The United States has considerably increased its processing policy for organized crime groups as terrorists with a deadly missile strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean.
President Donald Trump announced on September 2 that a military strike against a ship suspected of drug transport in the South of the Caribbean had killed 11 alleged traffickers.
See also: Video: The United States has just bombed a “Narco terrorist” boat. Or is that?
A grainy video published by authorities seems to show several people on a boat traveling in free water before the ship explodes in flames.
The strike is part of a wider military campaign aimed at cutting the drug trafficking tracks in the Caribbean and intimidating Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Many other people would not do it again,” Trump said at a press conference. “When they look at this band, they will say:” Let's not do that. “”
The White House has provided few details on the strike, which raises several strategic and operational questions. Here are five key aspects to understand about this development.
1. The strike would have targeted Tren from Aragua, which is not an international drug trafficking group
Trump said the operation targeted the members of the Venezuelan gang Tren of Aragua, calling them “narcoterrorists”.
But the administration did not provide any evidence connecting the gang to the alleged smuggling boat, and Insight Crime's in -depth research On Tren de Aragua, found no evidence of its direct involvement in transnational drug trafficking on a large scale.
Trump also repeated his assertion that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro directs the activities of Tren in Aragua, even if the US intelligence agencies have contradicted this evaluation.
See also: Beyond the Suns cartel
The United States has also said that Maduro leads a criminal organization known as Cartel des Suns (Los Soles Cartel). However, the Suns cartel is not a formal organization but rather a description of a Widespread corruption system In the Maduro regime which facilitates drug trafficking.
While the Venezuelan government is an accomplice in drug trafficking, the American representation of the Suns cartel as a coordinated geopolitical operation led by Maduro is inaccurate. In reality, the government authorizes illicit activities but does not manage them directly.
2. The strike is part of a wider military presence in the Caribbean
This missile strike is part of a significant increase in American military activity in the southern Caribbean. In recent weeks, Trump has deployed several naval ships and thousands of American troops in the region in what officials have described as an anti-traiti initiative.
Several governments of the region, including the neighbor of Venezuela, Colombia, as well as Mexico and Brazil, have expressed their concern about the demonstration of force and the possibility of a military confrontation between the United States and Venezuela.
However, other governments have hosted aggressive American actions. Guyana, which is involved in a territorial dispute in Venezuela, published a declaration supporting the deployment. And Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of the neighbor of Venezuela Island, Trinidad and Tobago, argued the deadly strike, saying that it had “no sympathy for traffickers” and that the United States “should kill them violently”.
3. We do not know what the alleged drug boat transported
The area where the alleged drug boat has been exploded is a lively corridor for transport not only of drugs, but also other smuggles and even migrants.
The United States claimed that 11 people have been killed in the strike are notable because ships carrying drugs generally have a crew of less than half this size – one or two drivers, an engineer and one or two members of the additional security personnel.
Sources on the ground in Venezuela told Insight Crime that the boat had left the coastal state of sugar and that it may have transported some migrants in addition to the drug trafficking team. Although this initial report remains not confirmed, it would correspond to the models of criminal activity generally observed in the region.
In addition, drugs – if there were – may not have had the United States as a ultimate destination. Illicit expeditions passing through this region are often intended for Europe or other consumer markets.
4. The United States has already used a fatal military force against drug traffickers, but it is rare
The use of the lethal American military force against drug trafficking is rare but not unprecedented.
The most important example is the American invasion of Panama in 1989, in which the American forces killed hundreds of panamen soldiers and civilians while ousting the manual dictator Noriega in order to amuse him in the United States to imprison him for drug trafficking.
The United States has also provided indirect support for deadly actions in Mexico, Colombia, Honduras and other countries.
But the direct military strike against alleged drug traffickers marks a qualitative change in strategy, with potentially unforeseen implications.
The senior American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said that the September 2 strike was the first to come.
But there are few reasons to believe that other strikes will have a lasting impact on drug flows. Drug traffickers are adaptable and will simply find new routes and methods to avoid American military deployments.
In addition, these targeted by strikes would not be members of powerful drug trafficking groups, but the lowest and most easily replaceable of the drug trafficking chain – often bad fishermen or other coastal residents with limited economic opportunities.
Not only are the strikes expensive and likely to be ineffective, but they could also be dangerous. Additional strikes increase the risk of an erroneous attack on the innocents or an accidental confrontation with the Venezuelan forces, which could lead to a serious conflict.
5. The United States has offered no legal basis for the strike
The Trump administration has not publicly declared the legal justification for the strike. Trump would have signed secret orders for the military to target drug trafficking groups, which could constitute the legal basis of the attack, but these have not been made public.
The United States has signed international agreements concerning the use of military force which prohibits targeting non-combatants, which puts the strike on a dubious basis since drug traffickers purely focused on profit do not constitute an imminent security threat to the United States in the same way as violent terrorists with ideologically motivation.
Despite the obvious differences, the Trump administration has increasingly used anti -terrorist policies to target organized crime groups. In recent months, its administration has added dozens of organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean, including Tren of Aragua, to the black list of foreign terrorist organizations.
An FTO designation does not necessarily provide legal authorities for extrajudicial killings of drug trafficking suspects without regular procedure. However, the American courts and legislators are traditionally very deferential to use by the president of the deadly military force against the alleged members of groups on the list.
Star image: American destroyers deployed by Trump off the Venezuelan coast. Credit: US Navy
