Amidst the Trump administration’s unauthorized war on Iran and the resulting hostilities from Cyprus to the waters off Sri Lanka, it is easy to overlook the fact that the administration also continues to wage unauthorized hostilities in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. military is still conducting lethal maritime strikes against alleged drug smugglers, killing over 150 people to date. (See here for previous Just Security analysis of the maritime bombing campaign.)
And the administration may have begun its long advertised “strikes on land” against supposed drug trafficking targets—in Ecuador, targeting a dissident faction of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).
Clues from Social Media Bombast
On March 3, U.S. Southern Command announced on social media that “Ecuadorian and U.S. military forces launched operations against Designated Terrorist Organizations in Ecuador” accompanied by the hashtag of Operation Southern Spear—the label also used for the boat strike campaign. On March 6, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared a video on an apparent airstrike in a jungle environ and stated:
Yes — as @POTUS has said — we are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well.
Thank you to our partners in Ecuador. Much more to come from @Southcom…
Notwithstanding the explosion in the video and accompanying dramatic music, Hegseth’s post did not explicitly state that the United States had conducted an airstrike and seemed to leave open the possibility that the U.S. military was supporting direct action by Ecuadorian partners.
An unusual report from the White House to Congress under the 1973 War Powers Resolution suggests that yes, the U.S. military may indeed have conducted one or more airstrikes in Ecuador.
War Powers Resolution Background
Section 4(a) of the 1973 Resolution establishes reporting requirements to prevent the president from taking the country to war in secret. In the absence of a declaration of war or other statutory authorization, the executive branch is subject to multi-tiered obligations to report to Congress within 48 hours of certain activities by U.S. armed forces.
First, under subsection 4(a)(1) the president must report when U.S. military forces are introduced into “hostilities” or introduced into “situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” Such hostilities reports are the focus of this essay.
Second, even if U.S. forces are not engaging in hostilities, subsection 4(a)(2) requires the president to report the introduction of “combat equipped” forces into a country (the executive branch defines “combat-equipped” as forces equipped with crew-served weapons such as machine guns requiring more than one person to operate and mortars; Congress does not seem to have meaningfully differed in its understanding of the term).
Third, pursuant to subsection 4(a)(3), the president must also report a substantial enlargement of combat equipped forces in a country where such forces are already present.
Notably, under Section 5(b) of the 1973 Resolution, the submission of a report under the first of these scenarios — introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities or situations of imminent hostilities — also starts a 60-day clock for the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from such hostilities unless Congress declares war or otherwise enacts specific statutory authorization for the use of force.
Although Congress did not define “hostilities,” or “imminent involvement in hostilities,” in the text of the statute, the legislative history shows that Congress intended those terms to be construed broadly to establish a low threshold for both the reporting and withdrawal provisions of the War Powers Resolution. The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on the Resolution explains:
The word hostilities was substituted for the phrase armed conflict during the subcommittee drafting process because it was considered to be somewhat broader in scope. In addition to a situation in which fighting actually has begun, hostilities also encompasses a state of confrontation in which no shots have been fired but where there is a clear and present danger of armed conflict. “Imminent hostilities” denotes a situation in which there is a clear potential either for such a state of confrontation or for actual armed conflict.
Unsurprisingly, the executive branch has for decades espoused different, narrower interpretations of these terms that are less likely to constrain the president’s ability to use military force without congressional authorization.
In the most-often-repeated formulation, the State Department’s Legal Adviser informed Congress in a 1975 letter that its working definition of “hostilities” meant “a situation in which units of the U.S. armed forces are actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces.” “Imminent hostilities” means, according to the letter, “a situation in which there is a serious risk from hostile fire to the safety of United States forces.”
In practice, administrations of both parties have routinely treated military actions such as airstrikes, in which U.S. forces were not in harm’s way, as “hostilities” for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution (see a catalog of dozens of such reports on U.S. airstrikes at the NYU Law Reiss Center’s War Powers Reporting Project). Indeed, the Trump administration reported the first maritime strike to Congress in September—presumably as hostilities–before it changed its mind on the characterization of the strikes as the 60-day deadline approached.
Although the White House under administrations of both parties submits these reports to Congress stating it is doing so “consistent with the War Powers Resolution” (rather than “pursuant to” that law), in practice reports are submitted only when required by law—and sometimes not even then.
In other words, the submission of a War Powers report does generally indicate that the White House has undertaken one of the triggering military actions. Another long-running practice of the executive branch is not to specify which prong of the War Powers Resolution the reports are being submitted under (hostilities, combat-equipped introduction, or a substantial enlargement). It is therefore necessary to assess what military action triggered the report based on the description of the action in the report, and often outside reporting is also needed given how sparse the reports tend to be in modern practice.
March 9th War Powers Report
Based on its contents, the March 9 report to Congress pertains to the introduction of U.S. armed forces into “hostilities,” rather than the deployment of combat equipped forces or their substantial enlargement. The report notifies Congress of “military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.”
The report situates this military action in the broader context of “operations to protect the United States by combatting extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels designated as terrorist organizations”—a seeming reference to the maritime bombing campaign.
