SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In February, the Trump administration designated several drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. This month, the U.S. conducted military strikes in the Caribbean against what it says were drug boats. This is part of its campaign against cartels. Officials have likened that effort to the U.S. campaign against Islamic extremists during the global war on terrorism. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas reports.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Kash Patel celebrated the Trump administration's decision to label drug cartels as foreign terrorist groups.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KASH PATEL: We must treat them like the foreign terrorist organizations post-9/11. We must treat them like the al-Qaidas of the world because that's how they're operating.
LUCAS: Going after the cartels with law enforcement, Patel said, has failed to destroy them. To do that, he said, the U.S. needs to bring in its military and spy agencies.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PATEL: In order to eliminate - and that's the key, eliminate - the drug trade, we have to use authorities at the Department of War and the intelligence community to go after the threat like we did terrorists when we were manhunting them.
LUCAS: The administration has provided few details on the scope of its anti-cartel campaign, but it has trumpeted its military strikes - three and counting - against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. After the first one, President Trump posted online a black-and-white video that shows a fast-boat bursting into flames. He said 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were killed, but the administration has not provided any evidence to support its claims about who and what were on the boat. After the second strike, Trump was asked about providing proof that the boat was indeed carrying drugs and posed a threat to the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have proof. All you have to do is look at the cargo that was - like, it spattered all over the ocean- big bags of cocaine and fentanyl over the place.
LUCAS: He also said they have recorded evidence but did not elaborate. The Trump administration has said the president took action under his Article II powers as commander in chief and in self-defense, but experts and some lawmakers have condemned the strikes on civilian narco-traffickers as illegal extrajudicial killings.
Luca Trenta is a professor at Swansea University in the U.K., where he studies U.S. foreign policy and covert action. He says the recent military strikes represent a massive escalation in the use of force and suggests the U.S. president can target whomever, whenever he wants, without making an effort to provide a legal justification.
LUCA TRENTA: It's a really bad thing if the president of the United States can decide that a group of civilians that might pose some kind of remote threat can be killed without any form of due process 'cause who is to say what group will be targeted next?
LUCAS: During the war on terror, the U.S. targeted al-Qaida and other Jihadi groups under the legal authority passed by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The U.S. conducted strikes in active conflict zones, but administrations also stretched that authority to target groups outside those areas if they were deemed a military threat to the U.S., Trenta says.
TRENTA: None of this would apply to the current situation due to the nature of the target and the lack of a threat that the target was posing.
LUCAS: In the case of the first strike in the Caribbean, an individual briefed on the attack and not authorized to speak publicly told NPR the boat had turned around and was returning to shore when it was hit, raising further questions about how it could've posed a direct threat to the United States. The legal issues aside, there are also questions about how effective the war on terrorism blueprint of military strikes will be against cartels. Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
VANDA FELBAB-BROWN: I'm very skeptical that concentrating lethal action in the Caribbean will stop the flow of drugs to the United States.
LUCAS: The administration has said its military strikes could deter cartels from trafficking drugs to the U.S., but Felbab-Brown says drug traffickers have not been deterred by the already significant risks they face, including death or a long prison sentence. She also notes that there's an opportunity cost to blowing up drug boats instead of interdicting them, seizing the cargo, arresting and questioning crew, as the U.S. has done for decades.
FELBAB-BROWN: And I would say that there is a real downside to the lethal strikes, which is big losses of intelligence that one can obtain from being able to interrogate detainees.
LUCAS: To interrogate the drug mules about the larger networks they work for and then putting that intelligence to good use. Then there are also a slew of possible ripple effects from the administration's use of military force - the potential spike in violence as criminal groups shift to land-based smuggling routes sparking turf wars, to the potential for public backlash if, as happened in the war on terror, U.S. strikes kill innocent civilians.
Ryan Lucas, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMOTIONAL ORANGES SONG, "TALK ABOUT US (FEAT. ISAIAH FALLS)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
