Could Trump's boat strikes turn into war?

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0:29The Trump administration's war on alleged narco-terrorists is escalating tensions across Latin America. For weeks, the U.S. military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean. The Trump administration claims that the people on board are smuggling illegal drugs into the United States from Venezuela. There is no concrete evidence, at least none that is available to the public, to verify President Trump's claims. Meanwhile, the strikes have completely destroyed the boats and killed all passengers on board. Without survivors, it is difficult to know the truth. But then last week... The latest strike had a twist.

1:10At least two people on board survived the blast. Two people on the boat surviving, then picked up by the U.S. Navy. It's not clear just yet what would be done with the survivors who the people said were being held by a Navy vessel in that area. On Thursday, two survivors were rescued after the U.S. struck a boat off the coast of Venezuela. National security reporter Alex Horton was stunned when he heard this news. I wouldn't have imagined that two survivors would have come off the boat, and I don't think the Pentagon even thought about that, of what happens if not everyone dies.

1:47From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbiechowicz. It's Monday, October 20th. Today, Alex explains how these survivors complicate the Trump administration's narrative about these strikes. and how it's fueling speculation about a larger U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

2:11Alex, hi. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Colby. So before we get into these strikes, I want to ask you about something that recently changed, about how you go about this kind of reporting. Because normally you're at the Pentagon, but that's changed recently after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put in this new policy that required journalists to sign a pledge. What happened exactly? So the Pentagon outlined a 17-page policy that said, among other things, that solicitation of protected material would not be protected under the First Amendment. The document didn't really explain what solicitation was and how that's different from just asking a question about, say, a ship and its general location, which has been something we have always done with no problem.

2:58So instead of signing on to these restrictions that say the Pentagon will only put out and only will work with us from pre-released information, we decided to walk out instead. And so basically what Hegseth was saying is, you know, unless we've chosen to give you this information, you can't go seeking out new information about the military and our operations. That's right. It's essentially a policy of trust us to give what you need to know and how you should know it and what details that we will provide and kind of leave it at that, not really ask the follow-up questions, seek more information or go report stories that they're uncomfortable or embarrassed to tell you.

3:45I'm wondering from all your years covering the Pentagon, now not having access there, how does that affect your reporting on issues like the strikes in the Caribbean? We knew more before and after the strikes in Iran on the nuclear facilities. Yeah. That – when you talk about in terms of significance, secrecy and like the elaborate mission, we knew which weapons to study before the strike even happened. And it just goes to show that information is a light switch they can turn on and off when they want to. Typically, even in this administration and others, there would be press conferences with the important people involved.

4:25That has not happened here. We have not heard from them beyond tweets, beyond, you know, fast social media clips about what's happening, the legal justifications, what evidence they have of these people being connected to a larger, what they describe as terrorist organizations. None of that has been shown to us in any format, especially not a press conference where we can ask these questions and peel back the layers. Wow. OK, let's get into these strikes, because starting in September, the U.S. began, you know, firing missiles at boats in the Caribbean. What has happened in the last two months?

5:04So since early September, the president has authorized the Pentagon to go after suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. That has now amounted to seven strikes that we know about, at least, and about 30 people killed. The Trump administration has said these are drug traffickers primarily from Venezuela. We do know that there are a mix of nationalities, which I think just underlines the amount of drug trafficking that happens in the Caribbean from all over the place. But this has been an unusual turn for how the U.S. military and the U.S., you know, writ large, handles the problem of drug trafficking.

5:42How did we get to this point? Kind of walk us through this, the escalation of, you know, blowing up boats in the Caribbean. Well, it starts with the Pentagon and the White House deciding that Homeland Defense was going to be their primary military focus. And you see that with border deployments. You see that with National Guard deployments within the United States. and how that has animated this particular operation is they said, okay, there's a big drug problem in the U.S., which of course there is. I think everyone agrees about that. And there have been different ways you have dealt with it.

6:13The primary way that is most relevant here is the Coast Guard doing interdictions at sea because the U.S. has always considered this a law enforcement operation that was handled by, in the end, civil authorities. So in a typical scenario of what we see, a drug boat getting stopped, getting boarded. The drug runners are arrested, detained, and either they're deported or they go to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution. The drugs are seized and the boats are typically destroyed. And, you know, you've probably seen a million of these photos of Coast Guard boats with a bunch of bricks of cocaine and money and guns all laid out.

6:52And that's just been the course of events for years. But the administration says this policy isn't working. And now I think they have a more confident footing when it comes to military strikes than they did in the first administration. How do you mean? The Caribbean is not a place that has been operational up until the last month, right? It's about patrolling. It's about interdiction. And I think the White House said, well, we drone strike terrorists in the middle of the desert in Syria. And, you know, we kill people all over the world. Why can't we do it here? So that's the big shift is considering what these people are doing.

7:31You know, as Trump has explained, bringing in drugs like fentanyl, meaning it's an assault on the United States. And therefore they meet the barrier and legal justification for strikes, which people on the Hill and law of war experts are saying is at best dubious and at least non-existent. What's been confusing to me is, are we at war now with Venezuela? Are we in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels? Like, wouldn't you actually have to declare war in order to carry out these kinds of killings? And this is where Congress comes into play. You know, they have the authority to declare war.

