Trump’s blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil raises new questions about legality
World Dec 19, 2025 1:42 PM EST
[...]
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.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
