Trump resorts to distortions to support his pressure campaign on Venezuela

Trump claims that an “armed conflict” legitimizes the killing of people aboard ships, but experts in the law of war say that the requirements for a war are not met.

The government acts as if the Venezuelan term “Poster of the Suns” to refer to soldiers corrupted by drug money was a real cartel.

He has reinterpreted drugs as a “weapon” and classified them as “terrorism.”

The main argument for using armed force?

Overdoses caused by fentanyl from Mexico.

The objective of the attacks?

Vessels suspected of transporting cocaine from South America.

The alleged participation of a Venezuelan president in drug trafficking?

A former president of Honduras convicted in a US court for doing exactly the same thing?

Trump has a long history of making false or misleading statements.

But the large number of them in the attacks on his administration’s vessels and the pressure campaign on Venezuela has been exceptional.

The pattern dates back to February, when, at Trump’s direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated eight Latin American drug cartels and criminal groups as “terrorist organizations,” including the Aragua Traina Venezuelan prison gang.

Since then, Trump’s team has insisted on calling these groups and their alleged members “narcoterrorists.”

In simple terms, terrorists are fanatics who use violence to promote some ideological or religious cause.

Drug cartels are unscrupulous companies that seek to profit by supplying an illicit product, despite it being prohibited.

In March, Trump declared that he could invoke a wartime deportation law against Venezuelans suspected of being in Tren de Aragua—and summarily deport them to a notorious prison in El Salvador—because, he said, Nicolas Madurothe leader of Venezuela, was ordering that gang to carry out an “invasion.”

But US intelligence agencies believe otherwise:

that evidence shows that the gang is not subject to Maduro’s control, is at odds with his government, and lacks the organization to effectively obey orders.

And although federal courts said they did not have the ability to challenge Trump’s claim that the gang was an arm of Maduro’s government, they ruled that illegal immigration simply was not a “invasion” in times of war, so the deportation law did not apply.

In July, the Treasury Department formally designated the “Cartel of the Suns” as a terrorist organization and declared Maduro as its leader.

Last month, the State Department followed suit.

Based on this, the government often describes Maduro as a cartel leader.

But “Cartel de los Soles” does not refer to an actual drug cartel.

It is a Venezuelan colloquial term, dating from the 1990s, to refer to soldiers who accept bribes of drug traffickers and is essentially a pejorative way of referring to the Venezuelan government as unusually corrupt.

Also in July, Trump sent an order to the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsethwhom the administration calls “Secretary of War.”

The order instructed Hegseth to begin targeting cartel-linked drug trafficking vessels in international waters with lethal force.

On September 2, the military attacked the first vessel of this type.

It carried 11 people, who, according to Trump, were members of the Aragua Train. Trump also posted a video showing one of the attacks, suggesting a simple and clean operation.

Trump told Congress that the attack was in “self-defense.”

But it turned out that the ship was headed to a location associated with the transshipment to Europe and had returned, apparently spooked by a military aircraft, before the attack began, raising the question of whether it posed an imminent threat.

It was also revealed that the ship had suffered multiple hits, not just the one shown in the video, and that a subsequent one killed two initial survivors.

The men had climbed onto the overturned hull and saluted as a surveillance plane flew overhead before an admiral ordered a second attack.

Even in an armed conflict, killing shipwrecked people who are hors de combat is a war crime.

In reports to Congress, the admiral justified the second attack by claiming that the men might have communicated with narcoterrorists, but later admitted that there were no other vessels in the vicinity and no signs that they had radios, according to people familiar with the reports.

He is also said to have argued that some of the alleged cocaine cargo could have been left under the hull, in which case what he called a “weapon” was still present.

In mid-September, Trump’s counterterrorism adviser tried another argument.

He argued that since the administration had labeled the cartels “foreign terrorist organizations” (OTF), it was legal to use military force against them.

However, the law allowing such designations seeks to cut off funding and support for such groups.

It does not authorize military attacks against them.

Faced with challenges to this measure, the authorities chose to use a different term for the cartels and gangs whose alleged members, they claimed, the military could legally kill:

OTD, which means “designated terrorist organizations“.

That term is invented and does not come from the law.

After a second boat attack, the administration told Congress that Trump had “determined” that the United States was in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that the boat crews were “combatants,” not civilians, against whom it would be murder or a war crime to attack.

It is difficult to find anyone knowledgeable about the law of armed conflict outside the administration who agrees.

People do not lose their civil status for committing crimes.

Cocaine is an illegal recreational drug, not a weapon or bomb, and shipping it to American consumers who want to buy it may be a crime, but it does not constitute an armed attack.

Pressed to explain what can justify extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers, the Trump administration has cited a rise in overdose deaths over the past decade.

But that increase, which began to decline after 2023, was mainly due to fentanyl, which is manufactured in laboratories in Mexico with chemical precursors from China.

The United States is attacking ships from South America carrying cocaine, assuming the information justifying the attacks is correct.

The Trump administration has also stated that the United States can use armed force in the “collective self-defense” of countries such as Colombia and Mexico, whose security forces sometimes face shootouts with cartel hitmen.

However, one nation must request assistance before another can use force in its collective defense.

Instead of calling on the United States to blow up ships, the presidents of both countries have condemned the attacks.

A major justification for the government’s promise to oust Maduro from power is that, in 2020, he was formally charged with conspiring to export cocaine to the United States.

However, three weeks ago, Trump pardoned the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandezwho had been convicted last year of conspiring to export cocaine to the United States on a large scale.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

However, that term has a legal meaning:

a chemical, biological or radiological weapon, or an explosive capable of killing many people in a mass casualty incident.

Last year, around 48,000 Americans who used illegal drugs died from fentanyl-related overdoses.

However, these were individual deaths, not an event with a large number of victims.

On Tuesday, Trump declared on social media that US naval forces in Venezuela would implement a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL VESSELS.”

A blockade is an act of war, so the statement generated shocking headlines.

But the term also means something specific:

prevent all ships from entering or leaving the ports of an enemy nation.

The threat to intercept a handful of tankers that have already been sanctioned for helping Iran sell its oil, leaving other vessels free to transit, is a police operation, not a “blockade.”