The U.S. government claims to promote democracy and rule of law around the world. Recent military operations in Latin America reveal how American imperialism operates through extrajudicial violence and political manipulation that contradict these stated values.
According to The Washington Post, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to eliminate everyone on a boat targeted on Sept. 2 off of Venezuela’s coast.
The Associated Press reported that the initial strike killed nine individuals while two men remained alive, holding onto debris in the water. Admiral Frank Bradley later directed a follow-up attack that ended both survivors’ lives.
People who lived through similar attacks have stated they were fishing, not engaged in criminal activity.
The White House acknowledged the follow-up attack and characterized it as defensive action under armed conflict laws. Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force attorney and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College, told the Associated Press that ending lives of individuals clinging to watercraft is unambiguously unlawful. Even if armed conflict existed, military doctrine has forbidden taking no prisoners for over a century.
Brian Finucane works as a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group after serving as a State Department attorney. He informed the Associated Press that intentional killing absent armed conflict meets the definition of murder. Homicide at sea constitutes a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Similarly, the Pentagon’s warfare manual characterizes directing fire at shipwrecked individuals as clearly prohibited.
The Sept. 2 incidents began a campaign that expanded to over “20 documented attacks and more than 80 deaths,” according to the Associated Press. No judicial proceedings occurred, and those targeted had no chance to defend themselves.
CNN reported that the Trump administration threatened imminent strikes with a large fleet of warships, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, and declared Venezuelan airspace closed to force regime change.
Congressional members from both parties recognized the strikes as potentially illegal. CNN reported Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna stated that some of his Republican colleagues expressed shock over the follow-up attack. Republican Rep. Mike Turner pointed out that what was reported “diverges significantly from … the legal opinion [they] were provided.” The divergence only raises concerns because the report implies that vital information was deliberately excluded or not accurately reflected in the opinion.
While the administration killed alleged traffickers without trials, it simultaneously granted clemency to actual convicted criminals. Politico reported that President Donald Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández after full judicial proceedings resulted in his narco-trafficking conviction. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s pardon of the ex-Honduran president, stating that Trump wants to “correct the wrongs of the Biden’s Justice Department.”
The boat strikes and Hernández’s pardon expose how American imperialism functions through selective enforcement of legal standards. The United States does not abide by democratic principles but rather deploys them strategically. Legal procedures apply when they advance American objectives and disappear when they obstruct them. Killing alleged traffickers serves the Venezuela regime change operation while pardoning a convicted trafficker serves diplomatic relations with Honduras.
This selectivity destroys American credibility more thoroughly than outright rejection of democratic values would. When the United States prosecutes foreign leaders and then pardons them for political convenience, it demonstrates that legal accountability means nothing. Authoritarian governments cite these contradictions to dismiss American criticism as hypocrisy. Democratic reformers cannot appeal to international law or human rights standards when the most powerful democracy treats those standards as optional.
The Venezuela operation reveals imperial intervention operating without constraints. There were no trials, no evidence presented in courts and no legal process for the 80 people who died across 20 strikes. The administration positioned the world’s largest aircraft carrier off Venezuela’s coast and threatened regime change to install a government aligned with American interests.
American imperialism operates through selective application of democratic principles, military intervention in sovereign nations and concealment of legal justifications behind classified documents. The boat strikes that killed survivors and the pardon of a convicted drug trafficker demonstrate accepted methods of projecting American power abroad.
This approach spreads authoritarianism by teaching other governments that might make right and legal norms are for the weak.
