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War & Peace
Guatemalan President Denies Deal With US for Joint Strikes on Drug Cartels
“There is no agreement authorizing foreign military operations by any country in national territory,” the office of President Bernardo Arévalo said in response to a New York Times report.
May 28, 2026
While acknowledging a request for US support in fighting drug cartels, Guatemala's president on Thursday refuted reporting by The New York Times claiming his government "has agreed to carry out joint strikes with the United States military inside its territory"—action that would violate the country's Constitution.
Citing "three people familiar with the talks," the Times reported that "President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala agreed to both airstrikes and other military action in a call with [US] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth... with operations to start as early as next month."
However, Arévalo's office pushed back in a statement stressing that “there is no agreement authorizing foreign military operations by any country in national territory."
The presidential statement said that Guatemalan Defense Minister Henry Sáenz wrote to Hegseth "to request US cooperation in operations led by Guatemalan security forces against narco-trafficking organizations as part of a strategy launched in 2024."
"This request falls within the framework of existing bilateral agreements on the matter, and adheres to constitutional provisions and laws regarding cooperation agreements on civil and military security," the office added.
Arévalo's office stressed that Guatemala's Constitution stipulates that foreign military forces can only be deployed in the country if authorized by a two-thirds vote of the national Legislature.
A source from Arévalo's government told El País Thursday on condition of anonymity that the Trump administration has been exerting "great pressure" for two months.
“What they offered us is to select one or two places to bomb and televise everything," the source said. "But we have been clear that this is not going to happen. It cannot operate a US military force in the country, simply because it is unconstitutional."
Arévalo's office said it is seeking US assistance in training, strategic and tactical support, and intelligence sharing, pointing to recent actions against drug trafficking, including the capture of an arsenal in Las Cruces, Petén, the seizure of a narcotics laboratory in Ayutla, San Marcos, and the capture of numerous suspected narco-traffickers.
Asked during a Thursday press conference about the possibility of joint combat operations like those reportedly carried out by US and Ecuadorian forces in the South American nation, Arévalo claimed unfamiliarity with the details of the agreement between those two countries.
Progressive US lawmakers are demanding answers about “reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities" in Ecuador, including a "dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking" where unarmed civilians were allegedly tortured.
Arévalo brushed off a suggestion that his request for US cooperation could open the door to human rights violations in Guatemala, telling reporters that "the best defense against any violation of human rights is our respect and commitment to the laws of the republic and to current legislation."
While Guatemala does suffer from serious narco-trafficking issues, many Guatemalans are wary of US intervention, given past meddling including the 1954 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of reformist President Jacobo Árbenz, which was followed by decades of right-wing repression, civil war, and a US-backed genocide against Indigenous Mayan peoples during which around 200,000 people were killed.
In March, the Trump administration lifted longstanding restrictions on arms transfers to Guatemala.
“Now, our soldiers are going to have access to modern technology, radars, night viewfinders," Sáenz told La Hora on Friday.
The defense minister said he discussed closer counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States during the “Shield of the Americas” summit, during which senior officials from over a dozen nations—most of them ruled by right-wing governments—gathered at President Donald Trump's golf resort near Miami.
In addition to Guatemala, the Trump administration has been trying to pressure other Latin American nations into launching joint military operations against narco-traffickers. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has vehemently rejected US requests, even as President Donald Trump has threatened "to do something" about cartels in her country.
“The epicenter of cartel violence is not Mexico, it’s the United States,” Sheinbaum defiantly declared in March. “The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos throughout Latin America.”
In January, Trump ordered the bombing and invasion of Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted to the United States on dubious "narco-terrorism" allegations that were then significantly walked back.
Trump has also threatened to attack Colombia, Panama, and Cuba, whose people are bracing for what many observers fear is an impending US war. If Trump does order military action against Cuba, it would be the 12th country he's attacked during the course of his two White House terms. Trump also ordered the ongoing bombing campaign targeting boats his administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Around 200 people have been killed by the US strikes.
As Nick Turse of The Intercept reported Wednesday:
Trump has turned the Western Hemisphere into a war zone as part of what he and others have called the Donroe Doctrine. This bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean; an attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president; CIA operations in Mexico; joint counter-cartel operations in Ecuador dubbed “Operation Total Extermination”; and increased military and intelligence operations elsewhere in Latin America.
