Republican Congressman Tim Burchett recently introduced the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025, a legislation that would allow US President Donald Trump to authorise private citizens to attack foreign ships.

To put the issue in context, the bill – if approved – will allow anyone to act as legally approved privateers or ‘pirates’. In simple terms, bounty hunters of the high seas.

The bill reached Congress eight days after the first US Coast Guard seizure of an oil tanker servicing Venezuela as part of Trump’s so-called war on drug cartels.

Should this bill pass, it would mark a severe escalation of conflict in the Caribbean Sea and hostilities against Venezuela, besides risking Chinese commercial interests operating in the region.

At the same time, the scandal involving Navy SEAL strike teams killing suspected traffickers on speedboats triggered a congressional probe into the legality of these executions, followed by the premature retirement of Admiral Alvin Holsey under unusual circumstances. 

Letters of marque would further obscure accountability by shifting coercive violence from state forces to the private sector, shielding decision-makers from the human rights scrutiny they currently face.

What is a letter of marque?

Letters of marque are 16^th-century legal instruments issued by states granting private actors the authority to capture enemy vessels, a right otherwise reserved for nationally flagged military ships. 

The most famous example comes from Queen Elizabeth I’s ‘Sea Dogs’, including Sir Francis Drake, who raided the Spanish treasure fleet under royal authorisation.

Historically, letters described the vessels under the holder’s command, required a security bond, and meticulously outlined which ships and enemy flags constituted lawful targets. 

Once a privateer seized a vessel, they had to bring the prize before an Admiralty Court. If the court ruled the capture legitimate, the privateer received the ship and its cargo. If the seizure violated the letter’s terms, the court returned the vessel to its rightful owners and exposed the privateer to condemnation as a pirate.

For sailors, privateering was a gamble. Cargo contents were never certain, high-value targets were heavily defended, and even a successful capture could be invalidated in court.

The scholarly consensus holds that letters of marque thrived because they were tools that were ideal for states with low naval production capacity. For early modern war-making states, privateers could act as force multipliers and be extremely disruptive to intercontinental enemy supply lines.

Given that the US came into being during the 18^th century, the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to issue letters of marque alongside its authority to declare war. 

Their use peaked during the War of 1812, when Congress issued roughly 500 letters. The last American-issued letter of marque was in 1815, during the Second Barbary War.

By the 19^th century, advances in military naval technology and industrial production made the state more capable of producing warships, thus the demand for privateering substantially declined. 

In 1856, the Declaration of Paris formally outlawed privateering. Although the US never signed the declaration, its provisions became customary international law.

Despite this, many have reached for the esoteric letter of marque clause as a panacea for solving contemporary security challenges. 

From Republicans Ron Paul’s proposal for their use to curb Somali pirates to Lance Gooden’s pitch to issue letters to seize Russian assets, the latest bill follows the same pattern.

Chaos in the Caribbean?

Given Congressman Burchett’s public record – he believes chemtrails are poisoning us, but when it comes to school shootings, he takes a “we’re not gonna fix it” stance – it is tempting to dismiss his proposal as another gimmick. 

Yet the idea has institutional backing.

In 2024, the Center for Maritime Strategy, a think tank sponsored by the Navy League of the United States, published Reviving Letters of Marque​. The report argues that “[l]etters of marque offer a low-cost, flexible option to address lower priority and unconventional national security challenges, such as pirates or transnational drug cartels.”

How would letters of marque work if drug cartels are the targets?

The core problem with applying letters of marque to drug trafficking is targeting. Early modern privateers targeted ships by flag. Drug traffickers, however, do not operate under sovereign flags.

Burchett’s bill targets cartels rather than states. A cartel is defined based on two other pieces of legislation – specific cartels conforming to the legal definition of transnational criminal organisations and Trump’s expansive definition, which includes actors embedded within other states, in the Designating Cartels executive order. 

If Trump is given the power to issue letters of marque by Congress, then we could see a situation where Venezuelan Navy vessels are designated targets.

The legislation offers no clarity on how privateers would distinguish cartel vessels from civilian shipping. 

Already, civilian vessels flying the flags of Panama, Guyana, and Colombia have been seized or struck in the Caribbean Sea by the US. 

If private military companies with poor human rights records, such as Blackwater, become the primary recipients of these letters, the stakes of misidentification rise dramatically.

Beyond human rights abuses, this targeting ambiguity threatens to disrupt Caribbean trade and tourism by flooding the region with legally sanctioned freebooters. And hence, ushering in diplomatic blowback in the Western hemisphere.

A second, more existential problem lies in adjudication. 

Letters of marque historically depended on admiralty courts to legalise captured cargo. In the early modern era, courts routinely authorised the transfer of seized gold and commodities. Today, no US naval court would authorise privateers to take possession of shiploads of prohibited narcotics.

However, given that the US Coast Guard is seizing oil tankers now, we can surmise that lawful transfers constituting cargo in mineral wealth would be within the realm of the possible. 

With Trump’s letters of marque, history is poised to repeat itself at a slight incline: the gold is coming from the same place, but it’s American privateers instead of Brits.

US-China power game

Historically, states resorted to letters of marque when they lacked the industrial capacity to field sufficient warships. For the Center for Maritime Strategy, privateering can buy time for the US to upgrade conventional military capacities in preparation for a potential conflict with China.

The appeal is obvious. China’s naval expansion has been historic. 

As of 2024, the People’s Liberation Army Navy operates 234 warships compared to the US Navy’s 219. More strikingly, US Navy estimates suggest China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the United States.

Yet using letters of marque to close this gap misunderstands their function. Privateering is not a technical solution to industrial decline. Blackwater contracts will not revive American shipbuilding. 

Letters of marque are politico-military instruments that necessarily presuppose a state of war and operate through low-intensity conflict.

Geopolitically, Washington and Latin American governments alike view confrontation with Venezuela and conflict in the Caribbean Sea as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine and US hemispheric dominance. 

The Caribbean has become, again, a testing ground for renewed American power projection.

In the case of the letters, the centre also notes that they can counter unconventional Chinese threats like its illegal fishing fleets. 

Once Trump gets letters of marque power from Congress, nothing can stop him from issuing letters targeting massive Chinese fishing operations off the coasts of countries, from Mexico to Argentina, that he deems transnational criminal organisations.

If letters of marque succeed in closing the Caribbean to Venezuela, they could also serve as a precedent for restricting the Malacca Strait to vessels servicing China. 

Concentrating such de facto war powers in the hands of Trump risks accelerating American decline by provoking a conflict with China from a position of inferior industrial capacity rather than reversing it.