by Olivier Acuña Barba •Published: August 12, 2025•23:07•2 minutes read
Pentagons already draw choices on how to attack drug cartels in foreign soils | Credit: PressLab/ShutteStock
President Trump secretly signed the Prime Minister to begin using military force in foreign soil against certain Latin American drug cartels his administration labeled as terrorist organizations, several news organizations, including the New York Times, reported on Tuesday, August 12th.
The decision to involve US troops in the fight has so far been the most offensive step in the administration’s escalating campaign against the cartels, the strongest of which are Mexico and Colombia.
The order expresses the will to use Trump’s ongoing will to use the military to carry out what has been considered primarily a law enforcement responsibility to curb the flow of other illegal drugs, primarily from the southern part of Mexico to the United States.
Direct military operations at sea and other countries
This order provides an official base for the possibility of direct military operations in maritime and foreign soils against the Cartel, the New York Times. I said.
“Since President Trump’s number one priority is to protect his hometown, he has taken a bold step to designate several cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in an email to the NYT.
Alexander Avigna, an associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, believes that Trump’s order is “leading primarily towards Venezuela. The United States used the war on drugs as another way to advance the geopolitical design of the US imperial geopolitical design in the Western Hemisphere.”
As reported in globalnewsphere, the US Judicial and State departments have doubled their bounty to Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million. The compensation is in exchange for information that led to the arrest of Maduro, who was charged with drug trafficking.
The Pentagon is already planning an attack
Those familiar with the secret order told NYT that Pentagon officials have begun to create options for how the military chases the group.
However, cracking down on illegal trade to use the military raises legal questions, such as whether US military acting outside of Congress-sanctioned armed conflicts would kill even criminal suspects that pose no immediate threat.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum hit Trump’s move and said, “The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We will work together, we will work together, but there will be no invasion. It will be excluded and absolutely excluded,” President Sinbaum spoke at a press conference on Monday. According to Now in democracy.
“This is a very dangerous indication that creates and threatens to unleash violence across Latin American countries that the Trump administration could target under this widely defined terrorist struggle that is currently using to explain the fight against Latin American drug cartels.”