The US government's military operation in the Caribbean is supposedly intended to target "narco-terrorists." In my latest article, I explore the history of the term to argue that "narco-terrorism" is mostly a myth— a "political slogan" which does not accurately describe the world. By focusing our attention on foreign suppliers, this myth distracts us from more important factors, including the US government's own history of supporting drug trafficking.
To say that “narco-terrorism” is a myth is not to deny the obvious violence associated with the black market drug trade, but to acknowledge that the term does more to confuse than to clarify. The idea does not accurately explain the complex dynamics of the global drug trade; instead, it radically oversimplifies the problem. By portraying military intervention as a response to drug trafficking, the “narco-terrorism” myth allows politicians to ignore all of the ways in which military intervention is a cause of drug trafficking...
Perhaps the greatest flaw of “narco-terrorism” is that it encourages us to believe that complex human problems have simple military solutions. Sociologist C. Wright Mills once astutely criticized US elites for accepting a “military definition of reality,” a distorted perspective which prevents them from imagining policy solutions that do not involve military intervention. So long as the government insists upon seeing non-military problems through a military lens, they will never be solved.
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