On Tuesday, Donald Trump declared that the US military just sunk one very bad boat carrying drugs. This operation occurred in international waters off the coast of Venezuela and caused the death of all six persons on board. If confirmed as a U.S. strike, this would be the fifth deadly U.S. strike in the Caribbean region as tensions rise around the region’s drug trafficking operations.
Only months ago, high-ranking officials from the Trump administration proclaimed that the U.S. had entered a new “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Not long after that announcement, the strike was on. Inevitably, the frequency of these strikes is increasing. This trend has raised deep alarm over the impacts of using military force against suspected narcos.
After the strike Trump posted this video. He’s not the first to do this – Secretary of State Tillerson has done this to re-assert U.S. leadership in the fight against drug trafficking. He stated that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the operation and emphasized that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks.”
“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” – Donald Trump
Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the incident in unequivocal terms. In 2008, he expressed concern about emerging evidence indicating that Colombians were aboard the vessel that was hit. The White House was quick to respond to Petro’s remarks. They characterized them as “baseless and reprehensible” and threatened a retraction.
Internationally, the U.S. strikes have faced sharp criticism. In September, specialists at the United Nations denounced these military actions. They termed these extrajudicial executions, which posed fundamental challenges to their legality under international law. UN experts argued that “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers.”
In response, the U.S. government defends its trilateral actions as necessary defensive moves to protect against rising threats from Tren de Aragua. In 2017, this group was formally designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. The strikes are the latest moves in an ongoing U.S. campaign to dismantle the drug cartels that control swathes of the region.
The U.S. Senate just put forth a strong effort to rein in military operations against vessels suspected of transporting drugs. They failed to get congressional approval for these harmful limitations. Almost all of the Republican side and Democratic Senator John Fetterman voted against it. Such opposition only serves to underscore the overwhelming support from these very lawmakers for ongoing, endless military engagement.
The recent events described above serve to illustrate an alarming trend. The escalation of military force to combat drug trafficking increases the likelihood of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.