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monroe doctrine
Another 'Extrajudicial Execution' as US Bombs Second Alleged Venezuelan Drug Boat
"There is no legal justification for this military strike," said one Amnesty International campaigner. "The US must be held accountable."
Sep 15, 2025
President Donald Trump said Monday that the US carried out a fresh strike on what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one human rights campaigner called another "extrajudicial execution."
"This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the [US Southern Command] area of responsibility," Trump said on his Truth Social network. "The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US."
"These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital US Interests," the Republican president continued. "The Strike resulted in three male terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this Strike."
"BE WARNED—IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!" Trump added. "The illicit activities by these cartels have wrought DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES ON AMERICAN COMMUNITIES FOR DECADES, killing millions of American Citizens. NO LONGER. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"
US President Trump just announced that a second drug smuggling boat from Venezuela was hit by a US airstrike in the Caribbean, killing 3 people on board the boat.#Venezuela pic.twitter.com/dO34gYr9GZ
— CNW (@ConflictsW) September 15, 2025
Responding to arguments by legal experts and Venezuelan officials that the September 2 strike was illegal, Trump said Sunday that "what's illegal are the drugs that were on the boat... and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs."
Only 62 million people died in the entire world of all causes last year, making Trump's claim impossibly false.
Monday's attack followed the September 2 bombing of a vessel allegedly transporting cocaine off the Venezuelan coast, a strike that killed 11 people. Venezuelan officials say none of the 11 men were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, as claimed by Trump.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Last month, the president reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat drug cartels abroad, sparking fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US attacks, invasions, occupations, and other interventions since the issuance of the dubious Monroe Doctrine in 1823.
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported Monday that the Trump administration's recently rebranded Department of War "is thwarting congressional oversight" of the September 2 attack.
“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela,” Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said in response to Turse's reporting. “They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings—and teased more to come.”
Common Dreams reported last week that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced a war powers resolution seeking to restrain Trump from conducting attacks in the Caribbean.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered "no legitimate justification" for the first boat strike.
It's not just congressional Democrats who have decried Trump's September 2 attack. Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that "the recent drone attack on a small speedboat over 2,000 miles from our shore without identification of the occupants or the content of the boat is in no way part of a declared war, and defies our longstanding Coast Guard rules of engagement."
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial," Paul later added.
Paul also mirrored Democratic lawmakers' questioning of Trump's narrative that the boat bombed on September 2 was heading to the United States.
Echoing congressional critics, Daphne Eviatar, director of Amnesty International's Security With Human Rights program, said of Monday's attack, "Today, President Trump claimed his administration carried out another lethal strike against a boat in the Caribbean."
"This is an extrajudicial execution, which is murder," Eviatar added. "There is no legal justification for this military strike. The US must be held accountable."
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The Return of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine
The Trump agenda in Latin America is about protecting US economic and financial interests, just as it was under Kirkpatrick’s reign of terror-for-profit.
Sep 08, 2025
In August 1981, US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick traveled to Santiago to meet with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, eight years after he seized power in a military coup. Kirkpatrick cheeringly described their talk as “most pleasant” and announced that the Reagan administration would fully normalize relations and resume arms sales—support that Pinochet quickly used to claim renewed legitimacy and crack down on opponents.
The episode crystallized what became known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine: the notion that the US government should embrace any autocrat who aligned with Washington’s anti-communist agenda while working to undermine, sanction, or topple any left-wing leader who refused to “play ball,” even if they were democratically elected (and popular). Protecting American economic interests was the lodestar, and just about anything was permissible in service of that goal.
The Kirkpatrick Doctrine shaped US Cold War policy across Latin America under President Ronald Reagan. It was invoked to justify participation in Operation Condor, a transnational repression system that coordinated dictatorships’ assassinations and torture chambers. It was used to rationalize funneling weapons and training to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and to support Brazil’s military junta and its anti-communist crusade.
And it explained why Washington turned a blind eye to the Argentine junta’s Dirty War, which disappeared tens of thousands of citizens while receiving US diplomatic cover. In Kirkpatrick’s view, these horrors were an acceptable price for preserving American hegemony and global “liberalism.” Kirkpatrick is still hailed as a “True American Hero” by conservatives, knowing full well the horrors she committed.
This imperialist view was not entirely new. US foreign policy had long operated on behalf of economic interests. The “Banana Wars” and “Banana Republics” of the early 20th century and the invasions of the Philippines and Caribbean islands were justified in the same way. What changed under Reagan was the sheer arrogance and brazenness of American evil. Washington packaged its hyper-capitalist, immoral backing of tyrants and terrorists under the banner of freedom, insisting to the world that the US was a “shining city upon a hill.” It was nonsense, but the message resonated at home.
The main architect of this approach was Jeane Kirkpatrick. Long discredited after the Cold War ended, her ideas seemed destined for the dustbin. Yet under US President Donald Trump, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine’s ghost has come hauling back. It is now a cornerstone of foreign policy in conservative circles.
