It was an extrajudicial killing but I don’t think it qualifies as piracy under either 18 USC Chapter 81 or UNCLOS Article 101(a)(i) since it isn’t an act by a non-state-affiliated party but was rather an authorized act of the national military force of the offending nation (US Navy). That attack, without provocation, not in self-defense or defense of a third party, and with no other attempt made to divert, disable, or dissuade the boat arguably makes it an undeclared act of war, and potentially a war crime. Here is what the US Naval Institute has to say on the strike and general issue of using the Navy for this kind of ‘intervention’:
The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits the armed forces from engaging in law enforcement on U.S. soil. Congress has carved out exceptions for maritime counternarcotics support, which in practice has meant the military provides surveillance, logistics, and transport, while the Coast Guard conducts arrests.5 By ordering a strike against narcotics smugglers instead of a seizure, the administration stretched this framework into new territory.
Internationally, the question is even thornier. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea grants states authority to board and seize vessels engaged in piracy, the slave trade, or unauthorized broadcasting. Drug trafficking is addressed through separate conventions and bilateral treaties. None of these treaties authorizes the summary execution of traffickers at sea, even if they are designated as terrorists. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the strike is self-defense—that the United States could engage in a unilateral strike because narcotics trafficking poses a threat to U.S. national security and U.S. citizens. But the principle of self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter only allows the use of force against an imminent threat. It is hard to see how a drug-laden speedboat in international waters hundreds of miles from U.S. territory posed an imminent threat to the United States.
To be clear, the United States has engaged in the extrajudicial killing for two decades using the drone assassination program, generally within the sovereign borders of another nation and with a minimum of due process. The program was originally justified under the George W. Bush administration for “high value targets” in the Global War on Terror or “against persons who pose a continuing imminent threat to U.S. persons”, although the specific requirements to meet those definitions have been progressively relaxed until they basically mean whoever the kill chain authority has designated as a target. This includes four (4) US citizens killed by drone strikes with no due process, which is almost certainly a violation of constitutional rights. So, this isn’t wholly unprecedented but it is certainly an expansion of scope where unidentified persons in a foreign flag boat in international waters who pose no imminent threat to US persons or assets are summarily executed for the purported crime of smuggling drugs between two independent countries, neither of which requested US military support. The claim that they were members of transnational organized crime organization ‘Tren de Aragua’ was neither verified, nor (despite clams from JD Vance and other Trump regime officials) is it justifiable through AUMF as unlike Al Qaeda, Tren de Aragua has never declared war or intent to commit acts of terrorism against the United States. Despite the statement from Marco Rubio that the boat was filled with drugs and headed for the US, there is no evidence for either claim; the boat was not headed for or anywhere near the US coast, and drug boats are not usually filled with people taking up valuable space for drugs.
Of course, the reason this actually happened is because the Trump regime is trying to provoke confrontation with Venezuela and potentially to overthrow the Maduro regime. This kind of unilateral military action by the US is hardly unprecedented, even in the region (US invasions of Grenada in 1983 and of Panama in 1989) but while Nicolás Maduro is certainly corrupt and the election that brought him to power was condemned as illegitimate by the Organization of American States which approved a resolution declaring his presidency illegitimate and calling for new elections, nobody has asked the United States to intervene. Unlike those interventions, which were essentially political in nature, this is actually just a thinly veiled exercise in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to gain control over the natural resources of Venezuela, specifically petroleum, gold, and copper reserves.
More from the Council on Foreign Relations:
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