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Ricardo Morín

November 2025

Oakland Park, Florida

Abstract

This essay examines how procedures governing the use of force, the classification of conflict, and the articulation of self-defense diverge from declared principles in three areas of U.S. foreign policy:   the Trinidad maritime strike, the war involving Ukraine and Russia, and the conflict involving Israel, Palestine, and adjacent countries.   The analysis traces how inconsistencies arise when official language does not align with established norms, when criteria shift across comparable circumstances, and when the stated basis for action changes according to political need rather than procedural coherence.   The comparison highlights how these divergences contribute to instability and weaken interpretive clarity across international affairs.

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1

The Washington Post report titled “‘Kill them all’: Hegseth’s battlefield rhetoric shaped Trump-era strike” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/hegseth-kill-them-all-survivors-boat-strike/) describes a U.S. military operation near Trinidad in which a small vessel believed to be transporting narcotics was struck after being misidentified.   Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a spoken directive “to kill everybody,” and the strike killed most individuals on board.   When surveillance identified two survivors clinging to debris, a second strike was ordered that killed them as well.   Subsequent explanations to Congress presented the follow-on strike as an effort to remove a navigational hazard, even though the presence of survivors had already been confirmed.   The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), whose opinion later justified the actions as part of an armed conflict with designated narcoterrorist groups, introduced a legal classification that departed from the facts presented in the initial reports.   These elements create a single set of materials from which procedural coherence can be examined.

2

The procedural irregularity becomes visible once the chain of actions is placed in order:   an unverified assumption about the vessel’s identity, a directive that treated all occupants as combatants, a second strike executed after survivors were identified, and a later legal justification grounded in a classification that recast the operation as part of an armed conflict.   Each step relied on a different principle—assumption, directive, reinterpretation, and reclassification.   The divergence among these principles reveals how procedure shifted to accommodate the desired framing rather than guiding the action itself.   This shift does not imply motive; it demonstrates how administrative language can detach from the criteria that normally govern the use of force.

3

A similar procedural disjunction appears when U.S. positions regarding Ukraine and Russia are placed alongside the Trinidad case.  The United States publicly condemns Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians and cites violations of distinction, proportionality, and accountability under the laws of armed conflict.   Yet discussions about scaling back support for Ukraine have introduced a reversal in which the procedural commitments used to justify condemnation of Russia are not consistently applied when considering the implications of reducing assistance to a State defending its sovereignty.  The shift from emphasizing legal norms to weighing political costs illustrates how procedures can be reshaped by circumstances, even when the stated principles remain unchanged.  The inconsistency does not rest in the declarations themselves but in the procedural reversals that appear when support for Ukraine becomes entangled with broader strategic calculations.

4

The conflict involving Israel, Palestine, and neighboring states such as Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen reveals another form of procedural divergence.   The United States affirms Israel’s right to self-defense and stops short of recognizing Palestine’s claim to self-determination in equal procedural terms.  The same criteria invoked to justify one party’s actions do not extend to the other party’s pursuit of sovereignty, even though both claims arise within a single territorial and political circumstance.   This asymmetry becomes more pronounced when regional attacks are considered:  the procedures invoked to justify Israeli strikes in response to threats from Iran, Lebanon, or Yemen differ from those applied to Palestinian actions, despite operating within an interconnected region where the consequences of one engagement affect all others.  The divergence reflects a procedural evasiveness that stabilizes one position while it leaves another without an articulated pathway toward recognition or resolution.

5

When the three circumstances—the Trinidad strike, the shifting position toward Ukraine and Russia, and the procedural asymmetry in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—are examined together, their differences do not obscure the common pattern.   In each case, established procedures that ordinarily govern the use of force or the recognition of sovereignty diverge from the principles publicly invoked.   In Trinidad, the divergence takes the form of reclassification after the fact.   In Ukraine, it appears as a reversal in how the principles of civilian protection and territorial integrity are applied.   In Israel and Palestine, it emerges as a partial application of the right to self-defense without a corresponding recognition of the procedural requirements associated with sovereignty.   The alignment across cases arises from the way procedures shift to accommodate political needs rather than guiding action according to a stable set of criteria.

6

This alignment does not rest on the equivalence of the conflicts but on the consistency of the procedural departures.   Each case shows how the same vocabulary—armed conflict, self-defense, sovereignty, and civilian protection—operates differently when applied to different actors.   The procedures attached to these terms change according to circumstance rather than principle.   As a result, the meaning of each term becomes unstable.   What counts as an armed conflict in Trinidad, a sovereign defense in Ukraine, or a legitimate use of force in Gaza depends not on a uniform procedural standard but on the political frame selected in each instance.

7

A coherent foreign policy requires that procedures governing the use of force, recognition of sovereignty, and classification of conflict remain consistent across situations.   The Trinidad strike shows how procedures can be rearranged after the fact to protect the narrative of an operation.   The evolving position on Ukraine demonstrates how procedural commitments can weaken when strategic considerations gain priority.   The treatment of Palestinian claims and Israeli self-defense reveals how procedures can be selectively applied within the same region.   Together, these inconsistencies demonstrate how the absence of procedural coherence reduces interpretive clarity and complicates the relationships on which international stability depends.

8

The examination of these cases through a single lens does not equate them; it identifies the procedural incoherence that appears when the principles governing the use of force, recognition of sovereignty, and classification of conflict do not align with the actions taken.   The result is a field of international affairs in which the stated basis for action varies according to circumstance, and in which procedural language adapts to political needs rather than providing a stable standard for decision-making.   The inferences that follow are left to the reader, who can judge how the departure from procedural coherence shapes the credibility of U.S. conduct abroad.

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