8:11And, you know, a lot of this stuff does go back to Iraq and Afghanistan and the post-September 11th mindset that the president can just take these unilateral strikes. You know, George Bush did it. Obama did it. Biden and Trump and his first administration. And now in a second, they've all done this. And Congress has failed time and time again to rein that behavior in of where the president can authorize strikes and on who. I talked to a congressional aide who's following this very closely. You said behind closed doors, Republicans and Democrats are asking a lot of questions and not getting any answers about the legal authorities, the evidence, the connections to a greater apparatus like drug trafficking organizations or terrorist organizations.

8:56Alex, when this happened in September, when the first strike happened, I remember there was a lot of thought like, OK, well, they're just trying to scare off drug cartels. This is a deterrent. Maybe this is a one-off. And then there was another strike. And then another, right? And to your point, there's been at least seven. So this was not just like a one-time warning. This is an ad hoc, like, we'll just shoot them as they come and that's it. This is a deliberate apparatus where a lot of forces have moved into the region. There are now about 10 ,000 troops in the Caribbean. Dozens of aircraft and ships are in the region.

9:35that includes a nuclear-powered submarine. It includes destroyers. It includes special operations aviation units. I think there's something in the order of like 10 % of all deployed naval power is in the Caribbean. Wow. Which is a lot. When you think about everything that's going on in the Middle East, the administration's priorities to deter forces in China and the Pacific, when you consider all of the things where the U.S. needs to be around the world, in seas and in open ocean, 10 % of that is in the Caribbean right now supporting this mission. So this is not just, you know, let's fling a missile or two and go home.

10:12This is setting the stage for prolonged and sustained operations. As I understand it, Alex, we didn't know anything, almost anything about the identities of people that were killed on the boats. But then you had the strike last week. What made that one particularly remarkable? So we got word of another strike happening. And, you know, these are becoming more and more common. And the general tempo is either we hear about it and don't get any information or President Trump will put out a video later. But almost immediately, we started hearing something that was different about this one. Typically, these strikes have hit boats in the open ocean and that's it.

10:55They kill everyone on board. This particular one had four people and two of them survived. And not only were there two survivors, but they didn't come from Venezuela at all. One was Ecuadorian and one was Colombian. And the vessel they were in is also not something that's very common from Venezuela, which is a semi-submersible or so-called narco submarine. You know, these are very long constructed in the jungles of Ecuador and Colombia typically and their mental hall and a lot of drugs to elude detection, to get a little bit under the surface. but it can't really dive, just that extra layer of camouflage as it kind of drifts north to the U.S.

11:35So what that tells us is these organizations might be shifting to more covert means to move their product, but it also introduced a lot of interesting and complicated questions about what do we do with these people now if they are captured? Because Trump has called this an armed conflict. Are they prisoners of war? Are they afforded the Geneva Convention protections? Are they terrorists who could be held at Guantanamo? In the tradition of what has happened in the region for decades, are they criminals to be either deported or prosecuted in civilian court in the United States? And we got our answer very quickly, which I thought was also interesting.

12:17Almost immediately, once we learned that two of these suspects were not from Venezuela. Yeah. But, you know, in the region, we heard they were being repatriated after they were rescued by U.S. forces and put on a Navy ship. So not taken into custody, just sent back to their countries. Yes. So U.S. forces got there and they rescued them from the water and put them aboard a Navy ship. And within a couple of days, they were sent back home to Colombia, we know of. And we know a little bit less about what's happening with the Ecuador national. But they were sent home, which is the surprising option.

12:56Democrats on the Hill are saying there's this contradiction here where you're saying these are very dangerous terrorists. And it's good enough to kill them in open water without warning them, without saying anything, without declaring any sort of armed conflict in Congress. So you can do that. But when you have a survivor, you send them home. If they were a serious threat, why aren't they being sent to military tribunals or the civilian justice system? And some law of war experts I spoke to yesterday about this said the administration doesn't want a lot of that stuff to come out. It would be politically risky for all of the justification they've been using to be unspooled in federal court.

13:36So the best way to do that is just to put them on a plane and send them home. And they did that very quickly. That strike was on Thursday. The Colombian was home on Saturday. And so it's confusing because to your point, these are individuals from Colombia and Ecuador. We have no evidence that they have ties to Venezuela at this point. And nor would they. You know, these are different groups, different countries. You know, they sort of share markets a little bit and they share distribution. And we don't know the nationalities of the two people who were killed in that strike. According to President Trump, there was two that were killed and we just don't know anything about those folks.

14:13And I think it also goes to show that Venezuela, when compared to Ecuador and Colombia, Venezuela is a small player in the drug market. They've been doing it recently because their economy has been in shambles for so long that it's becoming more of a focus there. But they're just not major players. So the experts and Democrats on the Hill are saying this is not how you tackle the drug problem if you're going to do it this way. It'd be in the Pacific. It would be targeting fentanyl production and distribution, which is the Mexican cartels. And boats coming from China, not from Venezuela. It's just a way swing for the pendulum all the way over to be going after these groups.

