The collection now also includes analysis of more recent boarding and seizure of vessels, including U.S. sanctioned oil tankers, and the U.S. military operation in Venezuela that removed President Maduro from power.

Informational Resources

• Jeremy Chin, Margaret Lin, and Aidan Arasasingham, Timeline of Boat Strikes and Related Actions (continually updated)

Operation Absolute Resolve and Threats of Force against Venezuela

• Jeffrey Rogg, U.S. Intelligence in a Post-Maduro Venezuela (Jan. 9, 2026)
• Brian Egan, Tess Bridgeman, and Ryan Goodman, Congress, the President, and the Use of Military Force in Venezuela (Jan. 7, 2026)
• Chimène Keitner, Head of State Immunity and Maduro on Trial (Jan. 6, 2026)
• Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman, International Law and the U.S. Military and Law Enforcement Operations in Venezuela (Jan. 4, 2026)
• Ryan Goodman, Maduro Capture Operation and the President’s Duty to Faithfully Execute U.N. Charter Assessment of 1989 OLC Opinion (Jan. 3, 2026)
• Michael Schmitt, U.S. Saber Rattling and Venezuela: Lawful Show of Force or Unlawful Threat of Force? (Nov. 4, 2025)

Seizure and Blockade of Vessels (Domestic and International Law)

• Rob McLaughlin and Connor McLaughlin, A Law of the Sea Assessment of the U.S. boarding of the Bella 1 / Marinera (Jan. 14, 2026)
• Rob McLaughlin and Tess Bridgeman, The Just Security Podcast: Can the U.S. Seize Russian Flagged Oil Tankers? (Jan. 8, 2026)
• Elizabeth Hutton, Maritime Law Enforcement on the High Seas: Authority, Jurisdiction, and the Seizure of The Skipper An Expert Backgrounder (Dec. 22, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt and Rob McLaughlin, Blockading Venezuela: The International Law Consequences (Dec. 18, 2025)
• Rob McLaughlin and Connor McLaughlin, Was the Visit and Seizure of the Skipper off the Coast of Venezuela Lawful? (Dec. 17, 2025)
• See also Question 31 in Tess Bridgeman, Michael Schmitt, and Ryan Goodman, Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes (Dec. 13, 2025)

Operation Southern Spear and Related Operations Legal Analysis (Domestic and International Law)

• Michael Schmitt, Using an Unmarked Aircraft to Attack an Alleged Drug Boat: Is it Perfidy? (Jan. 20, 2026)
• Michael Schmitt, Marko Milanovic, The International Law Obligation to Investigate the Boat Strikes (Dec. 15, 2025)
• Tess Bridgeman, Michael Schmitt, and Ryan Goodman, Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes (Dec. 13, 2025)
• Mark Nevitt, The Law on Targeting Shipwrecked Drug Traffickers: Expert Backgrounder (Dec. 11, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman, Operation Southern Spear: Why the Crews, Drugs, and Boats are Not Targetable (Dec. 7, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman, Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder (Dec. 1, 2025)
• Daniel Maurer, Hypothetical Legal Review of Narcotrafficking Strikes (Nov. 18, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt, Marko Milanovic, and Ryan Goodman, The International Law Obligation of States to Stop Intelligence Support for U.S. Boat Strikes (Nov. 17, 2025)
• Brian Finucane, Dissecting the Trump Administration’s Effort to Circumvent the War Powers Resolution for Boat Strikes (Nov. 3, 2025)
• Rebecca Ingber and Jessica Thibodeau, Expert Backgrounder on War Powers Resolution 60-Day Clock for Boat Strikes Expiring Monday (October 31, 2025)
• Ryan Goodman, Michael Schmitt and Anna Jimenez, Irreconcilable Presidential Determinations: On Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan Government (October 29, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt, Attacking Drug Cartels in the Territory of Another State (Oct. 17, 2025)
• Marty Lederman, Legal Flaws in the Trump Administration’s Notice to Congress on “Armed Conflict” with Drug Cartels (Oct. 3, 2025)
• Daniel Maurer, US Servicemembers’ Exposure to Criminal Liability for Lethal Strikes on Narcoterrorists (Sept. 24, 2025)
• Marty Lederman, The Many Ways in Which the September 2 Caribbean Strike was Unlawful … and the Grave Line the Military Has Crossed (Sept. 10, 2025)
• Michael Schmitt, Striking Drug Cartels Under the Jus ad Bellum and Law of Armed Conflict (Sept. 10, 2025)
• Mark Nevitt, Using Labels, Not Law, to Justify Lethal Force: Inside the Venezuelan Boat Strike (Sept. 5, 2025)
• Brian Finucane, Legal Issues Raised by a Lethal U.S. Military Attack in the Caribbean (Sept. 3, 2025)

Congressional Actions and Oversight

• Tess Bridgeman, Margaret Donovan and Ryan Goodman, U.S. Boat Strike Campaign: Questions Congress Should Ask Executive Branch Officials (Dec. 4, 2025)
• Stephen R. Weissman, Will the Intelligence Committees Meet the Challenge of CIA Covert Action in Venezuela? (Oct. 31, 2025)
• Mary B. McCord and Tess Bridgeman, What the Senate Judiciary Committee Should Ask A.G. Bondi on Drug Cartel Strikes (Oct. 3, 2025)

Policy Analysis and Opinion

• Mark Nevitt, Killing Shipwrecked Survivors is Not Just Illegal—It Endangers U.S. Servicemembers (Dec. 1, 2025)
• Eugene R. Fidell, Daniel Maurer and Steven J. Lepper, Professional Responsibility and the Boat Strikes (Dec. 1, 2025)
• Brett Max Kaufman, From Secret Law (2001-2024) to None at All (2025-present) (Nov. 21, 2025)
• Sarah Harrison and Mark Nevitt, The Caribbean Strikes and the Collapse of Legal Oversight in U.S. Military Operations (Oct. 23, 2025)
• Ben Saul, The United States’ Dirty War on “Narco Terrorism” (Sept. 22, 2025)
• Annie Shiel, John Ramming Chappell, Priyanka Motaparthy, Wells Dixon and Daphne Eviatar, Murder by Drone: The Legal and Moral Stakes of the Caribbean Strikes (Sept. 17, 2025)
• Brian Finucane, Asserting a License to Kill: Why the Caribbean Strike is a Dangerous Departure from the “War on Terror (Sept. 15, 2025)

Podcast Episodes

• Tess Bridgeman, Rob Mclaughlin, The Just Security Podcast: Can the U.S. Seize Russian Flagged Oil Tankers? (Jan. 8, 2026, also available on YouTube)
• Tess Bridgeman, Rachel Goldbrenner, Rebecca Ingber and Brian Finucane, The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas Part IV (Dec. 2, 2025)
• Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, Rebecca Ingber, The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas Part III  (Oct. 21, 2025, also available on YouTube)
• Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, Rachel Goldbrenner, Rebecca Ingber, The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas Part II — What We Know about U.S. Vessel Strikes One Month In (Oct. 7, 2025)
• Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, Rebecca Ingber, The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas? What You Need to Know about the U.S. Strike on the Caribbean Vessel (Sept. 9, 2025, also available on YouTube)

The post Collection: U.S. Lethal Strikes on Suspected Drug Traffickers, Operation Southern Spear, Operation Absolute Resolve appeared first on Just Security.

The FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, enacted on Dec. 18, takes a significant step towards the full removal of sanctions on Syria by repealing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 (Caesar Act), which provided for mandatory sanctions on those providing certain support to Syria and its government. This marks the latest in a remarkable series of developments following Assad’s sudden downfall and exile to Russia in December 2024. The transitional Syrian government formed after Assad’s ouster has worked to project stability and attract international development and investment funding, reversing years of isolation and the Assad regime’s reliance on Russia for survival. As Syria emerges from sanctions seclusion, numerous challenges remain to outside investment and development in Syria, which the World Bank estimates will cost $216 billion to reconstruct.

Led by transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new Syrian government has pursued a path towards building international legitimacy and demonstrated its willingness to reconsider Syria’s relationships with regional and global powers to fund its development. This shift was evident on November 10, 2025, when al-Sharaa joined President Trump in the White House for the first-ever meeting hosting a Syrian head of State. This followed an initial meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia on May 14, the day after Trump announced he would order the lifting of sanctions on Syria.

The repeal of the Caesar Act presents a key moment to review the U.S. government’s progress towards the goal reflected in Trump’s May 13 announcement and June 30 Executive Order of removing sanctions and other restrictions on Syria to support the new government and efforts to promote a stable, unified, and peaceful Syria. Key issues such as accountability, institutional reforms, and a successful democratic transition are closely interlinked with Syria’s ability to engage in effective reconstruction and economic recovery, and sanctions – or their removal – have the potential to significantly impact Syria’s ability to garner the support necessary for those processes. In this article, we take stock of where things stand along the path of Syria sanctions removal and what restrictions remain to inhibit burgeoning investment and development in post-Assad Syria.

Assad’s Ouster Leads to Reexamination and Removal of Sanctions

U.S. sanctions on Syria started with export controls and foreign assistance restrictions derived from Syria’s designation in 1979 as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) and grew over decades to include an amalgamation of export controls, economic sanctions and terror list designations, and assistance restrictions. They variously aimed to pressure Assad’s regime to either reverse course and end its interference in Lebanon, terrorist support, and human rights abuses or hasten the transition to a new Syrian government. Over 13 years after President Obama sanctioned the government of Syria and called for Bashar al-Assad to step aside, Syrian rebel groups including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ended the Assad family’s 50+-year reign in a matter of roughly 11 days. Following this quick change in government, U.S. policymakers were left with the question of whether and how to dismantle the entrenched Syria sanctions apparatus, which broadly impacted the country and its government, without regard to who held power.

Since becoming transitional president shortly after leading the overthrow of Assad, al-Sharaa has sought to quickly move beyond his militant past and attempted to establish himself as a moderate leader committed to preventing corruption and holding accountable human rights abusers, protecting minorities, and ensuring a stable and secure Syrian government  Significant questions and challenges surrounding al-Sharaa’s goals for his new government remain unresolved as Syria charts its course for the future. Outbreaks of government-affiliated sectarian violence raise concerns about al-Sharaa’s ability to ensure the safety of all Syrians. On the economic front, he has pressed the United States to permanently end its sanctions on Syria, including removing Syria as a State Sponsor of Terror and specific appeals for a permanent repeal of the Caesar Act, to further settle the nerves of potential investors and provide more clarity and stability for Syria.

While barriers to trade remain, repealing the Caesar Act is the latest in a number of significant sanctions relief actions that suggest al-Sharaa’s strategy is working. Since announcing he would roll back Syria sanctions on May 13, Trump has continued to voice his support for Syria and his desire to “give them a chance at greatness.” As detailed below, the U.S. government has already removed many sanctions measures to implement the May 13 announcement, while retaining sanctions on Assad and his supporters and other bad actors related to Syria.

