The Deterrence Facade
ABSTRACT
This article argues that Operation Southern Spear should not be mistaken for an exercise in deterrence. It posits the current administration is using “securitization” – reframing drug trafficking as an existential “narco-terrorist” threat – to legitimize extraordinary military measures and pursue the unstated political objective of regime change and ultimately, regional hegemony. The article concludes that this high-risk approach is strategically counterproductive, as it abandons the rule of law and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that will drive Latin American nations toward U.S. adversaries.
Last month, a Navy rear admiral visited a group of junior officers to discuss the state of the fleet and answer their questions. Unsurprisingly, one of the first questions raised concerned the legality and ethical considerations of the Navy’s new, aggressive actions in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. The admiral, clearly practiced in his response, explained that this operation was a textbook case of deterrence theory, one deemed both legal and necessary. His use of the term ‘deterrence’ not only melded nicely with the current administration’s messaging of Peace Through Strength, but it supported the longstanding U.S. strategy of defending the homeland and deterring attacks, rather than seeking to escalate or provoke confrontation (the concept remains the backbone of the current National Defense Strategy, penned by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin). Many in the crowd nodded along, accepting the answer at face value, while others remained skeptical.
Albeit on a much smaller scale, this anecdote serves as a perfect microcosm of the profound political process unfolding in real-time: securitization. A military leader delivers a legitimizing speech act in the name of deterrence, as the nodding young officers serve as an accepting audience, validating their leadership’s framing and thus its irregular actions. However, this simple exchange papers over a larger shift in U.S. policy. The growing military operation off the coast of Venezuela has gone far beyond drug deterrence and now has the potential to become a real kinetic conflict, which, without legal justification, is dragging both U.S. forces and policymakers into a mess of legal, strategic, and moral quagmires.
Tools of War
The clear blue waters of the Caribbean, long romanticized as an American Lake, are now the backdrop for one of the most significant U.S. military deployments in decades. The growing force starkly contrasts with the calm, defensive language of deterrence, and is a far cry from the region’s typical maritime law enforcement missions. From a maritime perspective, the Caribbean typically only sees one or two U.S. warships operating at a time. Whether that be a destroyer or littoral combat ship sailing from Naval Station Mayport to conduct drug interdictions, or a larger group in route to South America to participate in a multinational exercise, these warships are seldom tasked with or armed with the tools to conduct maritime strikes. In contrast, Operation Southern Spear now encompasses dozens of warships with the recent arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group (CSG), both drone and bomber aircraft, and least publicized but most tellingly, the establishment of a new joint task force led by the II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF). II MEF is a unit structured for amphibious assault and combat operations ashore, and the USS Gerald R. Ford CSG is an instrument for delivering sustained maritime power projection. These are tools of war, not law enforcement.
This deployment signals a deliberate paradigm shift, explicitly rejecting the traditional counternarcotics model. Historically, such missions were led by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S), both focused on law enforcement in international waters. Operating under peacetime authority, their goal was interdiction: to inspect, search, seize, and arrest. The primary objective was to disable vessels, capture suspects, and, critically, gather evidence to better understand cartel operations. After the decades-long War on Drugs, it is unlikely that any previous administration was naïve enough to believe these interdictions would result in the wholesale stoppage of illicit drugs flowing through the Caribbean. In fact, the seizures likely directly lead to the development of new routes and innovative technologies for smuggling. However, the operations maintained a status quo in the region. That is the existence of an enduring drug trade, but with it, a stable effort to prevent its reaching the United States. The effort upheld international legal norms and provided data and intelligence to be used by allies and partners in the region, all while achieving a variety of follow-on strategic initiatives (forward presence, joint and interagency integration, security cooperation, etc.).
