Are The Strikes On Venezuelan Boats ‘War’ – And Do The Rules Of War Apply?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith.
I cover the White House.

I'm Frank Ordonez, and I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myri, I cover national security.

And today on the show, we want to look at the military actions the Trump administration has taken against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.

The White House alleges the vessels are used for drug trafficking, and those aboard the ships are narco-terrorists. In these strikes, more than 80 people have been killed.

Greg, the strikes came up yesterday in a cabinet meeting at the White House where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked questions about that first boat that was targeted back in September.

Can you talk about what we learned from that? Yeah, so this first strike took place on September 2nd, and we learned about it after the fact at that time.

And it was a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. Now, 11 people were killed.
The Trump administration released a brief bit of video at that time.

It was the first of more than 20 strikes and more than 80 deaths. But we've got relatively few details on all of them.

But now we're learning more about that very first strike, and it's coming under this intense scrutiny.

It turns out nine nine people were killed in the initial strike on the boat and two survivors were still on the burning vessel.

So here's Hegseth talking about that strike yesterday at the White House cabinet meeting. I watched that first strike live.
As you can imagine at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do.

So I didn't stick around, so I moved on to my next meeting. So Hegseth is saying he didn't see it, but what is NPR's reporting about what happened next?

Yeah, so it turns out this very first strike of this military operation created this complicated scenario with the drugs presumably in it still afloat, but survivors on board.

So the military followed up with a second strike, which apparently killed the two survivors. And then there were actually a couple more strikes to sink the boat.

So this current controversy really began with a Washington Post story last Friday. It said that Hegseth gave a verbal order to kill everyone.
Now, he's denied it, and here's what he said yesterday.

So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire.
It was exploded and fire is smoke.

You can't see anything. You got digital.
This is called the fog of war.

So Hagseth, while he was away and not seeing what happened after that first strike, that the decision for the additional strikes was made by Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley.

And Hagseth said it was the right call, but he's definitely pinning it on Bradley as the person who made this decision. He seems to be saying, totally right call, but not me.
Don't look at me.

Look at this Admiral here. Yeah, we've had so much controversy around the whole big picture of what's the legal authority for all this stuff.

But now we're really zeroing in on this one specific action that took place in the very first strike.

Franco, I want to hone in on something that Hag Seth said there. The idea of this being the fog of war, but there is no war that's been declared.
So what is actually happening here?

Yeah, I mean, on the fog of the war part, I mean, it is part of Hegseth's defense for, you know, not seeing the two survivors.

He's also using it to criticize some of these media reports and saying that people don't know what they're talking about because they don't have the experience of those in the military like him who know about the fog of the war.

I mean, like, Is he talking about fog of war literally or metaphorically here? I mean, likely both. I mean, I I can't get into Hegseth's head, and he's, you know, given mixed signals in so many ways.

But, you know, kind of on your note about no war being declared, while there is no official war, I mean, when has the administration ever really stuck to any literal meaning on these kind of things?

The White House is calling this a war on drugs. They're launching missile strikes on boats.

They have one of the biggest, largest contingencies of military hardware floating in the Caribbean right now, including the world's largest aircraft carrier.

They are definitely acting as if this is a war. But again, this is part of their defense of not knowing what's going on.

You also have Trump saying he didn't know anything about the people adamantly saying he wasn't involved.

So they're definitely, as you were pointing out and Greg was pointing out, you know, kind of trying to create some separation between them and this strike or the second strike.

Greg, can we just explain something here? Aiming missiles at drug boats is not typically the way drug trafficking has been handled by the U.S. government in the past.

Absolutely. There is this long history of the Coast Guard interdicting boats.
If they find drugs or other contraband, they will arrest the people, prosecute them, and this has gone on.

In fact, Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, posted a letter yesterday that he got from the Coast Guard.

He had asked them some questions, and they responded by saying that they interdicted more than 200 boats roughly the year before this U.S. military campaign started.

The Coast Guard said it did not use lethal force in any of those cases. It said in about 20% of the cases, they did not find drugs.

Now there's some context there that maybe they were looking at boats that are involved in resupplying or refueling drug boats.

They had apparently some reason to be suspicious, but there were no drugs on board those boats and they were obviously not using a force to kill the people involved.

So there is a long, well-established approach here, which has been completely overturned by what the Trump administration is doing.

And I will just note that the Trump administration says that the reason why they have overturned it and are not doing what has been done in the past, because they argue that it hasn't worked, and drugs continue to flow into the United States at

somewhat record. levels.
I think one of the problems with that is the big concern right now is fentanyl comes from Mexico by land via China.

And some of this interdiction that's happening in the waters is cocaine. And cocaine is not as much of an issue as fentanyl.
So there's a lot of contradictions to unravel here.

Now, the administration says that each one of these boats has enough drugs on them to kill 25,000 Americans. And so they have to be stopped to save American lives.

That may be a bit of a stretch if it's not fentanyl. Or if it's not even going to the United States.
The boat, that is.

And the White House just hasn't provided evidence that there are drugs on these boats other than these grainy videos that they keep putting out. All right, well, we have much more to come.

Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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And we're back. And Greg, I want to talk for a moment about the rules of engagement here.
There are specific laws and and regulations of how the military is supposed to act.

So what do you know about how these strikes align with the rules of war? Yeah, so we won't go down the rabbit hole entirely, but just as a starting point, there are so many different bodies of law.

