US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday (Sunday NZT) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying President Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” to defend the nation.<\/p>\n
Hegseth dismissed criticism of the strikes, which have killed more than 80 people and now face intense scrutiny over concerns that they violated international law. Saying the strikes are justified to protect Americans, Hegseth likened the fight to the war on terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks.<\/p>\n
“If you\u2019re working for a designated terrorist organisation and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defence Forum.<\/p>\n
“President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation\u2019s interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”<\/p>\n
The most recent strike<\/a> brings the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. Lawmakers have sought more answers<\/a> about the attacks and their legal justification, and whether US forces were ordered to launch a follow-up strike following a September attack even after the Pentagon knew of survivors.<\/p>\n Though Hegseth compared the alleged drug smugglers to Al-Qaeda terrorists, experts have noted significant differences between the two foes and the efforts to combat them.<\/p>\n Hegseth’s remarks came after the Trump administration released its new national security strategy, one that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America\u2019s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n During the speech, Hegseth also discussed the need to check China\u2019s rise through strength instead of conflict. He repeated Trump\u2019s vow to resume nuclear testing on an equal basis as China and Russia \u2014 a goal that has alarmed many nuclear arms experts. China and Russia haven\u2019t conducted explosive tests in decades, though the Kremlin said it would follow the US if Trump restarted tests.<\/p>\n The speech was delivered at the Reagan National Defence Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event which brings together top national security experts from around the country. Hegseth used the visit to argue that Trump is Reagan’s “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy.<\/p>\n By contrast, Hegseth criticised Republican leaders in the years since Reagan for supporting wars in the Middle East and democracy-building efforts that didn’t work. He also blasted those who have argued that climate change poses serious challenges to military readiness.<\/p>\n “The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralising and feckless nation building,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday (Sunday NZT)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-172343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}