doubled its existing bounty on Maduro to $50m<\/a> and accused the Venezuelan leader of being one of the world\u2019s leading narco traffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.<\/p>\nIn a televised address last Monday, Maduro announced that a \u201cconsultation process\u201d had begun to invoke what he called a \u201cstate of external unrest\u201d under the Constitution of Venezuela, aimed at protecting the people.<\/p>\n
Maduro has repeatedly claimed that the Trump administration wants to overthrow his government \u2013 an allegation that Trump has denied, saying, \u201cWe\u2019re not talking about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said that the emergency declaration would grant Maduro special powers to mobilise the armed forces and close Venezuela\u2019s borders if needed.<\/p>\n
She said the measure was intended to defend the nation\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity against \u201cany serious violation or external aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n
Caracas has staged military drills, mobilised militias, and postured its Russian-made fighter jets under a \u201cdefence of the nation\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n
Are US strikes legal?<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said the maritime strikes amount to \u201cextrajudicial killings\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cUS officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs,\u201d said Sarah Yager, Washington director at HRW. \u201cThe problem of narcotics entering the United States is not an armed conflict, and US officials cannot circumvent their human rights obligations by pretending otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the International Relations programme at Leiden University, said that under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, the use of force by one state against another is prohibited except when authorised by the UN Security Council or exercised in legitimate self-defence under Article 51.<\/p>\n
And the US claim that strikes against \u201cdrug traffickers\u201d near Venezuela amount to self-defence \u201cappears legally untenable\u201d, Regilme told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
He noted that drug trafficking, even when transnational, does not constitute an \u201carmed attack\u201d under customary international law.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless Washington can prove that the targeted actors carried out or imminently threatened a large-scale armed attack attributable to Venezuela, these actions risk violating the charter\u2019s core prohibition on the use of force and undermining another state\u2019s territorial integrity,\u201d Regilme said.<\/p>\n
To qualify as a non-international armed conflict, as the Trump administration notified Congress, said Regilme, there must be protracted armed violence between organised armed groups or between such groups and a state under the Geneva Conventions. Simply labelling cartels as \u201cterrorists\u201d or \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d does not automatically trigger the applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL), he added.<\/p>\n
Expanding the \u201cterrorist\u201d label to justify military targeting risks normalising warlike responses to what are primarily criminal and socioeconomic problems,\u201d Regilme said, referring to the US strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt militarises law enforcement and blurs the boundaries between crime control and warfare, which has led to severe human rights abuses in the so-called \u2018war on drugs,\u2019 from Mexico to the Philippines,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Celeste Kmiotek, a senior staff lawyer at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said in a report that even outside armed conflict, striking a vessel without imminent threat or judicial process may constitute an arbitrary deprivation of life.<\/p>\n
Domestically, lethal targeting abroad requires a clear legal basis under US statutes or the US Constitution, she said, adding that no congressional consent or specific Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) covers anti-drug operations in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
How have other countries reacted to this?<\/p>\n
Several Latin American countries have criticised the actions, with Colombia\u2019s leftist President Gustavo Petro calling the strikes an \u201cact of tyranny\u201d in an interview with the BBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy launch a missile if you could simply stop the boat and arrest the crew? That\u2019s what one would call murder,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has also condemned the US attacks on boats, which he said amount to \u201cexecuting people without\u200b a judgement\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing lethal force in situations \u200bthat do not constitute armed conflicts amounts to executing people without\u200b a judgement,\u201d President Lula said in a UN speech last month. He has also expressed his criticism against the deployment of US naval forces to the Caribbean, calling them a source of \u201ctension\u201d.<\/p>\n
Russia has also condemned the US strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ministers expressed serious concern about Washington\u2019s escalating actions in the Caribbean Sea that are fraught with far-reaching consequences for the region,\u201d the Russian Foreign Ministry said after a phone call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Venezuelan counterpart Yvan Gil.<\/p>\n
China, one of Caracas\u2019s largest trading partners, warned that US actions in waters off Venezuela pose a threat to \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d.<\/p>\n
China \u201copposes use of threat [or] force in international relations [and] \u2026 any interference in Venezuela\u2019s internal affairs on any pretext\u201d, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unilateral enforcement actions by the US against foreign vessels in international waters, which exceed reasonable and necessary limits, violate international law, and infringe [on] fundamental human rights, such as right to life,\u201d said Guo.<\/p>\n
He added that these actions \u201cpose a potential threat to the freedom and safety of navigation in relevant waters and may impede the freedom of high seas enjoyed by all countries in accordance with international law\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"National](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2025-09-08T041810Z_653723229_RC2SLGAPCRNW_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-VENEZUELA-1758396073.jpg\")
Members of the National Bolivarian Militia gather after responding to Venezuela\u2019s President Nicolas Maduro\u2019s call to defend national sovereignty amid escalating tensions with the US, in Valencia, Venezuela on September 5, 2025 [Juan Carlos Hernandez\/Reuters]What does it mean for the US influence in the region?<\/p>\n
The scope of accountability of the US strikes on vessels off the Venezuelan coasts is quite limited, said Regilme.<\/p>\n
This episode reflects a recurring pattern in US foreign policy, which he termed \u201cmilitarised punishment: the use of military force framed as moral enforcement rather than lawful defence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Instead of addressing the complex social and economic roots of drug trafficking, he said, Washington relies on coercive displays of power that project moral authority but lack a clear legal foundation.<\/p>\n
Regionally, Regilme said that the strikes could exacerbate distrust toward US interventions in the Southern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
Latin American states, even US allies, remain deeply sceptical of Washington\u2019s extraterritorial military actions justified under counter-narcotics or counter-terrorism rhetoric, he said, which stands to erode regional cooperation mechanisms and embolden nationalist or anti-imperialist political actors.<\/p>\n
US ties with Venezuela deteriorated after the 1998 election of President Hugo Chavez, whose socialist agenda sought to reclaim national control over Venezuela\u2019s vast oil wealth by increasing royalties on foreign firms and tightening state oversight.<\/p>\n
Chavez also forged close alliances with Cuba, China, and later Iran, marking a sharp ideological break from decades of alignment with Washington.<\/p>\n
Under Maduro, who succeeded Chavez in 2013, the bilateral tensions deepened amid Venezuela\u2019s worsening economic collapse and growing authoritarianism.<\/p>\n
Since Trump returned to the White House in January this year, the tensions have become worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US military\u2019s recent strikes on boats allegedly transporting drugs near the Venezuelan coast have raised questions about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1127,3071,12,2605,11501,3140,3,18231,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24,18232],"class_list":{"0":"post-205429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-drugs","13":"tag-explainer","14":"tag-latin-america","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nicolas-maduro","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-us-canada","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759774811_543_reuters_68dedc0a-1759435786.jpg\")
A vessel burns in this still image taken from a video released September 15, 2025, depicting what US President Donald Trump said was a US military strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel vessel that had been on its way to the US, the second such strike carried out against a suspected drug boat in recent weeks [Handout\/Donald Trump\/Truth Social\/via Reuters]What we know so far<\/p>\n![\"Venezuela's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2025-09-26T192809Z_872090282_RC2KSGAOWJTQ_RTRMADP_3_USA-VENEZUELA-1759217086.jpg\")
Venezuela\u2019s President Nicolas Maduro says the US deployments were \u2018the greatest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years\u2019 [File: Leonardo Fernandez Viloria\/Reuters]How has Maduro responded?<\/p>\n