President Donald Trump stated that the United States reached a second ship carrying drugs from Venezuela, demonstrating its determination to continue attacks that increased tensions with the country and raised doubts about the legality of these actions.
“The US forces have performed a second kinetic attack on drug trafficking cartels and extraordinarily violent, positively identified narcoterrorist in the area of responsibility of the Southern Command of the US,” Trump wrote in a publication on social networks. “The attack occurred while these confirmed Narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in international waters carrying illegal narcotics.”
The publication included a link to a video showing a ship rolling in the waves in unidentified waters. After a few seconds, it is consumed by a huge fireball.
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Trump ordered the attack about two weeks after the US Army reported killed 11 people in an attack on a vessel that also allegedly transported drugs from Venezuela. This action increased the tension with Venezuela and generated criticism from some neighboring countries, as well as scholars who argued that the US was not under immediate threat and that the attack could not have been legal.
The most recent attack will almost certainly raise similar questions. In the video Trump posted on social networks on Monday, the vessel seems to be moving. There is also no indication of where she was going.
Earlier on Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said the first attack was widely seen as a “heinous crime” and accused the US of trying to push his country into war. The US has shifted several naval vessels and about 4,000 naval sailors and Marines to the waters near Venezuela, as well as transferring several F-35 fighters to Puerto Rico.
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“The scale of displacement and the ambitions of management suggest that they want to go with everything, perhaps causing an internal fracture in the regime,” said Risa Grais-Targow, who leads Venezuela’s coverage to Eurasia Group. “But there seems to be a certain mismatch between the targets and the resources being mobilized.”
Trump administration officials defended the strategy, with the president referring to the previous attack as a military action. In a letter to Congress, he argued that the measure was “consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and the interests of the United States abroad, in favor of national security and US foreign policy interests.”
“What needs to start happening is that some of these boats need to be destroyed,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Jerusalem reporters on Monday. “We cannot live in a world where suddenly they make a turn in U and we can no longer touch them.”
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In a subsequent social media publication on Monday, Trump said drug cartels caused “devastating consequences” to Americans, and that the US was “hunting” anyone who transported deadly narcotics. Trump said that both the previous and Monday attack occurred in international waters.
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