U.S. attacks on alleged narcotics trafficking boats continue unabated with little apparent concern for near-unanimous legal condemnation. The Trump administration justifies these attacks as an exercise of national self-defense against a non-state group engaged in armed conflict against the United States — two inherently defective legal assertions. The result is the targeting of drug cartels like Tren de Aragua with missile strikes. This is not bending the law, it is breaking it.
And now we know addressing what is inherently a law enforcement threat with wartime authority has led to an emerging scandal over a reported “double tap” strike that killed survivors of an initial attack, allegedly responsive to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive to “kill them all.” Further investigation is necessary to establish the ground-truth of what may have been an illegal attack — even in the context of an armed conflict. But it is the invalid assertion of wartime attack authority that set the conditions for this latest scandal. Had this boat been dealt with through the law enforcement framework, there would not have been a first strike, much less the reported double tap.
Nonetheless, at least two international law commentators have endorsed this theory of legality, specifically the legitimacy of treating the activities of narco-trafficking groups as an “armed attack” triggering the inherent right of self-defense. Another editorial asserted invocation of “wartime” legal authority represents an arguably logical evolution of international law. This argument is premised on the theory that the administration’s interpretations of international law merely build upon previous invocations of analogous authority by the United States to engage in hostilities against non-state groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
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