(Washington) The United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” against the drug trafficking cartels, declared Donald Trump in a notice sent by the Pentagon to the Congress, which aims to legally support Washington’s recent operations off Venezuela.
The letter, obtained by AFP from a parliamentary source which requested anonymity, comes after the deployment at the end of August of several military ships in the Caribbean Sea, and the destruction of at least three boats in this area, involved according to Washington in drug trafficking, killing at least 17 people.
Jurists stressed that these strikes came out of any legal framework, and this official declaration aims, for the Trump administration, to serve as a legal justification for the operations undertaken off Venezuela.
Such a report to the congress “is legally required (…) following any event where the American armed forces were involved in an attack,” an official of the White House told AFP.
“As we have repeatedly stated, the president acted in accordance with the law of armed conflicts to protect our country from those who try to bring deadly poison on our coasts,” also argued Anna Kelly, deputy spokesperson for the White House.
However, the American Constitution provides that only Congress has the capacity to declare war, still throwing doubt on the validity of such a large declaration of “armed conflict”.
The cartels involved in drug trafficking have become over the past decades “more armed, better organized, and violent” and they “illegally and directly provoke the death of tens of thousands of American citizens each year”, estimates the Pentagon in this letter revealed first by the New York Times.
“In response (…), the president determined that the United States was engaged in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” continues the notice.
Washington accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government of being at the head of a vast drug trafficking organization to the United States. Caracas vigorously denies these accusations and, in response to the American deployment considered as a “military threat”, launched military exercises and the mobilization of reservists.
The Venezuelan Minister of Defense also denounced on Thursday overview of five American combat planes near the coast of the country.
