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During a speech Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed that Donald Trump could use force “as he sees fit” in regards to the deadly airstrikes on ‘cartel' vessels. The strikes have killed at least 80 people over the last four months, and have faced international scrutiny, with experts calling them ‘illegal'. Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, claimed that he was “utterly shocked that the United States would do this [the strikes],”.
“It shows that the Trump administration has no respect for international law or conventions around the use of force… This has to stop from within the US itself.”
Hegseth comments
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly voted into the role after strong support from Donald Trump, made comments on Saturday, claiming, “If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”
The statements, which read like veiled threats directed at every nation on the globe, are attempting to dismiss valid criticism about the deadly air strikes on sea vessels in Latin America. Hegseth compared the ‘cartel vessels' to Al-Qaeda units, using the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to justify a response to a completely different issue. Hegseth also mentioned China and Russia during the speech, repeating Trump's vow to ramp up nuclear weapons testing to match that of the two controversial nations. China and Russia have no conducted explosive nuclear tests in decades, but the Kremlin confirmed it would restart said testing if the US goes ahead with its own tests.
Hegseth gave the speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event that brings top national security experts from around the country together. Hegseth argued that Trump is Ronald Reagan's “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy. He said all of this while criticizing republicans from the last ten years, claiming their strategy of ‘democracy building' didn't work.
“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building,”
Four months of airstraikes
The US began initiating airstrikes on Venezuelan ships in the Caribbean Sea in September, under the guise of fighting narco-terrorism. Donald Trump, backed by Hegseth, outlined his mission to battle ‘maritime drug trafficking' in Latin America after the first strike. That first strike came on September 2, when an American military vessel sank a 39-foot speedboat filled with “a considerable amount of cargo.” This initial strike was one of the more legitimate, with the vessel hailing from a known trafficking centre, and multiple sources supporting the US's accusations of it being a criminal vessel. 11 people were killed in the first strike, according to Trump, all of them members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
Over the next six weeks, Trump carried out another four strikes, killing 16. There were drugs recovered in only one of the strikes. Venezuela has claimed that at least one of the boats attacked was a fishing vessel. Additionally, at least two of the victims have been confirmed as Colombian citizens without any attachment to the country of Venezuela, nor its organized crime groups. “These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,” Hegseth wrote. Now, at least 87 people have been killed by American airstrikes since the initial attack on September 2.
Are the strikes legal?
Experts are split on whether these attacks are lawful or not. On the one hand, Donald Trump is not technically breaking American law. As president, he is designated “Commander in Chief” of the army, meaning he has the power to order attacks against military targets. Even if Trump isn't violating National law, he's certainly breaking international law. Prof Luke Moffett of Queen's University Belfast, a human rights expert, claims that the attacks must be “reasonable and necessary in self-defence where there is an immediate threat of serious injury or loss of life to enforcement officials,” to count as self-defence. He claims the attacks are “unlawful under the law of the sea,” as the vessels were in international waters and posed no immediate violent threat to the US.
Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin, another human rights expert, says that the US is “stretching the meaning of the term [self-defense] beyond it's breaking point,” and that “Labelling everyone a terrorist does not make them a lawful target and enables states to side-step international law.” Whether Trump is directly violating international law is irrelevant (we'll direct your attention to international crimes committed in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, all gone unenforced by the UN). What is relevant is the fact that innocent people are being killed. It's been confirmed that at least three of the vessels sunk were ships being used by drug cartels, but at least three of them were not.
