We are in a new day. President Trump’s bold moves against Venezuelan, Colombian, and Mexican drug cartels – all dealers in death – as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) is revolutionary and noble. No President – including Reagan, for whom I worked – made the link. The effect will be huge.
As the former Assistant Secretary of State who managed billions in counter-narcotics, police training, and our nation’s largest – armed and unarmed – civilian air wing, this is real history.
What Trump critics do not understand is that President Trump, with Defense, State, and Justice, has refocused Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico – and with them China. By linking drug trafficking to terror, saying the obvious – since we lose 100,000 a year to drugs – he redefined national security.
Back in 2003, my job was crafting and implementing Plan Colombia, while training the Iraqi, Afghan, Kosovo, and Colombian police forces, triangulating aviation, ground, and intelligence assets to chase BOTH drug traffickers – i.e, Colombia’s Cali Cartel – and terrorists, like FARC and Taliban.
We were, at that time, highly effective – putting Colombia’s drug traffickers away, training the Iraqi, Afghan, Kosovar, Colombian, and 65 other police forces. We managed 250 airplanes and helicopters around the world, brought costs down, fired bureaucrats and contractors, and pushed effectiveness way up. We went from an operational readiness rate of 60 percent to 85 percent.
We worked with Defense, Justice, and our intelligence community to chase terrorists, get Colombian hostages home, and put terror groups like FARC, ELN, AUC, and Peru’s “Shining Path” out of business. But no president ever did what Trump has done, directly linking drugs and terror.
In 2003, my first book was entitled “Narcotics and Terrorism” (Chelsea Press), and it amounted to a legal, moral, and fact-based plea to conform US policies to reality, acknowledge that those trafficking drugs – killing millions in the US – use that money to push terror, while inflicting terror.
President Trump is the first president to see the link, legally recognize it, and then operationalize it. While Reagan and George HW Bush worked against drugs and terror, the law is now different – allowing us to treat drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, to hit, sink, and prosecute them.
Snatching Venezuela’s narco-trafficker-in-chief, former President Maduro, was a clean, legally and operationally tight law enforcement action, better than the 1989 snatch – also for prosecution in US courts – of then-President of Panama, Manuel Noriega. Maduro was a nexus of drugs and terror.
President Trump’s candid, clear, focused linkage of international drug cartels with BOTH the distribution of terror (killing tens of thousands) and a profit machine for terror is unprecedented.
Where will it lead? The answer is predictable and encouraging. Building on regional “shoot down” policies (in place for 30 years) and the USCG policy of shooting out drug boat engines (in place for 25 years) – based on precise, cued intelligence – we should see deterrence at work.
Just as we see fewer border crossers since he has created deterrence at the southern border, we will see fewer drug boats and other shipments from south and central America to the US, and – more broadly – China will begin to reevaluate the wisdom of shipping fentanyl and precursor drugs to Mexico and the US, and Mexico will itself reevaluate the wisdom of going light on traffickers.
Bottom line: A turn in the road has occurred. It has taken 25 years to get here, but we are here. Drug trafficking cartels, which terrorize, deal death, and fund terror globally, are reeling. Thank you, President Trump, for calling a spade a spade and leaning into deterrence. We are in a new day.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
