Geopolitics
Legal Issues Raised by a Lethal U.S. Military Attack in the Caribbean
On Sept. 2nd, the Trump administration announced what it described as a “lethal strike” against an alleged drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean. In a post on social media accompanied with a video of the strike, President Donald Trump stated that the attack was “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.” Trump also noted that Tren de Aragua had previously been designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). The social media post also asserted that the strike had occurred in international waters and killed “11 terrorists.”
An Extraordinary and Unsettling Action
The Trump administration’s military attack on this alleged smuggling vessel is not only extraordinary and unsettling in its own right, but also because of the context in which it occurs and for what it may portend for future action.
The use of lethal force in this attack appears gratuitous and the administration has not explained why law enforcement tools were inadequate to address the situation. Of a piece with the deployment of troops to U.S. cities, the strike is an unnecessary and performative use of the U.S. military—a use that is legally fraught at best. (Indeed, Trump threatened Chicago with a troop deployment in the same Oval Office appearance in which he announced the strike.) And the use of lethal force against these supposed terrorists is ominous both because the Trump administration has vowed further such strikes in Latin America and because this administration has deployed the “terrorist” label more broadly domestically, including against migrants and political opponents.
Congress—which has largely been missing in action this year—needs to reassert its own prerogatives over war powers and the use of these military tools as the White House seeks to further abuse these instruments both abroad and at home.
https://www.justsecurity.org/119982/legal-issues-military-attack-carribean/