Until now, the president concedes, interdiction has been «totally ineffective.» Blowing up drug boats won’t change that reality.
During a press conference in the Oval Office this week, a reporter asked President Donald Trump about his new policy of summarily executing suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, which so far has included five military strikes on speedboats, killing a total of at least 27 people. «Why not have the Coast Guard stop them», as it is «empowered by law to do?» the reporter wondered. That way, he suggested, «you can confirm who’s on the boat» and «ensure that they’re doing what you suspect.»
Trump’s answer was not that drug smuggling is tantamount to violent aggression, as he has repeatedly claimed, or that it merits the death penalty, as he has long argued. Nor did he aver that blowing up the boats is consistent with the law of war because the United States is engaged in an «armed conflict» with drug cartels, as the White House recently told Congress. Rather, Trump claimed his literalization of the war on drugs was necessary because the usual interdiction methods have been «totally ineffective» for «30 years.»
The latter assessment is accurate; for more than a century, in fact, the government has been trying and failing to prevent politically disfavored intoxicants from reaching American consumers. But Trump is wrong to think that the added deterrent of simply killing people suspected of transporting illegal drugs will finally accomplish that impossible mission, and his overestimation of that policy’s benefits is coupled with a disregard for its costs. Ordering the military murder of drug suspects simultaneously corrupts the mission of the armed forces, erasing the traditional distinction between civilians and combatants, and obliterates longstanding principles of criminal justice, dispensing with the need for charges or proof.
Historically, Trump said, 30 percent of illegal drugs imported into the United States would «come in through the seas.» Caribbean boats like the ones he is targeting account for a fraction of that fraction. «Despite the Trump administration’s portrayal of the Caribbean and Venezuela as a rampant conduit for drugs killing Americans», The New York Times notes, «the vast majority of maritime drug trafficking bound for the United States actually occurs on the Pacific», according to U.