The new operation, under a Marine Corps combat command, rejects this legal-procedural model. Its objective, as described by administration officials, is elimination, not interdiction. President Donald Trump articulated this new doctrine with blunt clarity: “We’re going to kill them. You know? They’re going to be, like, dead”. This kinetic-first approach, by its very nature, removes any possibility of gathering evidence. It reveals a fundamental disconnect from any genuine law enforcement or intelligence-gathering objective.
The analysis below argues that Operation Southern Spear is not a genuine deterrence operation but a textbook example of securitization. The politically resonant and strategically legitimate language of deterrence has been co-opted to frame a regional drug enforcement dispute as an existential threat to the United States. This speech act is a subversion of strategic language to justify extraordinary military measures that are poorly suited for counternarcotics but perfectly aligned with a long-standing, unstated political objective: hegemony.
The Deterrence Claim
Even with its recent rebranding to the Department of War, the official mission of the Department of Defense remains to deter war and ensure our nation’s security. This foundational principle, which orients the U.S. military toward a defensive posture of maintaining the status quo, creates an immediate analytical tension when contrasted with the present escalatory actions in the Caribbean. To justify this operation, the current administration has constructed a clear and public-facing narrative: it is framing the complex issue of drug trafficking as a war against narcoterrorism. Specifically, against those groups believed to be under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The language is a deliberate political choice. By invoking terrorism, it constructs a clear and present danger that appears to necessitate a robust, military-led response, moving the issue from the purview of the Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Defense.
This deterrence framing, however, fails under the slightest analytical scrutiny. As defined, deterrence aims to prevent an action and maintain the status quo. The current U.S. operation does the opposite; its stated goal is to “kill them” and eliminate the problem, and its unstated goal is to see Nicolas Maduro evicted from his presidency. These are not acts of deterrence. They are, respectively, acts of elimination and compellence; the use of force to radically alter the status quo. This linguistic bait-and-switch is the core of the political facade. Deterrence is a politically sacred concept, implying a legal, defensive, and necessary posture. Compellence and elimination imply aggression, choice, and extralegal killing. The language is a political tool, a legitimacy facade for an operation that is, at its core, strategically perilous.
The Securitization Playbook
With the deterrence frame deconstructed and revealed as a facade, the administration’s actions leading up to the establishment of Southern Spear become clear through a different theoretical lens: securitization. This is not a strategic interaction but a political process for enabling radical policy.
The process begins with the securitizing actor – in this case, the current administration- using a “speech act”. The speech act reframes a complex social, public health, and criminal issue (drug trafficking) as an existential threat to the nation. The lynchpin of this speech act is the term “narcoterrorism”. This word is a powerful political tool. It successfully moves the issue from a manageable public health and law enforcement problem to an imminent danger that demands a military response. The referent object, the thing to be protected, is explicitly defined as homeland security and the American people, who are portrayed as being under constant, existential assault from narco-terrorists.
A speech act, however, is merely rhetoric until a relevant audience accepts the issue as existential. This acceptance is the critical and often overlooked step. The administration’s narrative has been consistently reinforced through official statements, executive orders, and the dramatic publication of strike videos. The publication of these videos, for instance, is not merely a message to the enemy; it is a performance of the speech act for the domestic audience. It is designed to prove that the narco-terrorist threat is real and that the elimination policy is necessary and effective. This creates a powerful feedback loop. The audience has accepted this move, not because it was logical, but because the speech act effectively tapped into genuine public concerns about drug-related deaths and national security. This public and political acceptance, from the nodding junior officers to a compliant Congress, is the key that unlocks the next and most dangerous step: legitimizing extraordinary measures.
Because the audience accepted the existential threat framing, the securitizing actor successfully lifted the issue beyond the realm of normal, deliberative politics. This move establishes a zone of exception, a political space where normal rules, legal norms, and democratic procedures no longer apply. This zone of exception is precisely what has enabled the extraordinary measures that define this operation, from the deployment of II MEF and the Ford CSG to the shift from legal interdiction to kinetic elimination. It further allows the campaign to continue without congressional approval.
