US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has compared a Pacific strike against alleged drug runners to the pursuit of global terror group Al Qaeda.

Following the 22 October strike, Hegseth said:

Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people.

There will be no refuge or forgiveness – only justice.

The US have carried out two strikes in quick succession, killing a total of five people. It was the first strike in the Pacific, signalling an expansion of US aggression. Previous attacks have taken place in the Caribbean where the US has been massing naval and air power.

Forever Wars

The US framing of a war on ‘narco-terrorists’ conceals broader strategic interests. Namely, forcing the Venezuelan government to negotiate over access to oil. Latin America expert Robert Evan Ellis, who served under Trump, told the Guardian the military actions were:

one strand of “a carefully calibrated military messaging” campaign to pile pressure on Maduro’s regime as part of a “controlled negotiation” designed to advance US interests.

And the reference to Al Qaeda is significant. It extends the narrative of the War on Terror far beyond it’s original framework. It’s not for nothing that the post-9/11 wars have become known the Forever Wars.

US investigative reporter Spencer Ackerman wrote:

The U.S. military is using Puerto Rico as a staging ground for… we currently know not what.

However, given the debacle of the War on Terror, we may well have some idea what they’re laying the foundation for.

War on Terror narratives “work too well”

Ackerman also rightly points out that the build-up is unlike any seen in the America’s for decades:

I’m struggling to think of a comparably large Western Hemisphere buildup during the past 25 years. Yet the intermittent and bloodless coverage the buildup has received suggests to me that the typical U.S. media indifference to Puerto Rico is in effect.

He added that after over two decades of the War on Terror “it should not be remotely surprising that an administration would reach for its authorizations and rhetoric. They work too well not to export”.

It doesn’t ultimately matter that whatever the U.S. unleashes upon Venezuela, or now potentially Colombia, will not have a formal connection to the War on Terror. Its template is all the connection necessary, particularly if elite opposition reverts to type and rolls over.

The Trump administration’s have attracted criticism from anti-war conservatives. Senator Rand Paul told Piers Morgan drug trafficking was a crime, not a matter for military force:

We don’t blow up boats off Miami because 25% of the time suspicion is wrong.

We shouldn’t do it off Venezuela either. These are small outboards with no fentanyl and no path to Florida.

We can’t just kill indiscriminately because we are not at war. It’s summary execution!… pic.twitter.com/CMb4m1aUF1

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) October 21, 2025

While all strikes have been against targets at sea so far, Trump has also threatened land-based strikes against Venezuela. And, the stationing of two heavy bombers in Puerto Rico has raised concerns.  Unusually, Trump made public a major deployment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Such matters are normally tightly guarded secrets.

The CIA’s return to Latin America at scale recalls the agency’s bloody past on the continent. For decades the people there faced CIA-backed coups to install authoritarian leaders and vast bloodletting by US-trained and armed forces as the Americans sought to shape the politics of the region.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.