Post-May 13 Syria Sanctions Relief

Step 1: Temporary Sanctions Relief

On May 23, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the State Department took the first significant steps towards sanctions relief by issuing OFAC General License 25 and a 180-day waiver of sanctions under the Caesar Act. These actions broadly authorized transactions with the new transitional Syrian government, al-Sharaa (under his nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad Al-Jawlani) and transitional Interior Minister Khattab, and certain sanctioned entities. The Caesar Act waiver also temporarily removed the risk of sanctions designation under the Act. Absent a waiver or suspension, the Caesar Act provided for mandatory secondary sanctions on non-U.S. persons that engage in various significant transactions involving Syria, such as support to the Syrian government, Syria’s petroleum industry, or engineering services to the Syrian government.

Before its repeal, two distinct methods allowed the U.S. Secretary of State to temporarily halt application of the Caesar Act: a waiver under Section 7432 of the Act, or suspension via Section 7431 of the Act. Waiving sanctions under the Act required the Secretary to certify that such a waiver was in the national security interests of the United States. Suspension, however, required a more fact-based certification that seven enumerated conditions had been met, including with respect to the government of Syria’s actions related to destruction of chemical and biological weapons, the return of displaced Syrians, and accountability for the Assad regime. The statute limited both waiver and suspension to 180 days, renewable.

Step 2: Executive Order Roadmap

On June 30, President Trump issued Executive Order 14312, “Providing for the Revocation of Syria Sanctions.” This order laid out the following steps towards sanctions relief and reframing:

• Permanently Removing Syria Sanctions: The Executive Order terminated the national emergency with respect to Syria and revoked previous Executive Orders establishing the Syrian sanctions regime (EOs 13338, 13399, 13460, 13572, 13573 and 13582). This led to the removal of 518 individuals and entities associated with Syria from OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List).

• Expanding Assad-related Sanctions: It further amended EO 13894 to expand sanctions authorities to “ensure meaningful accountability” for former Assad officials and their supporters, providing sanctions authorities to designate, e.g., those who threaten Syrian peace, security and stability, commit human rights abuses, trade illicitly in captagon, or are responsible for missing persons in Syria during the Assad era. OFAC designated 139 persons under these expanded authorities, as well as other relevant authorities, in conjunction with the Executive Order.

• Providing for Export Control and Assistance Relief: The Executive Order also waived statutory provisions under section 5(b) of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (Syria Accountability Act) and section 307(d)(1)(B) of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act) that had underpinned prohibitions on virtually all exports to Syria, restricted U.S. foreign assistance, denied U.S. government credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance, and restricted U.S. banks from making loans or providing credit to the Syrian government.

• Secondary Sanctions Relief: The Executive Order also directed the U.S. Secretary of State to evaluate whether the criteria in the Caesar Act had been met to justify suspension of the Act’s mandatory sanctions.

• Counterterrorism Review and UN Engagement: Last, the Executive Order required the U.S. Secretary of State to take “all appropriate action” related to the terror designations applied to the new Syrian government and its members – including HTS’s designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, Syria’s inclusion on the SST list, and al-Sharaa’s designation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). It also directed the U.S. Secretary of State to support a stable Syria at the U.N. and “explore” U.N. sanctions relief to Syria.

Evaluating the EO’s Effect – What Remains to Deliver on President Trump’s Promise?

Following issuance of the roadmap for sanctions removal in EO 14312, the U.S. Departments of State, the Treasury, and Commerce have continued along the path to remove sanctions on Syria. Additional steps, however, remain before the U.S. sanctions and export control apparatus applicable to Syria is fully dismantled. Below, we review actions taken in furtherance of the measures described in EO 14312 and remaining steps along the path to fully removing sanctions and restrictive export controls from Syria.

Sanctions Regulatory Changes: On August 26, OFAC removed the Syrian Sanctions Regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations. On September 25, OFAC also renamed the “Syria Related Sanctions Regulations” as the “Promoting Accountability for Assad and Regional Stabilization Sanctions Regulations” to reflect the expanded scope of the underlying national emergency. The removal of all Syria-focused sanctions regulations has the effect of underscoring that U.S. sanctions do not target Syria but rather target destabilizing actors in the region.

Initial Export Control Relief: On September 2, empowered by EO 14312’s waivers of the Syria Accountability Act and CBW Act, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a final rule to allow greater trade with Syria, while maintaining restrictions relevant to malign or destabilizing actors.

This rule added a Syria-specific license exception, License Exception Syria Peace and Prosperity (SPP), which authorizes the export of “EAR99” items to Syria. EAR99 refers to low-technology consumer goods items that are not identified on the Commerce Control List and are therefore subject to the lowest level of U.S. export controls. It also expanded several other license exceptions to allow for specified exports to Syria without requiring an export license. These expanded exceptions apply to certain consumer communications devices; aircraft, vessels, and spacecraft; temporary imports, exports, and transfers; servicing and replacing parts and equipment; exports related to the U.S. government and its allies; technology and software; and baggage. Additionally, BIS now applies a presumption of approval for license applications to Syria that support economic and business development. These license exceptions represent an incremental step towards allowing exports for daily living, international travel, and global business operations to Syria, removing some of the export control impediments that stymied the early response to the Syrian earthquake in 2023.

Of note, however, Syria remains subject to significant export controls resulting from its designation in Country Group E of the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”), which applies to terrorist list countries. This country group designation means that items subject to even the lowest levels of control require a license or license exception for export to Syria, and U.S. export control jurisdiction extends to items that contain as little as 10% U.S. content.

Counterterrorism Relief: Effective July 8, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delisted HTS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), citing the group’s announced dissolution “and the Syrian government’s commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms.” This meant the removal of criminal risk under the Material Support Statute associated with knowingly providing material support or resources to the group, although the group remains designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under EO 13224, as amended. Then, on November 6, with the support of the United States, the U.N. Security Council voted to remove U.N. terror sanctions from Al-Sharaa and transitional Interior Minister Khattab. One day later, on November 7, the United States itself removed the designations of al-Sharaa and Khattab as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, meaning they are no longer individually subject to U.S. sanctions.

Caesar Act Suspension: In conjunction with al-Sharaa’s November 10 White House visit, Rubio also announced the suspension of the Caesar Act for the maximum 180-day period. While Rubio had previously issued a Caesar Act waiver, suspension required his certification to Congress that Syria is meeting the conditions set out in the Act. This suspension had the effect of replacing the soon expiring waiver to remove the risk of sanctions designation for those engaging with the transitional government of Syria to support investment or development in Syria for the next 180 days.

Caesar Act’s Repeal: Prior to its repeal, the Caesar Act only allowed for suspension or waivers in 180-day increments. As a result, even when the Secretary of State acted to waive and later suspend the Act, its specter continued to stymie investment in Syria as investors remained reticent to invest in the face of sanctions uncertainty. On Dec. 18 Congress removed this impediment to long-term investment in Syria by fully repealing the Caesar Act in section 8369 of the FY 2026 NDAA, entitled “Repeal of Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.” This section also requires the President to report to Congress every 180 days for four years and certify to that Syria’s government is: (1) taking action against ISIS and other terrorist groups; (2) taking steps to remove foreign fighters from Syrian government; (3) upholding religious and ethnic minority rights; (4) not taking unilateral, unprovoked military action against its neighbors, including Israel; (5) taking steps to implement the March 10, 2025, agreement between the Government of Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces; (6) taking steps to effectively combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; (7) actively prosecuting those that have committed serious abuses of internationally recognized human rights since December 8, 2024; and (8) taking verifiable steps to combat the illicit production and proliferation of narcotics, including Captagon. If these conditions are not met for two consecutive reporting periods, section 8369 provides that the President “may consider whether to impose targeted sanctions on individuals under existing authorities,” but critically for attracting investment into Syria, the NDAA includes no mandatory sanctions or snapback provision that would reimpose Caesar Act sanctions.

Looking Ahead: Post-Caesar Repeal

The repeal of the Caesar Act sets the stage for next steps along the path of sanctions removal. The key players in this next phase are the Secretary of State and BIS.

Syria State Sponsor of Terrorism Removal:  Syria was designated on the initial State Sponsor of Terrorism list in 1979, during the reign of Hafez al-Assad, and remains listed today despite the U.S. government’s steps to dismantle the Syria sanctions regime and the direction in EO 14312 to review Syria’s SST designation. As such, significant export controls still apply to Syria due to SST-related restrictions imposed under section 1754(c) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (relating primarily to export control requirements), section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act (related to munitions items), and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (related to assistance). Until it is delisted, Syria is denied immunity by virtue of the SST-designation under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) if sued in U.S. court. Under the terrorism exception to the FSIA, if Syria is eventually delisted, any U.S. victims of Syrian terrorism will have six months from the time of delisting to make claims for damages incurred during the period Syria was designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

Export Controls: Delisting Syria as a State Sponsor of Terrorism would also remove the legal underpinnings requiring stringent export controls on Syria. If the Department of State delists Syria, the ball will be in BIS’s court to update the EAR to account for Syria’s new status. Looking to the regulatory change BIS made following Sudan’s SST removal as an example, this will include the removal of Syria from EAR Country Group E:1 and a change to the de minimis threshold for U.S. export control jurisdiction from 10% to 25%, meaning that fewer items destined to Syria will be subject to U.S. export control. It will also make Syria eligible for additional license exceptions under the EAR and remove it from the most stringent, anti-terrorism-related controls. Once implemented, these changes should make it easier for developers and investors in Syria to obtain parts and machinery necessary for reconstruction and development, and they will remove barriers to consumer imports and business operations that support the country’s economic recovery. None of these changes will occur, however, until (1) Syria is removed as an SST; and(2) BIS publishes a rule change to amend the EAR.

Syria has a long road ahead towards reconstruction, development, justice, and accountability. As the country rebuilds and emerges from years of isolation, it requires international funding, technical assistance, and support. Removing Assad era barriers to engagement with the international community is a critical step along this path.

The post Caesar Act Repeal and the Syria Sanctions Removal Report Card appeared first on Just Security.

The Security Council’s authorization of the ISF creates what seems to be a militarized force with an aggressive counterterrorism role that will involve close cooperation with Israel. The mandate of the ISF not only raises some doubt as to the resolution’s legal basis, but also poses a serious risk to the prospects of the peaceful transition to Palestinian self-governance and Statehood that is envisaged by the resolution. It also risks backfiring in unintended ways, potentially inadvertently increasing violent extremism rather than defusing it. In this way, it seems to effectively advance neither Palestinian self-determination nor Israeli security concerns.

