The U.S. strike that blew up an alleged Venezuelan drug-running boat in the Caribbean, killing 11 people, marked a dramatic escalation in President Donald Trump’s hard-line strategy toward Latin America led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

It may be just the start.

Tuesday’s attack was the culmination of Trump’s years-long interest in using unprecedented — and legally questionable — force against drug cartels. In 2020 he mused about launching missiles to blow up fentanyl labs in Mexico, according to then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

Now, more than seven months into his second term, Trump is unencumbered by the warnings of more moderate advisers. And in Rubio he has an aide who has spent his career drawing a tough stance against socialist leaders in Cuba and, since the Hugo Chavez era, Venezuela.

“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said of the cartels, speaking to reporters in Mexico City this week. “And it’ll happen again.”

Rubio, 54, has long linked President Nicolas Maduro to the unfettered drug trafficking U.S. officials say emanates from Venezuela. And while Trump’s top diplomat hasn’t always been front-and-center when it comes to talks on global crises in places like Ukraine and the Middle East, he appears to have come out on top of an internal power struggle in the administration when it comes to Latin America.

“Trump likes him and trusts him,” said Kimberly Breier, an assistant secretary of state during Trump’s first term who previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. “He’s playing an incredibly important, multiple-hats role.”

While Rubio was a fierce Trump rival a decade ago when they both pursued the Republican presidential nomination, he has since become one of his most loyal lieutenants, with Trump praising him at a cabinet meeting last month by saying “I think you’re born for this job.”

Rubio’s move to the top of policy making on Latin America seemed obvious when he was picked to be secretary of state. The former Florida senator is steeped in the region’s politics and even kicked off his run for the presidency in 2015 at Miami’s Freedom Tower, where a generation of Cuban immigrants were processed after fleeing Fidel Castro’s rule.

But early this year there appeared to be conflicting priorities within the administration over how much to engage with Maduro. The U.S. wanted the strongman to accept Venezuelan deportees, while American companies sought to bolster energy production from the OPEC member. Rubio had long been skeptical about the value of negotiating with Maduro. He appears to have won out, for now.

“Rubio has been a constant advocate for a harder line in U.S. policy towards Latin America, and he’s certainly using his new position to advance that approach,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow and Venezuela researcher at the Atlantic Council.

Trump and Rubio are united by their view that drug cartels have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and are a threat to national security. The president has deployed naval vessels and thousands of troops to Caribbean waters. Tren de Aragua, the gang Trump linked to the destroyed boat, was designated a terrorist group in February, giving it the same status as al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

The aggressive approach comes directly from Trump, with Rubio as the administration’s main implementer, according to people familiar with the deliberations who asked not be identified discussing them publicly. But it’s a strategy that easily fits into Rubio’s history of advocating tougher moves against what he sees as anti-democratic regimes from Havana to Beijing.

Asked to comment, Tommy Pigott, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, said that Trump leads America’s foreign policy and that Rubio is part of an “all-star team” that has “achieved historic results.”

From his early days as secretary of state, Rubio pressed Latin American governments to confront drug cartels, curb China’s influence and stop undocumented migration. In a meeting this week in Ecuador, a close ally, Rubio said the U.S. would be open to once again basing troops in the country, a move that would be seen as adding pressure on both the cartels and Venezuela.

Back in Caracas, Maduro said the U.S. is trying to intimidate his nation in order to take its oil. He responded on Thursday by sending two F-16 jets over a U.S. warship in international waters off Venezuela’s coast, according to the Pentagon. Trump said Friday he’d shoot down planes if they put the U.S. in a “dangerous position.” He said Venezuela’s “been a very bad actor.”

Critics denounced the boat attack by the U.S. as an extrajudicial killing that violates the law and endangers civilians.

“The use of lethal force in this context has absolutely no justification,” said Daphne Eviatar, the director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA.

Those arguments aren’t likely to deter the administration. Rubio’s comments suggest such operations could become more common.

“This is a counterterrorism playbook, not your old counternarcotics playbook,” said Breier. “People need to understand that.”

Cocaine boom

For Rubio, the issues are personal. The Miami he grew up in during the 1980s was dominated by anti-Castro politics and the cocaine boom fueled by Colombian cartels. But there’s a cautionary note in that: U.S. pressure over decades never ousted the Cuban regime, and Rubio’s condemnation and threats against the Castros, Maduro and his predecessor, Chavez, go back more than a decade.

In 2018, Rubio said the Maduro regime was on “borrowed time.” A year later he said Venezuela’s government was running out of money and that Maduro’s “days are numbered.” Yet the Venezuelan leader has held on, with support from Cuba, China and other allies.

Rubio — who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser — dodged a question Tuesday about the ultimate scope of U.S. objectives toward a Venezuelan regime that he’s called a drug cartel and a leader he says is illegitimate.

“We’re going to take on drug cartels wherever they are and wherever they’re operating against the interest of the United States,” he told reporters in Florida. “I’m not going to speculate about what might come down the road.”

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