Last Sat­ur­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump con­vened a meet­ing of heads of 13 coun­tries of the hemi­sphere to for­mal­ly es­tab­lish an al­liance that he con­ceived, un­der terms that his team de­vised, un­der­writ­ten by a procla­ma­tion that he craft­ed, in a cer­e­mo­ny he alone spoke at, at a time that he de­ter­mined, at a re­sort that he owns.

The Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC) was es­tab­lished by pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion. Trump’s. Not a joint com­mu­nique. The first line ref­er­ences his lead­er­ship.

When briefed on plans for the sum­mit at the Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral Golf Club in Flori­da, State De­part­ment con­fer­ence staffers may have ini­tial­ly en­vis­aged a set­ting of all of the heads at a con­fer­ence ta­ble – name tags and all – with the US pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er, the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny was the same as when the US pres­i­dent signs do­mes­tic leg­is­la­tion and ex­ec­u­tive or­ders – in which he sits at a small desk bear­ing the seal of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, sur­round­ed by stand­ing staffers, friend­ly leg­is­la­tors, or ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the bill. He was the fo­cus.

For a smart and TV-savvy pres­i­dent, stag­ing is every­thing. He is the boss. The clear mes­sage con­veyed by the vi­su­als was that the lead­ers sum­moned to Do­ral are work­ing for him, not with him. His Sec­re­taries of State and De­fense (re­named War) de­liv­ered brief re­marks of flat­tery to their great leader. No oth­er leader spoke.

When he moved to the small desk and in­vit­ed the oth­er lead­ers to sur­round him, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was no­table for the rapid lo­co­mo­tion that she sum­moned in get­ting close to the seat­ed pres­i­dent. Job done, Trump got on Air Force One not long af­ter and flew about two hours north to Dover Air Force Base to at­tend a cer­e­mo­ny, in which the re­mains of the first US sol­diers killed in the war with Iran were brought back to the US.

The com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor in the Iran war and the AC­CC is the self-styled Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth. This pas­sage from Trump’s procla­ma­tion is worth not­ing.

“In fur­ther­ance of our ef­forts, the Sec­re­tary of War es­tab­lished the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion, a pledge from mil­i­tary lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 17 coun­tries demon­strat­ing that the re­gion is ready to op­er­a­tionalise hard pow­er to de­feat these threats to our se­cu­ri­ty and civil­i­sa­tion. We will ad­dress these grave dan­gers by use of any nec­es­sary re­sources and legal­ly avail­able au­thor­i­ties, to­geth­er with our part­ner na­tions.”

Two terms stand out… “hard pow­er” and “legal­ly.” Hegseth has demon­strat­ed that he is pre­pared to de­ploy the first. On the sec­ond, he has a poor record of com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al law. He has slashed num­bers at the Judge Ad­vo­cate Gen­er­al’s Corps (JAGS), ar­gu­ing that lawyers tie the hands of war­riors on the bat­tle­field.

He is the ar­chi­tect of the US mil­i­tary’s legal­ly un­sound pol­i­cy of blow­ing up boats they claim are fer­ry­ing drugs, and killing their oc­cu­pants. To date, they’ve killed 157 peo­ple. Hegseth’s com­man­ders killed two ship­wrecked sur­vivors in the Caribbean Sea last Sep­tem­ber, and more re­cent­ly, left Iran­ian sailors to drown in the In­di­an Ocean af­ter sink­ing their ship near Sri Lan­ka. Both ac­tions vi­o­lat­ed Ar­ti­cle 98 of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea.

In Pen­ta­gon press brief­in­gs on the Iran war, Joint Chiefs Chair­man Dan Caine strikes a sober­ing, grown-up con­trast with Hegseth’s teenage-style brag­gado­cio. His most ut­tered word is “lethal­i­ty.” He doesn’t seem that con­cerned with le­gal­i­ty.

The AC­CC sub­sti­tutes mil­i­tary force for law en­force­ment. The procla­ma­tion al­so men­tions chok­ing off fi­nanc­ing for car­tels and takes a veiled swipe at Chi­na, but there’s not a word about in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing.

The law en­force­ment of­fi­cials in the part­ner na­tions should ad­vise Hegseth that blow­ing up the boats of sus­pect­ed smug­glers runs counter to gath­er­ing in­tel on the peo­ple who give them their or­ders.

This col­umn was the first to note that Do­ral was a gath­er­ing of the like-mind­ed. Lead­ers with frosty re­la­tions with Trump – from Brazil, Colom­bia, Mex­i­co and Cana­da – were not in at­ten­dance. But de­spite the pres­ence of pro-Pinochet far-right Jose An­to­nio Kast of Chile and right-wing au­thor­i­tar­i­an Nay­ib Bukele of El Sal­vador, it’d on­ly be a par­tial read to put pro­ceed­ings in a right-wing box. In­ter­ests were var­ied. More on that next time.