"We've never seen this before": Trump's drug war looks like a real war

• "The president's overall perspective is that, if there is a terrorist threat to the homeland of the United States, he trusts the military to take that threat out — whether it's a drug boat off the coast of Venezuela or an al-Qaeda terrorist in the Middle East," a senior Trump administration official told Axios.

Driving the news: On Tuesday, the U.S. Navy blew up a suspected drug-running boat off Venezuela, killing its crew of 11, according to Trump and Pentagon officials.

• The attack marked the first time a suspected "go-fast" drug-running boat was destroyed by a military missile, according to officials and drug-war experts.
• "There's more where that came from," Trump said in announcing the strike.
• All other details of the shocking, caught-on-video missile attack are classified, officials said.

Friction point: The attack was denounced by critics accustomed to the U.S. conducting the drug war as a law-enforcement matter in which high-seas interdictions mainly involve the Coast Guard.

• Until now, the goal was to try to capture drug runners and their narcotics to build a case for federal prosecution.
• What happened Tuesday was "a murder anywhere in the world," Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, wrote on X. "We have been capturing civilians who transport drugs for decades without killing them. Those who transport drugs are not the big narcos, but the very poor, young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific."
• "Trump admits he ordered a summary execution — the crime of murder," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth posted on X. "Drug traffickers are not combatants who can be shot on sight. They are criminal suspects who must be arrested and prosecuted."

That thinking is no longer operative, Trump says. On his Inauguration Day, he signed an executive order declaring certain drug cartels, including Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, as "foreign terrorist organizations."

• Under U.S. law that gave Trump the authority to employ the military, administration officials say, in the same way that President Obama authorized a drone program that killed 3,797 people in 542 strikes aimed at suspected terrorists.
• Trump also loosened internal rules that slowed military officials from conducting lethal operations against alleged terrorists.
• "The National Security Council has taken out nearly 300 jihadists," the senior official said. "We are conducting strikes against terrorists weekly that no one even knows about."

What they're saying: Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Sullivan, who successfully prosecuted former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega for drug crimes after he was snatched in a 1989 U.S. military invasion, said Trump's militarization of the war on drugs was a surprise.

• "We've never seen this before," Sullivan told Axios. "This is a totally different approach. No one fired a missile at a go-fast boat and just destroyed it. It's just totally unheard of."

• "Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narcoterrorist will face the same fate," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Wednesday.
• But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) expressed misgivings about the operation, saying on Newsmax that Congress needs to declare war before the administration wages full-scale war on cartels.

Between the lines: Trump's new drug war isn't limited to Venezuela. But in the short term, it could double as a regime-change operation to depose Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, who's accused of stealing last year's presidential election.

• After Noriega, Maduro became the second sitting Latin American head of state to be indicted on narcotics charges, in 2020, during Trump's first term. Maduro also has a $50 million bounty on his head, which the Department of Justice had doubled.
• "The only person who should be worried is Nicolas Maduro, who's running, effectively, as a kingpin of a narcostate," Hegseth told Fox. "And we know he has been involved in the types of drug-running that has affected the American people directly."

Put another way: Maduro can be targeted for assassination, including by drone strike, under the new U.S. policy. Administration officials say that possibility hasn't been seriously discussed, but Trump is keeping it as an option.

• When asked whether regime change is a U.S. goal, Hegseth said the call wasn't his.
• "That's a presidential decision," he said. "We're prepared with every asset that the American military has."