Read our editorials on reactionization and US aggression in Latin America
The Trump administration’s open rejection of the War Powers Resolution marks another turn in the reactionization of the U.S. imperialist state. The Department of Justice told Congress this week that President Trump could continue lethal aerial strikes on alleged “narco-terrorists” in Latin American waters beyond the 60-day limit for unauthorized military operations. Their justification: the United States is not technically at war, because U.S. soldiers are not being attacked.
This cynical logic allows the government to wage war while pretending it isn’t. The administration claims that because the strikes are carried out by fighter jets or unmanned drones from naval vessels far from danger, they do not count as “hostilities” under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Yet the same operation is described as a “formal armed conflict” by Trump himself. The ruling class is asserting the executive’s right to kill abroad without even the minimal oversight that Congress once pretended to provide.
Trump’s lawyers built upon the precedent set by former President Barack Obama and other imperialist NATO leader’s 2011 bombing of Libya, which twisted the term “hostilities” to help “rebels” in overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi to subdue Libya for US and European monopolies. Obama intentionally avoided the 60 day deadline—continuing the trend of other presidencies in centralizing power around the executive branch and weakening Congress’s nominal powers to authorize wars.
Trump’s new “anti-narco” operation, which has so far killed at least 67 people with over a dozen airstrikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, is not about drug smuggling. It is doubling down on the “Monroe Doctrine,” of using more open aggression aimed at tightening U.S. domination over Latin America’s resources, trade, and its colonies and semi-colonies. By labeling poor fishermen and petty smugglers “terrorists” and bombing them, they move from more soft power methods of coercing the nations in this hemisphere to more open military involvement.
This concentration of power around the executive is a symptom of imperialism in decay. The U.S. bourgeoisie can no longer maintain its power through it’s supposed representative institutions, where factions of the bourgeoisie debate over how to best sustain their rule, and instead move towards presidential absolutism. This includes the militarization of society coupled with the erosion of the old bourgeois-democratic forms.
The same contradictions that drive the U.S. to bomb the oppressed nations are tearing apart imperialism internally. As inter-imperialist rivalries deepen and global resistance to U.S. domination grows, Washington’s answer is to double down on war and executive decrees, with the militarization of American streets also picking up.
Photo: The US prepares to airstrike a boat in Latin American waters. Retrieved from @SecWar on X.
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