President Donald Trump has stepped up a shadow war at sea, ordering strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The campaign is meant to squeeze the cartels — and, by extension, their political backers in Colombia and Venezuela — through a mix of firepower and fear. At least 10 such operations have been carried out, leaving 44 people dead. In one case, two survivors were repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia and later released after Washington failed to provide evidence of their crimes.
The punitive nature of these strikes and the Trump administration’s apparent disinterest in criminal prosecutions have led to growing concern about whether these actions are lawful or even properly targeted at drug smugglers. Such concerns are legitimate, but they miss the point.
Firstly, most constitutional scholars agree that Trump, as commander-in-chief, has broad latitude to authorise limited but powerful military actions. He can often do so even without formal congressional approval for the use of force. Secondly, Colombia’s government and that of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro are assessed by the US intelligence community to have close links to the cartels operating on their soil. These links are primarily patronage-based, with relative impunity from prosecution provided in return for vast kickbacks. The links are particularly strong in Maduro’s case, involving all the top ranks of his security and military forces.
I also understand from my sources that the US intelligence community has very high confidence that every one of the boats struck thus far was indeed carrying significant quantities of illegal drugs or drug precursor materials. This intelligence is based on intercepted communications, persistent tracking of supply routes overland to ports, and confirmation via drones and other intelligence assets of drugs being loaded onto the boats in question. There are an extensive array of such assets now deployed in and around both Colombia and Venezuela.
This is a war being waged overwhelmingly in the shadows — one only made public at its final moment of attack. Indeed, one key reason the US released the two smugglers who survived a recent strike is that prosecuting them would have required the government to publicise classified intelligence material showing how Washington is targeting the cartels.
On the legal concern, law enforcement intervention against drug-smuggling boats is impractical and insufficient given the locations of these drug routes. Once they get to their first port of call, it becomes extraordinarily hard to monitor the drugs. But drug trafficking into the US obviously damages public health while fuelling a vast array of broader domestic criminal activities, including violent criminality. For these reasons, I believe Trump has the authority to conduct these strikes in international waters.
The key intent behind these strikes is not to substantially degrade drug smuggling into the US. Rather, it is to inject what the military refers to as “friction”, or increased pressure and complexity to cartel operations, forcing them to take greater efforts to evade detection, increase the salaries of boat crews, generate new lines of intelligence reporting (the CIA is dangling dollars in return for information), and second-guess their decision-making. In tandem, these strikes seek to motivate the governments of Colombia and Venezuela, and in Latin America more broadly, to take far more decisive action against the cartels on their soil or face Trump’s growing and inherently unpredictable wrath.
Put simply, the US President is trying to throw the cartels and their enablers off balance through what would, were the Pentagon not publishing videos of each strike, constitute a textbook covert action campaign. Considering Trump’s perception of success thus far and his strategic conception of drug smuggling as a paramount national security threat, the risks of further US escalation against the cartels are high. For now, the shadow war Trump has unleashed shows no sign of ending — and every sign of expanding.