Human rights, democracy, and human progress are expendable when they collide with American profits and hegemony.
There has been plenty of talk about this being the new Monroe Doctrine. A Newsweek piece this week argued that Trump’s America First agenda in Latin America is a “MAGA Monroe Doctrine.” But there is a contemporary precedent to Trump’s kind of imperialist chest-thumping.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a handful of other Trump-aligned hawks have pushed for the Kirkpatrick Doctrine’s revival. The GOP, under Trump, has openly flirted with copying Reagan’s playbook in Latin America and making it clear the region is a no-go zone for foreign competitors. US military and economic power could, at any time, be deployed to bully Southern nations into protecting American profits, once again.
This thread runs through both Trump terms. In the first, neoconservatives like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams held sway. In the second, the torch has been picked up by figures like Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Rubio.
In just over four years, the US has shown itself willing to deploy military forces against “subversive forces,” allegedly support coups such as the Silvercorp operation in Venezuela or the Organization of American States-assisted 2019 ouster of socialist Evo Morales in Bolivia, and meddle in elections to achieve its preferred outcome.
It has protected and propped up leaders engaged in authoritarian wars on drugs and socialism—Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele—while punishing leftist leaders like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Lula, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with tariffs, sanctions, and economic warfare. It has also supported right-wing opposition figures across the continent, from son-of-Nazi-SS-lieutenant José Antonio Kast in Chile to oligarch María Corina Machado in Venezuela to far-right groups in Peru and Colombia.
The US has also supported paramilitary groups. Colombia is the clearest case. For decades Washington poured weapons, training, and billions of dollars into the Colombian military, mostly under the Plan Colombia program, all while it collaborated with right-wing paramilitary death squads that murdered tens of thousands of civilians.
The US participated in the “False Positives” scandal, where the Colombian Army, armed with US weapons, training, and equipment, killed thousands of civilians before claiming they were guerrilla fighters, often planting evidence to do so.
Similarly, police and military units engaged in war crimes and brutality have been given US weapons and training. In Brazil, most foreign weapons for the police and military are American, including the very snipers used to gun down children in favelas. Meanwhile, the US has sanctioned any Latin American country from purchasing Chinese and Russian weapons, equipment, and technology, to help feed the American military-industrial complex’s profits.
The doctrine also shows up in how the Trump administration uses pressure campaigns. In Venezuela, the “Maximum Pressure” campaign from the first term has escalated to outright military confrontation. Just last week, the US allegedly destroyed a fishing boat in Venezuelan national waters, killing 11 people. It claimed the boat was transporting drugs headed to the US, affiliated with Tren de Aragua.
There is no evidence for this claim, and even if there was, should drug traffickers be massacred without respect for sovereignty, due process, or congressional approval? Such a war crime could lead to full-on regime change or a new War on Drugs on Venezuelan shores.
This is all while ExxonMobil and Chevron have practically bought Washington’s Venezuela policy, and as the Venezuelan opposition, backed by the US, has said it would give oil rights to US corporations.
The underlying interests are clear. The US wants to maintain dominance over investment and markets, ensuring preferential treatment while shutting out competitors like China and Russia. This has meant pressuring governments not to buy BYD cars, threatening sanctions for buying Russian oil and weapons, strong-arming Panama to ditch Belt and Road projects, and trying to block Chinese banks from opening across the continent.
As South America becomes a breadbasket for the world, countries are turning to Brazilian, Russian, and Chinese fertilizers, cutting into US Big Agriculture’s profits. Oil and gas are front and center in Venezuela, where the largest proven reserves on Earth remain largely untapped.
Mining is increasingly important in the Andes, with lithium, copper, and other critical minerals needed for the global energy transition—and US firms want to be at the center of it, despite Chinese companies leading the way. This can help explain why the administration, particularly Marco Rubio, is so obsessed with supporting oil-rich Guyana, where ExxonMobil and Chevron have billions at stake.
The region is viewed as an extension of US dominance over global commerce—and measures to protect that dominance will be taken accordingly.
Locally, elites close to Trump are eager to profit from the US. They expect fatter contracts, looser regulations, and lower taxes under right-wing authoritarian governments backed by Washington. Brazilian business magnates, including real estate developers involved in building a Trump hotel in Rio de Janeiro that was shut down over corruption investigations, were key actors in pressuring Trump into putting 50% tariffs on Brazil, a move that has backfired massively.
The Trump administration has also pressured Latin American governments not to diversify away from the dollar, discouraging them from signing trade deals in yuan or joining BRICS currency initiatives. China’s opening of multiple bank branches across Latin America has also been a target of US pressure. Countries are now able to sign deals, both internationally and regionally, using foreign currencies like the yuan. This threatens dollar dominance, and the US simply cannot abide by a globally competitive system in “our hemisphere.”
