The Trump administration is presenting its missile strikes on drug-running boats in the Caribbean as an act of collective self-defense on behalf of regional partners, The Guardian reported, citing three people directly familiar with the internal legal rationale.

The justification hinges on an assertion, without publicly available evidence, that drug cartels are engaged in armed hostilities against the security forces of allies such as Mexico, funded through cocaine shipments.

Under this reasoning, the US claims the strikes target the cocaine itself and that any deaths aboard the vessels should be viewed as combatant casualties or collateral harm rather than unlawful killings. This argument forms the core of a classified legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and offers the clearest explanation yet for how the administration believes it has met the threshold to use lethal force.

Legal justification for deadly force clashes with Trump’s narrative

But the internal rationale stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s public messaging, which has consistently framed the 21 lethal strikes, resulting in more than 80 deaths, as an effort to stem overdose fatalities.

A White House official told The Guardian that Trump has not been making a legal argument, though his statements are the only public justification offered for the strikes, even as the actual legal basis appears to be entirely different.

If accepted, the argument would mark the first time the US has claimed, contentiously and against the prevailing understanding, that cartels are using cocaine revenues to wage warfare, rather than primarily to generate profit.

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said, “These operations were ordered consistent with the law of armed conflict.” 

The emerging legal justification comes as the administration’s campaign against the cartels appears poised for a significant escalation. The arrival of the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier, has brought capabilities to strike land targets, something Trump has openly indicated he wants.

This week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went so far as to threaten Senator Mark Kelly with court-martial after Kelly and five Democratic lawmakers released a video urging military personnel to question unlawful orders, widely understood to reference the strikes.

Legal argument centers on disputed claims about cartel warfare

Three lawyers familiar with the OLC opinion said the collective self-defense theory is a central pillar of the government’s legal analysis.

The opinion formalizes a July 21 meeting of a “restricted interagency lawyers group” made up of eight career and political officials from the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the White House, and the OLC.

The memo argues the US has effectively entered an armed conflict with the cartels by aiding regional partners such as Mexico and Colombia, which an administration official said sought US support privately to avoid retaliation.

This “armed conflict” designation is critical, as it allows Trump to operate under the law of armed conflict, providing legal cover for lethal force without violating US murder statutes or international humanitarian law.

The OLC further concludes that Trump does not need congressional authorization because the administration met its two-part test: that the strikes advance a US national interest and that the operations will not be prolonged in scope or duration.

The memo outlines four national interests at stake, including obligations to assist allies, the preservation of regional stability, and protecting the United States from illegal drug flows.

Wider context

However, the OLC’s framework relies on assumptions about cartel behavior for which no public evidence has been presented. 

Martin Lederman, a former OLC deputy assistant attorney general under the Obama and Biden administrations, questioned the administration’s claims.

“A significant problem with this theory is that they still have not identified any state that’s engaged in an armed conflict with a particular cartel,” Lederman stressed.

“Nor has the administration provided any evidence that another state engaged in such an armed conflict has asked the US to destroy cocaine shipments that are allegedly being used to subsidize armed violence against the requesting state,” he added.

An administration official said intelligence shows each boat carries about $50 million in cocaine, with proceeds allegedly used to secure sophisticated weapons, though the underlying assessments remain classified.

Still, the OLC is not typically responsible for vetting intelligence about cartel motives and usually defers to the US intelligence community.

In this case, a senior administration official acknowledged that OLC did not attempt to scrutinize the purported aims of the cartels or verify whether an armed conflict exists.

Instead, OLC addressed a narrow question from the White House: whether it would be lawful for the president to use military force against unflagged, cocaine-transporting vessels in international waters.