The new National Security Strategy document signed by President Trump is not to be missed. There will be those who emphasize contempt with which the magnate treats Europe or the right he assumes to limit the sovereignty of his neighbors on the American continent. But what holds my attention, beyond the repetitions demonstration of a supremacism which, deep down, has always been there, This is the change that this represents in the United States’ perception of itself.
We are far from the doctrine of “manifest destiny” which, almost two centuries ago, American interventionism justified from the divine mandate to bring democracy and his own interpretation of Christianity to the world around him – there is no shortage of Americans who believed in it and gave their lives for this ideal – to Trump’s doctrine, which is not at all altruistic: “We will make America safer, richer, freer, bigger and more powerful than ever.”
So the same dog, with a different collar? I don’t believe it. Reasons matter, even when they only serve as pretexts for a policy decided in advance, because they influence the entire chain of decisions that determine each specific event, good or bad. When Putin calls the Ukrainian military terrorists, he knows he is provoking war crimes and this surely does not escape Trump either.
Allow the reader, as an example of a button, to draw their attention to recent murder of two drug dealers When their boat was destroyed, they clung to the remains afloat for their lives. Trump and his incompetent War Department secretary deny giving this order, and it may be true. Admiral Bradley, an officer who spent most of his career in the SEALs – but ultimately a sailor – apparently made the final decision. But it is difficult to explain how a seaman could reach such an extreme.
The sea is, for most sailors, a common enemy. A hostile environment which, if it does not suffocate us, kills us with cold or thirst. There is therefore an obligation to rescue shipwrecked persons which is both legal – Article 98 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes the duty to provide assistance “to any person who risks disappearing at sea” – and moral.
Putting myself in Admiral Bradley’s place, it is difficult for me to understand that an officer of the US Navy, a friendly navy on whose ships I spent long periods of navigation sharing experiences and values, would stained his hands shooting two survivors of a boat attack, Although this is not proof, I see no other reason why they would risk sailing at high speed under the surveillance of Trump’s ships, surely they were real drug traffickers.
The tycoon justifies the attacks on these ships with a declaration of war against drug trafficking. It is a war that the UN Security Council will never approve, but which the tycoon claims to be waging for the self-defense of the American people. But even if we accept this octopus as a pet – and that’s a lot to accept – self-defense doesn’t cover murder. It seems quite obvious that the conditions that the laws and good judgment require for the application of this concept – necessity, proportionality and urgency – do not exist when after an attack on a ship only two people remain, however bad they may be, in danger of disappearing at sea.
“If it is simply about making America bigger, more powerful or richer – a goal foreign to the concept of humanity, which the drug cartels would also sign up for themselves – it is easy to dissolve the ethical barriers”
Let’s continue to accept Trump’s theses: these were soldiers of an enemy army. If that were the case, the US Navy has every right to attack its ships… and can even justify killing cartel members – transformed by Trump’s own decision into terrorists like Bin Laden – while they are in a position to fight. But soldiers also have their rights, codified in the Geneva Conventions. When they are injured or helpless, it is forbidden to finish them off. In fact, the tycoon would not dare give the order to kill the survivors of such an attack if, instead of boats on the high seas, they were cars on his own roads.
let’s go back to the new American national strategy, Without knowing him personally, I find it unlikely that Admiral Bradley would have ordered the assassination of the drug dealers if he believed he was fighting for Protestantism or democracy. Even Hitler did not order his sailors to kill the shipwrecked men attacked by his submarines. The war crimes we know about from the movies were the decisions of individual commanders, and Grand Admiral Dönitz was acquitted at Nuremberg of committing them. On the other hand, if it is all about making America bigger, more powerful or richer – a goal foreign to the concept of humanity, which the drug cartels would also sign up for themselves – It’s easy to break down ethical barriers.
The reader will extrapolate what happened in the waters of the Caribbean to the scenario that worries them the most and see what could happen in the world. when the words of someone like Donald Trump turn into actions. We better be prepared.
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