Paul R. Pillar
The Trump administration’s lethal airstrikes on small boats off the coast of South America are highly irregular on multiple grounds. The administration has presented almost no evidence to support its contention that the people killed on the boats were running drugs into the United States. President Donald Trump has cited deaths of Americans from drugs as the principal rationale for the lethal action, while greatly exaggerating the number of drug overdoses in the United States. But most of the drug deaths involve fentanyl coming from Mexico rather than cocaine from South America. Venezuela—the origin of the boats hit in the earliest strikes—does not even play a major role in the cocaine trade.
The administration has made no attempt to argue that the usual method of dealing with drug trafficking—non-lethal interdiction, with arrests of the people and seizure of the drugs—was infeasible. The attacks have amounted to summary executions of individuals, with no due process and no right to mount a defense in a court of law. The executions are for purported crimes that, under US law, do not involve a death penalty.
The administration’s statements have fostered confusion about whether it is combating mainly state action or the independent work of nonstate actors. Trump has tried to tie anything bad coming out of Venezuela, including drug trafficking, to the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Trump asserts that the gang known as Tren de Aragua is “operating under the control of” Maduro, an assertion that an assessment by the US intelligence community contradicts.
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