A parallel might exist between Donald Trump’s airstrikes in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean against suspected or alleged drug traffickers and his attempts to militarize cities across the US. Behind the curtain in these Oz-like military adventures is the attempt to give unlimited authority to the US president to use force anywhere and anytime he wishes.
The Posse Comitatus Act (1878) was a post-Civil War law to keep federal US forces off the streets of the US for law enforcement purposes. It took no time for Donald Trump to place that law in the dustbin of history. Trump violated that law to highlight his attack against states and cities where Democrats hold power.
Trump’s foray on the seas against alleged drug traffickers is yet another attempt, so far quite successful, to clothe him with unlimited ability to strike wherever he wishes, be the target a domestic or international one. Behind the curtain of airstrikes is the Trump administration’s policy of removing the current government from Venezuela and replacing it with one more compliant to US demands, and especially to demands on that country’s significant oil reserves.
When Congress enacted the War Powers Act of 1973 (“War Powers Law Does Not Apply to Trump’s Boat Strikes, Administration Says ,” New York Times, November 1, 2025), the US had spent decades both covertly and overtly attempting to groom Southeast Asia into a compliant sphere of influence for the US and its allies. No matter that a genocide would follow in Cambodia because of US military destabilization of that country, or the millions left dead on the ground, including about 58,000 US soldiers. The wars in Southeast Asia were human rights debacles with the mass killing of civilians, a feature not limited to those wars, as technology had long since been applied to killing in war. The objectives of empire far surpassed the rights of noncombatants on the ground. To hell with international and national laws that constrain the power to use military force or protect noncombatants in war. The Gaza war, among many other wars, has made the protection of civilians a bad joke. Presidents are required by the War Powers Act to go to Congress in 60 days of the opening of hostilities to seek the right to continue the use of US troops in international settings. Donald Trump acts with abandon both domestically and internationally with the use of military force. The boogeyman of the Vietnam era was anti-communism, which the salespeople on the right are willing to repackage and sell.
In Nigeria, another resource-rich nation, Trump wishes to act as the police of the world, an echo to those who know the history of the Vietnam era.
Trump now claims that since no US ground forces are being used to destroy suspected drug traffickers on the high seas, the War Powers Act means nothing. The bombers and drones being used in these attacks are launched by military forces, and attempting to separate those actions from conventional warfare is a chimaera behind which this US administration hides.
Trump is not the only US president who has ignored or danced around the War Powers Act. The most notable examples were Bill Clinton in the former Yugoslavia and Barack Obama in Libya. Readers might draw the conclusion that Trump is in a long line of US presidents who use force with or without Congressional approval, as the 1973 law requires. War fighting on the part of the US has been a bipartisan affair. The difference between Trump and his predecessors, however, is that Trump’s actions are part of an attempt to further solidify the power of the presidency as an unquestionable force in domestic and international military actions. Trump is acting on Richard Nixon’s false claim that if the president does it, then it’s legal. While Nixon referred to a domestic issue in that claim, Trump’s intention is to make his military moves, both at home and abroad, not subject to any checks or balances or the limitation of law.
From 2001to 2009, no one reflected the violent transition better from the war against communism during the Cold War to the War on Terrorism than the late Dick Cheney. As vice president during the administration of George W. Bush, US foreign and domestic policy was typified by regime change, the loss of individual rights, and the offshore campaign of torture.
The U.S. military’s strikes on boats in the waters bordering Central and South America, which have targeted and killed dozens of civilians, constitute some of the most serious violations of international law and must lead to prosecutions of those responsible, a UN human rights expert has said.
“Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of human rights… said the military is carrying out systematic murder after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced four strikes on alleged drug boats earlier this week,” (“UN Expert Says US BoatStrikes are ‘Crimes Against Humanity,’ With 61 Killed,” Guardian, October 30, 2025).
Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel (2025) provides a masterful account of how US special forces and special operations around the world have been leaden with drug trafficking (“The Rot at Fort Bragg,” The Nation, August 20, 2025). Don’t expect Trump to take action against this very real drug trafficking operation by US forces. There won’t be any drones in the sky in this military adventure! During the US war in Afghanistan, the heroin produced there flooded the world market with the knowledge and participation at the highest levels of both governments.
Whether or not US or US-led military actions have the imprimatur of the UN or allies, these interventions largely are the work of empire. While some federal judges attempt to slow the militaristic juggernaut that Trump represents, Trump is like a raging militaristic bull in a proverbial china shop. His championing of nuclear proliferation is yet another sign that the US is leading the world in doomsday thinking and actions.
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