227 dead in the Caribbean and the Pacific: the bombing of boats does not stop the entry of cocaine into the US

Barcelona"Just as Al-Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people." U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referred thusly less than a year ago to the Latin American drug cartels against which the U.S. military claims to have been fighting since September 2025 with attacks on vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific. A year after the operation dubbed Operation Southern Lance began, the results are practically nil, and the Pentagon itself has admitted that the offensive has not served to stop the entry of cocaine into the United States. Nevertheless, the attacks continue and often people with no connection to drug trafficking die.

On August 25, U.S. bombs killed four crew members of a vessel in the Caribbean. It is the latest in a total of at least 68 attacks in which Washington has extrajudicially murdered 227 people. In January, the attacks served the White House to escalate tensions in the region and attempt to justify the military aggression against Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro, whom it linked to drug trafficking. Throughout the rest of the winter and spring, bombings against vessels continued with intensity, and in recent days, after a couple of months of relative calm, the U.S. military has reactivated them.

Although over time they have become normalized, the White House makes efforts to amplify attacks and show an image of determination against an enemy, drug traffickers, whom public opinion perceives unequivocally as a threat. In this way, it justifies the military presence in the region, where more and more states are opening their doors to it. The latest is Colombia, where the new far-right executive has authorized Washington to carry out military operations within its borders.

However, nothing indicates with certainty that the vessels against which the United States fires are actually related to drug trafficking. "In all this time, the administration has provided almost no evidence to this effect," explains to ARA John Walsh, director of Drug Policy and the Andes at the NGO Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and co-author of the report Killing Spree: Extrajudicial executions in the U.S. boat strikes campaign.

On paper, the executive order that determines how the military should carry out attacks does not require checking that vessels are transporting drugs, nor does it require identifying individuals on board the boats before shooting. It only requires that there be "reasonable certainty" that the people on the vessel are related in some way to one of the organizations classified by the United States as "narcoterrorist".

The way this link is verified is also quite ambiguous. The Department of Defense uses the terms "affiliate" or "facilitator" to describe people who would be related to groups it considers terrorist, "a label that is already very broad," notes Walsh. According to congressmen and protected sources who have attended informational sessions in Congress and the Senate cited in the past year by US media, it is not at all clear under what criteria someone is considered an "affiliate." In fact, little more than a simple conversation with a member of a group designated as a terrorist can be enough to hang this label on someone who has nothing to do with drug trafficking.

The type of vessels attacked also raises suspicions. "In boats carrying drugs, there are 3 or 4 people at most. There are cases of attacks on ships with about ten people, which suggests that not everyone on board would be involved in drug trafficking," Walsh points out. In fact, in some cases it has been possible to prove that the victims were fishermen or citizens of Venezuela, Colombia or Trinidad and Tobago, who needed to travel by boat. In the area, it is common for the same boats that transport drugs north to take advantage of the trip south to transport civilians unrelated to smuggling.

A strategy that does not yield results

However, the main indicators do not show that the campaign has had any effect on the entry of cocaine into the United States. "Although consumption has decreased in the country, the flow has not stopped," points out to ARA Fredy Rivera Vélez, a Flacso researcher specializing in security, defense, and intelligence. This is demonstrated by the fact that the level of seizures at the US borders not only remains usual, but until June, seizures had even slightly increased (by 2%) compared to the 10 months prior to the start of Operation Southern Lance. Attention should also be paid to the price and purity of cocaine, which have remained stable over the past year, as acknowledged by the US Office of Drug Control (DEA). If there were less supply, the price per gram on the street would rise, and drug dealers would mix this substance with cheaper ones to maintain their income.

Before the operation's failure to stop the drug entry was publicly confirmed, the head of the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), Francis Donovan, already pointed out in March, when the death toll was around 150, that when the offensive against drug trafficking was evaluated, it would be seen that bombings against vessels "probably would not have been the most effective tool". Even then, the general pointed out that traffickers were "adapting" to new methods, but the attacks continued.

"The problem with drug trafficking exists, but the way the administration is addressing it only exacerbates it," warns Walsh. "We only need to look at historical precedents, such as Mexico, to confirm that an essentially military and violent confrontation with organized crime groups does not normally translate into a reduction in drug trafficking," he recalls. Both Walsh and Rivera emphasize that the attacks are illegal under international law. And regarding the scarce information with which the military attacks vessels, Rivera recalls that "the unilateral doctrine of shoot first and ask questions later is not new." There are precedents in the region and, beyond the Caribbean and the Pacific, the selection of targets based on behavioral patterns without verifying their identity or the use of the "terrorist" label to justify the use of military force recall the methods used by previous administrations in the war on terror. Hegseth's mention of Al-Qaeda, therefore, is not coincidental at all.