14:57After the break, what else might be motivating Trump's military actions against Venezuela? We'll be right back.

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16:14So Alex, the way that this has been framed by the White House is that this is all about Venezuela. But we heard this weekend from the president of Colombia. So it seems like there's tensions here rising across Latin America. How has this become bigger than just Venezuela? So Colombian President Gustavo Petro said over the weekend that one of the strikes that happened during this campaign had killed an innocent fisherman. An innocent fisherman from Colombia? From Colombia. And what's notable here is the ferocity in the war of words between Colombia and the U.S. now. Colombia's president took to social media to accuse the United States of committing the murder of a fisherman.

16:55President Petro said the fisherman killed had no ties to the drug trade and that his daily activity was fishing. You know, Trump, in response, said he was going to pull aid and assistance from Colombia. They have no fighting instructs, and I'm stopping all payments to Colombia because they don't have anything to do with their fighting instructs. Which is, it's very significant. And I don't want listeners to think that it's just a normal course of events. When you think about the special relationship that the U.S. has with the U.K., that's what they have down in Colombia. It is the strongest, most longstanding partnership between military forces in Colombia and the U.S.

17:35They are very close and they work hand in hand, particularly in drug interdiction. They have U.S. equipment. They have U.S. helicopters. They are the closest partner bar none in South America. So for that relationship to fracture is significant. The U.S. could lose intelligence and surveillance capabilities that the Colombians have and have developed with support by the Americans. They're going to lose some of their drug interdiction resources. So it's sort of, you know, cutting off your nose to spite your face type of situation. Colombia was already focused on this stuff in a big way. It's hard not to wonder if the motive for all of these strikes are not just stopping drugs into the United States.

18:21What are people saying about other potential motives? There's increasing chatter on Capitol Hill that, you know, this is ultimately about Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and regime change. So Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been in power for some time. And he's been an aggressive, you know, anti-American leader in South America for some time. You know, Trump has been focused on him, you know, in his first administration and this one in particular as a threat to national security. You know, his attorney general has described him that way. Other members of his cabinet have described Maduro in very existential terms of these threats to the homeland.

19:04So when you put all the pieces together and you say, logically, does this make sense to be going after these drug boats? Is there an actual connection to drug smuggling from Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro? There is increasing chatter on Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republicans are telling the Pentagon and telling the administration, you need to show us the math. You need to show us these connections to Nicolas Maduro, these connections to these terrorist groups. What, if anything, does Maduro think? Does he think it's about regime change? It would certainly seem that he's taken this seriously. You know, he's mobilized militias.

19:42You know, they are describing more proactively about what they see Americans doing. Mobilize militias to do what? To fight back? You know, start training to be available if America or other forces enter. Like invade? Invade the country, you know. Think of it as like a step below like the National Guard. Is there a world where he could retaliate against the United States and give the United States an excuse to start a war? I mean, is there an incitement of violence aspect of this? You know, a congressional aide that I spoke to about this this morning said, you know, they might be looking for a Gulf of Tonkin incident, which it's when forces fired on a ship in the Gulf of Tonkin off of Vietnam.

20:22And that escalated the war there from sort of a nation building, a peacekeeping type of operation into a full blown conflict. And it's used politically now as like an incitement or a reason to get involved by putting your forces at risk, getting attacked, and then saying, all right, let's do this thing. That's what some folks on Capitol are fearful of that, you know, this growing buildup of U.S. forces in the Caribbean, which is now at 10 ,000. That incident may just be inevitable that something crashes. They fire on something. Yeah. forces, you know, defend themselves in Venezuela if they're close enough, that there could be something that happens where this thing just spins out of control in a very quick way.

21:08And then we also learned last week that there's been a covert CIA operation in Venezuela that the Trump administration has authorized. So how does that fit into this conversation we're having? Yeah, I mean, it is a little unclear from Trump whether that means things will happen or whether it's just an authorization. We don't know if that means they are just going to go. I mean, I think it's inconceivable. I see. There's a difference between authorizing it and then actually happening. It hasn't happened yet, as far as we know. As far as we know. So it seems like things are escalating really quickly.

21:42Where do you see this going from here? I wish I could tell you. There's a ton of unknowns. And it's also, you know, when you have that many military service members, you have that many aircraft and ships, whence the president decides, if he decides to send forces into Venezuela or go after groups on their territory, it could happen fast and you wouldn't know it until after the fact. There's a special operations mothership that's in the region that can dispatch some of these helicopters. They could be in Venezuela in under an hour if they said, go. We've gone up the ladder, not down. And we don't know where the rungs lead to at this point.

22:25Alex, thanks so much for all your reporting and for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Colby. Alex Horton is a national security reporter for The Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you love the show, help other people discover it by leaving a rating on Spotify or a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Today's show was produced by Alana Gordon, with help from Emma Talkoff. It was mixed by Sam Baer and edited by Peter Bresnan, with help from Ariel Plotnick. Thanks to Andy D. Grand Prix. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.

23:16Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts. Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family.

23:57After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.