The Trump Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy Takes Aim at Drug Cartels

Excerpt

President Donald Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy is an unapologetic, hard-hitting political manifesto that prioritizes the targeting of drug cartels over the usual emphasis on Islamic extremists. The political language may not be to the liking of some readers, but the document’s focus is groundbreaking.

Approximately 80,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2024, and another 700 to 1,500 were killed in drug-related violence. This is in contrast to the fewer than 4,000 Americans who have been killed on US soil from Islamic terrorism over the past 25 years, including the 2,977 murdered on September 11, 2001.

Given that the majority of drugs are imported to our soil by cartels based in the western hemisphere, drug-related deaths and violence in America are a clear national security threat, many orders of magnitude greater than that posed by Islamist terrorists. In a marked departure from prior counterterrorism strategies, the 2026 document prioritizes the fight against narco-terrorists as its America First focus on keeping our citizenry safe.

While the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act and similar legislative initiatives have been modestly effective in combating the drug cartels, the designation of these groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) gives law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the military expanded powers to tackle these destructive organizations head-on. 

Joe Zacks is the CIA’s former deputy assistant director for counterterrorism and an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.