Experts contend that, like the boat strikes, any airstrikes carried out against drug cartels would likely constitute illegal acts of murder, even if conducted with the permission of governments in targeted countries.
“As with the boat strikes, depending on the facts, further attacks could amount to premeditated killings outside of armed conflict, which some of us lawyers would refer to as murder,” former US State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told The New York Times on Thursday.
“Congress never authorized any of these strikes," he added. "So US personnel who participate in these actions could face consequences down the road, after the Trump administration.”
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‘A War Criminal Admitting to His Crimes’: Netanyahu Says He Ordered Military to Seize 70% of Gaza
The head of a pro-Israel lobbying group called it "a blatant violation of the ceasefire and clear undermining of any plan for post-conflict Gaza."
May 28, 2026
As Israel expands its control over the Gaza Strip in violation of last year's ceasefire agreement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to take over even more territory.
During a conference at the Ein Prat pre-military academy in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, the prime minister acknowledged that Israel has gradually expanded its control over Gaza since the ceasefire agreement was implemented in October.
"We are now in 60% of the Gaza Strip, more or less. We were at 50%; now we’ve moved to 60%," he told the crowd.
"My directive," he continued, "is to move to—"
Members of the audience then interrupted with shouts of "100! 100!"
"Wait, let's go in order," Netanyahu responded. "First 70%. Let's start with that."
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has said Israel's expansion of control in Gaza and construction of fortified military sites “directly contradicts the requirements of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement" and is creating conditions of "de facto annexation."
That agreement required Israeli forces to withdraw behind a so-called "yellow line" that left the military occupying about 53% of the country. Even that occupation was meant to be temporary, with later stages of the agreement involving a full pullout of Israeli troops as Hamas and other militant groups in the strip disarm.
But in recent months, the opposite has happened. The Israel Defense Forces have gradually pushed the yellow line deeper into Palestinian territory to the point where it encompasses more than 60% of the coastal strip, leaving Palestinians near the yellow line to wake up and learn they are in an "open-fire zone" where they can be shot on sight.
According to data from the United Nations Human Rights Office shared with Reuters on Wednesday, 152 Palestinians—comprising 102 men, 15 women, and 35 children—had been killed near the boundary during the ceasefire period up to February 5, which the office's head said raises "serious concerns that the Israeli army is shooting at and killing presumed civilians simply on the basis of their proximity to the so-called yellow line."
Netanyahu's remark follows Israel's orders on Wednesday for more than 200,000 residents of southern Lebanon to forcibly evacuate north of the Zahrani River despite an ongoing ceasefire that began last month.
Israel has systematically razed villages across southern Lebanon since the beginning of March, gradually pushing northward to the point where it now effectively controls about a fifth of the country's territory.
Those ordered to flee their homes on Wednesday joined more than 1 million Lebanese already forcibly displaced by Israel's forced expulsion orders and bombardments. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, including hundreds of women and children.
Israel's far-right settler movement—represented in the Netanyahu government by figures like Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—speaks openly about ethnically cleansing Gaza and Lebanon of their residents to make way for permanent Israeli settlers, in a similar fashion to the intensifying annexation of the West Bank.
On Wednesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israel was pushing for the mass “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza and said the government would implement a plan for it “at the right time and in the right manner."
Human rights groups have said that the creation of unlivable conditions in Gaza to push its residents to leave would amount to the war crime of forced transfer.
Itay Epshtain, an Israeli expert in international law and the law of armed conflict, said Katz had "publicly committed himself to the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza" and that "members of Israel’s government openly endorsed conduct in gross and systemic breach of peremptory norms of international law."
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has previously expressed sympathy for the idea of "Greater Israel," which involves the expansion of the nation's borders to conquer all or part of current-day Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in accordance with Biblical descriptions.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel's genocidal military campaign in Gaza, and is reportedly taking actions against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as well.
Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that Netanyahu's pledge on Thursday to further expand Israel's territorial control in Gaza was "a war criminal admitting to his crimes."
Ilan Goldberg, the senior vice president of the pro-Israel lobbying group JStreet, said plans to expand were "a blatant violation of the ceasefire and clear undermining of any plan for post-conflict Gaza."
