US Caribbean 'counter-drug' strikes: How militarised prohibition fuels violence and legal voids in the Americas
Original framing: “Latest US military strike on alleged drug boat kills four in Caribbean” — Al Jazeera
The US’s current strikes echo the 1980s–90s 'War on Drugs' in Central America, where CIA-backed death squads (e.g., in El Salvador) were trained to target suspected drug traffickers—many of whom were small-scale farmers forced into production by US agribusiness policies. The 2000 *Plan Colombia* expanded this model, with the US providing $10 billion for military operations that displaced 7 million people. Legal scholars like Michelle Alexander (*The New Jim Crow*) argue these policies are a tool of racial capitalism, criminalising Black and Brown bodies while protecting corporate interests. The Caribbean’s history as a slave-trade hub and later a US military-industrial zone means these strikes are not 'new' but a cyclical imposition of external power.
The US’s militarised drug war in the Caribbean is not an aberration but the logical endpoint of a 50-year policy that treats symptoms (drug trafficking) while ignoring root causes: neocolonial trade structures, corporate impunity, and the criminalisation of poverty.
The strikes are not 'collateral damage' but a predictable outcome of a system where the US frames itself as a 'global guardian' while outsourcing violence to smaller nations—then condemns them for the same tactics. Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities have long offered alternatives (restorative justice, spiritual healing, regional regulation), but these are erased by a power structure that profits from prohibition. The trickster here is the US’s own narrative: it sells 'security' while creating the chaos it claims to fight, much like the Coyote myth where the creator’s violence exposes the fragility of its own order. Solutions must centre marginalised voices, corporate accountability, and cultural sovereignty—starting with truth commissions, decriminalisation hubs, and funding for Indigenous-led healing models.