The ISF as a Militarized Counterterrorism Force in the Form of a Support Mission

Resolution 2803 authorizes the creation of the ISF “in close consultation and cooperation with the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Israel.” It is empowered to use “all necessary measures to carry out its mandate,” which includes such tasks as to “secure border areas, stabilize the security environment in Gaza by ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, including the destruction and prevention of rebuilding of military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”

This mandate raises several questions. Most fundamentally, it raises the question of what kind of force the ISF is meant to be: a peacekeeping operation, or something else? When questioned on this, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that the ISF “shouldn’t be a fighting force.” His comments seem to indicate that, politically, the ISF is being framed as a peacekeeping force to support an eventual transition of governing authority over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

If the mandate is to be taken seriously and considered realistically, however, the ISF seems to lack the hallmarks of a traditional peacekeeping force. Broadly, peacekeeping forces must be based on three principles: consent, impartiality, and limited defensive use of force. It is important to note that these principles apply to peacekeeping generally and are not limited only to U.N. peacekeeping forces. The Leuven Manual states that these three principles are part of the framework applicable to peacekeeping universally. Although it is still early in the process, the basic building blocks of the ISF set forth in resolution 2803 do not seem likely to meet all three principles, particularly those of impartiality and limited, defensive use of force.

The Consent Prong May Have Been Met

Although not wholly clear-cut, there is at least an argument that the consent prong has been met. Though, Israel has indicated its consent (not without domestic controversy), Palestine’s case is more complicated. Although the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement welcoming the adoption of the resolution likely constitutes Palestinian consent to the ISF, there isn’t clear consensus both as to whether the PA has the authority to consent, nor whether the PA’s statement was in fact intended to communicate formal consent. In situations of consent-based interventions, effective control, accepting sovereign responsibility, and multilateral recognition are generally key elements in determining who has the authority to grant consent (see Hathaway et. al., p. 542). Palestinian consent is not clear-cut for a variety of reasons, including because effective control and recognition might be divided in relation to Gaza; although the PA enjoys far greater recognition, it may be argued that Hamas has a greater degree of effective control in Gaza compared to the PA (here a consideration of effective control would need to assume such control after Israeli forces have relinquished theirs).

Nonetheless, since the capacity to consent stems from State sovereignty, in situations “where there are competing claims of governance and where effective control is disputed, consideration should be given to whether those claiming to represent the state accept the international law responsibilities that such recognition carries.” (Hathaway et. al., p. 542). On this principle, it is likely that the PA – and not Hamas – would be sufficiently authorised to consent on behalf of Palestine.

Structural and Operational Partiality to Israel

However, the text of the resolution indicates that the structure of the ISF likely does not sufficiently safeguard the principle of impartiality. This principle requires operational impartiality, impartiality in the mode of decision-making (i.e. procedural impartiality in the manner in which decisions are made), and impartiality in the basis for decision-making (i.e. substantive impartiality in which interests and facts guide decision-making) (see here and here). The ISF’s operational mandate and decision-making practices likely fall short. For instance, the resolution provides that the ISF is to operate in “close consultation and cooperation with” Israel and Egypt and that it “shall work with Israel and Egypt” in carrying out its mandate (para. 7). Although the oversight body established by the resolution called the “Board of Peace” (“BoP”) is mandated to create an apolitical, technocratic Palestinian committee (see paragraph 4(B)(1)), the resolution does not establish any direct relationship between the ISF and that committee that would, at least on its face, facilitate direct cooperation with the ISF; rather, the ISF and the committee both, separately, fall under the supervision of the BoP. Additionally, paragraph 7 of the resolution indicates that the ISF will “work with” not only Israel and Egypt but also a new Palestinian police force of some kind to implement the ISF mandate – but this police force is not included in the higher-level and likely more comprehensive “consultation and cooperation” role that is given to Egypt and Israel. Egypt’s ostensible role, then, is to be a counterbalance to Israeli involvement, perhaps with the intent of protecting against partiality to Israel. It does not, however, eliminate this risk entirely.

While Egypt may be able to take a leading role to represent and protect Palestinian interests in the ISF, and its involvement may limit wholly unbridled Israeli influence over the ISF’s activities by imposing a political checks-and-balances system, this is unlikely to fully balance out Israeli influence. This is not only because, as a matter of political reality, Israel’s interests are highly likely to come with the powerful backing of the U.S. (and thus the BoP that will be chaired by the United States). It is also because the resolution seems, at least facially, to grant a more expansive set of authorities to Israel than it does to Egypt. It stipulates, for example, that the “standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization” will be agreed between the “IDF [Israel Defence Forces], ISF, the guarantors, and the United States.” Egypt is not clearly accounted for in any of those categories. The implication of this is that the IDF will be empowered to (potentially significantly) influence not only the process for its own withdrawal but also the standards for the ISF’s “control and stability” in Gaza that the resolution sets as a prerequisite to IDF withdrawal, without a clear structural guarantee of  Egyptian (or Palestinian) involvement. This seems to open the door to an unbalanced level of Israeli influence on the ISF’s implementation of its mandate.

This, of course, is not to suggest that the ISF ought not to cooperate with Israel at all. Indeed, such an approach would be unrealistic. To guard against impartiality, however, Israeli involvement should be limited to only a logistical support role such that it enables the ISF to effectively carry out its mandate, without allowing it to substantively influence the ISF’s actual operational decision-making or other activities.

A (Non)Limited Use of Force Mandate

It is not unprecedented for peacekeeping forces to be issued robust mandates with an authorization to use armed force. For instance, the Security Council authorized peacekeeping operations to undertake targeted offensive operations in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (although these missions have had mixed levels of success).

However, the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations has indicated that there is a difference between “robust peacekeeping,” which involves the use of force specifically for the purpose of preventing specific threats to civilians or the peacekeeping mission itself, and “peace enforcement,” which involves the use of force against specific groups regardless of any particular threat to civilians or the mission. But even peace enforcement can differ from an enforcement operation under the Security Council’s Chapter VII authorities, which may more clearly involve a military effort to defeat an adversary (although the lines are somewhat blurred between these various distinctions). Furthermore, the Leuven Manual suggests that peacekeeping forces deployed to provide security support “differ from enforcement operations in which armed force is applied” and from forces tasked with “the imposition of a political solution upon warring parties by force of arms in situations where governmental authority has broken down” (Leuven Manual, p. 4).

The ISF’s mandate seems to indicate that it will serve exactly the twin purposes identified by the Leuven Manual: use of armed force, and the imposition of a political solution. Its primary responsibility is, in fact, imposing a political solution for Gaza where governmental authority has broken down on both sides. Years-long contestation for both military control and political legitimacy amongst the warring parties has also left the area of concern with heavily fragmented and ineffective governmental authority, deeply affected by Israeli occupation and with split claims to legitimate governance between the PA and Hamas.

The fact that the ISF’s mandate involves the “destruction” and “prevention of rebuilding” of “military, terror and offensive infrastructure” also indicates that its duties may include using armed force proactively to carry out enforcement operations. Executing a proactive mandate to “destroy” military, terror, and offensive infrastructure would necessarily require military operations well beyond the limited use of defensive force contemplated by traditional peacekeeping operations.

With all of the above taken together, the ISF thus appears to constitute something more akin to an ad hoc counterterrorism operation exercising military force, rather than a peacekeeping operation. This is particularly noteworthy given that the U.N. High-Level Panel on Peace Operations  concluded in 2015 that U.N. peacekeeping missions “are not suited to engage in military counter-terrorism operations,” but rather that such activity ought to be undertaken by other entities such as “an ad hoc coalition authorized by the Security Council” (see para. 119). It appears that Gaza will have the latter, rather than the former.

A Precarious Legal Basis for the Authorization of a Militarized Force

If the ISF is indeed a militarized counterterrorism operation rather than a true peacekeeping operation, this raises an important question: what is the legal basis for authorizing a mandate involving the use of force, for a purpose other than self-defence?

Though the Security Council is empowered to authorize the use of force under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, the resolution conspicuously omits reference to Chapter VII as per usual practice (although an explicit reference is not required). In any case, the Security Council’s power to authorize force under Chapter VII is not unlimited, as confirmed in Tadic  where it was held that the Security Council cannot go beyond its jurisdiction and that the Charter did not conceive of it as being unbound by law (para. 28).

At the very least, the procedural conditions within Chapter VII must be met. For instance, under Article 39, the Security Council must first determine that there exists a threat to international peace and security before it is able to authorize the use of force under Article 42 of the Charter. Notably, resolution 2803 does not explicitly make such a determination, nor does it reference any prior such determination by the Council. Instead, it determines that the situation in Gaza constitutes a threat to “the regional peace and security of neighboring states.” This may not satisfactorily constitute the requisite determination under Article 39, which uses the specific language of “international” peace and security. As Lieblich notes, however, the combination of the word “regional” with reference to “neighboring states” could also be taken to mean “international.” Accordingly, there is some legal ambiguity; it is possible that the ISF’s authorization is based on an implicit invocation of Chapter VII authorities after having made the requisite finding under Article 39, but it is not entirely clear.

Even if so, however, the Security Council’s power to authorise force under Chapter VII is limited by Article 24(2), which provides that the Security Council shall act in accordance with the “Purposes and Principles” of the U.N. in discharging its duties under Chapter VII. An authorization to use force cannot be contrary to the principles enshrined under Articles 1 and 2 of the Charter. These include, inter alia, the right to self-determination, political independence of States, and the peaceful settlement of disputes by member States. The ISF’s partiality and expansive use of force mandate would appear to risk undermining some among these principles.

In particular, the ISF’s mandate to militarily impose, under what may end up being a certain level of Israeli direction, a political solution where the priorities and legitimate political actors are determined by foreign entities potentially runs the Security Council into the risky territory of authorizing force to stifle Palestinian’s rights to self-determination.  For instance, paragraph 9 of the U.S. Plan establishes that Gaza will be governed by a temporary Palestinian committee made up of “qualified” Palestinians and international experts, under the “oversight and supervision” of the Board of Peace. Paragraph 4 of the resolution references participation by “competent” Palestinians that are “championed” by the Arab League; it does not reference international experts at all, leaving ambiguity as to whether the committee will be wholly Palestinian, or not. Neither text indicates the mechanism or metrics or by which Palestinians will be determined to be sufficiently “competent” or “qualified,” nor how international experts will be chosen (if they are to be included). The resolution also leaves the time horizon for the committee’s governance under the Board of Peace open-ended, indicating that once the Palestinian Authority reform program has been “faithfully” completed and Gaza redevelopment has moved forward, a pathway “may” be in place for Palestinian self-determination – without indicating how such progress will be determined, nor by whom. Paragraph 8 authorizes the BoP through December 2027, allowing for additional reauthorization without any clear time limit. No consultation with Palestinian authorities for such reauthorization is indicated in the text. This open-ended framework could theoretically leave the Board of Peace – and the ISF – in place for the interminable future, with limited and unclear Palestinian decision-making. At the least, these arrangements leave open the question of how well the resolution comports with the Charter’s principle of self-determination.

