If we accept the White House’s tweet as true, the U.S. military has destroyed a boat, some drugs, and some Tren de Aragua members (before they had a chance to enrich us via immigration):
Even if everything that the White House says is true, how is it legal to do this? We didn’t know for sure that these noble enrichers/merchants were heading to the U.S., right? They could have been going to some other country. Maybe there is some country on this planet where whatever cargo was in the boat was legal to possess. Or maybe the enrichers were going to dump the cargo overboard prior to docking and meeting for margaritas with Maryland Senator Van Hollen?
We were informed that we couldn’t drive an AC-130 up and down the coast of Somalia and destroy pirate vessels from the air, thus ending the Somali pirate industry at a negligible cost. We had to use multi-$billion Navy ships and board the Somali vessels, take the noble future Minneapolis residents into custody, etc. But now we’re allowed to do “Death from Above” in international waters?
I asked ChatGPT “Can a military legally destroy a boat that it knows to be carrying drugs if the boat is in international waters?” and it gives a long answer with the following conclusion:
A military cannot simply destroy a drug-carrying boat in international waters under international law. The lawful course is to seek flag-state consent, board, seize, and possibly scuttle—but not to sink the vessel outright with people or cargo on board. Destruction without consent or imminent threat would generally be illegal.
Maybe part of the answer, which eludes our future AI Overlord, is that the U.S. has refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. We are, literally, lawless (see “Unmoored from the UN: The Struggle to Ratify UNCLOS in the United States”).
Loosely related…
In February 2025, the U.S. Department of State officially designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Is this any different than the droning of terrorists, which a variety of administrations have been doing for decades?
Anon: Why couldn’t we have designated the Somali pirates as an FTO, as well, then?
I guess you’re right that hitting freedom fighters (“terrorists”) on land should also be against what passes for international law. They’re not in international waters but in fact situated on sovereign land where, generally, the ruler of that land approves of their existence/actions.
What’s the limit to this, though? Could we designate Emmanuel Macron’s wife as a foreign terrorist because she keeps slapping him and then blast her via drone as she teeters around Paris?
My follow-up to ChatGPT: “What if we believe the people on the boat are members of Tren de Aragua, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization?”
Answer:
. International Law on the High Seas
Even if suspected terrorists are aboard, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) still governs.
International waters are not “law-free.” States generally must respect the exclusive jurisdiction of the flag state.
To act lawfully, the U.S. (or any state) would normally need:
Flag-state consent, or
A recognized right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter (e.g., if the vessel posed an imminent threat of attack).
….
Being an FTO does not itself make a vessel and its occupants lawful targets for destruction on the high seas.
Military destruction is only legal if:
The vessel poses an imminent threat (e.g., suspected suicide boat, arms transport preparing an attack), or
The flag state consents (rare).
Otherwise, the lawful approach remains boarding and seizure, even if the occupants are terrorists.
@Anonymous
> Is this any different than the droning of terrorists, which a variety of administrations have been doing for decades?
Barack Hussein Obama, II had a “secret kill list” of terrorists, a decent body count (including Osama bin Laden), and a Nobel *Peace* Prize. So, um, no?
“War” is another one of those words whose semantics keep evolving.
I wish they would have seized the boat intact (remember the neutron bomb? destroyed people, saved valuable real-estate?). I would probably bid $100 for that boat at the government auction during the Stuart FL Boat Show. 🙂 They could (partially) reload the Gatling-gun on the AC-130 with the proceeds.
¡Hasta la vista!
I think the difference is that Middle-Eastern pirates are viewed as more precious and special and less coordinated and astute then South American drug gangs. West seem to like that midle-eatrners are ideological and hate Jews. Latin American gangs are more money oriented and live in the present and thus are perceived as more of a threat and competition for western elites.
Isn’t “international law” kind of a bogus concept? If you didn’t think that before surely the way it has been applied to Israel should be dispositive. Where should the relatives of the dead gang members seek restitution in the court of international law?
Mitch: I agree with you that international law in practice seems to follow the “might makes right” principle. But on the other hand we were apparently constrained by international law in dealing with the more adventurous among the Somalis. We didn’t simply say “Somalis aren’t allowed to operate boats until further notice” and then sink any presumed pirates as they came out of their harbors.
Echoes of International Law
Whither shall we turn, when kings again decree
Their laws apply to all but not to them?
The Magna Carta’s ancient challenge breaks their plea,
No crown can hide behind a royal hem.
Like Hippocrates’ Oath beneath the stars,
We vow to heal, to mend what has been torn,
While faux kings dance around their own sharp bars,
Exempting power from the rules they’ve sworn.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights
Lies crumpled, dust-dimmed and unseen,
Where hope grows faint, where justice dims its lights,
A promise tarnished, fading from the scene.
Through centuries of struggle, hope endures—
When equal law, at last, throws wide its doors.