This significant disconnect between the stated threat and the nature of the U.S. response is the smoking gun. The extraordinary measures are poorly suited for counternarcotics but perfectly aligned with a long-standing, unstated political objective: regime change to a long-standing challenger to U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. As some institutions have noted, the current administration’s foreign policy focus on Latin America bears a resemblance to the age of the Monroe Doctrine and the Cold War’s spheres of influence, where regional hegemony was synonymous with national security. Operation Southern Spear is a clear embodiment of that very foreign policy.
The High Price of Securitization
The present administration, having made the securitization of Latin America a hallmark foreign policy approach, has embarked on a high-risk policy that is likely to fall short in its stated, unstated, and strategic objectives. The long-term risks of this strategy are profound, inviting historical failure, enabling geopolitical adversaries, and ultimately creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that undermines U.S. security.
The first risk flows directly from the creation of the zone of exception. When an issue is lifted beyond politics, long-term planning, diplomatic considerations, and uncomfortable questions about “what comes after” are dismissed as weak or obstructionist. The administration is myopically focused on toppling a regime while ignoring the clear, disastrous lessons of history. U.S.-led attempts at regime change fail far more often than they succeed. Even “successful” overthrows, such as in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, failed to lead to long-term stability and instead produced cycles of repression and violence. By focusing only on toppling the regime, the administration repeats the core error of Iraq and Libya. The securitization process directly causes this risk. Because the threat is existential, the only goal is its elimination, which precludes careful post-conflict planning. Decades of research confirm this: foreign-imposed regime change drastically increases the likelihood of civil war in the target state.
The second risk stems from the extraordinary measures. In choosing to employ “gunboat diplomacy” and extralegal killings, the administration abandons its primary advantage over its revisionist rivals and thus its leadership of a global system based on the rule of law. The United States abandons this high ground for the ‘law of the jungle’. This is not merely a reputational problem; it is a profound strategic gift to adversaries like China and Russia. It makes it all but impossible for the United States to make principled objections to others’ aggressive acts. When Beijing inevitably sinks a Philippine or Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea, President Xi can simply point to Washington’s unilateral and extralegal actions in Latin America as justification for its own actions. The U.S. unilaterally surrenders its moral authority and, in doing so, disarms its own diplomacy on the global stage.
These first two risks combine to create the ultimate securitization trap: a devastating, self-fulfilling prophecy. A commonly stated strategic objective for SOUTHCOM is to box out China from the Western Hemisphere. Previous means have included humanitarian aid, security cooperation, and the ultimate goal of becoming Latin America’s partner of choice. These have now taken a backseat to hard power and gunboat diplomacy. This method is guaranteed to backfire. It will inevitably bolster widespread anti-American sentiment and revitalize traumas from past interventions. This reaction is precisely what drives countries away from cooperation with Washington and leads them to search for a substitute, to seek alternative partners, including Beijing and Moscow. Herein lies the trap: the extraordinary measure taken to achieve regional hegemony thus becomes the primary cause of further Chinese influence. The policy is not only likely to fail; it is strategically guaranteed to accelerate the very outcome it hopes to deter.
Beyond the Facade
The language of deterrence, as applied to the new U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean, is a dangerous facade. The operation is a high-stakes political gambit, enabled by the successful securitization of the regional drug trade into an existential narco-terrorist threat. This process has allowed the administration to pursue a high-risk policy of regime change, trading the momentary satisfaction of gunboat diplomacy for long-term strategic risk. The U.S. public and its elected officials must be wary of this trap. The true enablers of this uncertain policy are not just the administration officials who authorize strikes or author the subsequent social media post, but all those in the audience, from the junior officers on watch in the Caribbean to members of Congress, who themselves nodded along and accepted the pretext of deterrence at face value. The first and most critical step toward a sounder, more sustainable policy is to pierce the veil of deterrence and call this operation what it is: a dangerous and counterproductive example of securitization.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed here belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the DoD or any of department of the United States Government.
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