Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Friday a new strike in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast against an alleged narco-boat, leaving 4 dead. “Following President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal strike against a drug-trafficking vessel affiliated with organizations designated as terrorist,” the secretary of war said, which he accompanied with a video.
“Four narcoterrorist men aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” he added. The video shows a boat speeding across the open sea, then the impact that completely destroys it. “The strike took place in international waters just off Venezuela’s coast while the vessel was carrying substantial quantities of narcotics bound for the United States to poison our people,” the statement said.
This would be the fifth U.S. strike in the region, according to President Donald Trump’s own count. The toll so far would be at least 21 dead. These strikes have triggered mobilization of the military and pro-government militias in Venezuela, as well as complaints from other countries in the region.
The U.S. Congress has already held a closed-door hearing on the matter amid questions about the legality of these strikes in international waters against targets that at first glance do not pose a direct threat to U.S. forces deployed in the region.
“Our intelligence services undoubtedly confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics,” the secretary of war said, under the Defense Department’s new definition. “These strikes will continue until the aggressions against the American people cease!” Hegseth declared.
Legal questions
Facing legal challenges, the Pentagon submitted a letter to senators in which Trump asserts that the United States is engaged in an “undeclared armed conflict” against drug-trafficking groups with lethal capacity.
The U.S. Constitution states that only Congress can declare war, and this official declaration could, for the Trump administration, legally justify operations carried out in the Caribbean.
Drug cartels have over recent decades become “more heavily armed, better organized, and more violent” and “directly and unlawfully cause the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens each year,” the Pentagon argues in the letter.
“There are no narco-terrorists on those boats. The narcos live in the U.S., Europe, and Dubai. Those boats carry poor Caribbean youth,” responded Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has asked the U.N. to have Trump tried.
Washington has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his government of leading a vast drug-trafficking operation to the United States. Caracas forcefully rejects these accusations and, in response to the U.S. deployment, which it considers a “military threat,” launched military exercises and mobilized reservists and militias.
Tensions rose Thursday when Caracas said several U.S. fighter jets carried out an “illegal incursion” into an air zone under its control.
Maduro has said he has a decree ready to declare a state of external commotion, an exceptional measure for armed conflicts that expands his powers. It has never been applied before and could lead to the suspension of certain constitutional guarantees.
Trump, for his part, said this week that alleged high-seas drug trafficking was almost nonexistent after the previous strikes. “We are going to watch very closely the cartels that bring [the drugs] in by land,” he said.
