Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. Military, and Lawlessness
The administration has bypassed critical international law thresholds with potentially devastating precedence for the international order and, more concerning, U.S. domestic law.
By Captain Matthew C. Dolan, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2025
Proceedings usni.org
Vol. 151/12/1,474
Featured Article
On 2 September 2025, the United States struck an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, killing 11 people on board. Since that initial attack, the Trump administration has conducted 10 additional attacks on vessels in the eastern Pacific or Caribbean Sea. President Donald Trump stated the vessels were smuggling drugs on behalf of the Tren de Aragua gang, further alleging that “TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela.”
There are a multitude of complex legal issues related to the Trump administration’s attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific, centering on freedom of the seas, sovereignty, the status of non-state actors, and the international law governing the use of force. Although much of the commentary has related to the second strike allegedly ordered by Admiral Frank Bradley during the 2 September attack, the legal implications are much broader than whether U.S. commanders were justified in taking the second strike against two individuals clinging to the destroyed vessel.
The first and most fundamental question is: Does the United States have the right to use force against the Venezuelan vessels at all? This threshold aspect of the legal issue is referred to as jus ad bellum (the right to wage war). The second question would be to analyze the administration’s actions in the actual conduct of the conflict, known as jus in bello (the law in war). In other words, jus ad bellum asks if the sovereign is authorized to use force, while jus in bello dictates how the conflict must be conducted, assuming it is determined to be an actual armed conflict. If the administration cannot justify the use of force under jus ad bellum, the second question becomes less relevant, as the nation’s use of force was unjustified and illegal. In this scenario, the attack would not be governed by the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) but might be considered an extrajudicial killing. What is permissible in an armed conflict is primarily controlled by the LOAC, but only if it has been determined that it applies to a lawfully recognized and justified armed conflict.
Jus Ad Bellum: The Use of Force Against Venezuelan VesselsThe Trump administration justified the military attacks on the alleged Venezuelan drug boats as an act of self-defense against armed attacks by narco-terrorist organizations. On 4 September 2025, President Trump further clarified the justification by stating:
"I directed these actions consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as commander in chief and chief executive to conduct United States foreign relations."
This statement and subsequent clarifications by the administration have made it clear that the use of force against these vessels is primarily justified under a theory of self-defense.
Self-defense in international law is a state’s inherent right to use force to repel an “armed attack,” as recognized by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It permits a response to actual attacks and, under limited conditions, anticipatory strikes, if there is an imminent attack. In analyzing the administration's use of force based on a theory of anticipatory self-defense, international law has relied on the Caroline test as a key principle defining the strict conditions for such action. The analysis is named after the 1837 Caroline affair, when British-Canadian forces attacked a U.S. vessel, the Caroline, in U.S. territory. Applying the Caroline test to the attack on the Venezuelan drug runners would require the threat from these drug runners to be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” It sets an extremely high bar, meaning preemptive force is only justifiable when absolutely necessary and with no time for peaceful alternatives.
It is difficult to argue that drug running in high-speed boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific posed an instant and overwhelming threat that left no choice of means and no moment for deliberation in protecting the United States from illicit drug importation. The vessel in the 2 September attack was allegedly unarmed and had turned around to head back to the Venezuelan coast. The actual destination of the vessel was not in the United States, and the cargo, although allegedly illicit drugs, was not an instant and overwhelming threat to U.S. citizens or U.S. sovereignty. In an initial statement, President Trump said the boat was headed to the United States, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated later on the same day that the drugs were “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean.” The following day, Rubio stated it was “headed toward, eventually, the United States.” It is difficult to imagine a deliberative and thorough analysis of the imminence of the attack by the drug runner based on the administration’s inconsistent statements of fact since the attacks.
In recent days, to shore up the administration’s justification for the use of force over the past four months, President Trump signed an executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and declaring that foreign terrorist organizations use the sale of fentanyl to fund activities that undermine U.S. national security. Trump boosted his argument that drug flows are “a direct military threat to the United States of America.” Although international law does not directly define weapons of mass destruction, it is difficult to imagine that fentanyl, an FDA-approved schedule II controlled substance used in U.S. hospitals for pain management, could ever be classified as a weapon of mass destruction. A weapon of mass destruction traditionally refers to a nuclear, biological, chemical, or possibly radiological weapon that would be capable of causing widespread and instantaneous death, injury, or environmental devastation to a large segment of the population in a very short period.