The War Powers report provides only a vague description of the March 6 military action:
United States Armed Forces partnered with Ecuadorian Armed Forces to strike on March 6, 2026, the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization. United States Armed Forces planned and executed this mission in a manner designed to empower a partner nation, degrade narco-terrorist activities, and minimize civilian casualties. Although present for this partnered operation, United States ground forces did not come into contact with hostile forces. (emphases added)
There are a few notable aspects to this description.
First, the description of a particular “strike,” on a specific date, often indicates a “hostilities” trigger. Reports necessitated by either of the other two prongs rarely describe specific strikes, although there may be exceptions to the rule. Moreover, the notification not only refers to a specific military confrontation, it does not mention the deployment or augmentation of the U.S. armed forces in Ecuador, as would generally be the case for reports under the other two 48-hour reporting prongs.
Second, the disclaimer that U.S. “ground forces did not come into contact with hostile forces” is oddly specific. The clear implication is that other U.S. forces did come into contact with hostile forces, such as for example through an airstrike. Indeed, presumably some such U.S. direct action was involved in this incident, because the executive would not report partnered military operations if they did not involve U.S. direct action (and in some cases fails to even when they did engage in direct action with partner forces). Nonetheless, the report implies, rather than explicitly states, that the U.S. conducted a strike (“partnered… to strike”). The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense’s statement on this attack near the Colombian border refers to U.S. intelligence and support and the bombing of a camp belonging to drug traffickers, but does not explicitly specify who bombed the camp.
Third, the War Powers report does not specify the target of this partnered military operation beyond describing them as the “facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.” The “designated terrorist organization” is unidentified. In other words, the administration is suggesting the United States is engaged in hostilities in Ecuador, but won’t say with whom. Notably however, the Government of Ecuador did identify the target of the operation as Comandos de la Frontera—a dissident element of the Colombian rebel group the FARC.
Making Sense of the Administration’s Messaging
The messaging from the administration regarding military operations is a strange combination of bluster and ambiguity. On the one hand, the so-called “Secretary of War” is eager to boast on social media about “bombing Narco Terrorists on land.” On the other hand, the administration does not clearly state whether it is the United States doing the bombing, nor does it specify who is being bombed.
This tension might be explained by competing interests. Military action for the sake of spectacle is a defining feature of this administration’s approach to the use of force with the President and Secretary of Defense regularly posting dramatic footage of airstrikes and special operations raids on social media. Indeed, the President recently boasted about the U.S. attack on Iran as a “performance” (“I hope you are impressed. How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance?”). There appears to be a strong urge within the administration to promote its performative military “wins.”
At the same time, U.S. military operations in Ecuador are being conducted with the consent of and in partnership with the Ecuadorian government. And the administration may thus need to heed Ecuadorian sensitivities regarding public acknowledgment of direct U.S. military action on Ecuadorian territory. Even if the Ecuadorian government may be enthusiastic about partnered military operations with the United States, the Ecuadorian public may be more wary—having only recently voted in a referendum to reject foreign military bases in the country.
Implications
The implications of recent U.S. military operations in Ecuador may be significant. The Trump administration appears to have resorted to the use of military force in yet another country. Indeed, the United States may be involved in an entirely new armed conflict, if for example, (a) the group targeted in the March 6 strike was an “organized armed group” (an international law term for entities with sufficient military structure, hierarchy, and capabilities to engage in armed conflict); (b) an armed conflict already exists between Ecuador and that group; and (c) the United States has joined the conflict on Ecuador’s side. Indeed the Ecuadorian Government has announced that it will undertake a new offensive against criminal groups in that country with unspecified U.S. support—while warning of the potential for collateral damage.
As is now typical for the Trump administration, decisions to use force and engage in a new armed conflict were undertaken unilaterally by the White House without prior congressional authorization and its accompanying public debate. That means no public deliberation regarding the goals, strategy, and costs of military action. The U.S. government has not even identified the enemy, let alone the objectives of this military action.
As a legal matter, the submission of the March 9 report means that the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock is now ticking. In addition, Congress—which did not authorize these actions beforehand—can now force a vote under the War Powers Resolution to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities in Ecuador if it has the votes to do so.
The Legislature’s and the People’s Turns
In an all too common pattern, the White House has used military force unilaterally and now it is up to Congress to respond. This repeated dynamic—particularly prominent under Trump 2.0—upends the framework of the U.S. Constitution. As described by James Wilson to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention in 1787:
This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large.
Contrary to this constitutional vision, one man is currently able to “hurry us into war.”
The immediate question is whether Congress as an institution can muster the will to discharge its constitutional responsibilities with respect to the use of force—both with respect to U.S. military operations in Ecuador and elsewhere in the western hemisphere, but also more generally as Trump’s war rages in the Middle East.
Recent history is not particularly encouraging. Despite strong bipartisan efforts to block many recent military adventures by the White House through resolutions of disapproval, partisan loyalty has triumphed over constitutional fealty.
Ultimately, the American people will need to weigh in. The results of the 2026 midterms may improve the legislature’s ability to check executive military adventurism—including through the power of the purse. Over the longer term, a White House and Congress committed to the Constitution’s separation of war powers will need to create more robust legislative guardrails, including by reforming the War Powers Resolution to give it sharper teeth.
– Brian Finucane, Published courtesy of Just Security.
