The ghosts of the War on Terror are stirring once again, but this time they are materialising along the US-Mexico border rather than in the deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan. Nearly twenty-five years ago, the United States launched its “Global War on Terror” in response to the 11 September terrorist attacks, transforming its foreign policy and upending international law. Now we are witnessing an alarming replay of history as the United States reframes its approach to drug cartels using the lexicon and tactics of counterterrorism – often in partnership with accommodating Latin American governments. From classifying cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs) to authorising drone operations in Mexican territory, the parallels are unmistakable and deeply concerning.
The shift toward dealing with cartels as terrorists rather than criminal syndicates has been long in the making. President Donald Trump first floated plans to classify cartels as FTOs in 2019, after the Juárez Cartel killed members of an American family in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora. This sentiment echoed throughout the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary debates, where then-candidates Governor Ron DeSantis and Ambassador Nikki Haley vowed to send Special Forces into Mexico ‘on day one,’ because, in Haley’s words, ‘that is how we deal with our terrorists.’
Trump stated it most clearly just a week after his 2024 victory: ‘Our country is being poisoned from within. The drug cartels are waging war on America, and now it is time for America to wage war on the cartels.’ In what could have been a speech delivered by George W. Bush in 2001, Trump added that he would ‘order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership.’
Substituting the term ‘cartel’ for ‘Al Qaeda’ should elicit an ominous sense of déjà vu. The annual loss of more than 100,000 American lives to opioid overdoses has become Trump’s 9/11 – his justification for extraordinary measures. While the analogy is imperfect, both situations bear enough resemblance that one must critically examine the dangers of transferring War on Terror logic to the War on Drugs in Latin America. The question remains whether this shift will replicate the troubling legacy of illegal detentions, indiscriminate drone strikes, and military interventions of questionable legality, or if it might offer new tools to address the genuine security threats posed by powerful criminal organisations.
How the War on Terror Rewrote the Rules
The post-9/11 era fundamentally altered not just geopolitics but the legal and moral frameworks that had previously governed international conflict. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq set precedents for pre-emptive military action in the post-Cold War period, while simultaneously blurring previously established categories in international humanitarian law (IHL), otherwise known as the ‘laws of war’.
Most notably, the distinction between civilian and combatant – a cornerstone of IHL – became increasingly nebulous. Terrorists do not wear uniforms, carry arms openly, or respect the rules of war, making it difficult for conventional armies to distinguish them from civilians. The United States famously devised the doctrine of unlawful combatants, a category that allowed it to place terrorism suspects in a legal limbo, denying them both the protections afforded to prisoners of war and those guaranteed to civilian detainees. This classification facilitated the creation of detention facilities like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where hundreds were held without trial for years, many subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that numerous legal scholars have classified as torture.
The Bush administration also initiated the drone warfare programme, which the Obama administration dramatically expanded. Between 2009 and 2015, the Obama administration conducted more than 500 drone strikes, primarily in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties alongside targeted militants. This remote-controlled warfare further blurred the line between military operations and covert intelligence activities, creating a troubling precedent that is now being exported to the War on Drugs. Like the War on Terror, the fight against drug trafficking cartels has no clear geographical boundaries, meaning strikes could potentially be carried out anywhere cartels operate.
Another disturbing development was the rise of Private Military Companies (PMCs) like Blackwater (now Constellis), which operated in legal grey zones with limited accountability. These private contractors performed traditional military functions but without the same level of oversight or legal constraints, leading to incidents like the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, where Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
These transformations in how war is conducted and regulated did not remain confined to the Middle East. They created templates that have gradually been adapted for use in other contexts – including, increasingly, in Latin America.
Exporting the War on Terror’s Worst Excesses
Latin America has long borne the brunt of America’s war on drugs, but recent developments suggest a troubling shift toward treating this decades-old problem through the lens of counterterrorism – with all the legal and humanitarian complications that entails.
Since Trump’s designation of eight Latin American cartels as FTOs in January 2025, the United States has deployed active-duty service members to the Southern border, expanded surveillance drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs, and sent two warships that previously served in the Red Sea to the Gulf of Mexico. James Fowler and Alicia Nieves wrote in a blog post for the Atlantic Council that the speed and scale of these preparations have not been seen ‘since the early stages of the War on Terror,’ which ‘may indicate that the United States is on the verge of direct military action, either unilaterally or with the Mexican military, against cartels on Mexican soil.’ While President Claudia Sheinbaum has categorically rejected the presence of US troops in Mexico, other forms of military action – such as the lethal use of drones – remain on the table.
Despite Trump’s role in accelerating this shift, Latin American governments have contributed to these developments long before he entered politics. Since 2007, Mexico’s constitutional provision of arraigo allows the government to detain citizens suspected of participating in organised crime for up to 80 days without evidence or trial. Human rights groups have documented how this mechanism is used to deprive individuals of liberty to extract information – often through torture – for later use in trials.
El Salvador’s anti-gang emergency decree – first implemented in March 2022 and extended for three years under President Nayib Bukele – offers another troubling parallel. The centrepiece of Bukele’s anti-crime strategy, a mega-prison named the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), highlights the fusion between counterterrorism and anti-drug tactics. Like Guantanamo detainees, the 15,000 prisoners at CECOT can spend years without trial under conditions human rights organisations classify as torture.