This leaves the resolution on ambiguous legal ground: although one might fairly point to the PA’s expression of support (even if after the passing of the resolution), the lack of a clear triggering of Chapter VII authority leaves some room for doubt, and there is at least an argument to be made that the transitional frameworks imposed by the resolution do not entirely comport with Article 24(2)’s constraints on the use of Chapter VII authority.

The Strategic Failures of the ISF and of Militarizing Transitions

Beyond the legal murkiness of the ISF’s mandate, it sets itself up for potential strategic failure. Militarized transitions frequently collapse the distinction between supporting self-determined political processes and imposed political outcomes. An emphasis on disarmament through force and stabilization through enforcement risks reproducing or exacerbating the underlying root causes of the conflict itself, including any applicable cycles of power or inequality. This could cost the mission crucial public support on the ground and potentially backfire including by inciting further extremism that undermines Israeli security.

The ISF in essence continues Israel’s attempts of eradicating Hamas, not through political negotiation or processes with meaningful Palestinian participation, but through what are essentially foreign-led counterterrorism operations. In so doing, it continues similar conditions to the active armed conflict that the resolution purports to put an end to – simply now, instead of the IDF fighting Hamas, it will be the ISF. Following the passage of the resolution, Hamas has indicated that it will not voluntarily disarm, increasing the likelihood that to carry out this aspect of its mandate the ISF may indeed resort to use of force. In the end, Palestinian civilians will be left to continue to suffer the perils of what may amount to the same violent war, but with the ISF as another belligerent.

To this point, a stabilization force that is in effect undertaking counterterror operations with the use of armed force in dense urban settings will inevitably cause collateral civilian casualties. This has the strong likelihood of creating enmity and animosity amongst civilians towards a force that they already do not identify with, potentially radicalizing them against that force. As a consequence of both these factors, there is a serious risk that the ISF may push civilians closer to Hamas and extremist violence against an international force they perceive to be the enemy.

Additionally, it is a complicated reality that Hamas – not the PA – has governed Gaza since 2007. Paragraphs 2 and 9 of the resolution, in combination with the broader mandate of the ISF, enshrine what is in essence a change in governing authority in Gaza to the PA. Externally, and potentially forcefully, changing the seat of political power via a process that largely excludes meaningful domestic political participation or consultation may push some civilians to the fringes of the political arena where extremism thrives.

Although rife with its own challenges, one approach that might be preferrable would be the establishment of free and fair domestic political processes. Limiting Hamas’ involvement in governance this way would reflect and empower Palestinian self-determination and may mitigate some of the risks identified above. Of course, there are no guarantees that this would be successful (Hamas has won elections before, for instance), and such a process comes with its own obvious risks and problems. But it is not entirely implausible; polling shows that support for Hamas amongst Palestinians has sharply declined.

These issues expose a larger strategic fallacy inherent in militarized transitional frameworks: the assumption that political and public legitimacy can be engineered through armed enforcement. On the contrary, such an approach risks not only widespread public opposition and disapproval, but also can actively cause increased radicalization and extremism.

These risks are compounded especially when the force is perceived as being partial to and serving the interests of an occupying power. Because of the ISF’s intended close cooperation with Israel, it inherits the psychological baggage of occupation. For many Palestinians, an ISF whose mandate is effectively co-produced with the occupying power will be viewed not as a transitional support mechanism but as an extension of Israeli coercive capacity under international cover. Such perceptions are not merely symbolic; they decisively determine the force’s ability to operate, secure cooperation, and create conditions conducive to peaceful and stable political processes.

Ultimately, a militarized transition structured this way and predicated on shaky legal grounds can take on the appearance of merely rebranding externally imposed control as transitional governance. In doing so, it risks perpetuating insecurity, undermining trust, and creating new hostile non-State actors in the process.

The post An Analysis of Resolution 2803 and the International Stabilization Force: A Militarized Enforcement Mission with Precarious Legal and Strategic Implications appeared first on Just Security.

As a result of his alleged multi-year crime spree, Martin is charged with, among others, five counts of producing CSAM, 11 counts of distributing CSAM, and three counts of coercing minors to engage in sexual activity. Indeed, the debased acts identified by authorities against his victims are beyond horrific and likely force Martin to stare down the possibility of a life sentence for the CSAM charges alone.

Even so, one charge stands out most among the litany of federal offenses: a single count of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A — that is, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. It is the first time that a member of 764 or its many splinter groups has been charged with violating the statute. More specifically, the government alleges that Martin knowingly provided support for the act of killing, kidnapping, maiming, or injuring persons in a foreign country. This underlying criminal act violates one of several laws within 18 U.S.C. § 2339A. Choosing to charge Martin with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists is a significant development in not only how the DOJ prosecutes 764 but it also signals a shift in how the U.S. government classifies NVE groups – namely, as terrorist organizations.

Background on 764 and The “Com”

Born in the dark, small-town Texas bedroom of then-15-year-old Bradley Cadenhead in early 2021, 764 has emerged as one of the FBI’s top domestic terrorism threats. Named after the first three digits of Cadenhead’s hometown ZIP code, 764 primarily operates as an online child exploitation enterprise. The FBI categorizes it within the newly minted extremist typology known as NVEs.

First appearing in court documents in early 2025, NVEs are individuals who commit crimes, either in the United States or overseas, driven by political, social, or religious motives rooted in a deep hostility toward society as a whole, and who seek to destabilize or destroy it through widespread, indiscriminate chaos, violence, and disorder. NVEs often traffic in depravity as ideology, weaponizing acts of sexual extortion, animal abuse, and self-harm to express their rejection of moral and social norms.

However, 764 is not the first digital community to engage in such behaviors. Its predecessor, a network known as CVLT, emerged between 2017 and 2019 as an online group primarily on the Kik messaging app, but later spread to Instagram, Discord, and Telegram, where it engaged in grooming minors and producing CSAM. As Canadian researcher Marc-André Argentino has noted, CVLT “was one of the earliest known groups to systematically combine child sexual exploitation, coercion, and accelerationist ideology within a digital ecosystem.” Yet both CVLT and 764 are only parts of a much larger and amorphous phenomenon referred to as “The Com,” or “The Community.” Cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs has described The Com as a “kind of distributed cybercriminal social network that facilitates instant collaboration” and consists of multiple, overlapping pillars that feature cybercrime, sextortion, and offline criminal activity. Although The Com has existed for nearly a decade, law enforcement has only recently begun to grapple with the extent of its real-world harms.

In February 2021, Kaleb Christopher Merritt, one of the leaders within CVLT, was arrested in Virginia for the abduction and sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl he met and groomed on Instagram. One of Merritt’s compatriots and fellow CVLT leaders, Rohan Sandeep Rane, was arrested in France in 2022 for similar crimes, effectively splintering its leadership. By late 2023, these networks were receiving increased scrutiny from law enforcement, resulting in more arrests.

As prosecutions began to mount, CVLT’s remaining members who had not yet been swept up in legal prosecutions migrated to 764, which grew in parallel, thanks to the long hours Cadenhead spent unsupervised on the internet after dropping out of high school. It was around this time that, according to court documents, Martin began interacting with 764 and its members, going so far as to crown himself the “king of extortions,” and even authoring a guide instructing readers on how to identify young girls for grooming.

Martin’s Alleged Crimes and the Legal Mechanisms of Material Support

Domestic Terrorism

18 U.S.C. § 2331(5) defines domestic terrorism as acts that occur “primarily” within the United States that are “dangerous to human life,” violate other federal or state criminal laws, and are intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”

Martin’s alleged conduct, and that of many of NVEs, fits squarely within this definition. Their intent, as stated in Martin’s indictment, is to engage in criminal conduct, in furtherance of a political, social, or religious goal derived primarily from a hatred of society, with a desire to bring about society’s collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability. NVEs aim to achieve their goals by grooming minors and other vulnerable individuals to become desensitized to violence by coercing them into committing acts of violence, either against themselves or others. Those acts include, for instance, forcing children to engage in sexual acts that are filmed and circulated online by NVE group members, and threatening to kidnap and kill the children and their family members. Unlike online sexual predators or child pornographers whose endgame is viewing the sexual acts of minors for their own sick pleasure, NVEs use those tactics as a means to their ends. They weaponize child pornography and violence to achieve their goal of intimidating and coercing the civilian population to bring chaos and tear down the government — the very definition of domestic terrorism.

Although there is a statutory definition of domestic terrorism in the federal criminal code, there is no criminal statute specifically making domestic terrorism a federal offense. Instead, the DOJ has turned to a statute traditionally used for violations of international terrorism and has applied it to Martin’s case.

Providing Support to an Act of Terrorism

18 U.S.C. § 2339A prohibits the provision of support to specific acts/crimes of terrorism, which are listed in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B). The statute focuses on a terrorist act rather than on the provision of material support to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). 18 U.S.C. § 2339A has traditionally been charged in cases of international terrorism that occur overseas. By charging Martin with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, thereby expanding the use of 2339A, the DOJ is correctly describing the actions of NVEs as terrorism.

For the government to convict Martin of this offense, the prosecutors must prove that Martin conspired to provide material support or resources and that he knew (or intended) the material support or resources were be used to carry out a violation of an underlying crime of terrorism.

Let’s break the charge down. First, he was charged with conspiracy. In essence, a conspiracy is two or more people agreeing to violate the law. The agreement does not have to be in writing. It does not even have to be spoken, as long as the criminal goal is understood among the conspirators. The proof of the agreement, unspoken or otherwise, is often born out of conspirators acting in concert.

Nor does the government have to prove that any conspirator took any steps to advance the conspiracy. In the general conspiracy charge, 18 U.S.C. § 371, the government must prove that one of the conspirators took a step — an overt act — to further the conspiracy. For example, if two people agree to rob a bank, and one buys a ski mask to wear during the robbery, then they have violated the general conspiracy statute. Once that overt act occurs, the crime has been completed, and the bank robbery’s success is irrelevant. Because § 2339A contains a conspiracy provision within itself, an overt act is not required. Once the agreement is reached, the crime is committed. Although unnecessary, the government’s case is stronger if it can show that acts were taken to further the agreement. In the Martin indictment, the DOJ alleges that nine conspiratorial acts were taken in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Second, as stipulated in 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b), material support or resources can be anything except religious or medical material, to include oneself (personnel), services, money, or other tangible items. Martin has been charged with providing himself (personnel), services, and expert advice. Some of Martin’s charged conduct falls within all three categories. For example, he allegedly helped to author and circulate a manual, called the “Grooming/Manipulation Egirls Guide,” which was allegedly used to train other 764 members on how to target vulnerable individuals. The creation and circulation of the guide could be considered both a service to 764 members and expert advice.