There's U.S. military law.
There's the international laws of war, international humanitarian law. And so there is a lot of talk about war crimes.
Well, is this a war?

To commit a war crime, you have to have a war. And the Trump administration is calling it an armed conflict, though many of the critics are saying this is not a war or not an armed conflict.

So, you know, what is it a war or not? And so which laws apply? Let's try to ground this with one specific thing.

The Pentagon does have a law of war manual. And one of those points,

18.3.2.1, talks about clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations. And it talks about the fact that troops are supposed to not obey a clearly illegal order.

Well, that can be kind of fuzzy, but they do give an example. And it says, quote, for example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.

So it's almost as if they had anticipated something like this when that was written, but that is in the Pentagon's own manual of war.

So if one were following the manual of war by the letter of the law, would you then have rescued the two men that didn't die in the initial strike?

It's very hard to know exactly given the circumstances. If this boat was hit long distance and perhaps the U.S.

military did not have a boat or a ship nearby, a rescue might have just been difficult in practical terms. The boat was on fire and presumably had fuel.
It could have exploded.

It would have been very dangerous, even if you had the ability to do that. There was also probably the wish or desire to sink the boat.
So, you know,

how do you

square sinking the boat when there are survivors on board? So lots of tricky questions just talking about this in ordinary terms, let alone legal terms. The general notion under U.S.

law or the international rules of war is if somebody cannot defend themselves, then you are not supposed to attack them.

And I'll just add that in a subsequent strike later,

there were survivors found and the military at least did pick them up, brought them onto boats, and they were eventually sent back to their home countries.

Secretary Hagseth has been talking about lethality and military lawyers since the very beginning.

Shortly after he came into office at the beginning of this year, he fired the top military lawyers, the judge advocate generals of the Army and the Air Force.

This sent a very clear signal that he didn't want military lawyers prosecuting troops. He talked about this when he was a TV host.

He wrote a book that has a chapter in it entitled More Lethality, Less Lawyers.

In that book, he describes an episode in Iraq where he was a platoon leader and told his troops to ignore the advice of a military lawyer about when they could and couldn't open fire.

And very recently he gave a speech to admirals and generals. He said, We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.

We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.

Regarding Hegseth, he has been a liability for the White House from the beginning. There was his tough confirmation hearing where allegations of alcohol abuse were very prominent.

Then there was SignalGate, where classified military plans were shared in a group text that happened to include the editor of The Atlantic. We're expecting a report on that later this week.

And now this. So are there any signs that the president may waver in his support of Hexeth? Yeah, I mean, certainly a political liability.

I was actually talking with a White House historian about this earlier today, who told me that a president is going to stick by his or her cabinet secretary for as long as they can or until they just don't, and that they're going to stop supporting their cabinet secretary if it comes to the point where he or she is damaging to the president or the presidency.

And I think you can see some of that daylight very clearly in the comments from President Trump, you know, including on his return from Florida, where he spent Thanksgiving on Sunday on the Air Force One, saying that he did not know of the second strike and saying he would not have called for the second strike.

Or on Monday when the White House called, you know, kind of a last-minute press briefing and the press secretary, Caroline Levitt, read a very carefully worded statement explaining that the Admiral was the one who called for these strikes.

And as this historian was telling me, When a press secretary, especially one like Caroline Levitt, who is so comfortable talking off the cuff, refers to a carefully written statement, says it word for word, and refers back to it, that means lawyers were involved, and it means they're being very, very careful to protect the presidency and and protect the president.

And there is a reason for that is because you have members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, investigating this, vowing for more questions, and it is a Congress who already has concerns about these actions.

Franco, to close out here, I'd want to talk about Venezuela and not just the boats. President Trump has had strong words for Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro.

It seems Trump wants Maduro out. He definitely wants him out.
I think there's no question about that.

Trump has said repeatedly that it's time for Maduro to go, that a change is necessary, and it dates back to his first administration of supporting a different leader there.

This is something that President Trump has worked on for a long time, but this administration, this time, everyone I speak to says that the actions this administration is taking against Venezuela is far more than what we've been talking about, attacking some boat strikes, small boats carrying drugs.

This is more about, frankly, what I'm told is regime change, and all the actions look to be that way.

And when President Trump has been pushed on this, whether he's looking for Maduro to leave, he has not backed down. He said yes.

And that brings us to this kind of contradictory thing that happened, which is President Trump just pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of involvement in drug trafficking.

So, what is the rationale for that?

It's almost like here's someone who was convicted of doing the thing he says Maduro is doing, and Trump pardons him.

Yeah, I mean, the critics argue that the pardon of Hernandez, you know, basically undermines the administration's claims that it's focused on ending drug trafficking.

I mean, Hernandez was, you know, former president, but who U.S. officials at the time said was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.

The efforts to get Hernandez and put him behind bars were quite significant. The evidence against him was quite significant.

So there are a lot, a lot of questions about Trump doing this that are only leading to accusations of deceit and hypocrisy by the Trump administration as it comes while the president, as you note, has continued to escalate this military campaign against supposed drug trafficking in Venezuela.

And when you say criticism, we're not just talking about Democrats. This is not purely partisan criticism.
Correct. It is definitely Republicans as well.

And I think it is creating a little bit more of a divide, or at least some daylight, with Republicans.

And it is very notable considering that during this administration, Republicans have repeatedly deferred to President Trump, but you are seeing some daylight on a few issues, and this is a big one.

All right, well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamar Keith.
I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordoñas.
I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myri.
I cover national security.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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