Exclusive: Officials frame strikes as self-defense against violence, without naming aggressor, while Trump claims they’re to stop US overdose deaths
The Trump administration is framing its boat strikes against drug cartels in the Caribbean in part as a collective self-defense effort on behalf of US allies in the region, according to three people directly familiar with the administration’s internal legal argument.
The legal analysis rests on a premise – for which there is no immediate public evidence – that the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies like Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments.
As a result, according to the legal analysis, the strikes are targeting the cocaine, and the deaths of anyone on board should be treated as an enemy casualty or collateral damage if any civilians are killed, rather than murder.
That line of reasoning, which forms the backbone of a classified justice department office of legal counsel (OLC) opinion, provides the clearest explanation to date how the US satisfied the conditions to use lethal force.
