"The responsibility and imperative to rescue shipwrecked sailors at sea is perhaps the oldest, cornerstone tenet of international maritime law. Search and rescue is a duty, one that no one can legally ignore, even in cases where obvious irony and contradiction can't be avoided-like, say, when the shipwrecked survivors are there in the water because you just slammed a Hellfire missile into their vessel moments earlier in an attempt to kill them."
"But in the Trump administration's never-ending series of deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, performing "search and rescue" seems to be a purely theatrical exercise, with no actual intent to rescue anyone. The U.S. military seems to be operating with full intent to allow every one of its boat strike survivors to drown, sending out performative rescue missions far too late to have any probability of saving anyone."
International maritime law obligates rescuing shipwrecked sailors at sea under all circumstances. Search-and-rescue must be performed even when survivors are enemies or when survivors result from one's own attack. The Trump administration conducted a series of deadly, unannounced boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific beginning in fall 2025. Military rescue operations in those strikes appear delayed, perfunctory, or intentionally ineffective, resulting in apparent allowance of survivors drowning. The U.S. military struck survivors in at least one early incident and later both collected and arrested other survivors. These tactics raise serious questions about compliance with maritime obligations and the valuation of human life.
Read at Jezebel
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