The drone bombs from the U.S. Southern Command, which have destroyed more than a dozen vessels off the coast of Venezuela, reverberate for miles around. And not only because the Trump administration expanded the theater of operations of the current counter-narcotics offensive toward the United States, sinking several boats in the Pacific Ocean.

I'm referring to the fact that, following these thunderous drone strikes, countries with governments of all political stripes have aligned themselves with the hardline policy against drug trafficking.

It was no surprise when the president of Ecuador and White House ally, Daniel Noboa, recently confirmed that the Armed Forces are maintaining operations against illegal mining, which generally fuels the cartels, in the north of the country.

Spectacular images circulated on social media of cannon fire against mountains that were left smoking in the distance, in the Andean province of Imbabura. There were arrests, including members of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a dissident group from the former socialist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In a statement, Noboa said he would not back down “in the face of pressure and threats.” This came after a car bomb exploded in the financial and commercial center of Guayaquil, killing a passerby and injuring 30 others. It is believed to be “retaliation” for the operations carried out in the Andes.

In Brazil, Claudio Castro, governor of Rio de Janeiro, launched an operation last week against Comando Vermelho. This criminal group, which emerged in the 1980s allied with Colombian cartels and traffics drugs such as cocaine, has its main stronghold in the overcrowded and impoverished favelas of Rio.

Today, it is a veritable army, as Operation Containment demonstrated: long guns, drones dropping bombs on law enforcement, and influencers romanticizing the image of the criminal group. The result was a fierce battle that left more than 100 dead, with decapitated and disfigured bodies.

Comando Vermelho has transcended the narrow passages of the favelas to become a national and international threat, with significant influence in prisons throughout the country, according to the organization InSight Crime. The Amazonas region and western Mato Grosso are secondary strongholds, and the group maintains a strong presence in Bolivia, where it obtains “a good portion of its cocaine.”

It is no coincidence that Governor Castro declared: “This is no longer common crime, it is narco-terrorism,” using a term very much in line with that used by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who compares the cartels to al-Qaeda.

Castro revealed, in an interesting note, that the federal government of socialist Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva abandoned him in his war against drug trafficking. There was no intervention by federal forces in Tuesday’s operation, which was planned in advance.

On the other side of the continent, the Mexican government, led by the leftist Morena party, also took steps (albeit reluctantly) to cooperate with U.S. efforts. After Hegseth reported days earlier that the Army had eliminated 14 people and seized four boats belonging to drug traffickers in international waters of the Eastern Pacific, the Mexican Navy stated that it was participating in the search for a survivor.

Furthermore, Mexico put its regional partner, Cuba, on alert when a major drug trafficker of Chinese origin, Zhi Dong Zhang (associated with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels), escaped from house arrest in Mexico and fled to Havana.

The kingpin, who had more than a dozen aliases and was responsible for trafficking large quantities of methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl, was handed over to Mexico by Cuba a few days ago, and then to the United States. The Castro regime, which for decades has sheltered terrorists, is now “cooperating” under duress because of the troop movements in the Southern Caribbean.

Cuba has a long history of supporting drug trafficking to the United States as a weapon to weaken the northern nation, a practice that peaked in the 1980s with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Colombian cartels.

But as is clearly evident, there’s no better medicine than the sound of drones flying low to get almost any government to cooperate with international law or “abandon” its bad habits.