MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. Operation Southern Spear against drug cartels announced by US War Secretary Pete Hegseth will sooner or later backfire on the United States and its army, which has had no real combat experience in recent years, a Russian expert told TASS.
"The question of who this 'spear' is going to hit will depend on the accumulative boomerang effect of this aggressive and largely criminal venture. As for the pressure on Latin American countries that don’t want to bend to Washington, the spring cannot be compressed endlessly. A response may splash out in very serious local hostilities and as a result in significant losses for the US army," said Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Latin America.
"Viewing the current state of combat readiness realistically, the US army has had no meaningful combat experience recently, having operated typically from a distance against isolated and poorly-trained opponents," he explained, adding that the Latin American countries against which Washington’s campaign is geared towards have a strong defense potential that can offer serious resistance in case of ground operations.
