Yes, President Trump Can Blow Up Drug Boats

 Since September, U.S. forces have destroyed at least 15 vessels originating in either Venezuela or Colombia that were believed to be engaged in international drug trafficking, killing 61 individuals.

“What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat, and the drugs that are being sent into our country,” President Donald J. Trump said on Sept. 14, answering questions about the legality of a U.S. airstrike that destroyed a speedboat believed to be trafficking drugs from Venezuela.

The administration has not yet released evidence proving its allegations but releasing such intelligence now would almost certainly compromise sources and operations. Nevertheless, the Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control, which cooperated with a U.S. strike on Sept. 19, has revealed that it salvaged over 1,000 kilograms of cocaine from the boat destroyed that day, with even more presumably lost at sea.

In addition, a submarine that was attacked on Oct. 16 yielded two survivors who were detained by the U.S. Navy. One of them, an Ecuadorian national, was previously convicted in a U.S. court and deported from the United States for—no surprise—drug smuggling. All surface vessels that were attacked appear to have been moving at high speeds while following courses along commonly identified drug trafficking routes; none appear to have been engaged in any other activity.

Amid a major military buildup in the Caribbean, which began in mid-August but has accelerated in recent weeks, some critics—and some admirers, including hopeful Venezuelan political dissidents—have argued that Trump seeks regime change in Venezuela. The administration has not officially called for the ouster of that country’s Marxist president Nicolás Maduro, but it has denounced him as “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world” and announced a $50 million bounty for information leading to his arrest. It has also authorized CIA operations within Venezuela and suggested it could open military operations on land. Venezuela has mobilized its army and civil militia.

Other observers view the strikes as “gunboat diplomacy”—a localized demonstration of U.S. military might, which could be magnified against Venezuela and other countries. It could also be a trial run for future intervention in Colombia—another state with a drug problem whose Marxist president’s U.S. visa was recently revoked. Or, even Mexico, which continues to spiral into chaos, while serving as the landward conduit into the United States for drugs and illegal immigrants.

“Murder!” scream the international left and the Democratic Party. They are joined by the dwindling remnant of NeverTrumpers, the small number of libertarian nonintervention absolutists on the right, and, of course, the imperiled governments of Venezuela and Colombia. These critics argue that Trump’s boat strikes have violated international law and U.S. laws limiting the powers of the president.

They are wrong.

International law, according to the United Nations Charter, does limit military actions not sanctioned by the UN Security Council to “self-defense” against “armed attack” and prohibits forcible regime change. The UN, however, has no mechanism or authority for defining an “armed attack” or for determining when one has or has not occurred.

Tren de Aragua and the Cártel de los Soles, the Venezuelan organized crime gangs most closely implicated in narcotics trafficking, are U.S.-designated terrorist groups whose operations and personnel are violent and have killed and supported the killing of American citizens. They illegally traffic people as well as drugs into the United States, violate numerous U.S. laws on American soil, and routinely facilitate or materially support the South American drug trade, which causes tens of thousands of American deaths every year.

This is a far cry from the descriptions in many of the stricter legal analyses floating around, which claim that the gangs, as mere drug smugglers, are guilty of peddling an objectionable product but not more. According to a more accurate memo that the White House sent to Congress on Oct. 1, “the president determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.” The UN may appear to have a high moral tone, but it has no authority to override Trump’s finding.

Even if it did, it has no more means to enforce it than it had when U.S. forces were engaged in Iran or Yemen in recent months. The U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June alone killed hundreds of foreign citizens in their own country, which had not carried out any recent attack against the United States and posed only a theoretical threat due to its rapidly evolving nuclear weapons program. Nor, for that matter, did the UN have any bite the last time a U.S. president intervened militarily in Latin America. Back in 1989, President George H. W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama to arrest its president, Manuel Noriega, who was wanted under U.S. law on strikingly familiar drug trafficking and related racketeering and money laundering charges. The UN complained and later condemned the action, but the elder Bush invaded anyway and killed over 300 Panamanians to topple and arrest Noriega.

Applicable U.S. law, generally laid out under the War Powers Resolution of 1973—a Vietnam-era throwback—does require congressional authorization to begin or continue some military operations, but it still allows significant latitude for the president to act against perceived aggression without congressional approval, including against non-state actors, under his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Moreover, in 2001 Congress passed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution, which handed back to the presidency the power to use “necessary and appropriate” force against anyone broadly involved in or assisting with that year’s terrorist attacks on the United States. Ever since, multiple presidents of both major parties have routinely ordered military strikes against terror groups and their affiliates.

With the Venezuelan gangs now officially designated as terrorists, the same rationale should apply. Even if it did not, a new congressional war powers resolution proposed by Democrat Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine earlier this month failed. Had it succeeded, however, Trump certainly would have vetoed it, secure in the knowledge that Congress would not have overridden the veto.

The future of Venezuela remains unknown, but the boats going up in flames are legitimate targets of the U.S. military.

Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/yes-president-trump-can-blow-up-drug-boats/