The New Militarized War on Drugs—Time to View Cartels as National Security Threats?

In recent months, the Trump administration has sharply escalated its campaign against drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). This includes designatingmultiple cartels and street gangs as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs); ramping up intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in Mexico and Venezuela; ordering the Pentagon to draw up military plans against drug traffickers; directing a buildup of military assets in the Caribbean; authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert action; and, of course, destroying multiple alleged drug trafficking vessels on the high seas.

This represents a paradigm shift in how the US perceives and responds to drug trafficking and underscores the administration’s resolve to “ensure the total elimination of these organizations.” They have also raised serious concerns about the legality, morality, and wisdom in resurrecting the so-called “war on drugs.” These are timely and important questions, but I have no interest in rehashing the arguments or trying to settle the debate.

Instead, I’d like to zoom out a bit to explore the underlying policy question at the heart of the debate—is it time to stop thinking of drug cartels as mere criminals, and start treating them national security threats?

More than twenty years ago, as a graduate student at Boston College I wrestled with many of the same questions about the “global war on terrorism.” In my master’s thesis, I wrote about the origins of the 2003 war in Iraq and the various rationales put forward to justify it—the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the regime’s ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, the United States’ desire to control Iraqi oil, and/or the opportunity to bring democracy to the Middle East.

What I found, despite all the rhetoric at the time, was that the decision to go to war in Iraq had little to do with any of those things—it was really borne out of a new and profound sense of vulnerability in the US and the need to “do something” after the 9/11 terror attacks. That “something” was to go on the offensive, to take the fight to our adversaries, and confront “emerging threats before they are fully formed.” The 2002 US National Security Strategy made the case plainly, stating, “The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction—and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”

Before 9/11, major acts of terrorism—the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and the 2000 USS Cole bombing—were typically treated as criminal acts, handled by law enforcement. After an attack, the US Department of Justice would launch an investigation, gather all the evidence, and ensure justice was served. That’s how it had always been done.

Then 9/11 happened.

It’s almost cliché to say it now, but 9/11 changed everything. In an instant, Americans’ perception of safety was shattered and the traditional approach to counterterrorism seemed quaint, dangerous, and irresponsible. “Facing clear evidence of peril,” the US could no longer “wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” And so, in the years following 9/11, the US fundamentally transformed the US national security apparatus, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), increased information sharing and collaboration among government agencies, and the launch of a new global war on terrorism led primarily by the military and intelligence community, among others.

And it (mostly) worked.

The US is much better equipped to handle terrorist threats than at any time before 9/11. And while we cannot judge an issue as complex as counterterrorism based on a single metric, it’s important to acknowledge that foreign terrorist attacks on US soil have become exceedingly rare. According to an analysis performed by the Cato Institute, “only” 44 people have been killed in the US by foreign-born terrorists in the almost 25 years since 9/11.

Could the same blueprint work against drug trafficking?

Unlike the immediate shock and shared horror of 9/11, the drug crisis has unfolded slowly, lacking a singular event to galvanize national resolve. The drug crisis has sadly been more of a “slow-motion weapon of mass destruction,” that has somehow failed to garner the same sense of outrage and urgency, despite greater social and economic costs. At its peak in 2023, more than 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses—more than the fatalities of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. And even with the recent decrease in drug overdoses, illicit drugs are still the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45, and cost the United States an estimated $2.7 trillion per year.

The illicit drug threat has changed. Our response should too. Are illicit drugs tantamount to weapons of mass destruction? Are DTOs and TCOs actually terrorists by another name? Is treating the war on drugs like the war on terror a necessary shift that is long overdue?

As the Zen master (in Charlie Wilson’s War) says, we’ll see…

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The views stated herein are the author’s alone.