After sending America’s most advanced aircraft carrier — the $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford — to the Caribbean, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. mission in the Southern hemisphere would become a Pentagon priority.
Hegseth wrote: “Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and @SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it.”
President Trump ordered action — and the Department of War is delivering.
Today, I’m announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR.
Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and @SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our…
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) November 13, 2025
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey responded to Hegseth’s “Southern Spear Operation” on social media by writing: “Massive US Navy battle group in the Caribbean. Lethal. High tech. Use it or lose it. In search of a mission. Ineffective for anti drug ops. Unlikely to bring down Maduro. Massive increase in cocaine production next door in Colombia. Strategy by whim.”
Massive US Navy battle group in the Caribbean. Lethal. High tech. Use it or lose it. In search of a mission. Ineffective for anti drug ops. Unlikely to bring down Maduro. Massive increase in cocaine production next door in Colombia. Strategy by whim.
— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) November 16, 2025
[Note: The U.S., which has already begun attacking and destroying small vessels it claims are piloted by narco-terrorists, has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of having ties to the illegal drug trade, portraying him as the de facto head of the criminal organization Cartel de los Soles — a charge Maduro denies.]
McCaffrey, who also served as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (a.k.a. Drug Czar) during the Clinton administration, published the essay “The Drug Scourge as a Hemispheric Problem” in August 2001 (U.S. Army War College Press).
In the essay, McCaffrey argued that “Colombia’s 40 million citizens must not be deserted by their neighbors. Leaving the Colombians to deal in isolation with a pervasive drug problem will deeply affect all 800 million of us in the Western Hemisphere through addiction, violence, and corruption,” and that “the United States and the entire international community must support a long-term commitment to Plan Colombia and to building cooperative multinational approaches to the tough drug-associated problems that face us all.”
Note: U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) — are concerned that the Pentagon is, as McCaffrey implies, spoiling for a larger fight on the basis of drug trafficking and have condemned the “extrajudicial” attacks on alleged trafficking vessels.
“In order to wage war, you need approval from Congress,” conservative pundit Justin Haskins wrote this week, sharing Sen. Paul’s stance, “and to do so without Congressional approval is a violation of the Constitution.”
In order to wage war, you need approval from Congress. You don’t have it. Why is @RandPaul one of the only conservatives in Congress talking about this? It seems so obvious that this is a violation of the Constitution. pic.twitter.com/Jf4txsRp69
— Justin T. Haskins (@JustinTHaskins) November 17, 2025