensively about the root causes of the illicit narcotics trade. They would begin to invest in economic development in the regions where the coca crop has flourished. They would have to build a public health infrastructure that seriously considers the root causes of the addiction that fuels the market. This multi-faceted policy would support impoverished coca farmers in finding alternative livelihoods, reduce demand through treatment and harm reduction, and pursue real investigations into the financiers and arms dealers who enable the drug trade in the Global North.

Instead, Trump’s response to this “national emergency” is to pursue “gun-drone diplomacy”—the 21st-century version of the same old policy of domination, intervention, and militarism that has led to the high levels of distrust towards the United States from Latin American nations since the mid-19th century.

History Repeating Itself

This lawlessness isn’t new. We mustn’t forget that the United States mined Nicaraguan harbors in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, claiming to protect “freedom” while waging a covert war against the Sandinista government. Before that, Washington intervened militarily across Latin America on countless occasions, applying the imperial logic of the Monroe Doctrine, treating the hemisphere as its “backyard,” all in the name of defending “freedom” and the national security interests of the United States.

In recent decades, US involvement in the region has taken, at least on the surface, a softer, more bilateral form, generally through cooperation with local governments who were willing to cozy up to Washington to maintain open the spigot of generous economic and military support of their often-repressive regimes. The example of Plan Colombia at the turn of the century is perhaps the most dramatic example.

The Caribbean has become a laboratory for unchecked executive power, where legality and morality are drowned beneath the waves.

The post-9/11, anti-terrorism, militarist approach in Colombia propped up the “democratic security” strategy of the popular right-wing presidency of Alvaro Uribe Vélez for eight years. Uribe loyalists, forever entrenched in the Colombian political establishment, continue to erroneously credit him with successfully stabilizing the country after decades of guerilla war.

They conveniently erase the fact that it was at the cost of tens of thousands of civilian lives lost, countless disappeared, almost 2 million people internally displaced, and at best, mixed results in combating the illicit drug trade that, to this day, continues to bleed Colombian society. Indeed, using 20-year hindsight, it is not unfair to call this period yet another abject failure in the war on drugs. Which makes Trump’s ongoing rhetorical assault of Colombia’s current President, Gustavo Petro, even more ironic.

But that pretense of “partnership” has evaporated. Today’s strategy is unilateral, aggressive, and militarized—a message meant to remind the region who’s boss. And to justify direct military intervention in a country like Venezuela, which seems to be the dangerous direction we are heading at the current juncture.

Latin American nations have every reason to be wary. “Cooperation” has always come with strings attached. And today, as we close out 2025, with US warships like the USS Gerald Ford making itself comfortable in the Caribbean Sea this week, those strings are looking more like chains.

Venezuela in the Crosshairs

Why target Venezuela, a country that produces neither significant cocaine nor fentanyl? The answer has nothing to do with drugs. It’s about power and intimidation. By bombing “suspect” Venezuelan boats, the US sends a message to President Nicolás Maduro: We can hit you anytime, anywhere. With Cowboy Hegseth salivating over the destructive toys he has at his disposal, we have not seen this level of escalation in the region since the Panama invasion of 1989, not coincidentally a full-scale military intervention designed to liquidate a “narco-totalitarian” head-of-state in order to bring him to “justice.”

This strategy of fear mirrors Trump’s broader domestic agenda. The dehumanization of Latin Americans—whether through Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids, mass deportations, or maritime killings—is designed to condition the US public to accept violence as normal, especially directed at those dangerous brown people to our immediate south. In the same way migrants are labeled “invaders,” “criminals,” and “rapists,” fishermen and smugglers become “terrorists.” Both are treated as disposable. What’s wrong with that?

A Region Pushed Toward the Brink

The danger of this policy is not just moral, but geopolitical. These actions undermine regional stability, alienate allies, and embolden authoritarian tendencies across the hemisphere. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has repeatedly publicly condemned the US actions, understands that peace cannot come from bombs. Ironically, he’s now been smeared by Trump as a “narco president”—a charge as absurd as it is revealing.

Washington’s new Caribbean strategy reflects a deeper shift: the return of an imperial presidency blessed by the nation’s highest court to act with complete impunity and with hegemonic intentions. Where “emergency powers” are used to bypass an already compliant Congress and international norms altogether. This is imperialism in the age of drones—less about cocaine than control, less about law than raw dominance.

The United States claims to be fighting a war on drugs. But the real war is on sovereignty, on justice, and on the right of independent Latin American nations to exist without fear of destruction. The Caribbean has become a laboratory for unchecked executive power, where legality and morality are drowned beneath the waves.

The result is predictable: more violence, less stability, and no meaningful reduction in drug trafficking. If this administration believes that killing the poor on the high seas will solve addiction and save lives in the US, then it’s not fighting a war on drugs—it’s fighting a war on humanity.