#panama-reconnaissance

#panama-reconnaissance

The idea for a new canal to move oil from the Middle East had emerged two decades earlier, in the context of another Middle East conflict, the Suez crisis. In 1956, Egypt seized the Suez Canal from British and French control, causing the price of oil to spike for European consumers.

The January 3rd Operation Absolute Resolve ousted Venezuelan Dictator Nicholas Maduro, marking a significant shift in US policy towards countering adversarial influence in the western hemisphere.

The German Federal Prosecutor's Office ordered the arrest of two individuals accused of spying on a businessman supplying drones to Ukraine for military use.

Sunday's attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls "narcoterrorists" in small vessels in early September. As with most of the military's statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes.

The Trump adminstration has pledged a renewed focus on Latin America, which it has described as the 'Trump Corollary' to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine which back then sought to ban European incursions in the Americas. The White House has billed the summit as the founding of the 'Americas Counter Cartel Coalition' which they described as a new military partnership with leaders in the region.

It was not just another bombastic statement in the Republican's provocative style it was the first visible sign of a policy that once again places the region under U.S. oversight. Trump revived old interventionist instincts by interfering in Honduras's presidential election and threatening to cut aid to Central American governments as leverage to force them into agreements aimed at curbing migration.

At the direction of the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted three lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations, Southern Command said in the statement, which as has become customary was accompanied by a video showing the boats exploding after being hit by a missile. Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations, it added.

US Coast Guard tactical teams worked closely with its counterparts at the Departments of War, Department of Justice and State and used their specialized expertise to conduct these operations and conduct two safe, effective boardings within hours of each other. One of these tankers, Motor Tanker Bella I, has been trying to evade the Coast Guard for weeks, even changing its flag and painting a new name on the hull while being pursued, in a desperate and failed attempt to escape justice.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued notices to airlines, urging them to exercise caution over Mexico and other Central American countries, as well as Ecuador and Colombia, due to military activities. On Friday, the FAA released a series of advisories that come amid an ongoing US military buildup in the Latin America region, including US military attacks on Venezuela, and US President Donald Trump's warning to Cuba and threats of strikes against drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia,

The US military on Thursday said it killed two people in a strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal drugs in the eastern Pacific. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," the US Southern Command posted on X. It added that "no US military forces were harmed" in the operation. The statement did not offer any evidence that the boat pictured was actually carrying narcotics before it was blown up in the attack.

The word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission, an extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the western hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise. Failure of one component of this well-oiled machine would have endangered the entire mission.

American Airlines is adding 3,000 additional seats by adding flights and using larger planes in the Caribbean region. JetBlue says it expects to resume normal operations as well. A look at air traffic from Flightradar24 shows empty airspace over the weekend. There was minimal activity across the eastern Caribbean. Airlines cancelled over 1,000 flights nationwide on Saturday in part due to the Caribbean airspace closures, as well as other factors like weather.