The Trump administration has presented several dubious legal and rhetorical arguments for these controversial—and unlawful —operations. Many center around “narco-terrorism,” a designation that President Donald Trump presents as a self-evident justification for the use of military force.

Since early September, the U.S. military has launched a series of deadly attacks against suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, resulting in the deaths of at least 70 people so far.

Since early September, the U.S. military has launched a series of deadly attacks against suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, resulting in the deaths of at least 70 people so far.

The Trump administration has presented several dubious legal and rhetorical arguments for these controversial—and unlawful—operations. Many center around “narco-terrorism,” a designation that President Donald Trump presents as a self-evident justification for the use of military force.

Understanding the real history of the term “narco-terrorism” is now more important than ever. To be sure, there have long been links between narcotics trafficking and terrorism. Some drug gangs use terrorist tactics to intimidate governments and rivals, while some terrorist groups use drug sales to fund their activity.

But conflating the many, tangled relationships between terror and trafficking under the single heading of narco-terrorism is a recipe for bad policy. From the 1980s to the present, narco-terrorism has been invoked to justify hyper-militarized policies that consistently prove ineffective in stemming drugs and violence alike.

Since it first emerged out of Latin America in the early 1980s, the term narco-terrorism has been given multiple, often contradictory, definitions. The term was reportedly first used by then-Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry after Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group, attacked a prison and later a police station in 1982. He described the attack as “narco-terrorism—the union of the vice of narcotics with the violence of terrorism.”

Over the years, the “union” between drug traffickers and guerilla groups in Peru took various forms. Shining Path protected coca farmers in the areas that it controlled from government eradication efforts, before itself transitioning into