Blowing Up The Drug Boat

Dutch Caribbean Coastguard is a fun program on the National Geographic channel that for whatever reason lacks the tendentiousness of most material there. Curaçao, Aruba and St Maarten are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and their waters are patrolled by the Dutch Coast Guard, which works closely with the US Coast Guard, US Navy, and US Marines.

The islands are due north of Venezuela, so a big part of the job for all the agencies is to monitor drug trafficking and illegal immigration from that country. Pretty much every episode of the show has scenes of Dutch patrol aircraft tracking "gofast boats" carrying cocaine from Venezuela, which whenever possible are referred to Dutch or US surface vessels for interdiction. To those who watch the National Geographic show, gofast boats and interdictions are nothing new, and it gives context to Secretary Rubio's remarks in Mexico City:

The deadly US military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Tuesday marked a significant and escalatory shift in the Trump administration’s fight against drug trafficking, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled there would be more destruction moving forward.

Rubio on Wednesday argued that the traditional policy of intercepting drug-carrying vessels had not worked. Instead, the US is “going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

“The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allow us to interdict and stop drug boats. We did that. And it doesn’t work,” Rubio said at a press conference in Mexico City.

“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” he said, arguing that interdiction doesn’t work because drug cartels plan to lose 2% of their cargo.

According to this site,

Very few details have been released so far. A senior U.S. defense official described the action as a “precision strike,” but provided no details on the platform used to deliver the attack, the type of weapons employed, or the nature of the cargo on board.

The timeline of the events that led to the strike is also missing. As of now, what can be said with enough certainty is that strike happened within the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) area of responsibility, in the southern Caribbean, and the weapon involved could be an AGM-114 Hellfire missile.

. . . The choice to destroy the vessel outright, rather than seize it and apprehend its crew, stands out as an unusual tactic in U.S. counter-narcotics operations. Traditionally, the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy interdict suspicious vessels, confiscating drugs and arresting suspects. Analysts noted that the strike more closely resembled counterterrorism operations against militant groups.

Julio Ricardo Varela writes on MSNBC:

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. military blew up a vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people. The administration said the boat had departed from Venezuela and described the operation as a narco-trafficking bust against Tren de Aragua gang members. To anyone who knows the tragic history of U.S. interventionism in Latin America, it was an act of war.

. . . This week’s strike was an act of war. To pretend otherwise is to ignore history and to blind ourselves to what the United States has done time and again in Latin America and the Caribbean. If we are serious about learning from the past, we should call it what it is.

The Maduro regime for now seems to want to play chicken:

Two Venezuelan military aircraft flew dangerously close to a U.S. Navy destroyer in international waters on Thursday, a move the Pentagon denounced as a deliberate attempt to disrupt American counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean.

“Today, two Maduro regime military aircraft flew near a U.S. Navy vessel in international waters. This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter-narco-terror operations,” the Defense Department said late Thursday in a statement on its X account. “The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter, or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the U.S. military.”

The best parallel case I can see is Manuel Noriega in Panama:

[In 1987] the United States cut off aid to Panama and tried to get Noriega to resign; in 1988, the U.S. began considering the use of military action to put an end to his drug trafficking. Noriega voided the May 1989 presidential election, which included a U.S.-backed candidate, and in December of that year he declared his country to be in a state of war with the United States. Shortly afterward, an American marine was killed by Panamanian soldiers. President George H.W. Bush authorized “Operation Just Cause,” and on December 20, 1989, 13,000 U.S. troops were sent to occupy Panama City, along with the 12,000 already there, and seize Noriega.

The following January 3, he surrendered to US troops. to face charges of drug trafficking. He was flown to Miami for trial. On July 10, 1992, he was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The US is currently alleging that Maduro is running Venezuela as a narco-tafficking state, and it's certainly possible to envision a similar chain of events, especially if Venezuela does anything provocative against US forces.

For now, it's easy enough to see that gofast boats have only one purpose, to outrun Dutch and US drug enforcement assets in the South Caribbean. They are neither pleasure boats nor fishing vessels. US statements strongly imply that drug trafficking activity at the level it has been taking place can only be done with the active collaboration of the Venezuelan government. It appears that the US is working to develop a comperehensive legal basis for direct military action against Maduro, and its policies will continue in this direction.

What's Maduro going to do, declare war? Noriega already tried that.