As usual, President Trump narrated the incident on his social media platform. He accused the boat of trafficking unspecified illicit substances, attributing it to an operation by the Tren de Aragua; claimed the crew of 11 did not survive, while stating there were no U.S. casualties; and explained that the incident occurred in international waters. Since the released video showed only the moment of the attack, it remains unclear whether the weapon was a drone or a helicopter. This was challenged by Venezuela’s Minister of Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, who claimed it was a propaganda film created using artificial intelligence.

Nonetheless, Trump’s message was clear. This was his version of “gunboat diplomacy”—a 19th-century European-rooted practice of using military muscle as a coercive tool to achieve objectives. The ships weren’t just deployed to showcase naval power; lethal force was applied according to U.S. national security definitions that equate drug trafficking with terrorism, and under U.S. legislation that governs military operations (Title 10) and covert or clandestine actions (Title 50).

Naturally, there was no reference to international law. After all, the United States is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, despite previously claiming to act in accordance with its provisions—let alone the U.N. Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, or the San Remo Manual on Rules of Engagement. In short, there was no warning to the suspected drug-trafficking vessel, no attempt to detain the crew, seize the illicit cargo, or bring those responsible to justice. It was simply shot.

Clearly, this is not an epilogue, but rather an inflection point in an escalation that began with Trump’s return to the White House. From the day of his inauguration, Latin American criminal organizations were designated as terrorist entities. In February 2025, the State Department included the Sinaloa Cartel, the Central American Mara Salvatrucha 13, and Tren de Aragua in that classification, citing threats to U.S. national security that resulted in over 80,000 deaths solely from fentanyl consumption. Two months later, Washington requested that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum authorize the entry of U.S. troops into Mexico to combat the cartels—something not seen since 1916, when General Pershing led an expedition to capture the then “most wanted” man: Pancho Villa. Unsurprisingly, the request was denied.

In July, Washington raised alarms about the Cartel of the Suns in Venezuela—a network of complicity and state corruption involving uniformed personnel, benefiting from illicit trafficking, according to Insight Crime and Transparency International. Then, on August 8, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office offered a $50 million reward for information leading to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, alleged head of the cartel, and $25 million each for Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. At the same time, the Pentagon quietly implemented a directive authorizing the use of armed forces against cartels and gangs labeled as terrorist organizations. This marked a Copernican shift in Trump’s second administration compared to previous governments—including his own first term, when Maduro was merely charged with criminal offenses and sanctioned for alliances with the FARC. Thus, the Global War on Terror under Bush is now being mirrored by a New War on Narcoterrorism, carried out through rapid, high-impact strikes—much like the June incident in Iran (albeit for different reasons), following a similar logic of avoiding long-term military entanglements.

It’s worth noting that initially, other factors confused even seasoned observers. Ten days after taking office for a second term, Trump authorized a meeting in Venezuela between his special envoy, Richard Grenell, and Nicolás Maduro, which resulted in a detainee exchange and Venezuela’s acceptance of deportee flights from El Salvador. The Trump administration even restored Chevron Corp.’s license to extract and transport Venezuelan oil to the United States.

Thus, national security merges with the promotion of U.S. private enterprise—a kind of paramnesia reminiscent of the Banana Wars, as recounted by U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler in his 1935 book War is a Racket. That was the era of “dollar diplomacy” and the “big stick” approach in Latin America, where hemispheric military power and economic interests converged over Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Like an “imperial workshop”—to use Greg Grandin’s 2006 term—later applied globally during the Cold War, the United States deployed its full naval power between the end of the Spanish-American War and the start of the Good Neighbor Policy (December 1933). This included a series of military interventions in Cuba (1901 under the Platt Amendment), Panama (1903, 1908, 1918), Nicaragua (1912–1933 and 1934), Mexico (1914, 1916–1917), Haiti (1915–1934), the Dominican Republic (1916–1924), and Honduras (1924).

During the Cold War, covert operations were carried out in Guatemala (1954) to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz, and in Chile against Salvador Allende (1970–1973), along with military interventions in the Dominican Republic (1964–1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989). The former under CIA command; the latter with elite troops: Navy SEALs and Delta Force. In the post-Cold War era, U.S. military involvement in the region was limited to multilateral agreements under international organizations.

Therefore, the destruction of the vessel in the Caribbean marks a move not seen in over 35 years of the U.S. war on drugs—since drugs were defined as “new asymmetric threats” and policies like Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative were established in coordination with other governments. The last unilateral military expedition in Latin America was Operation Just Cause in 1989 to capture General Noriega, a former CIA collaborator accused of drug trafficking and corruption. U.S. military bases near the Panama Canal enabled the deployment of 25,000 troops in a campaign that lasted just weeks. The current case is quite different: just over 4,000 U.S. Navy personnel are now deployed near Venezuelan territorial waters. A large-scale intervention would require more forces and a broader logistical platform than what’s currently available in ports offered by Trinidad and Tobago or from French ships docked in Guadeloupe.

Colombia has said it does not approve the use of its territory for such a purpose, and President Gustavo Petro has rejected any U.S. intervention in the region. As pro tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), he convened a virtual meeting in which 20 states ^[1]signed a declaration expressing “concern over extra-hemispheric military deployment.” In contrast, several countries in the region have followed Washington’s lead in designating the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization: Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, joined by Curaçao, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago in supporting the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean.

In this context, Trump has responded with a “we’ll see” when asked about possible further strikes on narcotrafficking targets in Venezuela. It is even likely that Venezuela’s Directorate of Counterintelligence will be added to the terrorist list. While there is no explicit rhetoric calling for regime change—except in the hopes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio—it is not out of the question that “gunboat pressure” may create fissures in the so-far solid pro-government bloc.

^[1] Antigua y Barbuda, Barbados, Belice, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Granada, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, San Cristóbal y Nieves, Santa Lucía, San Vicente y las Granadinas, Surinam, Uruguay y Venezuela.