The video of a speech by President George W. Bush takes us back to the now almost unimaginable year of 2002. In it, Bush Jr. presents his administration’s new anti-drug policy. Still reacting to the September 11 attacks of the previous year, the former president says, bluntly: “Drug trafficking finances terrorist networks.”

Two and a half decades later, in October 2025, Rio de Janeiro governor Cláudio Castro ordered the police to carry out the deadliest operation in Brazilian history, in one of the city’s favelas. Dubbed “Operation Containment”, it was justified as a fight against drug trafficking and resulted in the deaths of 117 civilians and five police officers. On his X account, Castro defended the operation, saying that drug trafficking “is no longer a common crime, it’s narcoterrorism.”

Separated by time and space, the two statements are alike in their linking of drug trafficking with terrorism, a strategy that seeks to conflate public security measures with the fight against politically motivated violence. The idea of narcoterrorism, which suggests that seemingly distinct agents are working together to promote the suppression of fundamental rights, has become an obsession of the right and the far right. All in the name of security.

The operation in Venezuela revealed that the narcoterrorism charge is first and foremost a geopolitical instrument. Once Trump’s real objective was fulfilled — gain access to Venezuela’s oil — the cartel charge was discarded. Its power resides in its ability to commandeer global attention, justify extraordinary action, and mobilize institutional force under the banner of an existential threat. It is a narrative construct designed for the theater of international relations, not for the evidentiary rigor of a courtroom. Narcoterrorism, then, is a pretext: It transforms the targeted regime into a monstrosity that demands immediate, punitive action, thereby bypassing procedural hurdles and consensus-building.

Drugs and political insurgency

The word “narcoterrorism” was coined in the early 1980s to describe the supposed fusion of drug trafficking and violent political insurgency. It was initially applied to criminal cartels such as Bolivia’s Santa Cruz before being extended to ideological guerrilla movements such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC) and Peru’s Sendero Luminoso.

The term “narcoterrorism” relates to real, existing drug trafficking — a criminal trade focused on profit and control. But its function is political, linking that criminal activity to the aims and methods of political terror. This framing serves a specific purpose: It recasts a law enforcement issue as a national security threat, thereby enabling a specific response. Rather than rely on the police and the judiciary system, the state can resort to military action and legitimize international intervention. The full force of counter-terrorism measures can be applied to the realm of organized crime.

For the last four decades, “narcoterrorism” has served to legitimize and promote massive military interventions, substantially funded by the United States, and a public security approach based on the war paradigm, to the detriment of political solutions. In this way, the region north of the Andes became the initial laboratory for this strategy.