Third, the government must prove that the material support was intended to further a violation of a separate crime of terrorism. The Martin indictment identifies the underlying terrorism offense to be a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 956(a). Specifically, the indictment alleges that Martin and others conspired to coerce Victim 7, who was located overseas, to kill and maim themself. Although the government must prove two separate conspiracies — in other words, two separate agreements — prosecutors will likely rely on the same evidence to prove both the § 956(a) conspiracy and the § 2339A conspiracy.

Conclusion

The addition of a § 2339A charge is not about stacking penalties. Rather, Martin faces multiple counts for his numerous other crimes that carry decades — or even life — in prison. Nor is the inclusion of the charge a procedural maneuver to bring new evidence in front of a potential jury; the facts needed to prove the terrorism charge substantially overlap with those supporting the child-exploitation charges. On paper, the 15-year maximum for material support barely changes Marin’s potential sentence.

Still, the charge provides a valuable clarification. By deploying a statute traditionally reserved for international terrorism, or more recently, other types of domestic terrorists, the DOJ has signaled that NVE networks like 764 are terrorist enterprises. They are engaged in organized campaigns of violence and coercion designed to terrorize, destabilize, and degrade society to the point of total collapse. By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.

The post How the DOJ is Prosecuting Nihilistic Violent Extremism as Domestic Terrorism appeared first on Just Security.

On the fourth installment of the Murder on the High Seas series, cross-posted with NYU Law School’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, co-hosts Tess Bridgeman and Rachel Goldbrenner are joined by Rebecca Ingber and Brian Finucane to discuss the latest developments.

Show Note: 

• Murder on the High Seas Part III  (Oct. 21, 2025, also available on YouTube) 
• Murder on the High Seas Part II — What We Know about U.S. Vessel Strikes One Month In (Oct. 7, 2025, also available on YouTube)
• Murder on the High Seas? What You Need to Know about the U.S. Strike on the Caribbean Vessel (Sep. 9, 2025, also available on YouTube)
• Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder by Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman, and Tess Bridgeman (Dec. 1, 2025) 
• Timeline of Vessel Strikes and Related Actions by Jeremy Chin, Margaret Lin, and Aidan Arasasingham (Nov. 21, 2025, updated regularly)  
• Just Security’s Collection: U.S. Lethal Strikes on Suspected Drug Traffickers  
• The NYU Law Reiss Center on Law and Security’s War Powers Resolution Reporting Project 

The post The Just Security Podcast: Murder on the High Seas Part IV appeared first on Just Security.

The catalog below organizes our coverage into general categories to facilitate access to relevant topics for policymakers, researchers, journalists, scholars, and the public at large. The archive will be updated as new pieces are published.

We welcome readers to use the archive to follow climate change developments and generate new lines of analysis. To search headlines and authors, expand one or all of the topics, as needed, and use CTRL-F on your keyboard to open the search tool. The archive also is available in reverse chronological order at the climate change articles page.

IMAGES (left to right): Natural disaster and its consequences (via Getty Images); In this picture taken on September 28, 2022, an internally displaced flood-affected family sits outside their tent at a makeshift tent camp in Jamshoro district of Sindh province (Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images; Trees smolder and burn during the Dixie fire near Greenville, California on August 3, 2021. – Numerous fires are raging through the state’s northern forests, as climate change makes wildfire season longer, hotter and more devastating. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Just Security’s Climate Archive appeared first on Just Security.

In the early days after the first lethal strike, Vice President J.D. Vance gleefully said he “didn’t give a shit” whether the strike was illegal. And after government officials have (totally implausibly) suggested that the strikes are part of an armed conflict against the cartels, the President shrugged his shoulders at a reporter’s question about seeking a “declaration of war” from Congress, responding that “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be, like, dead.”

At this point, we’d be fools if we did not get the message. Since the administration apparently received legal approval for the boat strikes from the Office of Legal Counsel (though it remains unclear whether any legal memo came after-the-fact), it is somewhat tempting to say, in the terms we’re most comfortable addressing these kinds of matters, that Trump is “claiming the right” to kill anyone he wants to call a terrorist. But as Charlie Savage recently pointed out in an important piece in the Times, Trump is not claiming any right at all—he is simply asserting that no one can stop him. In Savage’s paraphrase of former OLC chief Jack Goldsmith, with the lethal boat-strike campaign, Trump has “demonstrated an indifference to law that threaten[s] to hollow it out.”

But Goldsmith is only half right, because the hollowness of the law in this area is nothing new. The reality—which many people have had trouble coming to terms with over the past few months—is that no matter how seriously some lawyers in past administrations took their obligation to honestly interpret and follow the law, the executive’s unwavering insistence on secrecy combined with its vehement structural opposition to judicial review of national security decisions means that Trump’s latest campaign is not an aberration, but an extension of what came before. And this is what advocates have now been shouting for decades: impunity works for the bad guys, too.

Defending secret policies with appeals to secret law

To be sure, there is something very obviously different in the current administration’s approach. Most prominently, Trump administration officials hardly deign to even pretend that the law is a consideration, let alone an actual constraint. Even if you believe (as I do) that too many government lawyers over the past quarter century arrived at their conclusions about executive authority cynically, those lawyers at least felt compelled to speak the language of the law. Convincing the public that they were making sound legal judgments—when, thanks to journalists, things like the government’s use of torture or targeted killing became public—was often a central feature of consolidating support for, or more often beating back opposition against, government “national security” policies. But that does not mean that they all believed they had to speak that language publicly, and if they’d had their druthers, none of their work would have ever seen the light of day.

Take, for example, the “public relations campaign” (as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit put it) regarding the legality of the September 2011 U.S. drone strike that intentionally killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi. The same strike killed another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, apparently incidentally. Two weeks later, another U.S. strike killed al-Aulaqi’s teenage U.S. citizen son, Abdulrahman—a horror that no government official has ever gone on the record to explain, apart from President Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, who (not kidding) blamed Anwar al-Aulaqi for bad parenting (“I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children.”).

It so happens that Savage was part of the reporting trio who, in March 2013 (eighteen months after al-Aulaqi’s killing) laid out, with reams of anonymously sourced details spanning more than 3500 words, the tick-tock and anguish of legal decision making that led up to the OLC’s authorization for the strike, as well as information about the government’s until-then secret allegations about why Aulaqi was lawfully targetable. This was, in David Pozen’s memorable construct, a “pleak”: an intentional and semi-authorized leak of classified information that served multiple purposes, primarily garnering public support for the administration’s actions through the attempted delivery of a one-sided narrative. By labeling the story as such, I do not mean to diminish the reporters or their reporting; these are very good reporters who do not simply reprint the government’s lines, and their article was a critically important contribution to the measly public facts surrounding the Aulaqi strike. Nevertheless, the government’s control over classified information, and its ability to manipulate secrecy in ways like this—here, to pre-empt or deflate pressure to have a court of law decide the legality of intentionally killing a U.S. citizen without due process—is a fundamental piece of the puzzle.

The Aulaqi article (the key section of which begins with the oddly jaunty announcement that “David Barron and Martin Lederman had a problem”) described the genesis and contents of OLC’s Aulaqi memo in striking detail, providing a window into the pair’s research and process. And the message that the Obama administration seemed to want to come out of the access it apparently granted for the story is that this was a hard question, and one its top lawyers took incredibly seriously. The piece also tried to assure readers that the OLC memo’s theory was limited, based not in expansive visions of Article II that Barron and Lederman had rejected as law professors, but in interpretations of statutes that could not easily be extended to people much unlike Aulaqi himself. Most importantly, the article suggested (without revealing the unprecedented legal arguments themselves) that the public should feel confident in the memo’s result.

The Aulaqi article was of a piece with much of the Obama administration’s approach to consolidating support for its national security policies, which notably enmeshed many of the practices that Obama had, during the 2008 campaign, appeared to promise to end.

During his candidacy, ending the Iraq War and closing Guantánamo were Obama’s hallmark stump-speech material, giving off the vibe that he would bring the nation’s post-9/11 Schmittian emergency to a close. Obama actually did try to close Guantánamo with a day-one executive order, and on the same day, declared, “For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city,” but “that era is now over.” That promise was, for many reasons, largely abandoned. All told, Obama vastly expanded the use of drones against al-Qaeda-related groups in countries like Yemen and Somalia where the United States was, in my and many experts’ views (pp. 39-40), simply not at war; approved bombings in Libya (again against AQ-linked/ISIS groups); and Syria (against an AQ-linked group and ISIL); continued to indefinitely detain scores of men at Guantánamo (while working, against fierce congressional opposition, to release or repatriate 197 others); opted to try detainees at Guantánamo by military commission instead of in criminal courtrooms (going so far as to reverse his own Attorney General’s decision to choose the latter); continued to press state secrets defenses in damages cases for Bush-era abuses; personally blocked release of images of torture and abuse; undermined the applicability of the War Powers Resolution by claiming an absurdly narrow definition of “hostilities” (notably, the Trump administration is now “doing a Libya” with respect to the boat strikes and the WPR); and aggressively pursued leakers of classified information notwithstanding the public interest value of particular disclosures.

It is true that the Obama administration cared far more than the previous one about providing the public with the broad outlines of the secret legal arguments justifying these policies, including most notably a series of speeches by administration officials like John Brennan and lawyers like Harold Koh and Jeh Johnson. But despite offering the public some scraps, the government vigorously defended (through a Swiss cheese of redaction) the total secrecy of its internal legal memoranda in court.

And because of the bipartisan insistence that national security policies and their justifications must remain secret, Obama sold his policies with personality instead. His administration was different than Bush’s because they were different, even “priest-like” in their self-professed devotion to defending the nation and attacking its enemies within the bounds of law and morality. (In a revealing story reported by Daniel Klaidman, CIA and military drone operators “talked about printing up T-shirts that said: ‘Drones: If they’re good enough for Harold Koh, they’re good enough for me.’”)

A bipartisan commitment to aggressive (and frequently wrong) interpretations of executive power

Whatever differences in public tone might have existed, the Obama administration built his national security policies upon the very same rickety legal architecture—and, even more, an attitude that embraced and encouraged broad assertions of executive authority—that many of Obama’s admirers on the left had reasonably assumed he stood against. Obama’s OLC rescinded some of the most notorious legal memos of the Bush era, including those concerning torture. But it left in place others that, as Goldsmith put it, “reach[ed] very broad conclusions about presidential power under Article II to use force to protect national interests, especially the defense of the nation.” Not only that, but the Obama administration advanced the executive into even more adventurous (and unlawful and unconstitutional) uses of executive power abroad—most notoriously, the 2011 bombing of Libya. The Obama administration also blessed the wild theory, which experts across the spectrum considered to be wholly implausible, that ISIS—a group that did not exist on 9/11 and was engaged in a fierce ideological battle with al-Qaeda—was a “successor force” of al-Qaeda, and therefore was covered by the 2001 AUMF. (It is not entirely clear which of Obama’s lawyers from which departments, including OLC, endorsed this theory, which was never tested in court. Notably, during Trump’s first term, the government detained a U.S. citizen alleged to be a member of ISIS under the same theory, but released him when the D.C. Circuit ruled that it had to prove its theory to a federal judge.)

