{"id":19151,"date":"2025-11-02T04:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T03:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=19151"},"modified":"2025-11-02T20:31:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T19:31:03","slug":"feuer-ueber-dem-karibischen-meer-und-das-phantom-im-mittelmeer-jordan-goudreau-waehrend-venezuelas-militaer-zivilisten-trainiert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/feuer-ueber-dem-karibischen-meer-und-das-phantom-im-mittelmeer-jordan-goudreau-waehrend-venezuelas-militaer-zivilisten-trainiert\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Over the Caribbean Sea and the Phantom in the Mediterranean, Jordan Goudreau - While Venezuela\u2019s Military Trains Civilians"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration has, within a few weeks, established a new pattern of power: it defines war so that it no longer looks like war and claims it is therefore not subject to legal limits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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T. Elliot Gaiser, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, who interned at the Heritage Foundation in 2013 and later received an alumni award from that think tank, told selected members of Congress that the ongoing killing operations against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America do not fall under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The 60-day clock, which has been running since the congressional notification on September 4, should play no role because these are not \u201chostilities.\u201d The rationale follows a template: if no US troops are in immediate danger, the law is not applicable. The strikes are said to be \u201cprecise,\u201d \u201cpredominantly\u201d carried out by unmanned systems, launched from warships in international waters, at distances that do not endanger American personnel. This way, a campaign of force can be moved into the distance until only the impact remains visible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is precisely where the contradiction begins, which former government lawyers speak about openly. Brian Finucane, long responsible for war-powers issues at the State Department, calls this reading a wild expansion of executive authority. If drones or long-range weapons fire at targets that cannot defend themselves, then, his sober objection goes, those are still hostilities. The practice of earlier campaigns - against Houthi positions in 2016, against Syrian military facilities in 2017 and 2018 - was treated by the governments that ordered them as \u201chostilities\u201d and covered by the War Powers Resolution. Even though Democratic and Republican administrations have repeatedly interpreted the 60-day limit creatively, the line remained visible: those who send armed forces into combat need parliamentary oversight. What is new now is not only the legal contortion, but the endgame. It is not about a declared armed conflict, but about boats, people, movement patterns - about killing as routine without a declaration of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the clock ticks down to Monday, November 3, 2025, the operation does not slow - it accelerates. More than a dozen attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, dozens dead, ships destroyed. The Navy has eight warships in the Caribbean, around ten percent of the deployed fleet. Destroyers, two amphibious ships, a submarine, a special vessel with helicopters are already on station, an aircraft carrier that is still in the Mediterranean as part of a carrier strike group: and more destroyers en route. Helicopters and bombers have repeatedly flown near Venezuelan airspace, F-35s and other aircraft were redeployed to Puerto Rico. It is a quiet but powerful array of steel and propulsion; the official justification remains slim: counter-drug operations. Trump has repeatedly hinted that land strikes could follow from the boat attacks, \u201cthe land is next.\u201d Later he said in response that this was not true. But the denial stands beside the visible deployment, and it is the logic of the deployment that electrifies the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n