Trump declares ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels

What happened

President Donald Trump recently informed Congress he has “determined” that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels and must continue to “use force in self-defense” against these “designated terrorist organizations,” The New York Times and other news organizations reported Thursday.

The administration’s confidential notice provided a legal justification for Trump’s lethal military strikes on three alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and what it called the “unlawful combatants” on board.

Who said what

The White House insisted Thursday that Trump was “merely explaining the legality of his actions — not setting new policy,” Politico said. But legal experts and some lawmakers called the memo a “dubious legal justification” for “unlawful military strikes on alleged civilian criminals,” with no authorization from Congress, The Washington Post said. In a classified briefing Wednesday, senators on the Armed Services Committee pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer on the legal justification for this presidential assertion of war powers, and afterward “members of both parties” criticized the message as “vague and unsatisfactory.”

Drug cartels are “despicable” but Trump has “offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence” for the strikes, Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the committee’s top Democrat, said Thursday. “Every American should be alarmed that their president has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.”

There’s no evidence the targeted drug traffickers are “attacking the United States,” Geoffrey Corn, an expert on the law of armed conflict at Texas Tech University, told the Post, so legally, they are civilians. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told the Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What next?

The memo “appears to represent an extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers” for both “past and future actions,” The Associated Press said. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “aim to force a vote in coming days on war powers legislation that would block further strikes without authorization from Congress,” Politico said, but so far, “most Republicans have largely gone along with Trump’s effort.”