President Donald Trump said the US would be “starting” land strikes on drug operations in Latin America, though again declined to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign would actually begin, or if countries could still do anything to avert the threatened action.
“We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, and now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office.
The US president for days has been pledging to broaden the effort, which comes after the Pentagon has launched a series of attacks on what it has called drug-smuggling boats in international waters off the coast of South America.
While Trump’s posturing has largely been seen as a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he on Friday insisted the land targeting may not only impact Venezuela.
Read more: Trump Says US Eyes Land Strikes Next After Drug Boat Attacks
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Venezuela,” he said, adding that “people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.”
Trump has justified the actions in part by framing the fight against drug smuggling as akin to combat operations. He told reporters that if overdose deaths were counted like combat deaths, it would be “like a war that would be unparalleled.”
Striking targets on land would represent a major escalation, and Maduro earlier this week said that if his nation came under foreign attack, the working class should mount a “general insurrectionary strike” and push for “an even more radical revolution.”