Remote warfare in the ‘backyard’: the US government, counternarcotics, and remote warfare in Latin America

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Recent years have seen the introduction of practices that may be described as ‘remote warfare’ to the conflicts caused by the interplay of narcotics prohibition and organized crime in Latin America. Remote warfare is characterized by the indirect, sometimes clandestine deployment of military, intelligence and law enforcement capabilities by outside actors – in the case of Latin America, typically the U.S. – in order to further their aims against structures of organized crime. The main types of remote warfare practices that have been reported in Latin America consist in the use of private military companies, the provision of support (including military hardware, training, and the deployment of special operations forces alongside local actors), and intelligence support of different types. Remote warfare practices have, besides the human rights problems inherent in many of them, led to at least three distinct types of problems, namely (1) unpredictable effects regarding the original policy aims, (2) serious problems of legitimacy for the intervening actor due to the clandestine nature of its operations, and (3) the possible dependence on local actors, who may pursue aims that may be entirely different or from or even incompatible with those of the intervening actor.