Why Did President Trump Order Strikes On Venezuelan Boats?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

I'm Greg Myrie.

I cover national security.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Today on the show, the U.S.

military has launched two strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Caribbean in recent days in what it says is an effort to prevent drugs from being smuggled into the U.S.

Greg, what is going on here?

Yeah, so let's just go to the basics here.

According to the Trump administration, two U.S.

military strikes on boats have taken place in international waters in the Caribbean.

One back on September 2nd, 11 people were killed, according to the administration, and then another one just this Monday with three people killed in the second attack.

In both cases, the U.S.

military airstrikes turned the boats into fireballs based on video that has been released.

And based on what the Trump administration is saying, the boats were in international waters, but we don't know exactly where, and there's a lot of other things we still don't know.

Yeah, the footage that the president has put out on social media has been...

pretty grainy, but also very clear that there are explosions happening.

What proof has the administration provided that these boats were engaged in drug smuggling?

Well, Trump has been asked this question, and here's what he said.

Well, 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.

Yeah, so Trump is referring to this video, but based on what has been released, it's far from conclusive as to what we're seeing.

And let's look at what he said, especially about fentanyl, which accounts for most of the drug overdose deaths in the U.S.

fentanyl comes mostly from chemicals made in China shipped to Mexico where the drug is manufactured then smuggled into the U.S.

across the southern border or on ships on the on the U.S.

west coast

so if you want to prevent drug overdose deaths these are the areas you would focus on China Mexico and the southern border now it's also true there is drug smuggling from the Caribbean and much of this is cocaine grown in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia.

Some of it makes it to Venezuela, and then it's shipped across the Caribbean, makes its way to the U.S.

But it's not the main source of drug overdose deaths, and this is not a usual route for fentanyl by any stretch.

So how is Venezuela responding to this very aggressive move?

Right.

So, you know, there's a lot of tension, a very fraught relationship between the Trump administration and Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro is calling this a heinous crime.

He says it's a military attack on civilians who are not at war, not threatening any country.

Now, he says the U.S.

is trying to start a major war and wants regime change.

Again, this very, very difficult relationship, and we don't know where it's headed.

Will there be more strikes like this?

Is this part of a larger operation?

What we can say is that the U.S.

has been sending Navy ships, ships, jet fighters, and other military hardware into the region.

So this raises the question, is there something larger in store or is this sort of a threat intended to one or two strikes, send a message, and that might be the end of it?

Mara, the U.S.

has conducted a war on drugs or many wars on drugs for a long time.

What kind of congressional notification or approval would be required to make these kinds of strikes?

This is the military doing an airstrike.

Right.

This is not the Coast Guard interdicting these kinds of boats.

And what the Coast Guard usually does is they stop a boat, they arrest the people on board.

If there's resistance, they blow up the motor or something like that.

But just to basically take military action and bomb a boat is pretty unusual unless you have notified Congress and gotten their approval.

Now, clearly, the Trump administration doesn't think they have to do that.

They say this is terrorism.

There's been very little pushback from Republicans in Congress, even though it is one of their constitutional prerogatives to approve military action, with the exception of Rand Paul, who's a Libertarian Republican in the Senate, who said that there was no process, there was no accusation, there was no evidence.

But Rand Paul was saying this is not the way the United States usually goes about interdicting people that they think are drug traffickers.

And we don't know who these people were.

And you can imagine a million ways that an operation like this could go wrong.

What if it's a bunch of civilians out for a sport fishing trip?

And Rand Paul has raised the question, as have others, how do we even know that these boats were headed to the U.S.?

They were in international waters, could have been going to an island.

Again, the evidence of whether or not they had drugs or weapons or what exactly was on the boat.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And Democrats in Congress certainly have been raising alarm bells about this, whether this was legal.

The Trump administration response is, oh, so now you're going to defend narco-terrorists?

And that is, I think, Greg, really the justification that the White House is pursuing here, that these are now classified as terrorist organizations.

That's right.

And the Trump administration has added drug smuggling groups or gangs to the list of international terror organizations.

The State Department keeps this list, and most of them have been involved at some point with the kinds of things we would associate with terrorism, a bombing of civilian targets for some sort of political goal.

