Washington– WASHINGTON (AP) — Under President Donald Trump, the drug war looks a lot like the war on terrorism.
To support strikes against Latin American cartels and drug cartels, the Trump administration is relying on a legal argument that gained momentum after the attacks of September 11, 2001, which allowed US authorities to use lethal force against al-Qaeda fighters who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
However, the criminal groups targeted by US strikes now represent a completely different enemy. They originated in Venezuelan prisons, and are fed not by anti-Western ideology, but by drug trafficking and other illicit enterprises.
Legal scholars say Trump’s use of overwhelming military force to fight such groups and allow covert action inside Venezuela, possibly to oust President Nicolas Maduro, exceeds the bounds of international law. It comes as Trump expands the military’s domestic role, deploying the National Guard to US cities and saying he is open to invoking the nearly 150-year-old Insurrection Act, which allows military deployment only in exceptional cases of civil unrest.
The army has so far killed at least 27 people Five hits On boats that the White House said were carrying drugs.
The strikes – the last of which came on Tuesday, where The United States killed six people – It occurred without any legal investigation or traditional declaration of war from Congress. This raises questions about the justifications for Trump’s actions and their impact on diplomatic relations with Latin American countries that remember with deep resentment the repeated US military interventions during the Cold War.
US intelligence community It has also been disputed Trump’s central claim is that the Maduro administration is working with the Tren de Aragua cartel and coordinating drug trafficking and illegal immigration into the United States.
Trump’s assertion that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels is based on the same legal authority that the Bush administration used when it declared the war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks. This includes the ability to arrest and detain combatants and use lethal force to eliminate their leadership.
But the UN Charter specifically prohibits the use of force except in self-defense.
“You can’t call something war to give yourself war powers,” said Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania. “Although we are frustrated with the means and results of law enforcement efforts to combat the flow of drugs, it is a mockery of international law to suggest that we are in a non-international armed conflict with gangs.”
After the events of September 11, it was clear that Al Qaeda was actively planning additional attacks aimed at killing civilians. But the gangs’ main ambition is to sell drugs. That, while damaging to American security overall, is a questionable justification for invoking war powers, said Jeffrey Korn, a law professor at the University of Texas who previously served as the Army’s senior adviser on law of war issues.
“This is a government, in my humble opinion, that wants to invoke war powers for many reasons” — including political ones, Korn said.
“Even if we assume that there was an armed conflict with the Tren de Aragua, how do we know that everyone in that boat was an enemy combatant?” He said. “I think Congress needs to know that.”
When asked at the White House on Wednesday why the United States did not use the Coast Guard to stop Venezuelan ships and confiscate any drugs, Trump replied: “We’ve been doing it for 30 years and it’s been completely ineffective.”
The president also indicated that the United States may strike targets inside Venezuela, a move that would significantly escalate tensions and legal risks. To date, strikes have occurred in international waters outside the jurisdiction of any single country.
“We stopped it almost completely by sea,” Trump said of the flow of drugs. “Now we will stop him by land.”
Trump was also asked about a New York Times report saying he authorized a secret CIA operation in Venezuela. Trump, who strongly criticized the 2003 US invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government, declined to say whether he had given the CIA the authority to eliminate Maduro, saying the response would be “ridiculous.”
Several US laws and executive orders since the 1970s make it illegal to assassinate foreign officials. But by declaring the Venezuelans to be illegal combatants, Trump may be seeking to avoid those restrictions and return to an earlier era in which the United States — in places like Guatemala, Chile and Iran — regularly carried out covert regime change missions.
“If you pose a threat, waging war against the United States, you are not a protected person,” Finkelstein said.
During Trump’s first term, Maduro was indicted on US federal drug charges, including drug terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. This year, the Justice Department doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, accusing him of being “one of the world’s largest drug traffickers.”
But Trump’s focus on Venezuela ignores a fundamental fact about the drug trade: the bulk of American overdose deaths are due to fentanyl, which is transported overland from Mexico. Although Venezuela is considered a major drug transit area, about 75% of the cocaine produced in Colombia, the world’s leading country, is smuggled through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.
Under the Constitution, it must be Congress that declares war. However, there is still no sign that Trump’s allies will back down from the president’s expansive view of his authority to go after the cartels that the White House blames for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths each year.
Recently GOP-controlled Senate They voted against A War forces A Democratic-sponsored resolution would have required the president to obtain authorization from Congress before launching further military strikes.
Despite pressure even among some Republicans for a more complete account, the Trump administration has yet to provide lawmakers with key evidence to prove it. Boats The one targeted by the US Army was carrying drugs. Two US officials familiar with the matter He told the Associated Press. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine said he and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in a classified briefing this month were also denied access to the Pentagon’s legal opinion on whether the strikes complied with U.S. law.
The legal response is unlikely to affect the White House either. The Supreme Court decision stemming from a Democratic congresswoman’s 1973 attempt to sue the Pentagon to stop the spread of the Vietnam War into neighboring Laos and Cambodia sets a high bar for any legal challenge to military orders, Finkelstein said.
Meanwhile, relatives of Venezuelans killed in boat attacks face hurdles of their own in the wake of several Supreme Court rulings that narrowed the scope for foreign nationals to sue in the United States.
The military strikes took place in international waters, opening the door for the ICC to launch an investigation modeled after its war crimes investigations against Russia and Israel — which, like the United States, do not recognize the court’s authority.
But the court, based in The Hague, became preoccupied with investigations into sexual misconduct, forcing the chief prosecutor to step down. US sanctions due to its accusation against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also hindered its work.