SEEING RED: US piracy, pesky laws and Australia

SEEING RED is an irregular column on Fremantle Shipping News by Barry Healy*. In this piece, Barry considers the rules of engagement as addressed by US Secretary for War Pete Hegseth

On 30 September 2025, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the gathering of all US military top officers that they “kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”

He promised them that there would be no more “politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

Credit Jon Tyson for Unsplash

Actually, Hegseth’s “maximum lethality” was already in practice. On 2 September, US forces killed people in a small boat plying the Caribbean Sea. Now serious questions are being asked of those involved in the killings. Laws, Hegseth’s “overbearing rules”, can be pesky things and may yet entangle Hegseth and Donald Trump.

The Washington Post says Hegseth personally ordered that all people on the targeted vessel be killed. The Post’s report is very dramatic: “A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smouldering wreck.”

Those two were then killed in line with Hegseth’s order. US government officials claim that Hegseth did not know that there were survivors and he did not personally order their execution.

The independent news site, The Intercept, says that the Trump administration paved the way for these actions by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year. Those that remain know better than to demur from the governing doctrine.

Irrespective of lawyers courageous enough to speak truth to power, the US Department of Defense (now the Department of War) Law of War Manual, dated 31 July 2023, is unequivocal: what US forces are doing in the Caribbean is a war crime.

The Manual is freely available on the internet. It is explicit: “Each member of the armed services has a duty to: (1) comply with the law of war in good faith; and (2) refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.”

There is a sub-heading, “Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations” containing a specific example: “…orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

There are signs that Trump and Hegseth’s lethality is causing ructions within the US armed forces. The sixth slaughter of civilians in a Caribbean boat occurred on 16 October, and again there were survivors. However, according to CBS News, they were picked up by US Navy vessels and returned to their countries of origin.

That very day the Admiral in charge of the entire US Southern Command, Alvin Holsey, abruptly retired. The BBC World Service reported that he was just one year into his tenure which was his career pinnacle. “Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats,” the BBC said.

Questions are now being asked in the US Congress by both Democrat and Republican representatives, led by Jason Crow of the House Armed Services Committee and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Donald Trump’s real interest in Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs, it is oil piracy. When he sent US troops into Syria in 2019, he said it was for “…keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure.” Venezuela has the biggest known oil reserves in the world.

Just to add extra irony to the already twisted tale, Trump has pardoned ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras, who was serving 45 years in US prison for cocaine smuggling.

What should Australians make of all this?

Defence Minister Richard Marles wants the integration of Australian armed forces with US forces. Do Australians want their military to “kill people and break things for a living”? Does the Australian nation accept that pesky laws are “overbearing rules”?

Australian forces are “monitoring” and “patrolling” in the South China Sea in connection with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Article 17, “Right of innocent passage”. They enforce navigation through the Strait of Taiwan.

In Article 38 UNCLOS clarifies the “Right of transit passage”through such straits. Innocent passage can be impeded only in the case of a strait “formed by an island of a State bordering the strait and its mainland.” In those circumstances “transit passage shall not apply if there exists seaward of the island a route through the high seas…”. So, China has legal right to decide who has innocent passage through the Strait.

However, following the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the defeated Republic of China (ROC) government established its administration in Taiwan, while the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) government rules the mainland. Both administrations say that they are the real Chinese government, including the Strait.

Further complicating this are differing “Dash Line” maps published by both administrations. The ROC version, its territorial claims, has eleven dashes encompassing the whole South China Sea. The PRC’s nine dash version denotes an area of interest (which they are ambiguous about clarifying).

Australia’s 1938 recognition of the ROC included accepting the ROC’s map as Chinese territory. In 1972, the Whitlam government recognised the Peoples Republic of China as the government of China and acknowledged the PRC’s attitude towards Taiwan. Australia, the United States and every other nation on Earth recognise that Taiwan is part of China.

How wise is Australia to be militarily “integrated” with US forces enforcing a “courageous” (in the Yes, Minister sense) reading of the UNCLOS in Asia when the US is violating the Convention in the Caribbean? True, the US is not a state party to UNCLOS, so perhaps it can be argued that it is not legally in contravention.

How do Australians feel about standing on the edge of such a legal and moral quagmire holding the hand of a pirate regime?

By Barry Healy

* Barry Healy is a life-long Marxist who first came to Perth in the 1970s to establish the Resistance young socialist group. He was a founder of the Green Left and currently edits the Culture section of the Red Spark website.

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