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The United States claims to uphold the rule of law and presents itself as the guardian of international order, yet its conduct tells another story. The strike on a small speedboat off Venezuela, ordered by President Donald Trump, revealed a disregard for law and procedure that has long characterised American intervention abroad. Eleven people were killed, most of them impoverished youths according to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who said they were more likely to be low-level couriers than leaders of organised crime. His remarks reflected decades of regional experience: drug couriers are rarely the senior figures in smuggling networks but young men from poor communities who see no other livelihood. His observation underscored the contrast between established methods of interdiction, which involve detention and trial, and Washington’s choice to carry out extrajudicial killings in international waters.
(Colombian President Gustavo Petro)
The legal basis for the attack is absent. International maritime law permits the interdiction of vessels suspected of drug trafficking, but it requires boarding, searching, and arresting those on board. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea outlines procedures for interdiction but does not permit summary execution. Drug trafficking, even when proven in court, is not a capital offence, let alone an allegation unsupported by evidence. The United States justified the killings by alleging ties between the victims and a group called Tren de Aragua, but that organisation is poorly defined and frequently invoked without substantiated intelligence. Independent reporting, such as that by Insight Crime, has pointed out that Tren de Aragua has been inflated into a catch-all label used to frame Venezuela as a hub of “narco-terrorism.” No proof has been offered that the boat’s occupants belonged to the group, or that the vessel contained narcotics. The lack of evidence reduces the attack to murder in the eyes of many observers, including Petro, who said bluntly: “If this is true, it’s murder.”
(Secretary of State, Marco Rubio)
The hypocrisy is clear when compared with the case of Rodrigo Duterte. The former president of the Philippines is facing charges at the International Criminal Court for ordering extrajudicial killings of drug suspects. The ICC prosecutor has argued that Duterte’s “war on drugs” involved systematic executions outside the law. Yet Trump, who ordered the execution of eleven people in international waters, faces no legal consequences, not at the ICC, not at the UN, not even in domestic courts. The comparison illustrates a double standard: leaders of smaller states are investigated and tried for conduct that American leaders engage in with impunity. That disparity damages the credibility of international institutions and demonstrates the limits of global justice when the most powerful state disregards it.
(While in Mexico City, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended a recent U.S. strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that killed all 11 people on board. Rubio stated that no warning was given before the strike because the boat, suspected of carrying drugs, posed an "imminent threat" to the United States.
“If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl, whatever it is, headed for the United States, you’re an immediate threat,” Rubio said during a press conference alongside Mexican Foreign Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente.
Rubio emphasized that the President has the authority to respond to imminent threats and made it clear that the U.S. will continue targeting suspected drug boats with force, saying Washington would rather “blow up” such vessels than attempt to intercept them)
The precedent carries geopolitical consequences. By destroying a civilian boat without due process, the United States asserts a right to unilateral execution at sea. If Iran or Russia destroyed a suspected smuggling boat in international waters, Washington would denounce the act as piracy or terrorism. When the United States does so, it is framed as counter-narcotics. The rules change depending on the actor, not the principle. That selective application of law is not new. During the invasion of Panama in 1989, Washington justified military action by pointing to Manuel Noriega’s involvement in drug trafficking, yet Noriega had been a long-standing CIA asset and his trafficking was tolerated while he served American interests. Once his position shifted, his activities were rebranded as intolerable and used as a justification for regime change. The parallel with Venezuela is striking: drugs provide a convenient justification for destabilising governments considered hostile to American policy.
The campaign against Venezuela cannot be separated from broader geopolitical objectives. Washington has imposed severe sanctions on Caracas, cutting the country off from international finance and oil markets, deepening a humanitarian crisis, and worsening migration pressures. The sanctions have been described by the Center for Economic and Policy Research as collective punishment, with a 2019 report estimating tens of thousands of excess deaths due to shortages of food and medicine. Officially, sanctions are framed as pressure against authoritarianism, but the effect is the weakening of the Venezuelan economy and the erosion of state capacity. The drug war narrative provides another layer of justification: by linking Venezuela to criminal groups such as Tren de Aragua, Washington presents the country not only as authoritarian but as a threat to global security.
