The U.S. military has conducted at least 10 strikes, killing more than 30 people, in an effort to target drug smuggling, while President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t believe he needs a formal declaration of war from Congress.
During an event on Thursday focused on his Homeland Security Taskforce, Trump said his administration would brief Congress, but stopped short of saying they would seek a declaration of war from lawmakers.
“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like dead,” the president said on Thursday.
Trump ramps up operation in Latin America:
The U.S. military has announced ten strikes targeting alleged drug smuggling vessels in the western hemisphere since this campaign began last month.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Friday that six people were killed in the most recent strike, and the secretary said it was the first of these operations to occur at night.
“We will track them. We will map them. We will network them. We will hunt them and kill them. They are trying to poison the American people,” Hegseth said alongside the president on Thursday. “Inside that we have all the license necessary, all the authorities necessary to take these kinetic strikes, and we’ll continue to take them.”
President Trump’s administration has declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and claims the United States is in an “armed conflict” with them. As a result, they characterize the U.S. strikes as ones conducted against designated foreign terrorist organizations in national defense.
Earlier in his term, Trump declared several Central American gangs to be foreign terrorist organizations (FTO), which gave him greater options in how the U.S. could go after them.
There are still several outstanding questions about the current operations in the Caribbean. The administration has not shared evidence to prove there were drugs aboard the vessels they targeted, who were killed in the strikes, and what factors they consider in determining whether to carry out a strike on the vessel.
The military has a large presence in the Caribbean area since the start of this campaign and has conducted displays of its force as well.
Two B-1 Lancers took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on Thursday and flew near Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal reported, and last week, the Air Force and Marines conducted a similar show of force with B-52 bombers and F-35B jet fighters near an island off its coast. There are several warships in the area, an attack submarine, a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and an F-35 fighter squadron currently in the region.
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the establishment of a new Joint Task Force (JTF) under II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) to lead the counter-narcotics efforts across the Western Hemisphere earlier this month. On Friday afternoon, top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the secretary had directed the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the region in support of their effort to stop drug trafficking.
Their presence in the region “will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere.”
The military buildup and threat of strikes or intelligence operations on Venezuelan soil has raised speculation that the administration could pursue regime change. Maduro has been accused by the Department of Justice of overseeing a drug cartel known as the “Cartel of the Suns.”
In one of the recent U.S. bombings targeting an alleged drug smuggling vessel, two people on board survived. U.S. military personnel arrived on scene, treated them, and they were ultimately repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
Does this follow historical precedent?
Congress is the only governing body that has the power to declare war for the United States, though the commander-in-chief does have broad powers to respond when under attack. Lawmakers have not declared war since World War II, though since then the U.S. has been involved in several conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, effectively ceding some of its power to the executive branch.
Consecutive presidents have used the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to strike back at any country, group, or person involved with the attacks “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States,” which was passed in the aftermath of 9/11.
This authorization has served as the legal basis for U.S. military operations unrelated to 9/11 in the Middle East, like when President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIS.
President George W. Bush used the power given to him in 2002 to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” to launch the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Trump, in his first term, also used it as the legal justification for the January 2020 U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
A declaration of war is viewed as a broad authorization, while an AUMF has a more specific set of objectives and operates within defined parameters, according to Cornell Law School.
There have been efforts on Capitol Hill in recent years to repeal the war authorizations but those have failed to garner the necessary votes to pass.
Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly compared drug traffickers in South and Central America to al-Qaeda, the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In the two wars spurred by the 9/11 attacks, in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. troops would often take enemy fighters prisoner if the situation arose, while drug smugglers who were caught in Central America prior to this campaign would be detained by U.S. law enforcement and often charged.
Comparatively, the U.S. is still detaining 15 alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, almost all of whom are approaching twenty years in the notorious facility.
Hegseth said it was common for U.S. forces to hand terrorists captured in Iraq or Afghanistan over to local authorities, but did not mention that others have been detained indefinitely at the Cuba base he once served at.
Some Republicans call for greater communication in lieu of declaration
Even though Congress has the power to declare war, they have mostly been sidelined during these recent strikes, which largely coincides with the second longest government shutdown in modern history.
“Congress isn’t hearing enough — in any form, including a public forum,” Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) said on Wednesday during Axios’s Future of Defense Summit.
“I think Congress needs to go further. Rather than just asserting our ability to authorize military force — which we certainly need to do — we also need to officially bring to close these conflicts and make clear that we have constitutional prerogatives that need to be consistently asserted,” he added. “If there’s been any takeaway from me from the last roughly 25 years of congressional action and inaction — it’s not that Congress needs to be more hands-off, that Congress needs to get out of the way.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has been the most outspoken GOP critic of the strikes.
At the same time, there are other Republican members who are comfortable with what they’ve heard from the administration. One of those Republicans is Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Axios he has been “briefed on it and feel comfortable with where we are.”
