20 U.S. Boat Strikes in Three Months
In a recent edition of The Atlantic Daily, the ongoing U.S. military strikes against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans raise significant ethical and legal concerns. Since the first strike in early September, there have been over 19 such attacks, with a notable increase in frequency. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has publicly declared these operations as necessary measures against “narco-terrorists,” suggesting that anyone involved in drug trafficking is a legitimate target. However, the lack of substantive evidence supporting these claims, combined with the extrajudicial nature of the strikes, has led to growing skepticism about their legality. Critics, including legal experts and military advisors, have pointed out that these operations resemble acts of murder rather than lawful military actions, as the individuals targeted have not been convicted in any court.
The Trump administration’s justification for these strikes hinges on a convoluted interpretation of legal frameworks. While asserting that these strikes are necessary to protect the homeland from drug threats, officials simultaneously argue that they do not constitute hostilities, thereby circumventing Congressional oversight under the War Powers Act. This contradictory stance raises alarming implications about the military’s role in law enforcement and the potential for misuse of military power. The situation has become more precarious with the resignation of Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command, who reportedly raised concerns about the operations. Additionally, intelligence-sharing with British officials has ceased due to legal uncertainties surrounding the strikes, indicating that even allies question the legitimacy of the U.S. actions.
The narrative surrounding these strikes suggests a deeper agenda, potentially linked to broader geopolitical strategies, particularly regarding Venezuela. As reported, the military’s focus on drug interdiction may be a guise for more aggressive maneuvers aimed at regime change in Caracas. This perspective aligns with the Trump administration’s history of framing military actions under the pretext of combating drug trafficking while pursuing other strategic objectives. As the public becomes desensitized to the frequency of these strikes, it is crucial to scrutinize their implications and question the normalization of such military interventions, which could set a troubling precedent for future U.S. foreign policy.
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The bulletins come every few days now. On Tuesday,
a U.S. strike
in the Caribbean Sea killed four people. On Sunday, two
strikes in the Pacific Ocean
killed six, and two people died in a November 4 strike. The MO rarely changes: a bellicose announcement from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Claims that the dead were involved in drug trafficking, though never much evidence to back it up. Usually a grainy image of the attack—an enormous explosion engulfing a small boat, sometimes with small figures visible on board, until they’re not.
Since the first of these strikes, in early September, there have been 19 more that we know of. The pace has increased since last month—15 of them have come in that time. When the strikes began, each one got lots of attention, but the Trump administration has adopted its usual strategy of doing things over and over until the public is lulled into a sense that this is normal. News is, definitionally, something fresh; when an event happens 20 times, it loses its novelty. But repetition has not made these strikes any less troubling or any more legal, and the more the public learns about how they’re conducted, the shakier the arguments for them look.
Hegseth portrays the situation as simple. “To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs,”
he wrote on X last week
. “If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you.” Nearly every part of this statement demands skepticism. First, the Pentagon has not generally provided evidence for its claims, other than to cite “intelligence,” and the administration’s pattern of
misleading
and
outright lying
makes it hard to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Second, even if the intelligence is correct, these people have not been convicted in any court, which makes their deaths extrajudicial killings. There’s another, more common term for that:
murder
, as
Rachel VanLandingham
, a law professor and retired judge advocate in the Air Force, recently told CNN. (The administration doesn’t seem confident about its chances at a conviction: When two men survived a strike last month, the United States handed them over to their home countries rather than attempting to try them.) Third, even if they had been found guilty, no federal law establishes the
death penalty for drug trafficking
. Donald Trump has previously called for instituting capital punishment for drug dealing, though he has also used his clemency power to pardon
people convicted of that crime
.
In the absence of a clear criminal-justice rationale, the White House is playing a slippery game. On the one hand, officials argue that involving the military, which doesn’t otherwise have a
law-enforcement role
, in these boat strikes is necessary, because drug shipments pose a
direct threat to the United States; the
Trump administration calls those killed “
unlawful combatants
.” On the other hand, the administration has also said that Congress has no authority to intervene under the
War Powers Act
, because these strikes don’t rise to the level of hostilities—no U.S. troops are in danger. The result is absurd: As Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser, told
The Washington Post
, “What they’re saying is anytime the president uses drones or any standoff weapon against someone who cannot shoot back, it’s not hostilities.”
Other warning lights are flashing. Admiral Alvin Holsey abruptly announced his resignation last month as head of the U.S. Southern Command—which oversees the strikes—less than a year into his posting. Although Holsey has not made any public comment about the strikes,
The New York Times
reports that he privately raised questions about them. Reuters reported last month that military officials involved in operations in Latin America are being asked to sign
unusual nondisclosure agreements
, even though national-security secrets are already restricted. And CNN reported this week that
British officials
have decided to stop sharing intelligence about suspected drug trafficking in the Caribbean because they believe the boat strikes are illegal. Even as the strikes become more routine, more reservations among people close to them are emerging.
One useful way to understand the boat strikes might be to compare them to threatened or executed National Guard deployments in several U.S. cities. When Trump first called up Guard troops in Washington, D.C., he contended that they were needed to fight street crime—even though the Guard generally isn’t trained in law enforcement and has limits on policing powers. What has become clear since is that the real goal is aggressive enforcement of immigration laws.
Similarly, drug interdiction may just be an excuse for broader actions in Latin America. As
my colleague Nick Miroff
has reported, the administration has used fentanyl as a justification for military deployments, but the Coast Guard doesn’t actually encounter fentanyl in the Caribbean. Instead, the boat strikes seem to be a cover for a huge military deployment designed to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro,
as
The Atlantic
reports
. If this is all a prelude to regime change in Caracas, that’s another reason to treat the strikes as anything but normal.
Related:
The boat strikes are just the beginning.
Why Venezuela?
Here are three new stories from
The Atlantic
:
Wait, are the Epstein files real now?
Annie Lowrey: What tariffs did
Trump’s animal-research plan has a missing step.
Today’s News
After the longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended last night,
federal workers began returning to their jobs and agencies began reopening
, though some services and museums remained closed as operations slowly resumed. Many employees are expected to start receiving back pay in the coming days.
The Trump administration sued to block
California’s effort to draw new congressional maps
, claiming that the plan amounts to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The case could influence control of the U.S. House after the 2026 midterms.
In a 2015 email, Jeffrey Epstein offered a then–
New York Times
reporter
photos “of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.”
The email was part of more than 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate that the House Oversight Committee released yesterday. The White House called the documents “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative.”
Evening Read
Illustration by Tim Enthoven
The End of Naked Locker Rooms
By Jacob Beckert
Not long ago, after a day of work, a colleague and I met for a friendly game of racquetball at our university gym. In the newly designed locker room, I began pulling off my shirt to change when he quickly stopped me: “You can’t do that here.” Undressing, it turned out, was now permitted only in small private stalls—which struck me as odd. This was a gym with a pool, where someone could go directly from a shirts-on locker room to a shirtless swim. But the logic was clear enough: The space had been redesigned as “universal,” for people of all genders. The locker room, once a place for casual and normative nudity, had quietly become a place where modesty was expected.
Read the full article.
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