But it's not the kind of groups that have been involved in drug smuggling, for example.

And Trump has cited this sort of general threat of national security for drug smugglers.

Obviously, it's a very serious crime, but it's not an act of war.

And the White House and the Pentagon have talked about the fact that the U.S.

is obeying the laws of armed conflict.

conflict.

But again, there's no evidence of armed conflict.

There's no evidence that there were weapons on these boats or there was an intent to attack the U.S.

So this seems to be in very sort of vague and pretty fuzzy terms the rationale that they're standing behind for the moment.

And this is part and parcel with what he is also doing domestically.

He is trying to name all sorts of organizations, however loosely defined, as domestic terrorists.

And the terrorism label does give the president some extra powers, and he seems to be using it as broadly as he can.

Trump might be breaking a law here and he is certainly breaking a norm.

I mean, past presidents didn't do this.

They generally treated drug trafficking as a law enforcement issue, not a military one.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment.

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And we're back, and we have been discussing recent military strikes President Trump has ordered on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean.

Greg, how do these strikes fit into other foreign policy moves you've seen from this administration and this president?

Well, Trump has been pretty reluctant to use military force in his first term, especially.

Maybe a little less so this time.

He still seems hesitant, and he often talks about something as being, it's over there, America first, it's just not our problem.

You hear that a lot when he's talking about Ukraine, for example.

He has been using force for limited strikes this time.

We saw the one-off bombing run on Iran's nuclear facilities back in June.

Now these two attacks on the boats.

Still, these are limited operation.

It seems like Trump wants to send a message and then be able to call it off very very quickly if that's what he wants to do and doesn't want to be drawn into a longer, more extended, open-ended kind of conflict.

And because the U.S.

is so much more powerful in a situation like this, it doesn't seem like there's a threat that it would go on longer than he would want.

So it's showing that Trump is willing to use force, but with the expectation that he can start it and stop it whenever he wants to.

And there's another pattern.

He's willing to use force against a smaller, weaker country.

He is extremely reluctant, skip using force, just pushing back against a strong ruler like Vladimir Putin.

He certainly isn't willing to confront Bibi Netanyahu, even though he says that he's very unhappy with some of the things he's done.

So there is a pattern.

If you're a smaller, weaker country, if you're Colombia, if you're Greenland, if you're Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, then Trump feels that he can exert U.S.

might against you.

But he seems to shrink from doing that against powerful adversaries like Russia.

Aaron Powell, I think that there's another theme here, which is throughout the second Trump term, he has been very focused on keeping promises.

And he focused in his campaign a lot on drugs, on fentanyl, on the United States being invaded by

groups from outside or people from outside, that sort of language.

And this is certainly part of that.

Speaking with reporters earlier this week, he suggested that his administration could be expanding these efforts to stop drugs from entering the country by land.

What does that mean?

That means there's no drugs coming by sea, but they do come by land.

And you know what?

We're telling the cartels right now, we're going to be stopping them too.

When they come by land, we're going to be stopping them the same way we stop the boats.

And you'll see that.

But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won't happen.

If it doesn't happen, that's good.

What do both of you make of those remarks?

trump has threatened a lot of things so i don't make much about it until he starts uh doing something on land i mean he has threatened vladimir putin numerous times uh with consequences with sanctions if something doesn't happen within two weeks and it doesn't so i don't make much of these remarks except that he feels very free to uh make threats like this without any worry about consequences yeah i would certainly agree with with that if we are talking about land if it does become something,

he's talking about Mexico.

So I think that's the important point.

It would be a huge escalation also if the U.S.

were to in some way send troops, carry out an airstrike on Mexico or on boats coming from Mexico, perhaps on the Pacific coast.

So that would be the thing to look for.

But again, it could be a bluff.

Trump wanting to take one or two actions, airstrikes.

Hopefully that will lead to a big reduction.

He can claim victory there.

But if it does escalate, I think Mexico would be the next place likely to be involved.

All right, we're going to leave it there for today.

I'm Tamar Keith.

I cover the White House.

I'm Greg Myrie.

I cover National Security.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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