Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where one of your co-authors spent the long weekend scuba diving in Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela, blissfully unaware of what was about to go down just a few miles away.
On that note, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump orders a military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, Israel considers West Bank annexation, and Chinese hackers siphon up global data.
Ships vs. Boats
Even as U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to end wars in Europe and the Middle East, he is sending the United States careening into a new conflict in Latin America—and further transforming the military’s role in the process.
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump shared a 29-second video that showed a speedboat coasting through unidentified waters before suddenly exploding into flames. The boat was struck by the U.S. military on Trump’s orders, he said, alleging that it was ferrying members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua who were “transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that destroying the boat rather than intercepting and seizing it was intended to deter other “narcoterrorists.” “What will stop them is when you blow them up,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Mexico. “And it will happen again.”
Chasing cartels. Tuesday’s strike is the first operationalization of Trump’s secret order to the U.S. military last month to begin directly going after drug cartels, which was reported by the New York Times but still has not been made public. It also comes amid a broader U.S. Navy deployment—which includes at least three destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, a nuclear-powered submarine, three amphibious ships, and thousands of troops—to international waters off the coast of Venezuela, purportedly to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump administration considers Maduro to be an illegitimate leader and has alleged that he is involved in the drug trade himself. Maduro said before the U.S. strike that Venezuela was at “maximum preparedness” to defend itself against any U.S. military action, but it’s not immediately clear if or how he plans to retaliate.
By using the Navy to go after individual alleged drug boats, Trump is continuing his trend of throwing the U.S. military’s immense might at problems outside its normal purview. As Chatham House’s Christopher Sabatini wrote in FP on Thursday, intercepting and taking action against drug traffickers in international waters is traditionally overseen by the Coast Guard. Although it is not unprecedented for the Navy to participate in such operations, launching a military strike on the boat without verifying its occupants or contents is a departure from normal procedure.
The jurisdictional disarray that the Coast Guard might be feeling will be familiar to police in multiple U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where Trump has deployed the National Guard to quell protests and fight crime, respectively (and in the latter case, sometimes to mulch cherry trees and pick up garbage). Both of those deployments have been challenged in court. Trump has also sent thousands of troops to the U.S. southern border to aid his immigration crackdown.
Congress and the law. The strike also raises a slew of legal questions, both in terms of domestic and international law, particularly given that Congress has not authorized military action against Tren de Aragua or Venezuela. Trump designated Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations soon after returning to office, which administration officials have said gives him legal authorities to target such groups in new ways. But it’s still hazy legal territory, even though presidents from both parties have taken military actions abroad without congressional approval.
Though Congress alone has the power to declare war, presidents are the commanders in chief of the military and generally have broad power to take actions necessary to protect national security. Whether this strike rises to that level is a larger question.
Presidents have been given extremely wide latitude to take military action against terrorist groups in the post-9/11 era and have often tested the limits of their powers and the law in the process. But drug cartels are not covered under the authorizations for use of military force passed by Congress in relation to terror groups.
In recent years, lawmakers in Washington have increasingly pushed for Congress to reassert its authority over war powers and rein in the powers given to presidents following 9/11. So far, the congressional response over this incident has been relatively muted, though some Democrats have raised concerns.
In comments to Politico, Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned Trump’s legal authority to strike a vessel that “posed no threat” to the United States. Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have cheered Trump on, with Sen. Lindsey Graham posting on X that the strike was the “ultimate—and most welcome—sign that we have a new sheriff in town.”
Let’s Get Personnel
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project 2025, is now the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, taking over the job from Rubio.
Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, who submitted a whistleblower complaint alleging that employees of the Department of Government Efficiency had mishandled the private data of millions of Americans, resigned on Tuesday.
Nemat Shafik, the former Columbia University president whose handling of pro-Palestine campus protests led to her resignation after Trump’s criticism, is now the chief economic advisor to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
On the Button
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
West Bank annexation talk. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday proposed that Israel annex roughly 82 percent of the West Bank in order “to remove, once and for all, this idea of a Palestinian state.” The proposal comes as more countries move to recognize Palestine as a state and amid rising global pressure for Israel to end the war in Gaza. The Knesset also voted in July in favor of a nonbinding motion for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.