While it may be true that Obama’s lawyers more frequently put forward their interpretations of congressional statutes, as opposed to pure Article II powers, that hardly affects the bottom line. For example, as we later learned, Barron and Lederman’s Aulaqi memo took a radically broad view of the meaning of the term “imminent threat.” Critically, the administration embraced “a more flexible understanding of imminence”—often referred to as “elongated imminence”—permitting, in the memo’s awkward words, the use of lethal force against a “continued and imminent threat.” That maneuver was the fulcrum of the government’s conclusion that it could, consistent with the Constitution, kill a man who no one seemed to argue was about to attack the United States, but was instead “continu[ing] to plot attacks” from afar. (Beyond the details published by the Times and some other reporting over the years, the actual factual basis for the memo’s conclusions has never been disclosed.) As Rebecca Ingber recently explained, even with those and other questionable moves to get past “a lot of barriers” to “suggest that there was a legal justification” for killing Aulaqi, “it was still a very tough question that many people think was wrongly decided.”

I’m sure that many will see a fairly wide gulf between, on the one hand, reliance on a groundbreakingly flexible version of “imminence” to use lethal force, even against a U.S. citizen, as part of what the government had concluded was a statutorily authorized armed conflict in order to prevent future armed attacks against the United States, and, on the other, whatever is happening in the Caribbean today. But whether President Obama’s lawyers like it or not, echoes of the Aulaqi memo can be clearly heard in the Trump administration’s deeply unserious justifications regarding imminence and the boat strikes, with Secretary Marco Rubio proclaiming, “We’re not going to sit back anymore and watch these people sail up and down the Caribbean like a cruise ship,” and reports indicating the government is relying, in its armed conflict determination, on its fantastical notion that profits from the drug trade might eventually cause violence in the United States. And, if we ever get to see the OLC memo that apparently authorized the ongoing boat strikes, it would not be at all surprising to see the Aulaqi memo cited in it when we do.

As Goldsmith himself recently explained, “This is how presidential power expands. They build on precedents, they point to the precedents, they pick up on language in the precedents, and they extend it to a new factual situation.” Even though he agrees the strikes are unlawful, Goldsmith explained that “the OLC opinions on Article II power are so open-ended and permissive that it’s just not a crazy interpretation of the OLC opinions to say that the President has this authority under Article II.” That this can even be said of such a blatantly unlawful killing campaign is deeply damning—not only of the current administration’s positions, but the past ones as well.

What did you “sign up for”?

What is missing from most of the criticism of these strikes so far is that the courts have not reviewed significant steps in this “expansion” (treating ISIS as a successor group covered by the AUMF, targeting Al-Shabaab in Somalia, etc.)—because the government has convinced them that they cannot. Internally reasoned executive-branch authorizations, ordinarily located in OLC, for ever-expanding national-security powers have been essentially unreviewable in court based on all kinds of executive-driven doctrines like standing, state secrets, political questions, and the shriveling availability of remedies for violations of the Constitution by federal officials. Through these doctrines, which have bloated beyond recognition in the 24 years since 9/11, the executive has maintained that litigation over matters involving classified information would jeopardize the security of the nation, including putting classified information in the hands of life-tenured judges, who aren’t used to handling such material and might inadvertently leak it. The government has also consistently argued that judicial review in cases seeking accountability for abuses of rights committed in the name of national security would intolerably intrude on the political branches’ constitutional powers.

And the executive has even argued that judicial review would chill national security officials from doing their best to protect the country, choosing to put American lives at risk by cowering in fear from potential damages lawsuits for unconstitutional behavior. As my ACLU colleague Ben Wizner once said, that position “takes a dim view of public officials,” as it is hard to “imagine a Secretary of State, or any other Cabinet official, being lackadaisical about national security to save a little money that might go to a victim of government abuse.” In Mitchell v. Forsyth, the Supreme Court said much the same thing in rejecting the government’s bid for absolute immunity from suit in national security matters, remarking that “the mere threat of litigation” was “unlikely” to “significantly affect the fearless and independent performance” by executive officials of their “national security tasks.”

It is of course not the job of OLC lawyers to put forward these types of litigation positions shielding the merits from any judge’s purview. Their job is different, aimed at setting the bounds (and open lanes) of executive action in the first instance. But to disregard or fail to appreciate what their colleagues were arguing in lawsuits challenging the very things (like torture, extraordinary rendition, surveillance, and targeted killing) that OLC had approved, as a tandem part of the system of executive impunity, is, as we have learned all too well over the past few months, a grave mistake.

The Aulaqi episode is particularly illustrative. Three months after the Times piece, the government continued to argue in court that it had no obligation to release the Aulaqi memo to the public, because “disclosure of such legal analysis could reasonably be expected to cause serious and exceptionally grave damage to national security.” (It ultimately lost that argument because it had been cornered into acknowledging as authentic a leaked, unclassified summary of the memo’s conclusions.) And less than three months before the Times report, the government had argued—in defending, on justiciability grounds, against a lawsuit seeking accountability for Aulaqi’s killing—that their positions did not “suggest that the Executive has unchecked power to conduct purported missile strikes abroad, particularly against citizens,” partly because of congressional oversight, but also because “checks and balances exist within the Executive Branch itself.” But whatever those kinds of checks were ever worth, they were always a matter of executive grace, bound to be ignored by an ungracious executive.

All told, the executive branch’s clear and unrelenting position has been that the lawyers who work for the President will always have the final word—and with the courts depressingly playing along, the executive has in practice amassed for itself the kind of absolute immunity from judicial inquiry in national security matters that the Supreme Court in Mitchell flatly rejected. Trump has taken that to the next level and then some, issuing an executive order commanding that he alone “shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch,” rendering any OLC opinions purely advisory. But that is a codification of reality, not a warping of it.

And that is why, when people like Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes look at the recent spate of lawless and lethal strikes in the Caribbean and say things like they “never signed up for this kind of targeted killing,” they are deluding themselves.

The problem is, and always has been, that playing with executive power is a dangerous game, and its consequences are hard and perhaps impossible to contain. If critics of the Trump boat strikes truly want to usher in a new era of respect for the rule of law, they must acknowledge that, in the shadow of the mounting democratic menace that Trump’s entire second administration represents, the legal process that yielded these strikes should not be seen as an aberration from the last quarter century of always-secret and often-unreviewable executive-branch legal reasoning, but the apotheosis of it.

The post From Secret Law (2001-2024) to None at All (2025-present) appeared first on Just Security.

The Trump administration has been hyping the threat posed by Antifa for months. “Antifa is an existential threat to our nation,” Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has argued that the “network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as” ISIS and Hezbollah, two international terrorist organizations that have murdered tens of thousands of civilians and combatants in attacks and guerilla warfare around the globe.

The new designations do not support the administration’s case that Antifa presents an “existential” threat to Americans. Indeed, the move appears to do little, or nothing, to protect Americans either at home or abroad. If anything, the State Department’s announcement shows that the administration is unsuccessfully laboring to portray “Antifa” – an amorphous “anti-fascist” movement with no clear leadership or hierarchy – as a significant terrorist threat. And it could be used to undermine the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. 

A Far Cry from the Threat Posed by Al-Qaeda on 9/11

 The U.S. government created the SDGT listing process as part of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which was signed by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Nearly 3,000 people perished during al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Thousands more have succumbed to, or still suffer from, related illnesses. Around that same time, the United Nations Security Council, NATO, and Organization of American States mobilized to respond to the al-Qaeda threat.   

From that moment forward, the SDGT list created a powerful tool, overseen by the U.S. Treasury Department, to cut off the international finances of terrorists capable of such large-scale attacks. Prior to the second Trump administration, the overwhelming majority of entities on the list were associated with al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iranian proxies or other global terrorist networks that had killed or threatened Americans.

The threat posed by the four newly designated entities, which have been responsible for small-scale attacks resulting in minimal casualties outside of the United States, falls far short of al-Qaeda or the other global terror networks previously designated. The State Department does not allege that any of the newly designated entities are capable of 9/11-style attacks. The Department does not claim that any Americans have been killed in their operations. Nor has the Department demonstrated that they endanger Americans or U.S. interests either at home or abroad, even though such threats are a prerequisite for inclusion on both the SDGT and FTO lists, which are authorities statutorily provided through congressional legislation. Indeed, the relevant statute giving the Secretary of State authority to designate an FTO requires “the terrorist activity of the organization threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States.”

Under E.O. 13224, the Secretary of State is authorized to “designate foreign individuals or entities that he determines have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the U.S.” The criteria for inclusion on State’s FTO list, under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), contains similar language. 

Nothing in the State Department’s fact sheet satisfies this criterion – even if one were to read it in the broadest possible manner. Antifa Ost’s followers have engaged in street fights with suspected “fascists” in Germany and Hungary (more on that below). The FAI/FRI “primarily operates in Italy,” has affiliates elsewhere, and has threatened “political and economic institutions” in other countries, but the State Department does not claim it has plotted against the U.S. government or Americans. The remaining two entities – Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense – are based in Greece and have targeted the Greek government and police. The latter group, Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, has claimed responsibility for two minor attacks in Greece that resulted in little damage and no injuries. As Reuters reports, such attacks are hardly new, as “[s]mall-scale attacks on businesses, police, politicians and embassies are frequent in Greece, which has a long history of political violence by leftist and anarchist groups.”

If the Trump administration has intelligence indicating that these groups pose a real threat to Americans, the U.S. government or its interests, then it should present it. The publicly available evidence does not support such a conclusion. Instead, the evidence shows that the targeted networks are responsible for a low-level of violence in European countries.

Inflating the Threat Posed by “Antifa”

The Trump administration has not clearly defined what it means by “Antifa.” Experts have long recognized that Antifa is an amorphous movement with no clear national, let alone international, leadership or hierarchy. According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) assessment published in 2020, the “U.S. antifa movement appears to be decentralized, consisting of independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals” and “lacks a unifying organizational structure or detailed ideology.” The first Trump administration’s national security leaders agreed with this assessment.

As mentioned above, in contrast, DHS Secretary Noem has compared Antifa’s “network” to ISIS and Hezbollah. She also compared Antifa to international criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Arugua, as well as Hamas. But Antifa lacks the organizational structure and hierarchy of each of these five organizations. Indeed, Noem’s comparison inadvertently reveals the weakness of the Trump administration’s case, as it has failed to demonstrate how Antifa is a cohesive group or “network” comparable to the world’s leading terrorist organizations.  