Both arraigo and Bukele’s emergency decree echo the ‘unlawful combatant’ designation created during the War on Terror, serving the same purpose: allowing governments to place detainees in a legal limbo wherein they are treated as combatants (who may be detained indefinitely during a never-ending war) while being denied the protections normally afforded to prisoners of war under IHL. Trump’s recent policy of deporting Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants directly to Guantanamo and to Bukele’s CECOT mega-prison has further blurred the boundaries between immigration enforcement, counternarcotics operations, and counterterrorism.
The deployment of US drones over Mexico represents another troubling parallel to counterterrorism operations. Although these flights have only conducted surveillance thus far, this limited role appears poised for expansion. The CIA recently announced that it is reviewing its authority to use lethal force in Mexico and beyond. Should lethal drone operations commence, the US will confront the same legal and moral grey zones regarding targeting criteria and collateral damage that characterised drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen.
It is all too easy to envision a scenario where CIA drone strikes in Mexico kill innocent bystanders whilst attempting to eliminate a high-profile cartel leader. One crucial difference emerges: these operations would target areas with high concentrations of US-born citizens and green-card holders, particularly in northern Mexico – creating unprecedented constitutional questions about drone strikes that could inadvertently kill American citizens without due process.
Perhaps equally disturbing is the emerging role of PMCs in Latin America’s security landscape. President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador recently announced a strategic alliance with Erik Prince, the controversial founder of Blackwater, to ‘strengthen the country’s capabilities in the fight against narco-terrorism.’ This development should set off alarm bells for anyone familiar with PMCs’ troubled history during the War on Terror.
Finding Promise Amidst Peril
Despite these troubling parallels, the counterterrorism framework may offer valuable tools for addressing the genuine threat posed by powerful cartels. In the same November 2024 speech where Trump promised military action, he outlined another approach that deserves serious consideration:
‘I will designate the major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. We will sever their access to global financial systems. . . . Either we will get the full cooperation of other governments to stop this menace, or we will expose every bribe, every kickback, every payoff, and every bit of corruption that is allowing the cartels to preserve their brutal reign.’
This financial and anti-corruption approach represents precisely what has been missing from Latin America’s fight against organised crime. The FTO designation grants the US Department of the Treasury significant powers to freeze assets, block financial transactions, and impose sanctions on entities that do business with designated groups—tools that could prove far more effective than military operations in undermining cartels’ influence.
In a recent executive order from 1 February 2025, the White House stated that Mexican criminal organisations have an ‘intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico’. Although Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum dismissed this statement as slander against her administration, evidence of state-cartel collusion in Mexico is overwhelming. Only last year, leaked documents from Mexico’s Secretary of Defence revealed ties between drug cartels and 29 city mayors. In the last decade, seven state governors have been prosecuted for collusion with organised crime. In a notorious case, a New York District Court found Mexico’s highest-ranking law enforcement official guilty of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel, sentencing him to 38 years in prison. There is currently an investigation underway at the US Department of Justice exploring alleged links between former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to three cartels, reportedly involving financing for his political campaigns.
These cases illuminate a fundamental truth that military interventions often overlook: drug cartels would not thrive without corruption. By threatening to expose corruption at all levels, Trump’s strategy recognizes that cartels’ power stems not from violence alone, but from their successful infiltration of government institutions. Most importantly, it addresses a reality that has plagued Latin America for decades: local authorities often lack either the capacity or the political will to implement rigorous financial controls themselves. Political and economic elites are lukewarm to implementing stringent fiscal and patrimonial controls that may ultimately harm their own interests.
Trump has kept good on his word, recently revoking US visas for Mexican politicians with suspicious links to the drug trade, including high-profile members of ruling Morena party. However misguided Trump’s military approach to fighting cartels in Latin America may be, his threat to ‘expose every bribe . . . and every bit of corruption’ holds genuine potential in helping to purge Latin American governments from the influence of criminal syndicates.
Finding Balance in the Grey Zone
The world has already experienced the enormous human and financial costs from the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with questionable results for international security. By accepting the repackaging of drug cartels as terrorist organisations, the global community risks importing all the legal, moral, and strategic failures of the post-9/11 era into the Western Hemisphere. Before endorsing a similar open-ended military campaign in Latin America, US policymakers should carefully consider what is worth importing from the War on Terror and what is not.
The opportunity here lies in the possibility of deploying counterterrorism’s financial and intelligence tools without adopting its most problematic military and detention practices. While the international community should remain vigilant against the exportation of the War on Terror’s most problematic practices to Latin America, it should also recognize that financial transparency and anti-corruption measures—even when imposed through external pressure—may offer the best hope for addressing the region’s persistent security challenges.
The fight against organised crime in Latin America does not need drone strikes or special forces; it needs accountability and transparency in places where domestic institutions have consistently failed to provide them. The ghosts of counterterrorism need not haunt Latin America if we can learn to separate the valuable lessons from the catastrophic mistakes.