‘America falls victim to its own pre-emptive doctrine’

This is apropos a letter to the Editor titled ‘America falls victim to its own pre-emptive doctrine’ carried by the newspaper yesterday.

Colombia faces parallel pressure. American intelligence asserts that Colombian networks have expanded trafficking corridors and that the government has not done enough to stop them. In response, US forces have conducted over 50 targeted seizure-and-destruction missions against Colombian-linked maritime and aerial assets. Colombia’s leadership has called these actions coercive violations of sovereignty, warning that repeated strikes “may compel defensive measures.” In both nations, US interdictions are no longer viewed as anti-drug operations but as the early stages of a pre-emptive war doctrine extending into sovereign territory.

This rapid escalation is not new. It mirrors the same pattern witnessed in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, where preventive-strike logic produced catastrophic long-term consequences. After the 2003 Iraq invasion—justified by fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction—extremist movements multiplied. The world soon witnessed the Madrid bombings of 2004 (193 killed), London bombings of 2005 (52 killed), Paris attacks of 2015 (130 killed), Brussels bombings of 2016 (32 killed), and the Nice massacre (86 killed). These were not isolated tragedies. They were the direct blowback of destabilizing entire societies under the banner of preventive security.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025