The crew of the USCGC Seneca (WMEC-906) in September recovers bales of cocaine after a suspected drug-smuggling vessel capsized in the Pacific Ocean. (Nicholas Strasburg)In stark contrast to the U.S. armed response, the Colombian Navy reported in nearly the same timeframe the seizure of more than 7 tons of cocaine in multiple interdictions, resulting in the arrest of 11 individuals. For years, the United States has treated the “threat” from the importation of illicit drugs in the same manner as the Colombians—by the Coast Guard interdicting illicit drug runners and the Department of Justice subsequently prosecuting them. Drug runners are interdicted, arrested, and tried, being provided due process in criminal prosecutions. It is difficult to comprehend what strategic factors would have changed the threat from this drug cartel such that the use of military force—specifically, the launch of a missile—would be justified to take the lives of these alleged drug runners. The transformation of the “war on drugs” from a law enforcement response to an armed conflict is troublesome and difficult to justify.
We have seen the danger of a government’s “war on drugs” transforming from a law enforcement operation to a military campaign on a domestic front. In 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte transformed his domestic “war on drugs” from a law enforcement effort to a military and vigilante response, which resulted in the extrajudicial killing of nearly 12,000 Filipinos, with more than 2,500 of those murders being attributed to the Philippine National Police. Duterte was blatant about his lawlessness, telling a crowd during his presidential campaign, “If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, holdup men, and do-nothings, you better get out because I'll kill you.” It can be argued that the extrajudicial killing of these Venezuelan drug runners is no better than Duterte’s reign of terror and lawlessness during his tenure as the Philippine President.
The focus on the second strike on 2 September assumes the United States was justified in its use of force as a threshold matter. The benefit of bypassing or ignoring this threshold question is that U.S. military commanders are judged under the LOAC, which presents a more digestible controversy for the U.S. public. The question then becomes whether the two individuals clinging to the wreckage would be permissible targets under the LOAC. This also becomes a much easier transgression to forgive—killing two alleged drug runners—versus questioning the entire campaign and the nearly 90 reported deaths from the U.S. strikes.
Assuming the United States was justified in its use of force in a jus ad bellum analysis, there are several LOAC issues in play.
Jus in Bello: LOAC Issues in the Second StrikeWith the significant leap that the entire counternarcotic military campaign is a lawful conflict in which the United States is permitted to use force, was the second missile strike on the two survivors and the overturned vessel justified under the LOAC?
The LOAC requires warring parties to, at all times, distinguish between civilians and combatants, and only attack combatants. If it is a valid armed conflict against the Tren de Aragua gang, a non-state actor, the vessel could have been determined to be a belligerent and a lawful military objective. However, the core jus in bello principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution mandate attacks only on military targets, banning indiscriminate attacks and requiring harm minimization, with specific protections for vulnerable groups, such as the wounded, sick, shipwrecked, and prisoners of war.
In this instance, the administration argued that the mission identified the drugs as the primary threat to the United States, effectively deeming the cocaine a “weapon” that could endanger Americans. The administration acknowledged two men survived the initial strike and further argued that, while they were clinging to the overturned vessel, they remained legitimate targets for a second attack because their overturned vessel was still believed to contain a large amount of drugs and the men could have radioed for help, drifted to shore, or found a way to sail the vessel and continued the trafficking mission (even while acknowledging U.S. intelligence did not intercept any communication from them after the first strike).
The administration also argued that since the vessel had been on an approved target list, it gave them authority to strike the boat a second time. Finally, the administration acknowledged to lawmakers that U.S. intelligence did not definitively conclude the drugs were heading to the United States but rather south toward Suriname, though the traffickers could eventually make their way to Europe or Africa, and potentially later to the United States from there.
It is concerning that the administration has articulated the facts and the law in a manner that makes it sound as if they are arguing for the illegality of the second strike. The individuals clinging to the vessel, drifting at sea with no communications, posed no threat to U.S. forces and deserved special protections as shipwrecked persons; they should not have been targeted with the second strike. The absurdity of the arguments for the second strike raises even deeper questions about the legality of the armed attacks on any of these boats. The Trump administration’s campaign of military strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug vessels represents a profound misinterpretation of the fundamental tenets of international law governing the use of force and national and maritime sovereignty. By attempting to transform maritime drug interdiction operations from law enforcement into an armed conflict, the administration has bypassed critical international law thresholds with potentially devastating precedence for the international order and, more concerning, U.S. domestic law. The U.S. strikes set a dangerous precedent: blurring the line between criminal interdiction and military conflict, weakening the sovereignty of nations, and eroding the global prohibition on the unilateral use of force.
Matthew Dolan
Captain Dolan served 24 years in active service as both a Navy SEAL and a Navy judge advocate general, serving in operational law billets with two carrier strike groups, U.S. Sixth Fleet, and Commander Naval Forces Europe. |
