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The leaked reports suggesting that the UK has suspended intelligence cooperation with the US over its lethal strikes against boats allegedly smuggling drugs through the Caribbean risks wider ramifications for UK-US intelligence cooperation, but only if the US chooses to overreact.
The UK's decision does not reflect any move to go "soft" on drugs, as some in the Trump administration might try to allege. Nor does it mean that the UK sympathizes with the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which many analysts believe is the true target of the US's more assertive posture in the region, part of a wider strategy to increase pressure on the regime and stimulate an internal coup against Maduro.
The UK has consistently stood with the US and other international partners in condemning Maduro's authoritarian rule in Venezuela, and denouncing his claim to the Presidency as illegitimate following contested elections last summer. Earlier this year, the UK imposed sanctions on 15 individuals closely associated with his regime.
The UK's decision seems to have been motivated purely by a concern that it not be directly implicated in the US's attacks, which numerous international experts, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have said is a form of extrajudicial killing, illegal under international law. There have been 19 attacks on boats so far, resulting in the deaths of at least 76 people. They have apparently taken place without any warnings to the people onboard, or with irrefutable proof that the boats were indeed carrying drugs, and destined for the US mainland.
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The UK could face legal jeopardy, because it has traditionally cooperated closely with US organisations combatting drug trafficking in the region, including by sharing intelligence, and stationing a liaison officer at the main centre for tracking drug movements and conducting counter-narcotic operations in the Caribbean, the Joint Interagency Task Force South unit in Key West, Florida.
The UK also has a naval officer onboard one of the US warships, the USS Winston Churchill, which is part of a larger naval strike force, including an aircraft carrier, which the US is moving into the region. This officer could potentially become personally liable, if he is on board a ship which takes part in illegal operations.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration tried to establish legal cover for its attacks by designating drug traffickers as "enemy combatants" engaged in an armed conflict against the US, and certain drug cartels as "foreign terrorist groups". While it is certainly true that drug-related deaths have soared in the US, and that drug gangs in Latin America are notoriously violent, their main destabilizing effects are felt in drug producing countries, such as Colombia, or transit countries, such as Mexico. There can be no credible claim that drug gangs pose such a serious security threat to the US, that it would justify a full-on military response
Moreover, the most serious drug problems in the US today are caused by synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, which are trafficked mainly through Mexico, and produced using chemicals sourced from China. According to Michael Shifter, former President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a leading Latin America think tank in Washington, whom I spoke to a few weeks ago about what might be behind US actions in the Caribbean, Venezuela, while certainly home to many criminal drug groups, is largely irrelevant to the fentanyl issue.
Shifter's believes that the US administration's decision to portray its military p...
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