On Dec. 15, U.S. Southern Command announced three new boat strikes, which killed at least eight people: three people in the first vessel, two in the second, and three in the third, Southern Command said in a statement on X. The three vessels were allegedly operated by “Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters.” It further claimed, “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking.”
The total known death toll from these U.S. strikes is now in the neighborhood of 95.
On the same day, U.S. President Donald Trump raised the stakes in his war against drug trafficking by signing an executive order declaring fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction.” The order appears to increase the prosecuting directives for anyone involved in the sale or distribution of the drug, including the use of “WMD- and nonproliferation-related threat intelligence” to combat it. While there is a brief mention of targetting any financial infrastructure involved in the trafficking of fentanyl (to “pursue appropriate actions against relevant assets and financial institutions”), the bulk of the emphasis seems to be on punishment, brute strength suppression, and even the use of deploying the military to stop it.