Philip, if Somali pirates were closer to US shores then their fate would be similar. What, about 1% of US maritime trade goes through the Red Sea and through Suez, and probably only in cases when container ships’ navigators are drunk.
Mitch is spot on on international “law”. Who elected those making international “law”? Do not recall voting for them. What is the reason for living in US that is based o US Constitution if bureaucrats with an agenda from any dictatorship could decide a law for you? Wonder as a former immigrant who knew why he was coming to America.
Potential for tyrannic over-reach here is tremendous, and was already tied to protected civil rights domestically, particularly free speech and right to keep and bear arms.
International relationships should be governed by treaties between countries. Do you think a particular treaty, that was ratified by US Senate, and which defines enforcement mechanisms, is broken by blasting formally designated terrorist boat out of the water? If yes then which?
I agree that focus should be on potential terror from open enemies such as Iran, Hamas and other similar entities and their backers.
Phil, where were your moral questions when Barack Hussein Obama murdered good and decent religious Americans in international “lands” using missiles?
Why did you compare LatinX gente with tacos, you monster? And why did you look like Marsha Brady in your yearbook photo? An EdD (with a 30 page “dissertation”) does not entitle you to call yourself “Dr.”, even I know that. Best wishes. XoXo
You should know better, Philip!
Killing Somali pirates in the Middle East or Africa, especially Muslims, is “inhumane” or “harass”. You simply cannot get away with it!
I think the real reason is that Somali is far away, and not critical for US trade, and AC-130 is quite expensive to operate for patrolling 24×7.
Russian Navy and Indian Navy sunk Somali boats outright when they were covering their caravans, and nobody said anything to them. So where is will there is a way.
Some of the ChatGPT analysis might be correct if this were a criminal matter. Piracy has long been generally considered a criminal matter. In fact, piracy is one of the few crimes that enjoys universal jurisdiction under international law, i.e., any country can prosecute someone for piracy even if the specific act did not involve one of their flagged vessels. However, the Trump Administration now considers smuggling drugs into the US a matter of national security, hence the designation of these groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Thus, the Law of the Sea treaty analysis is not particularly relevant. Instead, the military operation presumably was authorized by Article 51 of the UN Charter (self-defense) and is subject to the Laws of Armed Conflict. ChatGPT has a narrower definition of how Article 51 applies relative to what most nations, including the United States, view it. BTW, according to open source reporting the kinetic action was most likely delivered by a Hellfire missile from either a helicopter or Predator drone.
I’m nagged by a little bit different question: what was the reason behind the urge to brag publicly about it? There must be many other ways to explain the meaning of what has happened and why to the right addressees concerned.
There should be many more, we should be hitting at least one day. With regard to Somali pirates, they should have been destroying them immediately on sight by the most effective means possible. We erred not in destroying this, and hopefully many other, narco trafficking boats, but in our treatment of the Somali pirates.
I hope that is your actual point.
Back in 2009, I suggested using AC-130s to enforce a curfew on Somalis’ use of boats. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2009/04/18/impose-a-curfew-on-somalias-coast/
None of the commenters liked the idea! Everyone seemed to prefer the status quo of stopping Somali skiffs with $1 billion Navy ships that cost a fortune to operate vs. the AC-130, which has a crew of just 7 and shouldn’t cost more to run than a Boeing 737 (though, of course, it is our government and therefore it does cost much more than what an airline spends per hour).
We couldn’t attack actual pirates from the air in 2009, in other words, but today we can attack people who would otherwise become Senator Van Hollen’s best friends and leading citizens of Maryland?
> None of the commenters liked the idea!
I think they just wanted to keep a variety of fine hawkish options open. Phil should read his comments closer (mine excepted), first post:
> No IFF squawk, boom. Sorry, Sorry, as Monty Python would say. …or yes, AC 130’s?
> So many options. To go boom.
“Boom, here comes the boom. How do you like me now?” — P.O.D. Boom
I think people were funnier back then. There were other interesting comments:
> And sure, the AC-130 is one whopping sledgehammer if you know for sure your target is hostile, but that aircraft would be politically difficult to deploy — far too much firepower.
I ain’t ever had “too much” firepower. (Would that the U.S. military had Phil G.’s commenter think tank.) Covert operations could have been another, pirate ships just started disappearing. Of course back then the government had to care a little more about public sentiment–Nixon being the starting point for crazy nowadays.
International law is a set of customs and agreements(“might makes right” but more orderly) between states, not something that a sovereign state is subject to in the same way subjects(sorry “citizens”) of a country are subject to penal law. Unless another country is mad about it, it’s not even a little bit relevant. Within classical international law (pre-fake UN laws), something like this could be justified either by declaring them to be unlawful enemy combatants or by declaring them hostis humani generis, enemies of all mankind. Doing the latter would be diplomatically foregoing any objection to other countries, or even private citizens, bombing drug traffickers.