Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans announced this week that the Netherlands is suspending joint anti-drug operations with the United States outside of its own Caribbean territorial waters, responding to American military actions against suspected smuggling vessels.
The decision follows a controversial US operation that targeted Venezuela and led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, an act widely condemned as a violation of sovereignty and international legal norms.
Brekelmans stated that as long as US forces continue to attack suspected traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, the Netherlands will focus its anti-drug efforts solely on protecting its territorial waters around the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, located off Venezuela’s coast.
“When it comes to drug enforcement, we’ve been collaborating with the Americans for years, but we do it in a different way. So when we see drug smuggling taking place, we try to arrest and prosecute those involved, but not by shooting down ships,” Brekelmans said during a visit to Aruba on Monday.
He emphasized that the Netherlands will continue its drug enforcement within its own waters but will cease operations in international waters with US cooperation. “We’ll stay in contact with them about this, of course, because drug enforcement is something we all want to be committed to and a problem that affects us all,” he added.
The US military buildup in the Caribbean began in September under Operation Southern Spear, which involved over 20 lethal attacks on speedboats suspected of drug smuggling and the detention of ships carrying Venezuelan oil. These actions were seen as part of a pressure campaign against Maduro, who was captured late last week along with his wife, Cilia Flores, in what US President Donald Trump called a “large-scale” military operation.
Spain and five Latin American nations issued a joint statement condemning the US incursion and the arrest of Maduro, stating that the actions violate fundamental principles of international law. The UK reportedly stopped sharing intelligence on suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean last year, unwilling to participate in attacks it deemed illegal.
Brekelmans acknowledged the US remains “a key ally of the Netherlands and a very important partner here in the region,” but clarified that for Operation Southern Spear, “we are not making our amenities available.”
Kirsty Sutherland, a UK-based lawyer specializing in international humanitarian and public law, told OCCRP that US operations in the Caribbean clearly breach provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the US previously committed to follow. While the US has not ratified UNCLOS, the Netherlands is a strong supporter.
“The rules on the use of force and interference with vessels and international waters are really strict,” Sutherland said. “The Netherlands considers itself bound by UNCLOS, as well as the panoply of all of its domestic and international laws. So I think resiling from supporting or actively assisting conduct that contravenes those obligations is completely justified.”