Since regaining power last year, Donald Trump has been clear on his intent to establish military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. That has ranged from demanding favorable trade arrangements from regional partners to expressing the desire to either control or annex territories and whole nations. Along the way, he has revealed a steady fixation with combating drug traffickers, and has unleashed the full weight of U.S. military power to pursue those ends. But it’s only in recent days that this has turned into a clear policy framework. These actions in Ecuador are a preview of a wider campaign that looks poised to quickly grow in the coming weeks.
The U.S. military has largely remained quiet about the matter, not publicizing deployments; the news of its involvement broke via Ecuadorian officials. But U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, has since issued triumphant statements about recent attacks. An airstrike on a small boat in the eastern Pacific, the first in two months without such an attack, was the first indication from SOUTHCOM of renewed actions. Soon after, the USS San Antonio and its embarked Marines stopped, boarded, and sank a ship alleged to be a “floating refueling station” used by drug traffickers. The Pentagon has suggested that other nations in the region governed by Trump-friendly leaders are amenable to joining these joint operations.
Speaking at a gathering in Panama in August, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined the coalition’s goals: “To degrade, dismantle, and destroy narco-terrorist networks,” using the term the administration has for traffickers. Soon after, he outlined a new mission for U.S. forces in the area, operating under SOUTHCOM, saying that the U.S. is using “military capabilities against real threats who need to be deterred and defeated.”
Backing the regional, U.S.-led coalition is a new military task force. In August, the U.S. set up Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, replacing Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which oversaw the blockades of Venezuelan oil ships and, eventually, the raid on Caracas last January. The new command serves as the U.S. arm of the new security coalition, with deployed ships as well as a Marine Corps force sent to the region explicitly to fight traffickers. There are many questions about this new effort, including how many forces are actually being sent to the region and what objectives they have been assigned to pursue. There are also valid concerns over human rights abuses. But what is even more concerning is the way the administration has a free hand to rapidly scale up these operations under this new framework.
Rather than a hostile intervention like Venezuela in January, or large-scale war like Iran, Washington has found a way to insert itself into these countries through partnerships with friendly governments, opening the door for military action. And now, this new anti-cartel coalition, with more than a dozen nations involved, seems poised to aid or at the very least allow the U.S. to expand its reach across the hemisphere. The campaign is just getting started, unchecked and largely unnoticed. If the current strategy in Ecuador is as robust as Washington says it is, it will only grow from here as the administration plots a bloody distraction from its other military misadventures.
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