The United Arab Emirates warned that such a move would cross a “red line” and deal a major blow to the Abraham Accords at a time when the Trump administration continues to push for more Arab countries to normalize ties with Israel.
However, it’s unclear how much support, if any, Smotrich’s proposal has from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Jerusalem Post reported that following the UAE’s warning, the idea was removed from the agenda of a Thursday meeting being convened by Netanyahu to discuss the economic and security situation in the West Bank.
Russia’s warning to the West. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Paris on Thursday for a meeting with the “coalition of the willing” group of countries to discuss postwar security guarantees for Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron announced that 26 countries have formally pledged to deploy troops “by land, sea, or air” to Ukraine as a “form of reassurance” following a prospective truce deal.
But here’s the problem: There’s no peace agreement on the horizon, and the process is largely stalled despite major efforts by the Trump administration to move things forward.
Russia, which partially justified its 2022 invasion of Ukraine by citing Kyiv’s NATO ambitions, has also warned the West that it will not sign off on an agreement that would see foreign troops stationed in its next-door neighbor.
“Russia does not intend to discuss unacceptable foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form whatsoever,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday.
Chinese hackers’ field day. Remember Salt Typhoon, the Chinese hacking group that has repeatedly alarmed the U.S. government over the past few years? Their reach and damage is far more extensive than previously thought, according to a sweeping new report from more than a dozen cyber agencies, including from the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and several European countries.
Chinese cyberattackers have had “persistent, long-term access to networks” around the world, the agencies said in the report, and have been “performing malicious operations globally since at least 2021.” That includes targeting and gaining access to global telecommunications, government, military, and transportation networks, with the hackers feeding information back to China’s intelligence agencies, the report added.
Snapshot
Hot Mic
Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Andy Kim recently led a Senate delegation to South Korea and Japan as part of an effort to bolster U.S. national security and economic ties. Both countries have been hit by Trump’s tariffs, and his “America First” rhetoric has increased nerves on security issues in the Indo-Pacific. SitRep caught up with Duckworth and Kim about their trip to get a sense of where perceptions about relations with the United States stand at present.
Militarily, there are worries about the United States’ “level of predictability” right now “in terms of our ability to be able to assure our two treaty allies of our commitments on a deep and fundamental level,” Kim said.
On their trip, Duckworth and Kim joined U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Xavier T. Brunson for a training exercise that was attended by ambassadors from United Nations Command member states.
“Those ambassadors expressed some real concerns about America’s long-term commitment,” Duckworth said. “What we do in Korea and Japan is being looked at and watched by all the other nations in the region.”
Duckworth and Kim said they fear that the administration’s policies are driving U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific into Beijing’s arms, pointing to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to China amid Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on the South Asian country.
“This is a big reason why we went,” Kim said. “China is increasing their engagement with these nations. They’re on a charm offensive.”
Put on Your Radar
Monday, Sept. 8: Norway holds parliamentary elections.
United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk addresses the 60th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Tuesday, Sept. 9: The U.N. General Assembly begins in New York.
Thursday, Sept. 11: Nadine Menendez, wife of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, is due to be sentenced in a Manhattan district court after being convicted of helping her husband in a scheme to bribe Egyptian officials.
Friday, Sept. 12: A verdict is expected in the Brazilian Supreme Court case against former President Jair Bolsonaro.
By the Numbers
338—the number of Chinese entities awarded at least two artificial intelligence contracts by the People’s Liberation Army between January 2023 and December 2024, according to a new report by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The vast majority of those were “nontraditional vendors” outside of state-owned enterprises and research institutions, the report found, indicating that the Chinese military is vastly diversifying its quest for AI supremacy.
Quote of the Week
“We need this at the State Department.”
—Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, in a post on X jokingly (or perhaps not) referring to a video of a magnetic sheet designed to “immediately stop leaks.”
This Week’s Most Read
- So You Want to Work in International Affairs by Luke Coffey
- Trump’s Economic Policy Is More Radical Than You Think by Howard W. French
- How Fear Killed Liberalism by Stephen M. Walt
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Only the paranoid survive? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un certainly appears to believe that, with video circulating that purportedly shows his aides painstakingly wiping down every item he sat on, held, or touched during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing this week. Putin himself also appears keen to elongate his life as much as possible, having been caught on a hot mic during the same visit discussing immortality with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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