News that U.S. soldiers were deployed to Ecuador last month to fight drug-trafficking cartels deserves more attention than it has received. A trademark pledge of President Trump is to stay out of “endless wars.”Yet if ever there were a conflict destined to go on forever, it’s the armed effort to defeat the suppliers of mind-altering substances in the face of robust consumer demand.

This isn’t to dismiss out of hand the Shield of the Americas, the new U.S. regional security initiative under which the Ecuador mission was launched. The State Department says the goal of the hemispheric project, unveiled in March, is to pull together “likeminded allies” to “work together to advance strategies that stop foreign interference in our hemisphere, criminal and narco-terrorist gangs and cartels, and illegal and mass immigration.”