"Yes, Hamas needs to disarm," he said. "But Israel cannot be launching plans to retake all of Gaza."
Owen Jones, a British journalist, lamented the lack of coverage of the slow-motion ethnic cleansing in the Western press.
"Israel doesn't try to hide its crimes. It broadcasts them to the world, knowing it has impunity," he said on Thursday. "Netanyahu boasts of annexing Gaza. Yesterday, his defense minister said the plan was to remove Gaza's population. No front page headlines. No Western denunciations."
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'No War With Cuba': As Pentagon Mobilizes US Forces, Dems Move to Block Illegal Trump Attack
“This administration is rushing toward another disastrous war, putting countless American and foreign lives at risk," said Rep. Nydia Velázquez. "Congress must reassert its constitutional authority."
May 28, 2026
With US military forces prepared to launch an unprovoked attack on Cuba, a group of congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced a new war powers resolution in a bid to block President Donald Trump from launching yet another illegal war of choice.
Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Gregory Meeks, both of New York, introduced the resolution, which would bar US forces from hostilities within or against Cuba without congressional authorization, as required under the 1973 War Powers Act. The measure is cosponsored by Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Joaquin Castro of Texas.
“Donald Trump's belligerent foreign policy is creating new wars and conflicts across the world. As our country is already embroiled in a new war with Iran, the president has now set his sights on regime change in Cuba,” Velázquez said in a statement. “This administration is rushing toward another disastrous war, putting countless American and foreign lives at risk. Congress must reassert its constitutional authority if the president continues down this illegal path.”
Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hellbent on starting another war, this time with Cuba, to distract from the president’s failure in Iran, weak economy, and mass deportation of 500,000 Cubans legally in the United States."
It is the second Cuba war powers resolution introduced by lawmakers since Trump began threatening to attack and "take" the island earlier this year. Last month, senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
The new resolution's introduction follows months of escalating aggression against Cuba by the Trump administration, including preparation and threats to attack, an oil blockade that critics say is causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and last week's Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment of former President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who has falsely claimed that his parents fled communism in Cuba when they actually emigrated during an earlier US-backed dictatorship—said that the island is "in a lot of trouble."
“Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States," Rubio added.
An article published Wednesday by Politico highlighted US military preparations for various war scenarios for Cuba, including bombing, an invasion, or a mission to enforce the DOJ indictmebnt by kidnapping Castro in a manner similar to January's illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
According to Politico's Paul McLeary:
The armada in the region is slightly smaller than it was in January when the US captured Maduro. But the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group entered the Caribbean in May, along with several guided missile destroyers and cruisers that can launch precision missiles at targets onshore. An array of advanced American drones and surveillance aircraft have also circled Cuba for months, according to flight tracking sites. The USS Kearsarge amphibious ships and escorts, which carry 2,500 Marines, are off the coast of Virginia preparing for a new deployment, and could replace some ships heading home.
The surge provides a variety of military options, although the Pentagon would need additional troops for a massive ground invasion.
The Politico piece drew fierce rebuke from Havana.
"There are politicians in the United States pushing the drumbeat of war against Cuba, trying to fabricate excuses, trying to portray Cuba as a threat, and trying to push the US president to take military action, even with the understanding that military action would lead to bloodshed, mostly of Cubans, but also of Americans," Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told The Los Angeles Times.
"The question is: How does a government convince American citizens that it is in their interest to cause death, cause destruction and suffering to a neighboring nation simply to satisfy the ambitions of a small cabal of wealthy, influential people who enjoy the ear of politicians and powerful people in Washington?" Fernández added.
Cuba has been shoring up international support amid the growing threat of US attack. On Tuesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said earlier this month that “there is no military solution to be sought for Cuba."
On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a meeting with Rodríguez at United Nations headquarters in New York that "China will continue to uphold justice and speak up for Cuba, support the Cuban people’s just cause, and contribute to Cuba’s economic development and people’s livelihood."
Also on Wednesday, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Council for Foreign and Community Relations issued a statement affirming "Cuba’s sovereign right to import and receive fuel" and condemning "the obstruction of energy supplies to Cuba, which has precipitated a grave humanitarian crisis."
