On September 2 and 15, President Trump ordered the United States Navy to destroy small speed boats in the Caribbean. In both cases, all on board died. International lawyers have uniformly criticized the killings as unlawful. Commentators called the first attack a “performative” use of force with no material connection to national self-defense or crime suppression. The killings were designed to “send a message” rather than for any legally sanctioned purpose. One opinion writer labeled them the president’s most “dangerous assault on the rule of law” to date.
And, yet, government officials in states long committed to the rule of law at home and abroad have remained largely silent. Even the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killing has remained silent to date. In July, Henning Lahmann argued here that Germany’s silence in the face of Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran indicates the growing weakness of German democracy and commitment to law. In the U.S., I have argued that lawless killing with military force abroad has increased the militarization of policing and negatively impacted respect for the rule of law domestically. Läs artikel