Since early September, the United States has announced at least 22 military strikes against vessels suspected of drug trafficking off the coast of Latin America.

Legal experts and international officials said the attack, which killed at least 86 people, violated the law and was an extrajudicial killing.

But despite what scholars describe as patently illegal conduct, Trump’s deadly campaign shows few signs of slowing down, and critics say it represents an alarming shift toward the use of force to fight crime.

“I am very shocked that the United States would do this,” Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview.

“This demonstrates that the Trump administration does not respect international laws or conventions on the use of force.”

This situation illustrates the trend of impunity among powerful countries. While it may be widely believed that Trump violated international law, it is unclear what legal or political mechanisms could have prevented his bombing campaign.

“Of course, trying to control a superpower like the United States is a very difficult thing,” Saul said. “This has to stop from within America.”

‘The guardrails have been eroded’

Experts say oversight could come from multiple sources.

On the domestic front, the U.S. Congress has the ability to pass legislation banning military strikes or cutting off campaign funds.

Military personnel involved in an attack may also refuse to carry out orders they consider illegal.

Foreign leaders may limit or suspend intelligence cooperation with the United States.

So far, however, the Trump administration has faced few meaningful restrictions.

The U.S. Senate twice voted down legislation that would have required the White House to get congressional support for its bombing campaign.

In October, the first bill failed by a vote of 51 to 48. In November, the second bill was defeated by a vote of 51 to 49.

Internationally, there are also reports that the UK and Colombia are considering whether to stop sharing intelligence from the Caribbean with the US.

But officials in both countries played down the reports, with Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti calling the situation a “misunderstanding.”

Other mechanisms designed to assess the legality of the Trump administration’s military actions are also facing political pressure.

News outlets including CNN and NBC News reported that U.S. military lawyers who questioned the legality of the bombing campaign, known as the Judge Advocate General or Joint Attorneys General, were sidelined or fired.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously said he does not want military lawyers to be an “obstacle” to Trump’s policies.

“If you want to break the law, military lawyers are just a barrier,” said Sarah Harrison, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Harrison previously served as deputy general counsel for the Department of Defense, where he advised the military on international law issues. She said the Trump administration has deliberately weakened institutional norms and legal safeguards designed to prevent abuses of military power.

“They have developed a blueprint to guide the military in carrying out illegal orders without resistance,” she said.

“The guardrail inside has been eroded.”

“Unlimited power”

However, there are many laws prohibiting extrajudicial killings, like those currently being carried out by Trump in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

For example, Article 2 of the United Nations Charter mainly prohibits countries from using force internationally and prohibits acts of self-defense.

The Geneva Conventions, the cornerstone of humanitarian law, also prohibit the use of military violence against “persons not taking an active part in hostilities.”

The Trump administration’s use of “double-tap” attacks, in which a second attack is carried out to kill survivors of the first attack, has raised additional legal concerns.

The Hague Convention explicitly prohibits “no mercy” policies, which order soldiers to execute those who might be captured.

Still, the Trump administration denies that any of its attacks violated international or domestic law.

Instead, it argued that the ships it bombed contained deadly narcotics and that drug traffickers were “unlawful combatants” whose transportation of narcotics represented an attack on the United States.

“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under U.S. law and international law, and all operations are fully consistent with the laws of armed conflict,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

“Attorneys up and down the chain of command were fully engaged in the review of these actions prior to execution.”

But legal scholars say the government’s argument doesn’t hold up.

Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law and a former State Department adviser, said the Trump administration is trying to erase the distinction between criminal activity and armed attacks that would justify a military response.

She compared the government’s reasoning to the confusing legal analysis that an AI assistant like Grok can produce.

“It seems to me that some political actor within the executive branch took all the statements and memorandums on use of force from the past 25 years, scrambled the text, threw them into Grok and asked them to make legal arguments,” Ingber said.

“They think they can use words like ‘armed conflict’ and ‘terrorist’ freely and that if they label someone that, it gives them unlimited power,” she added.

a submissive congress

Trump is not the first president to raise concerns about his widespread use of military force.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama launched military strikes in countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen as part of the global “war on terror.”

Both took advantage of the Authorization for Military Forces (AUMF) carefully drafted by Congress in response to the September 11 attacks.

Over time, these mandates applied to an increasing number of organizations and conflicts.

Critics, however, argue that the increasing use of military force stretches presidential power beyond the limits of the Constitution and weakens oversight and transparency.

Trump continues a trend of presidents deploying the military without congressional approval.

Normally, the authority to declare war and authorize military action rests with Congress, not the president, and Congress retains control of the president’s military deployments.

However, many conservative lawmakers have been hesitant to challenge Trump, who has a firm grip on the Republican Party. Others accepted the government’s description of the airstrikes as a counter-narcotics operation.

Only two Republican senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted with Democrats in their recent efforts to stop the ship bombings.

“From the bombing of Iran to a possible attack on Venezuela, some right-wing entrepreneurial figures are willing to criticize the government when it pursues interventionist policies,” said Kurt Mills, president of The American Conservative, a magazine that advocates for a more restrained foreign policy.

“But Congress is weak. Its influence on foreign policy is at an all-time low.”

“The principle of no limits”

With most Republicans unwilling to assert congressional authority, some experts have expressed hope that voters will send lawmakers to Congress to exert greater control over overseas military attacks.

But at least so far, most voters don’t appear to be particularly alarmed by the current strike.

In a CBS News poll last month, some 53% of respondents supported a crackdown on suspected drug ships, while 47% disapproved.

Inber, a Yale law professor, speculated that decades of overseas military operations during the War on Terror may have led the public to view current attacks as normal.

“This may be a cooked frog, that the public has grown to accept the idea of ​​the president using force in response to his rhetoric,” Ingber said. “Even, in this case, we don’t even have the death penalty in our country against a suspect for a crime.”

But legal experts say that if the “war on terror” has desensitized the public to the use of military force overseas, the current attacks represent an entirely new development: the application of wartime powers to criminal activity.

“The president claims the authority to kill anyone he accuses of committing a crime, no questions asked,” said Annie Shiel, U.S. director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), an advocacy group.

“There are no limiting principles there. This puts people in the United States and around the world at extremely high risk.”