Trump's blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil raises new questions about
legality
[December 19, 2025]
By BEN FINLEY, ERIC TUCKER, KEVIN FREKING and JOSHUA
GOODMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s “blockade” of sanctioned oil
tankers off Venezuela’s coast is raising new questions about the
legality of his military campaign in Latin America, while fueling
concerns that the U.S. could be edging closer to war.
The Trump administration says its blockade is narrowly tailored and not
targeting civilians, which would be an illegal act of war. But some
experts say seizing sanctioned oil tied to leader Nicolás Maduro could
provoke a military response from Venezuela, engaging American forces in
a new level of conflict that goes beyond their attacks on alleged drug
boats.
“My biggest fear is this is exactly how wars start and how conflicts
escalate out of control,” said Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who
fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. “And there are no adults in the room
with this administration, nor is there consultation with Congress. So
I’m very worried.”
Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the
University of Pennsylvania, said the use of such an aggressive tactic
without congressional authority stretches the bounds of international
law and increasingly looks like a veiled attempt to trigger a Venezuelan
response.
“The concern is that we are bootstrapping our way into armed conflict,”
Finkelstein said. “We’re upping the ante in order to try to get them to
engage in an act of aggression that would then justify an act of
self-defense on our part.”
Republicans largely are OK with the campaign
Trump has used the word “blockade” to describe his latest tactic in an
escalating pressure campaign against Maduro, who has been charged with
narcoterrorism in the U.S. and now has been accused of using oil profits
to fund drug trafficking. While Trump said it only applies to vessels
facing U.S. economic penalties, the move has sparked outrage among
Democrats and mostly shrugs, if not cheers, from Republicans.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Trump going after sanctioned oil
tankers linked to Venezuela is no different from targeting Iranian oil.
“Just like with the Iranian shadow tankers, I have no problem with
that,” McCaul said. “They’re circumventing sanctions.”
The president has declared the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug
cartels in an effort to reduce the flow of drugs to American
communities. U.S. forces have attacked 28 alleged drug-smuggling boats
and killed at least 104 people since early September. Trump has
repeatedly promised that land strikes are next, while linking Maduro to
the cartels.
The campaign has drawn scrutiny in Congress, particularly after it was
revealed that U.S. forces killed two survivors of a boat attack with a
follow-up strike. But Republicans so far have repeatedly declined to
require congressional authorization for further military action in the
region, blocking Democrats' war powers resolutions.
Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Service
Committee, has essentially ended his panel’s investigation into the
Sept. 2 strike, saying Thursday that the entire campaign is being
conducted “on sound legal advice.”
Venezuela pushes back
Trump announced the blockade Tuesday, about a week after U.S. forces
seized a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast. The South American
country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and relies heavily
on the revenue to support its economy.
The U.S. has been imposing sanctions on Venezuela since 2005 over
concerns about corruption as well as criminal and anti-democratic
activities. The first Trump administration expanded the penalties to
oil, prompting Maduro’s government to rely on a shadow fleet of falsely
flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, has
been largely locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions. It
sells most of its exports at a steep discount on the black market in
China.
Nicolás Maduro Guerra, Maduro's son and a lawmaker, on Thursday decried
Trump’s latest tactic and vowed to work with the private sector to limit
any impact on the country’s oil-dependent economy. He acknowledged that
it won’t be an easy task.
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“We value peace and dialogue, but the reality right now is that we
are being threatened by the most powerful army in the world, and
that’s not something to be taken lightly,” Maduro Guerra said.
Pentagon prefers the term ‘quarantine’
It wasn’t immediately clear how the U.S. planned to enact Trump's
order. But the Navy has 11 ships in the region and a wide complement
of aircraft that can monitor marine traffic coming in and out of
Venezuela.
Trump may be using the term “blockade,” but the Pentagon says
officials prefer “quarantine."
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline
internal reasoning about the policy, said a blockade, under
international law, constitutes an act of war requiring formal
declaration and enforcement against all incoming and outgoing
traffic. A quarantine, however, is a selective, preventive security
measure that targets specific, illegal activity.
Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services
Committee, said he was unsure of the legality of Trump's blockade.
“They’re blockading apparently the oil industry, not the entire
country,” said Smith, who represents parts of western Washington
state. “How does that change things? I got to talk to some lawyers,
but in general, a blockade is an act of war.”
The U.S. has a long history of leveraging naval sieges to pressure
lesser powers, especially in the 19th century era of “gunboat
diplomacy,” sometimes provoking them into taking action that
triggers an even greater American response.
But in recent decades, as the architecture of international law has
developed, successive U.S. administrations have been careful not to
use such maritime shows of force because they are seen as punishing
civilians — an illegal act of aggression outside of wartime.
During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy
famously called his naval cordon to counter a real threat — weapons
shipments from the Soviet Union — a “quarantine” not a blockade.
Mark Nevitt, an Emory University law professor and former Navy judge
advocate general, said there is a legal basis for the U.S. to board
and seize an already-sanctioned ship that is deemed to be stateless
or is claiming two states.
But a blockade, he said, is a “wartime naval operation and maneuver”
designed to block the access of vessels and aircraft of an enemy
state.
“I think the blockade is predicated on a false legal pretense that
we are at war with narcoterrorists,” he said.
Nevitt added: “This seems to be almost like a junior varsity
blockade, where they’re trying to assert a wartime legal tool, a
blockade, but only doing it selectively.”
Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech law professor who previously served as
the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues and has been
critical of the Trump administration’s boat strikes, said he was not
convinced the blockade was intended to ratchet up the conflict with
Venezuela.
Instead, he suggested it could be aimed at escalating the pressure
on Maduro to give up power or encouraging his supporters to back
away from him.
“You can look at it through the lens of, is this an administration
trying to create a pretext for a broader conflict?” Corn said. “Or
you can look at it as part of an overall campaign of pressuring the
Maduro regime to step aside.”
___
Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press reporters Stephen
Groves and Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano
in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
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