Defense News reports,

“President Donald Trump has declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and says the United States is now in a “non-international armed conflict,” according to a Trump administration memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, after recent U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean.”

gCaptain reports there has been a fourth attack.

Many questions have been raised about the legality of these attacks, but I will not address them here. I do question their effectiveness.

Admittedly can’t say that law enforcement efforts, including those of the Coast Guard, despite many successes, has kept drugs out of the country. The financial rewards of a successful shipment have made even very risky voyages too profitable. Probably few if any of the smugglers we catch are high in the cartel organizations so the kingpins are not directly at risk in either of capture or death. The long used capture method does at least provide a potential source of intelligence. The new (take no prisoners) approach may have the advantage of frightening aways potential boat crews for the smugglers but there are reasons to suggest the attacks in the Caribbean will also fail to stop the importation of large quantities of drug and fail to stop the large number of deaths by drug overdose that pointed to as justification for these extreme measures

Most drug overdoses were by the use of synthetic opioids that are not generally transported in the go fast boats we have seen destroyed.

“Overall, drug overdose deaths rose from 2019 to 2022 with 107,941 drug overdose deaths reported in 2022. Overdose deaths declined to 105,007 in 2023. Deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl or IMF) decreased from 73,838 overdose deaths reported in 2022, to 72,776 in 2023. Those involving cocaine continued to increase with 29,449 deaths in 2023.”

Because fentanyl is so compact it usually crosses the borders over land at regular ports of entry.

Most Seizures Occur At Ports of Entry Where U.S. Citizens Are The Primary Smugglers...This fact sheet uses two separate datasets to confirm what has long been reported by law enforcement sources and other researchers: that the majority of fentanyl smuggled across the southern border enters not on the backs of migrants crossing the border on foot, but in the vehicles and on the bodies of U.S. citizens and other lawful entrants seeking admission at land ports of entry. Using two separate datasets described below, we confirm roughly four in five people apprehended for smuggling fentanyl into the United States at the southern border between October 2018 and June 2024 were U.S. citizens—the rest were largely individuals with visas, border crossing cards, or other permission to enter the United States lawfully at a port of entry.

Currently the kinetic attacks are limited to the Caribbean while far more drugs are intercepted in the Eastern Pacific. Even if drug shipments are closed off entirely it is likely shipments through other routes will increase to meet demand.

Apparently the attacks are also having unintended consequences.

President Trump “Speaking to military leaders in Quantico, Virginia, he suggested the operations are already proving effective: ‘Now we have a problem. General Caine says, sir, there are no boats out there, not even fishing boats. They don’t want to go fishing.’”

Apparently many local mariners have less confidence in our ability to identify and attack only the smugglers.