Without specific criteria for defining “Antifa,” the U.S. government has no firm basis for concluding which groups or individuals belong to it, beyond those who somehow self-identify as its adherents. This opens the door for the Trump administration to abuse the term as a catch-all for leftwing groups and individuals who are broadly opposed to “fascism,” but may otherwise have no ties to one another.

This talk of “Antifa” untethered to facts is evident in the State Department’s treatment of the four foreign entities. 

Only one of the four entities designated by the State Department, the German-based Antifa Ost, openly brands itself as part of the Antifa movement. But the administration has not alleged that Antifa Ost is connected to any American Antifa adherents. It is not clear what ties, if any, there are between Antifa Ost and the other three entities, which are based in Italy and Greece. Nor is it clear if the other three have any ties to Antifa at all, either in other countries or inside the United States. It appears that the administration is simply conflating other far-left extremists and anarchists with Antifa, as if they are all part of the same network.

For instance, the first known American Antifa group was established in Portland, Oregon in 2007. As the State Department itself notes, the anarchist FAI/FRI began operating approximately four years earlier, in 2003, meaning that it predates the birth of the American Antifa movement. The Trump administration has not explained why it considers FAI/FRI, which has a long track record of violence on its own, to now be a part of Antifa in any meaningful sense.

The Trump administration has not designated neo-Nazi groups banned by democratic allies

The first entity listed by the State Department is Antifa Ost, also known as Antifa East and the “Hammer Gang,” a name its adherents earned by wielding hammers in their street attacks. Although Antifa Ost is based in Germany, the Trump administration reportedly did not coordinate its designation process with the German government. It is easy to see why. After the designation was announced, a spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry explained that Antifa Ost’s capacity for violence has “decreased significantly” after a series of arrests – an assessment that directly undermines the Trump administration’s desire to portray Antifa as a global menace. Indeed, the State Department does not attribute any attacks to Antifa Ost’s adherents since February 2023 — that is, more than two and half years ago.

The State Department notes that Antifa Ost is “accused of having conducted a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.” But the Department’s announcement omits a key detail – namely, these “attacks” occurred during the “Day of Honor” event – an annual neo-Nazi rally held in the Hungarian capital.  

 The “Day of Honor” rally commemorates a battle in which Nazi soldiers and Hungarian troops joined forces to break the Soviet Union’s siege of Budapest in 1945. Even though the joint Nazi-Hungarian campaign was unsuccessful, modern neo-Nazis see it as an inspiration. Hundreds of far-right extremists from around the world attend the “Day of Honor” event in Budapest each year, including in February 2023, when Antifa Ost’s adherents showed up as counterprotesters.

The “Day of Honor” rally is organized by Légió Hungária, a neo-Nazi organization. According to Bellingcat, Légió Hungária maintains close relationships with other international neo-Nazi and skinhead groups that participate in the “Day of Honor” rally. These include Blood & Honour (B&H), which originated in the United Kingdom and has maintained presence inside the United States since the 1990s, and Hammerskins. America’s allies have long recognized the international threat posed by both groups.     

In 2000, Germany banned B&H after it was linked to a series of racially motivated murders. In 2010, a Spanish court ordered the dissolution of a B&H chapter after 18 of its members were “found guilty of illicit possession of arms and inciting hate for racist and anti-Semitic reasons.” In 2019, the French government dissolved a B&H affiliate inside the country. The Canadian government banned B&H and Combat 18 that same year, explaining that the group had carried out “murders and bombings” across several countries, including the murders of two homeless men in Tampa Bay, Florida in the late 1990s. In 2020, Germany then added Combat 18 to its list of prohibited groups. Finally, in January of this year, the U.K. government froze B&H’s financial assets, finding that there were “reasonable grounds to suspect [it] of being involved in terrorist activities through promoting and encouraging terrorism, seeking to recruit people for that purpose and making funds available for the purposes of its terrorist activities.”

 In 2023, the German government banned Hammerskins (also known as Hammerskin Nation), which was founded in Dallas, Texas in the late 1980s. The German interior ministry explained that “Hammerskins affiliates exist in a number of countries” and its “members call each other ‘brothers’ and see themselves as part of an elite ‘brotherhood,’” with approximately 130 members in Germany alone. Authorities “seized cash and large quantities of weapons,” as well as Nazi paraphernalia, in raids across the country. The interior ministry specifically thanked the American government for its cooperation, saying it “worked closely with its U.S. partner agencies to bring about this ban on a right-wing extremist and racist organization.” Such bilateral cooperation stands in direct contrast to the U.S. government’s unilateral designation of Antifa Ost.

Thus far, the administration has failed to employ the U.S. government’s powerful designation authorities against the neo-Nazi organizations that participate in the “Day of Honor” rally, or any other like-minded groups, even though several allied democratic nations have already done so. Instead, Trump’s State Department has followed the course set by Viktor Orban’s autocratic regime, focusing the power of the state mainly on the leftwing counterprotesters who clashed with neo-Nazis in Budapest in February 2023. The administration has done so even though the far-right was also culpable for the violence. 

For example, a previous report by the State Department clarified that violence broke out during the 2023 event when “extreme-right and neo-Nazi groups clashed with antifascist counterprotesters.” Although local police attempted to ban the rally beforehand, “several hundred extreme-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers gathered” and “antifascist demonstrators … assaulted several individuals they assumed to be affiliated with the extreme right.” The violence was not one-sided, however, as “extreme right sympathizers reportedly attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators.”  

Concern that the Trump Administration Will Abuse the Designation Process to Target Domestic Opposition

 Since the murder of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, senior administration officials have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that a leftwing terrorist network, supported by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), threatens the security of Americans. Antifa is the main foe they cite. 

On Sept. 22, President Donald Trump issued an E.O. deeming Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” The E.O. lacked legal teeth, as the label does not create any new legal authorities to target groups operating inside the United States. Still, the E.O. signaled that the administration was probing for ways to conduct a broader crackdown on leftwing groups.

On Sept. 25, Trump followed up with a national security presidential memorandum (NSPM-7) claiming that the “anti-fascist” “lie” is used by “domestic terrorists” to threaten America’s “democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” The memorandum directs agencies of the U.S. government to take various actions against these supposed “networks.” Civil liberties and pro-democracy groups immediately saw NSPM-7 as a threat to free speech and civil society, as the memorandum imagines a broad conspiracy requiring a whole of government effort to combat. The memorandum seemingly invites branches of the U.S. government, including Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) around the country, to surveil and investigate groups and individuals based on “indicia” (beliefs) such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked those three types of beliefs when announcing the designations of the four “Antifa” groups, vowing to “continue using all available tools to protect our nation from these anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian terrorist groups.” Indeed, the State Department’s SDGT and FTO designations are the latest step in the administration’s campaign to portray Antifa as a top-tier threat.

FTO designations are powerful by design, as Thomas Brzozowski, the former counsel for Domestic Terrorism in the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, has written in these pages. Once a group is designated as an FTO, the U.S. government can invoke legal authorities that allow it to surveil and harass any party connected to it – including organizations inside the United States. It is for that reason that the State Department’s designations of four alleged “Antifa” groups is potentially worrisome. Although the administration has not yet branded “Antifa” in its entirety as an FTO, it is apparently seeking ways to invoke those intrusive authorities against an enemy that is conjured without evidence and conceptually undefined. 

None of this is to suggest that the threat of leftwing political violence should be dismissed. It is real, but the U.S. government already has the tools needed to combat it. And as the review above is intended to show, the new designations are unnecessary. They are surely not based on a bottom-up assessment of the threat that these entities pose, but instead a top-down desire to create a bogeyman.

When Trump first announced his intent to designate “Antifa” as a foreign terrorist organization in mid-September, Hungary’s Orban quickly cheered. Orban’s enthusiasm was telling, as he has used the power of the state to hollow out opposition to his autocratic regime, which he has described as an “illiberal democracy.” Some hard-right politicians in different parts of Europe followed Trump’s statement by announcing their own interest in designating “Antifa” a terrorist organization. On Sept. 26, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization and then “added the group to its national anti-terrorism list.” It was conspicuous that Orban did not take a similar action against any of the neo-Nazi groups that march in Budapest every February. After all, they do not protest his rule. Meanwhile, the policy actions taken by the Trump administration to address domestic terrorism thus far, including NSPM-7, fail to address the threat posed by far-right extremists in the United States.     

The post State Dept’s Foreign Terrorist Designations Undermine Claims of “Antifa” Threat appeared first on Just Security.

The development marks an escalation in the administration’s efforts to recast anti-fascist activism as a matter of national security, carrying far-reaching legal and political consequences. Experts think the move could lay the groundwork for targeting organizations and activists here in the United States, potentially undermining the right to free speech. 

Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security, is joined by Tom Brzozowski, former counsel for Domestic Terrorism at the U.S. Department of Justice, to discuss what the new designations mean for civil liberties, and how they might reshape the boundaries of permissible speech and association.  

Show Notes: 

• “How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties” by Tom Brzozowski (Just Security, October 27, 2025)  
• Just Security’s Terrorism and Violent Extremism Archive
• Just Security’s Counterterrorism Archive

The post The Just Security Podcast: Examining the Trump Administration’s New Antifa Designations appeared first on Just Security.

Though violence across Nigeria has certainly increased in recent years, Trump’s threat of military intervention appears to be primarily a performance for his evangelical base overlaid on a multifaceted security crisis. In reality, military intervention would be diplomatically and operationally complex, and would not address the drivers of conflict across the country. On the contrary, it would alienate a key partner and regional hegemon, while forcing the U.S. military to turn its attention to an unproductive mission and accept risk in other parts of the world.

Nigeria’s Security Landscape and Military Capacity

The empirical reality of Nigeria’s security situation is infinitely more complex than the Christian persecution narrative driving recent U.S. policy. Boko Haram and its ISIS-aligned splinter group, the Islamic State-West Africa (ISIS-WA), operate in the northeast, while armed criminal gangs plague Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina states in the northwest. The Lakurawa militant group, affiliated with the Islamic State Sahel Province, operates in the border areas of Sokoto and Kebbi states along the country’s frontier with Niger. Farmer-herder conflict destabilizes Benue and Plateau states in the Middle Belt, while a Biafran separatist movement continues to simmer in the southeast. Oil theft persists in the Niger Delta, and piracy and armed robbery at sea periodically threaten the country’s Gulf of Guinea coastline. The geographic and operational breadth of these security challenges has stretched Nigerian security forces to their limits, despite their historic capability to project power across the region.

