No es sorprendente que en el lado europeo las organizaciones delictivas que manejan la llegada y por lo tanto comparten los ingreso sean la Ndrangheta, las mafias de los Balcanes y que las mafias en Francia, Bélgica y Países Bajos usen la inmigración para reclutar adherentes pic.twitter.com/Oquq1ZrkeJ
— Nacho Montes de Oca (@nachomdeo) September 3, 2025
I have no idea if the strikes on boats, the coups along the Gulf of Guinea, and the crackdown on organized crime in Europe are all coordinated or even connected, but I do know that within a small time frame, a series of events have taken place that make it difficult to be involved in the drug trade at the beginning, middle, and end of Highway 10.
So how do you condense all of this into a concept we can discuss without getting lost in tropes about war for oil or American imperialism? Well, the first thing to do is give it a name to make it more manageable. The Highway Ten War feels succinct to me.
Then we can start assessing the why and how of it all. The first reason for the president to prioritize this route at this moment is that the first country in the route is an adversarial geopolitical entity that has given haven to our enemies. Such a presence at such a close range is unacceptable, and with the governing circle of that country accused of comprising a cartel involved in the drug trade, it becomes impossible to separate that threat from Highway 10.
The next geopolitical reality is President Trump’s pledge to take on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Although Nigeria isn’t one of the central locations along the drug route, the Islamist groups attacking Christians in Nigeria’s north benefit from the finances and arms resulting from the routes across the Sahel.
There’s also the United States’ alliance with France to consider. Not only have the French expressed concern at organized crime related to the Highway 10 drug route, but they have also seen their interests threatened by Russian expansion into countries along the route. This brings us to Russia and the possibility that targeting this route could help pressure Russia during negotiations with Ukraine.
Because events in Venezuela, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, and European organized crime have been treated as separate geopolitical events, rather than one issue connected by the Highway 10 route, certain questions have gone unasked in the public sphere. What level of coordination has gone on behind the scenes between the countries? We know that Russia has interests in Venezuela and the Sahel, but what is the extent of those interests, and how are they connected by the disruption of this route?
Unifying these conflicts under the label of the Highway Ten War can help the public identify the questions that have to be asked in order to create a more complete understanding of the geopolitical map as we discuss American actions in this realm.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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