More than five decades ago, Richard Nixon launched a “war on drugs”. The drugs won. Now Donald Trump is turning a failed metaphor into a worse reality.

On Tuesday the US president claimed that the military had killed 11 drug traffickers from Venezuela, posting footage of the strike that US officials said took place on a speedboat in international waters in the Caribbean. The administration supplied no evidence for its claim that the boat contained Tren de Aragua members, or drugs, and gave varying accounts of its destination. It also warned that there was more to come, with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, arguing that intercepting boats had not curbed the drugs problem: “What will stop them is when you blow them up.” Earlier this year, Mr Trump secretly ordered the use of military force against cartels internationally.

With US warships patrolling the coast of Venezuela – and F35 fighter jets reportedly dispatched to Puerto Rico – some fear that this could be pretext for a disastrous intervention, as its president, Nicolás Maduro, has........

© The Guardian