Once upon a time, a boat suspected of carrying illegal drugs into the US was a job for the US Coast Guard, who would stop and search the vessel and hand its occupants over to authorities.
Under the Trump administration, it's become a job for the newly rebranded Department of War, and the most powerful military force in the world.
For the second time in a fortnight, a boat alleged by the White House to be trafficking drugs to the US has been blown up by a US air strike, killing all on board.
Video released on Mr Trump's social media account shows a powerboat floating on the open sea, before a massive explosion sets it on fire. Three men on board were killed in the air strike, the president said.
It's a replica of an attack on a high-powered speedboat two weeks ago, in which the White House said 11 people were killed — allegedly drug traffickers on their way to the US.
"We smoked a drug boat and there's 11 narcoterrorists at the bottom of the ocean," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at the time.
"And when other people try to do that, they're going to meet the same fate."
But the White House has not provided any evidence to support the allegation that either of the boats were carrying drugs — nor even that they were headed to the US.
And in a recent UN drug report into drug-producing countries, Venezuela doesn't even get a mention — while its neighbours Colombia, Bolivia and Peru are at the top of the list.
"I don't care what the UN said," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the first strike.
"The UN doesn't know what they're talking about."
Drug war
There's been scepticism that the first boat — a speedboat with outboard motors — was capable of covering the 2,000-kilometre journey to the US, where Mr Trump said it was heading.
The US has also presented no evidence to support its claim that its occupants were members of the South American Tren de Aragua gang, under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — the subject of a $US50 million bounty for his arrest on US charges.
"Billions of dollars of drugs are pouring into our country from Venezuela," Mr Trump said.
"Venezuela has been a very bad actor."
Mr Maduro is internationally regarded as a corrupt dictator, holding onto power through human rights abuses and stolen elections.
But drug running is generally not on the list — except in the US, where Mr Rubio has described him as an "indicted drug trafficker" and a "fugitive of American justice".
"This is a counter-drug operation," Mr Rubio said.
"We're going to take on drug cartels wherever they are and wherever they're operating against the interests of the United States."
For a counter-drug operation, it looks more like a small war. The US has sent nine warships, a nuclear-powered submarine and 10 F-35 fighter jets to the region.
Under the new US rules of engagement, drug cartels — or "narcoterrorists", as Mr Trump has dubbed them — will now be treated as a military threat rather than as criminals.
'Dangerous precedent'
The new White House doctrine has experts in military and international law concerned.
"This is an extremely dangerous precedent," said Geoff Corn, a long-time US Army officer who is now the director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University.
"If you can call any criminal threat to the United States an attack, where do you draw the line? In my opinion, there's not even a plausible basis to assert that this is an exercise of national self-defence," he said.
Scott Anderson, a former US diplomat and an expert in international law and national security policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said:
"The whole framework that Trump administration is trying to argue is going to seem very alien to a lot of people looking at this from the outside. Because they're going to say, no way this is an armed conflict.
"And that has ramifications down the road. The usual strategy of the United States on narcotics trafficking and other smuggling in the Caribbean is multilateral cooperation and joint operations.
"That gets a lot harder when your partners don't think they can trust you not to do things that they understand to be illegal under international law."
Professor Corn said while the change in approach might worry US allies, it was likely to be popular at home.
"I think it's low-hanging fruit. It's politically advantageous," he said.
"The perception is, finally we have a president who's getting tough on drug importation. It's a non-sympathetic group he's targeting. There's a Congress that is highly unlikely to question his assertion of military authority.
"I think we have to also look at this in the broader context of an administration, and maybe a president, who appears to view the military as the favourite tool in the tool belt. Whenever there's a problem, we will treat it as kind of an emergency, necessitating the use of military force.
"And in the long run, that not only endangers rule of law and civil liberties, it endangers the institution of the military itself."
But the concerns of international law experts and others have largely been dismissed by the Trump administration.
"Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military," Vice-President JD Vance posted on social media on the Saturday after the first attack.
When an anti-Trump influencer suggested that "killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime", Mr Vance replied simply: "I don't give a shit what you call it."
