A War On Drugs Or A War On Terror? Trump’s Military Pressure On Venezuela Blurs The Lines

WASHINGTON (AP) — The drug war under President Donald Trump looks a lot like the war on terrorism.

To support strikes against Latin American gangs and drug cartels, the Trump administration is relying on a legal argument that gained traction after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, allowing U.S. authorities to use lethal force against Al Qaeda fighters who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But the criminal groups now targeted by U.S. attacks are a very different enemy, emerging from Venezuelan prisons and fueled not by anti-Western ideology but by drug trafficking and other illicit enterprises.

Legal experts say Trump’s use of overwhelming military force to combat such groups, possibly authorizing covert action inside Venezuela to oust President Nicolás Maduro, pushes the limits of international law. It came as Trump expanded the military’s role at home by deploying the National Guard to US cities and said he was open to invoking the nearly 150-year-old Insurrection Act, which allows military deployment only in exceptional cases of civil unrest.

So far the army has killed at least 27 people five strokes on boats that the White House said were carrying drugs.

The last of the strikes took place on Tuesday. USA killed 6 people – occurred without any legal investigation or a traditional declaration of war by Congress. This raises questions about the justifications for Trump’s actions and the impact they may have on diplomatic relations with Latin American countries that remember with deep resentment repeated US military interventions during the Cold War.

US intelligence community also objected Trump’s main claim that the Maduro administration is working with the Tren de Aragua gang and organizing drug smuggling and illegal immigration to the United States

Trump’s claim that the United States is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels is based on the same legal authority that the Bush administration used to declare a war on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks. This includes the ability to capture and detain fighters and use lethal force to overthrow their leaders.

However, the United Nations charter specifically prohibits the use of force other than in self-defense.

“You can’t call something a war to give yourself war powers,” said Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania. “Although we are disappointed in the means and results of law enforcement efforts to combat the flow of drugs, it makes a mockery of international law to suggest that we are in a non-international armed conflict with the cartels.”

After 9/11, it was clear that Al Qaeda was actively planning additional attacks to kill civilians. However, the main purpose of the cartels is to sell drugs. Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech law professor who previously served as the Army’s senior adviser on law of war issues, said that, while detrimental to American security overall, is a dubious justification for invoking war powers.

“In my humble opinion, this is the government that wants to use war powers for many reasons, including political ones,” Corn said.

“Even assuming there was a gunfight with the train de Aragua, how do we know that everyone on that boat was an enemy combatant?” he said. “I think Congress needs to know this.”

Asked at the White House on Wednesday why the U.S. hasn’t used the Coast Guard to stop Venezuelan ships and seize any drugs, Trump said, “We’ve been doing this for 30 years and it’s been completely ineffective.”

The president also suggested that the United States could strike targets inside Venezuela, which would significantly increase tensions and legal risks. So far, attacks have occurred in international waters outside the jurisdiction of any country.

“We have stopped the flow of drugs almost entirely by sea,” Trump said. “Now we will stop this from land.”

Trump was also asked about a New York Times report saying he authorized a covert CIA operation in Venezuela. Trump, a harsh critic of the US invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, refused to say whether he had authorized the CIA to oust Maduro, saying it would be “ridiculous” to answer that.

Since the 1970s, numerous U.S. laws and executive orders have made it illegal to assassinate foreign officials. But in declaring Venezuelans illegal combatants, Trump may be trying to circumvent those restrictions and return to an earlier era when the United States regularly carried out covert regime change missions — in places like Guatemala, Chile and Iran.

“If you pose a threat and declare war on 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 narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. This year, the Justice Department doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million and accused him of being “one of the world’s largest drug traffickers.”

But Trump’s focus on Venezuela overlooks a fundamental truth of the drug trade: The majority of overdose deaths in America are caused by fentanyl transported overland from Mexico. Although Venezuela is a major drug transit zone, approximately 75% of the cocaine produced in world-leading Colombia is smuggled from the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.

According to the Constitution, Congress must be the one to declare war. But so far there is little indication that Trump’s allies will push back on the president’s expansionist view of his own power to go after cartels that the White House blames for the overdose deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year.

The GOP-controlled Senate recently rejected A. war powers The Democrat-sponsored resolution requires the president to get authorization from Congress before further military strikes.

Despite pressure even among some Republicans for a more complete disclosure, the Trump administration has yet to provide lawmakers with the basic evidence proving this. boats He was carrying drugs targeted by the US military Two US officials familiar with the matter he told the Associated Press. Independent Sen. King Angus of Maine said he and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were also denied access to the Pentagon’s legal opinion on whether the strikes complied with U.S. law, in a classified briefing this month.

Legal pressure is also unlikely to sway the White House. The Supreme Court decision, which stemmed from a 1973 Democratic congressman’s attempt to sue the Pentagon to stop the Vietnam War from spreading 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 their own hurdles after multiple Supreme Court decisions narrow the scope for foreign citizens to file lawsuits in the United States

The military strikes took place in international waters and opened the door for the International Criminal Court to launch an investigation similar to war crimes investigations against Russia and Israel, which, like the United States, do not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.

But the Hague-based court was consumed by a sexual harassment investigation that forced its chief prosecutor to step aside. The sanctions imposed by the USA due to its accusations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also prevented the organization’s work.