Trumps kontraproduktive Anti-Drogen-Kampagne

The Trump administration’s lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers may compromise, not advance, America’s battle against cartels, Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Missy Ryan report.

“By Donald Trump’s account, his campaign of lethal maritime strikes is an attempt to extinguish powerful drug cartels, not a prelude to attempted regime change in Venezuela,” Sheinerman and Ryan write. “But even by that standard, the operation is already proving counterproductive, straining alliances essential to U.S. counter-drug strategy and starving officials of information central to battling criminal groups.”

“Until now, the U.S. Coast Guard has led interdiction in the Caribbean, stopping drug vessels and seizing their cargo, which allows investigators to collect evidence and refer suspected traffickers for prosecution,” they write. “Those foot soldiers of the international drug trade, in turn, may become witnesses in building cases in U.S. courts against cartel higher-ups. Military force is typically a last resort.”

The White House has offered little evidence that those targeted in its maritime strikes were drug smugglers—“but even assuming they were, U.S. officials have emphasized that the attacks are designed to kill, and the boats and cargoes are obliterated—and all possible evidence along with them,” Sheinerman and Ryan continue.

“You’re drying up a pipeline of intelligence critical to understanding the criminal network,” Adam Cohen, a former head of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, told Sheinerman and Ryan.

Cartels view the loss of some foot soldiers and drugs at sea as a cost of doing business, and can adapt tactics and shift supply routes to keep their shipments safe. “Blowing up some boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific—these guys are just laughing,” Dan Foote, a former senior official in the State Department’s counter-narcotics bureau, told Sheinerman and Ryan. “They build spoilage into their business plans.

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*—* Evan McMurry, senior editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*