What do you get when you merge a failed War on Drugs with an archaic War on Terror? We may be about to find out as President Donald Trump unleashes a legal, political, and military campaign against drug cartels, whom he has re-labelled as terrorist organizations. The tactics include blowing up small “go-fast” boats in the Caribbean, labeling Venezuelan President Maduro a cartel leader and then placing a $50 million bounty on him, and pushing a massive air, naval, and land military force into the Caribbean.

Is U.S. national security really threatened by the Mexican and Venezuelan cartels, including the bête noire of the moment, Tren de Aragua? If this is a “war” can it be won—and, if so, how would we know (one of the many problems with both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror framing)? Is the man who campaigned against forever wars starting a new forever war?

In this episode, host Alan Stoga explores these and other questions with Chris Dalby, Director and Founder of World of Crime and author of Tren de Aragua: The Guide to America’s Growing Criminal Threat, and Professor Clionadh Raleigh, President and CEO of ACLED and an expert on political violence and conflict data.

What do you think?  Is it war or performance art?

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ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Chris Dalby is a British and French investigative journalist based in the Netherlands.
He is the director of World of Crime and the Sports and Crime Briefing and has reported on organised crime for the past ten years. Much of his work focuses on cartel violence, political corruption and crime in sport. He previously worked as managing editor at InSight Crime, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Time magazine, Reuters, Open Democracy and Policing Insight.
He is the author of two books: CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico’s Deadliest Cartel and Tren de Aragua: The Guide to America’s Growing Criminal Threat.
He is the author of two books: CJNG: A Quick Guide to Mexico’s Deadliest Cartel and Tren de Aragua: The Guide to America’s Growing Criminal Threat.

Prof. Clionadh Raleigh created ACLED while writing her PhD in 2005. Since 2014, ACLED has operated as a non-profit, non-governmental organization in the United States.
While guiding the development of ACLED, she is also Professor of Political Violence and Geography in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK.
Cliona’s areas of expertise include the dynamics of conflict and violence, changing patterns of political violence and conflict data. Her work has also focused on African political environments and elite networks, and she has largely concentrated on subnational power dynamics and their influence on violent movements. In her intensive in-country research, she has engaged with questions on environmental change and violence patterns, and more recently, has developed new measures of civilian exposure to violence.