Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

What should be done about Donald Trump and the U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans? Should we really be quibbling about who ordered the second strike on the survivors of the boat off the coast of Venezuela? By quibbling, “there’s a risk … of losing sight of the forest for the tree, because the broader campaign is really problematic,” an International Crisis Group expert told Robert Tait in The Guardian. Beyond the questions of who ordered the second strike or whether the drone strikes violated guidelines in U.S. military manuals, the larger issue is whether international law was violated.

How is “the broader campaign…problematic”? November 25, 2025, marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials against major Nazi leaders. The trials marked a turning point in trying individual heads of states and was a seminal moment for human rights and international criminal law. Today, by contrast, President Trump has welcomed International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted leaders Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in Washington.

Where is international law today?

Arguments about whether the bombings of the boats – including strikes on survivors – violate U.S. military law miss the larger issue of violating international law. As Professor Gabor Rona correctly pointed out in a letter to the New York Times: “No responsible expert in international law could conclude that these attacks are part of a war, despite the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary. The use of epithets like terrorist and narcoterrorist to describe alleged drug traffickers changes nothing. These killings are simply murder — extrajudicial killings in violation of United States and international........

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