"Cuba poses no threat to any nation... it stands as a peaceful and cooperative member of the international community... [and] the continued application of these unilateral coercive measures constitutes an unjustifiable violation of human rights, the principles of free trade, and the fundamental norms governing relations among sovereign states," the council stated.
If the US launches military action against Cuba, it will be the 12th country attacked during Trump’s two terms in office. The president—who has repeatedly said that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—has ordered attacks on Afghanistan, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, and has bombed dozens of boats accused without evidence of transporting drugs in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Last week, tens of thousands of Cubans rallied in Havana to denounce the indictment of Castro and US aggression against their homeland, which dates back to the revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista, one in a series of dictators backed by the United States after it granted Cuba conditional independence after conquering the island along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam during an 1898 war against Spain waged on a dubious pretext.
Since then, the United States has tried to assassinate former Cuban President Fidel Castro, backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, served as a base for perpetrators of some of the hemisphere’s worst terror attacks, and even hatched a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb high above the island to convince its people that the return of Jesus Christ was nigh and the only thing standing in the way of the long-awaited “Second Coming” was Castro.
Cuba has endured this aggression and more without retaliating against the United States. Despite this, the Trump administration has responded by inflicting more and more pain upon people it claims it is trying to liberate from oppression.
“If Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are serious about a new relationship with the Cuban people," Meeks said Wednesday, "they would reverse 65 years of failed US policy toward Cuba, end the oil blockade and the humanitarian crisis it caused, and work with Congress to modify the draconian and outdated US sanctions that disproportionately harm the Cuban people.”
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'These Extrajudicial Killings Are Becoming Normalized,' Amnesty Warns After More Boat Bombings
"Not only are these killings illegal, they are immoral. People of good conscience cannot allow this to continue."
May 28, 2026
The Trump administration on Wednesday killed two more people in the eastern Pacific by bombing a vessel accused—without evidence—of trafficking drugs, bringing the death toll from the US military's illegal campaign of boat attacks in international waters closer to 200.
Amnesty International, which has spoken out forcefully against the boat strikes since they began in September 2025, warned in a statement Wednesday that "these extrajudicial killings are becoming normalized" as they fade from the headlines and lawmakers do nothing to stop the administration.
“Not only are these killings illegal, they are immoral," said Amanda Klasing, Amnesty's national director for government relations. "People of good conscience cannot allow this to continue, yet Congress has so far failed to halt, or even slow down, this lethal and unlawful campaign.”
The US Southern Command announced strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday and Wednesday, attacks that killed three people total.
SOUTHCOM called the victims "narco-terrorists" without any evidence. According to a tracker maintained by The Intercept's Nick Turse, the Trump administration's boat bombing campaign has killed 197 people since September 2025.
On May 27, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking… pic.twitter.com/qKvSjxpk3P
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) May 28, 2026
“Numbers alone cannot capture the unimaginable human toll of this horrific campaign of murder at sea," Klasing said Wednesday. "Every single person that the U.S. has killed at sea was arbitrarily deprived of their right to life, and they and their families have a right to justice. Lawmakers must do everything in their power to halt this campaign and hold everyone responsible accountable for their role in these extrajudicial killings."
“We are witnessing the height of lawlessness—a government taking military action to kill people who it unilaterally deems ‘criminals’ or ‘terrorists’ and then bragging about it on social media and stonewalling members of Congress demanding explanations," Klasing added. "Regardless of whether the victims committed crimes or not, killing them is completely illegal under both US and international law. Alleged criminal suspects should be dealt with by law enforcement who are bound by international human rights law, which prohibits using lethal force unless absolutely necessary based on an imminent threat to life."
Few of the nearly 200 victims of the US military's assault on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been publicly identified. Earlier this year, family members of two Trinidadian men—Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo—killed by a US strike in October filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Trump administration.
"Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family," said Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo's sister. "If the US government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable."
Ana Piquer, Amnesty's Americas director, called for urgent action from the international community to rein in the lawless Trump administration.
“Beyond US authorities, we need to see leadership from other governments in the region, as well as the Organization of American States,” said Piquer. "The international community must speak out firmly against these murders, which constitute a serious threat to human rights and respect for international law. Governments must immediately suspend intelligence sharing that may contribute to these operations. They further should suspend export licenses to any defense material that could be used to perpetuate these murders."
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