The Trump agenda in Latin America is, most conveniently, about protecting US economic and financial interests, just as it was under Kirkpatrick’s reign of terror-for-profit. The rhetoric may change; today it is about fighting socialism, China, or “narco-terrorism” rather than communism; but the underlying logic is the same.
Human rights, democracy, and human progress are expendable when they collide with American profits and hegemony. Ironically, that very logic destroys US credibility, and may help bring about a truly multipolar system in a region long hurt by unipolar imperial control.
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Experts Decry US 'Summary Execution' of Alleged Drug Runners Off Venezuelan Coast
"Drug trafficking is a crime, not an act of war," noted one critic. "Traffickers must be arrested, not summarily executed."
Sep 03, 2025
Legal and human rights experts said that Tuesday's deadly US attack on a boat the Trump administration claimed was transporting cocaine off the coast of Venezuela violated international law.
"Drug trafficking is a crime, not an act of war," former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth said on social media following the strike, which US President Donald Trump said killed 11 people. "Traffickers must be arrested, not summarily executed, which US forces just illegally did."
"Trump admits he ordered a summary execution—the crime of murder," Roth added. "Drug traffickers are not combatants who can be shot on sight. They are criminal suspects who must be arrested and prosecuted."
Declassified video showing the U.S. committing a war crime when it fired on a civilian vessel near Venezuela.Being suspected of carrying drugs does not carry a death sentence and certainly not without due process.
[image or embed]
— Arturo Dominguez 🇨🇺🇺🇸 (@extremearturo.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Michael Becker, an associate professor of international law at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland, told the BBC Wednesday that the Trump administration's designation of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua and other drug trafficking groups as terrorist organizations "stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point."
"The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narcoterrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets," Becker said. "The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization."
"Not only does the strike appear to have violated the prohibition on the use of force, it also runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law," Becker added.
Although the United States is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, US military legal advisers have asserted that the country should "act in a manner consistent with its provisions."
Luke Moffett, a professor of international law at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told the BBC that while "force can be used to stop a boat," this should generally be accomplished using "nonlethal measures."
Such action, said Moffett, must be "reasonable and necessary in self-defense where there is immediate threat of serious injury or loss of life to enforcement officials," and the US attack was likely "unlawful under the law of the sea."
"It reflects the worst of US militarism—secretive, unilateral, and contemptuous of due process, human rights, and the rule of law."
The peace group CodePink said Wednesday that "even if Washington's claims are accurate, drug trafficking does not justify a death sentence delivered by missile."
"International law is clear: The use of force is only lawful in self-defense or with explicit UN Security Council authorization," the group continued. "This strike had neither. It reflects the worst of US militarism—secretive, unilateral, and contemptuous of due process, human rights, and the rule of law."
"Under US law, it's equally indefensible," CodePink argued. "The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to authorize war. Unilateral action may only be used in emergencies or self-defense, and this strike meets neither."
CodePink continued:
With the US Southern Command assets already deployed in the region, why blow up a vessel instead of capturing and interrogating the crew? If the goal were really to uncover evidence of [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro's alleged involvement, this reckless approach raises only two possibilities: Either the narrative is fabricated and Washington used it as a pretext for a deadly show of force or it's real, and the US chose extrajudicial killing over law, evidence, and humanity.
CodePink called on Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) "to lead the fight in Congress to stop this escalation," urging him to "introduce legislation to block unauthorized military force, hold hearings to expose the dangers of border militarization, insist on transparency of all relevant directives, and rally Congress to cut off funding for these reckless operations."
Tuesday's attack came amid Trump's deployment of an armada of naval warships off the coast of Venezuela, whose socialist government has long endured US threats of regime change—and sometimes more.
Infused with the notion that it has the right to meddle anywhere in the hemisphere under the Monroe Doctrine, the US has attacked, invaded, occupied, and otherwise intervened in Latin American and Caribbean nations well over 100 times since the dubious declaration was issued by President James Monroe in 1823.
Since the late 19th century, oil-rich Venezuela has seen US interventions including involvement in border disputes, help with military coups, support for dictators, and attempts to subvert the Bolivarian Revolution—including by officially recognizing opposition figures claiming to be the legitimate presidents of the country.
Critics of US imperialism highlighted Washington's hypocritical policies and practices toward Venezuela.
"Venezuela produces no cocaine, but US warships patrol its coastline under the banner of a 'drug war,'" New Hampshire Peace Action organizing director Michael "Lefty" Morrill wrote Wednesday.
Meanwhile, neighboring Colombia and nearby Peru—the world's two leading cocaine producers—get no such treatment. Nor does Ecuador, which has emerged as one of the world's leading trafficking hubs.
Morrill also briefly explored bits of the long US history of supporting narcotraffickers when strategically expedient, noting that former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega "was first a CIA asset, then branded a narco-dictator and dragged to a US prison."
"The Taliban was once a strategic partner in Afghanistan's opium trade, before being cast as the world's largest trafficker," he added. "'Drugs' are not simply powders; they are pretexts, shaped to fit the contours of empire."
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