The narrative of Christian persecution that has drawn the ire of the American president appears to conflate two distinct security issues. In the Middle Belt, farmer-herder conflicts are fundamentally resource-driven disputes between predominantly Muslim Fulani herders seeking grazing land and predominantly Christian farming communities competing for land and water access. These tensions have intensified due to climate change, desertification, and the breakdown of traditional conflict-resolution mechanisms, rather than representing the targeting of specific populations on the basis of religion.

Meanwhile, in the northeast, Boko Haram and ISIS-WA operate as jihadist insurgencies opposed to secular governance, attacking both Muslims and Christians indiscriminately. During the first half of 2025, killings attributed to Boko Haram and ISIS-WA reached their highest level in five years, with fatalities rising by 18 percent year-over-year. Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) repository cited in a recent BBC report estimates that approximately 53,000 civilians across all religious backgrounds have died in targeted political violence since 2009. Of these casualties, between 2020 and September 2025, Christians were specifically targeted in 384 incidents that resulted in 317 deaths, representing a small fraction of total civilian fatalities.

Despite considerable investments in security on the part of the Nigerian government over the past decade, its military has faced shortfalls in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as inadequate logistics and maintenance. This has undermined efforts to hold territory and prevent ISIS-WA’s increasingly sophisticated attacks, which have included the increasing use of commercially-available explosive-rigged drones. The failure of the super camp strategy, implemented in 2019 to consolidate military personnel and equipment into fortified hubs in population centers for security reasons, has instead left garrisons and rural communities vulnerable. Moreover, corruption and poor resource management have compromised critical supply chains. The Abuja-based Center for Democracy and Development estimated in 2022 that approximately $15 billion had been squandered through fraudulent arms procurement deals over the previous two decades.

At the same time, tensions linger between local populations and the military over systematic, widespread crimes against humanity perpetrated during earlier phases of the conflict. Finally, despite more than a decade of counterinsurgency operations, the Nigerian government has failed to address the root causes of the conflict, including the extreme economic inequality between northern and southern Nigeria – instead relying almost exclusively on security-centered responses. Oddly enough, despite its heightened focus on Nigeria in recent weeks, the Trump administration defunded programs earlier this year that focused on early warning, conflict mitigation, and peacebuilding, which all could have helped address the underlying drivers of Nigeria’s multifaceted security challenges.  

The Nigerian Christian Persecution Narrative in U.S. Politics

The narrative that Christians are being systematically targeted in Nigeria has been a fixture of U.S. domestic politics for over two decades, beginning when USCIRF first placed Nigeria on its Watch List in 2002. This issue remains deeply important to the electoral coalition that twice delivered the White House to President Trump, who won support from nearly two-thirds of Protestant voters and 55 percent of Catholics in 2024. The first Trump administration designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern in December 2020, which was then reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.

Although the issue had been relatively peripheral to mainstream U.S.-Africa policy, years of sustained congressional focus has included advocacy by Republican Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey (the current chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa) and by former Republican members of Congress including Frank Wolf and Jim Moran, both of Virginia. Meanwhile in Nigeria, select church leaders have leaned into the narrative that Christians are being targeted on the basis of their religion, while many Nigerian legislators have actively resisted this framing, emphasizing that violence affects both Christians and Muslims without sectarian distinction.

Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican chairing the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 (S.2747) in September, which has a companion bill (H.R.5808) in the House of Representatives introduced by Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) in October. Both bills would require the secretary of state to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (now done, as noted above, without the legislation – see below) and to designate Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa as Entities of Particular Concern. The bills also would require the president to impose targeted sanctions under Executive Order 13818 on Nigerian officials who have “enforced blasphemy laws, including through prosecution, conviction, imprisonment, or other deprivation of liberty of individuals pursuant to such laws.”

Both S.2747 and H.R.5808 would codify the CPC designation in law, preventing future administrations from reversing it without congressional action. However, neither has cosponsors, indicating they function primarily as messaging to domestic constituencies and to garner favor with Trump rather than as serious legislative vehicles that have a chance at making it to his desk. Both bills face uncertain prospects and would require additional cosponsors and prioritization by committee chairs before advancing to committee action and then to floor votes. Two additional measures more recently introduced by Smith (H.Res.860) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV)  (H.Res.866) in early November commend the president for redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and, as resolutions rather than bills, are also symbolic measures that have no legal impact.

Diplomatic Disconnect

The diplomacy on this issue has also been complicated at both ends. For Nigeria’s part, it lacks accredited diplomatic leadership in Washington, due to President Tinubu’s decision to recall all Nigerian envoys worldwide in September 2023 for what was described as a reorganization of the country’s diplomatic corps. Furthermore, since taking office in May 2023, Tinubu has not visited the U.S. capital. However, enhanced diplomatic engagement may have offered only marginal opportunities to pre-empt or de-escalate diplomatic tensions. In this respect, Trump’s allegations of Christian persecution in Nigeria mirror the debunked conspiracy theory he and others on the American right continue to wield against South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) that there is a “genocide” of white farmers in their country.

Indeed, this pattern of championing selective narratives while dismissing broader evidence offers a cautionary lesson: there is minimal return on investment in persuading the president and his inner circle with facts once they have acquired their own ideologically entrenched truths. Notably, even after several months of diplomatic outreach and lobbying, including an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa, the U.S. president recently declared that no U.S. government officials would be attending the G20 in South Africa – and that the country should not even be a member of the G20.

U.S. Military Options: Flight of Fancy?

In response to the Trump administration’s directive to develop military options, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has proposed a range of approaches, each constrained by distinct diplomatic, strategic, and operational considerations.  AFRICOM was originally created as — and largely continues to be — a ‘posture-limited theater,’ with a limited forward military presence and drawing on only 0.3 percent of the Department of Defense’s operating budget, according to the congressional testimony of previous combatant commanders. The command’s annual posture statements identify Nigeria as central to counterterrorism strategy in West Africa, prioritizing the containment and degradation of Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa through an approach intended to let African partners lead, with the United States and allies providing enabling support, rather than the United States engaging directly in combat operations. The backbone of bilateral engagement has been episodic training to build the capacity of the Nigerian military and associated institutions and robust foreign military sales, which has included the delivery of 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft in 2021 and substantial munitions packages, such as a $346 million precision-guided weapons sale approved this August. Regionally, Nigeria has participated in annual multinational exercises such as Flintlock, which is focused on joint special operations, and Obangame Express, which is billed as the “largest multinational maritime exercise in Western and Central Africa.” The U.S. military also provides advisors, training, equipment, and intelligence-sharing, to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a five-nation regional security mechanism comprising forces from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger (until withdrawing earlier this year), and Nigeria.

The first option presented by AFRICOM, deepening “partner-enabled operations” with Nigerian security forces, essentially represents an intensification of the bilateral security cooperation already underway, which has not resolved longstanding conflicts across the country. Moreover, longstanding legal restrictions under the Leahy Law, which prohibits assistance to security forces that have perpetrated human rights abuses, have rightfully put guardrails on the bilateral security relationship for more than a decade. Lastly, the evisceration of the foreign assistance apparatus means that bureaus like the State Department’s Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in the former U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration shut down, are no longer working to address the root causes of insecurity in the country. Those efforts ordinarily would work hand-in-glove with military- and law-enforcement responses.

A second option that AFRICOM floated would involve drone strikes on militant camps and convoys launched from bases in southern Europe (presumably Morón air base in Spain or Sigonella in Italy) or Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which serves as AFRICOM’s only permanent military installation on the African continent. Operating from any of these locations would require roughly eight hours of transit for an armed MQ-9 Reaper, leaving approximately 10 hours on-station time. While this duration would permit extended surveillance of militant camps and convoys and enable multiple strikes, it would prove insufficient for sustained counterterrorism operations. Furthermore, such operations would require overflight authorizations from multiple countries across the continent; yet, given the Nigerian government’s concerns about sovereignty and territorial integrity, unilateral drone strikes from foreign bases would be diplomatically untenable for the region absent their consent. Nigeria’s possession of its own strike-capable aircraft, including the 12 A-29 Super Tucanos delivered in 2021, means Abuja would likely demand operational control over any targeting decisions rather than ceding sovereignty to U.S.-directed strikes from abroad. More importantly, such operations would divert MQ-9 assets already committed to counterterrorism missions against al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia, assessed as higher-priority threats to U.S. national security interests.

The third option AFRICOM presented would be to deploy an aircraft carrier group in the Gulf of Guinea that would enable fighter jets and long-range bombers to conduct airstrikes into northern Nigeria. One immediate limitation of this option is that the United States possesses 11 aircraft carriers, usually allocated between theaters deemed to be national security priorities to the United States – such as U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East– with the remainder undergoing scheduled maintenance or training cycles. Additionally, U.S. officials have indicated that the 2025 National Defense Strategy will prioritize homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere, thus implying that operations in other theaters, including counterterrorism in the AFRICOM area of responsibility, will be deprioritized. With the USS Gerald R. Ford rerouted from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean for what the administration describes as counter-narcotics operations, and the other currently-deployed carriers in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility, deploying a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Guinea would require the U.S. military to accept risk in the CENTCOM and INDOPACOM areas, leaving the United States more vulnerable to opportunistic challenges from adversarial actors and peer competitors. One way to buy down risk in this scenario could be to deploy submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which would enable strikes throughout northeastern Nigeria from international waters without diverting carrier groups or requiring forward basing.

Beyond the strategic, operational, and tactical constraints of these options is the question of the legal framework that would theoretically enable military action in Nigeria – most likely the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) or the president’s inherent Article II constitutional powers as Commander-in-Chief to conduct limited military operations without explicit congressional authorization, as modern presidents have done frequently. In any event, the president’s stated justification for military action in Nigeria stretches the conceptual limits of both authorities, as the protection of Christians is neither counterterrorism nor directly linked to a national security threat to the United States. Nonetheless, the administration’s approach to foreign assistance, immigration enforcement, and tariffs would seem to suggest that it views legal limitations as mere suggestions.

The Illusion of Impact

Ultimately, Trump’s threatened military action appears more as political theater choreographed for his domestic base, akin to deploying the National Guard to American cities. Whatever response the administration settles on in this case is highly unlikely to improve the plight of Nigerian civilians, including Christians, due to the structural governance, economic, and security drivers of conflict across the country. Much like other countries that have found themselves in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, Nigeria will discover that this disconnect is something that will need to be carefully managed – and unlikely to be resolved — for the duration of Trump’s tenure. In other words, increased diplomatic engagement and lobbying will not hurt, but ultimately is not likely to resolve this impasse in the bilateral relationship.

Working in Nigeria’s favor is that it is one of Africa’s largest economies, and can fortify relationships with other countries, should U.S. influence wither.  The Trump administration’s decision to gut foreign assistance and bully a State that possesses regional clout simply accelerates this pivot, undermining American strategic interests on the continent while expanding the influence of competitors at minimal cost.

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