The remarks of Senator Marco Rubio confirmed this strategy. He said that blowing up drug boats would stop trafficking, rejecting the long-established method of interdiction through boarding and seizure. He also said he did not care what the United Nations might say about such actions. His statements reveal both the contempt for international oversight and the preference for spectacle over effectiveness. Decades of evidence from Colombia, Mexico, and Central America show that militarised campaigns against traffickers do not stop the flow of narcotics. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has repeatedly concluded that supply-side eradication and interdiction have failed to reduce the global drug trade. Instead, networks adapt, routes shift, and violence increases. The victims are most often low-level participants, while the leadership of trafficking organisations remains insulated.
By framing Venezuela as a hub of narco-terrorism, Washington seeks to legitimise actions that would otherwise be condemned as unlawful aggression. This mirrors strategies used in the past. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration justified interventions in Central America by linking leftist movements to narcotics and terrorism. The allegations were thin, yet they provided cover for operations that had geopolitical aims of preventing socialist governments from consolidating power and aligning with Cuba or the Soviet Union. Today, the narrative of “narco-terrorism” serves the purpose of delegitimising Venezuela’s government and justifying measures that include sanctions, covert operations, and now direct military strikes.
The consequences for international law are grave. Maritime law depends on universal recognition of rules that prevent unilateral violence at sea. If major powers adopt the American precedent, the seas risk becoming arenas of extrajudicial killing under the guise of law enforcement. The erosion of legal norms is already evident. Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine have been widely denounced as violations of sovereignty, yet Washington’s strike on Venezuela’s boat is treated differently despite also violating sovereignty and due process. The inconsistency undermines claims that international law is universal. It exposes the reality that law is applied according to power, not principle.
The longer-term implications are destabilising. Venezuela has already endured economic collapse under sanctions, and acts of military aggression intensify the crisis. The perception among Latin American governments is that the United States applies one standard to itself and another to its neighbours. Colombian President Petro’s remarks reflect a growing regional frustration with Washington’s posture. Mexico has also criticised unilateral American actions, pointing to sovereignty concerns. These reactions suggest that Washington’s heavy-handed approach may be eroding its influence in a region it has long considered its sphere of control. At the same time, rivals such as China and Russia are offering investment and diplomatic support to governments isolated by Washington, deepening geopolitical fault lines.
The episode also undermines any claim that American action is guided by humanitarian concern. If Washington were concerned with the plight of Venezuelans, it would lift sanctions that restrict food and medicine imports. Instead, it compounds suffering while carrying out violent acts against the poorest people in the illicit economy. The killings off the Venezuelan coast did not target kingpins or major financiers but the lowest rung of the trade, echoing a global pattern where drug wars destroy poor communities while leaving higher structures intact.
The attack on the Venezuelan vessel did not constitute a defensive measure or a lawful interdiction. It amounted to the killing of civilians without judicial process, conducted in international waters, justified by allegations that were not substantiated, and later defended in terms that dismissed international oversight. It fits within a wider pattern of American hypocrisy in which law is invoked selectively, sovereignty is violated when convenient, and violence is applied against the weakest actors while the powerful escape accountability. It is part of the long history of using the drug war as a pretext for political objectives, from Panama to Colombia to Venezuela.
The consequences are profound. International law is eroded, regional stability is undermined, and the credibility of global institutions is weakened. The message to the world, in the same vein like Israel assassinating leaders of other countries, that the United States will operate outside the law whenever it sees fit, while demanding that others adhere to rules it ignores. For the victims, who were likely impoverished young men, the outcome was death without evidence, without trial, and without recourse. For the world, the outcome is another reminder that law is applied according to power, not principle, and that the United States, despite its rhetoric, stands as one of the chief violators of the order it claims to defend.
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