Still frames from footage of a November 2025 lethal strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of Operation Southern Spear. U.S. Southern Command

There is an unusual article in the new US Naval Institute Proceedings that suggests that the lethal strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats may be doing psychological harm to those involved. The author compares recent events in the Caribbean with what appears to have been a simpler case of seizure of a Cuban fishing boat during the Spanish American War which may have lead to at least one suicide and perhaps others, as related in a USNI Naval History, June 2026 article, “The Capture of the Paquete Habana,” by Charles Robbins.

Reading Robbins’ account in the spring of 2026, it is impossible not to see parallels to what is being asked of U.S. pilots and weapons officers right now. Since September 2025, under Operation Southern Spear, U.S. military forces have conducted lethal strikes on small boats in the international waters of the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. As of June 2026, these strikes have killed at least 200 people in more than 60 separate engagements. The legal framework rests on domestic counterterrorism designations rather than prize law, but the structural question is the same one Justice Horace Gray confronted in 1900: Can the executive branch use military force against small, civilian-type vessels in international waters while bypassing judicial review and the customary norms of the law of nations? Gray’s answer—that it could not—rested on five centuries of international law.

Gray’s answer rested on a principle that still stands, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice . . .”