--- title: "Could America Really Go to War with Mexico's Cartels?" description: "It is one of the most controversial policy proposals in years — an idea that, if carried out, would have ramifications for the whole of North America. Since the spring of 2023, there has been a steady drumbeat on parts of the American right for military intervention in Mexico: using special forces, sophisticated cyber tools, or even missiles to target cartels. The goal is to destroy drug laboratories and cripple the ability of gangs to create fentanyl, a drug that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. In defense circles, the plan is unpopular. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley has taken great pains to discourage it. Yet this may not ultimately matter. With the 2024 election on the horizon, multiple Republican candidates have expressed a desire to intervene in Mexico. In Congress, bills have been put forward to authorize action against the cartels. Should the GOP win big, it is possible military intervention could take place.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- Former Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham have publicly endorsed military action against Mexican cartels, comparing them to ISIS.\n- Secretary of Defense Mike Esper revealed that Trump twice asked about using missile strikes to destroy drug labs in Mexico in 2020, an idea the military opposed.\n- Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-49, with opioids killing about 1,500 Americans every week according to the National Center for Health Statistics.\n- The Center for Renewing America released a white paper advocating military strikes against high-value cartel targets on Mexican soil, modeled after Plan Colombia.\n- Mexico's 2006 military crackdown under President Calderón shattered cartels into smaller gangs that launched brutal turf wars, increasing rather than decreasing violence.\n- Plan Colombia spent $10 billion and successfully dismantled the Medellin and Cali cartels, but simply shifted cocaine trafficking networks northward to Mexican cartels.\n\n## Danger on the Border: How the Proposal Went Mainstream\n\nThe idea of using the military against Mexico's cartels has long kicked around the fringes of American discourse. But in the spring of 2023, it went vaulting into the mainstream. Using the military against Mexico's cartels could turn out to be one of the most complex operations the US military has ever undertaken, far from being a cakewalk. Back in March, former Attorney General William P. Barr wrote in praise of a Joint Resolution in the House of Representatives that would give the president the power to deploy troops in Mexico. A move he claimed was justified by saying: \"These narco-terrorist groups are more like ISIS than like the American mafia.\" A month later, Senator Lindsey Graham hammered the point on Fox: \"We need to put our military into the game to stop this. We are under attack — there are more Americans being killed by Mexican drug cartels than ISIS, al Qaeda, the Germans and Japanese combined on the homeland.\" Nor were Barr and Graham the only ones. Representative Mike Walsh of Florida has called for using drones and cyber capabilities against the cartels. Of the 2024 Republican primary contenders, three have come forward to support similar moves, including Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is no longer a fringe position, but one that has become almost mainstream. A feeling that Mexico cannot handle its own problems has been a feature of American politics for decades. Frustrated with the brutality of cartels, both Barack Obama and George W. Bush seriously considered designating them as foreign terrorist organizations — a move that would give the US wider powers to freeze assets, implement travel bans, and prosecute anyone who materially supports them. In both cases, the plans were abandoned after pushback from the Mexican government. Same deal with Donald Trump. Following the 2019 slaying of nine dual US-Mexican nationals in a burst of gang violence, the president tweeted: \"This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.\" He later clarified he meant slapping them with the terrorist designation. Once again, though, the plan was rejected over the massive damage it would cause US-Mexico relations.\n\n## From Missile Strikes to Battle Plans: The Trump-Era Escalation\n\nThe 45th president's interest in fighting the cartels did not end with the terrorist designation. In the Trump era, issues around the southern border took on massive importance in US political life. This was compounded by a sense that previous policies had failed. Even as Congress beefed up border security and the president promised to build a wall, record amounts of drugs were flowing into US markets. In Mexico, billions of dollars provided by the US had been spent modernizing security, tackling corruption, and funding developments in poorer regions in an attempt to stop migration — an attempt that had broadly failed. Cartel smuggling and illegal migration are two separate issues. Nonetheless, they combined in the popular imagination to give a sense that the southern border was in crisis, that these were extraordinary times, and that extraordinary measures could be justified. The most extraordinary of all came in 2020. According to Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, Trump twice asked him about using missile strikes to destroy drug labs in Mexico. The Washington Post would later drily sum up the defense establishment's response: \"The idea was opposed by the U.S. military.\" There it could have maybe ended — another Trump-era plan, like buying Greenland, that the president hyped for a while before forgetting about altogether. But not this time. Although Trump never ordered the strikes, he seems to have left office bitterly regretting the fact. In April 2023, it was reported he had ordered advisors on his new election campaign to draw up \"battle plans\" to \"attack Mexico\" if he wins. The think tank magazine Responsible Statecraft has claimed these plans \"include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments.\" The former president is backed by the Center for Renewing America, which recently released a white paper on how the US could \"wage war against the cartels.\" Their plan envisages a joint operation with the Mexican government, one that would enable military strikes against high-value targets on Mexican soil — like how Plan Colombia saw Bogota and Washington work together to destroy coca fields. The trouble is, there is no sign the Mexican government is willing to get involved. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has lashed out at the proposals, calling them \"irresponsible.\" On the American side, Gen. Mark Milley cautioned: \"I wouldn't recommend anything be done without Mexico's support.\" Buried in the Center for Renewing America's paper is the phrase: \"It is vital that Mexico not be led to believe that they have veto power to prevent the US from taking the actions necessary to secure its borders and people.\" That implies a future president should be willing to take unilateral action against the cartels, bombing them even if it causes a major diplomatic incident.\n\n## America's Fentanyl Crisis: The Desperation Behind the Proposal\n\nTo understand the feelings behind this proposal — the feelings of despair and hopelessness that would make such extreme action seem justified — it is necessary to understand America's greatest modern crisis: opioids. Every single year, the US loses the equivalent of a small city's worth of lives to drug overdoses. In 2021, some 107,000 Americans died this way. In the vast majority of cases, the drug responsible was a form of opioid. Just thirteen years ago, heroin was, for decades, the choice of opioid for users across America, and responsible for most overdoses. Around 2010, though, heroin began to drop out of favor. A new wave of synthetic opioids — drugs that can be up to 100 times stronger than morphine — came into place. The most popular of all is fentanyl. Originally synthesized back in the 1960s, small amounts of fentanyl are still used today in medical settings for vital treatments. Mostly, though, fentanyl gets used in modern America by people who have acquired it in illegal ways. Many are people who got addicted to other opioids in the era when unscrupulous pharma companies were pushing them as cure-alls for chronic pain. The vast majority — around 70 percent — are non-Hispanic whites. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, opioids kill about 1,500 Americans every week. Roughly two thirds are caused by synthetic opioids, which in most cases means fentanyl. These are stratospheric numbers. The Washington Post has calculated that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18–49. The Council on Foreign Relations, meanwhile, estimates nearly a million people have been killed by opioid overdoses since 2000 — a death toll on a par with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a death toll that is also rising. Drug overdoses in the US have quadrupled since 2010, with the biggest spike coming in the last couple of years. Perhaps it is no wonder Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas recently called fentanyl \"the single greatest challenge we face as a country.\" The fentanyl crisis is directly relevant to the military intervention debate because of where the drug is produced and how it is getting into the country. Last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized fifty million fake prescription pills containing fentanyl at the borders. Most were intercepted not at shipping ports, but at land crossings with Mexico. The Washington Post reports fentanyl seizures on the southern border have tripled since 2020. As recently as 2019, over fifty percent of fentanyl was shipped to the US from China. Now, US officials believe most of it is being produced in Mexico and shipped north by cartels. As the DEA put it in a December press conference, most fentanyl \"is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China.\" Mexico disputes these claims. President López Obrador has said the drug is still being manufactured in Asia, and that Mexican cartels are only involved in shipping it. But not according to American intelligence. The cartels are now the main producers and suppliers, feeding a bottomless market of Americans who each year spend over $153 billion on illegal drugs.\n\n## Historical Lessons: Colombia, Afghanistan, and Mexico's Own Drug War\n\nEvery year in Mexico, roughly 30,000 people are murdered. Staggering numbers are linked to the country's gangs. Law enforcement, students, journalists, activists, politicians — the list of those targeted by the cartels is long, grim, and unrelenting, a grimness compounded by the sadistic methods gang members often employ. With statistics like this in mind, one might think that ordinary Mexicans would welcome an intervention. But Mexican history is alive with periods when the United States came stomping in, only to leave chaos in its wake. The military journal Small Wars put it: \"The Mexican-American War, Punitive Expedition, cross border raids, and the occupation of Veracruz are footnotes in US history books, but they are key components of the Mexican national narrative.\" The majority of Mexicans are unlikely to see an American assault on cartels in a particularly rosy light, especially given the ongoing catastrophe that is the Mexican Drug War. Back in 2006, President Felipe Calderón initiated a military crackdown on what were then some of the biggest cartels — chief among them Los Zetas. Initially, it seemed like the policy could be called a success. Cartel leaders were killed, their deputies arrested, and scores of criminal networks smashed by land, air, and maritime units. But then a funny thing happened. War on the Rocks records: \"Instead of destroying these organizations, violence rose precipitously, and spread beyond targeted communities.\" Drug trafficking — including into the US — continued as before. Rather than break, the cartels simply shattered into smaller gangs that then began brutal turf wars to take control of newly contested territory. The experience of the Mexican military is a major reason analysts are skeptical an American initiative will achieve different results, especially when the US has its own recent track record in failing to curb drug gangs. Between 2017 and 2019, the Defense Department oversaw a massive campaign to end Taliban drug production in Afghanistan. Special forces were sent in to disrupt trafficking networks. Airstrikes blasted drug labs into flaming ruins. Yet the drugs never stopped flowing. Opium production increased. All this is not to say there are no examples of US firepower breaking powerful cartels. Washington once helped smash the biggest of them all. At their height, the Medellin and Cali cartels were like nothing else on Earth. Not only were they turning incredible profits shipping cocaine into the US, but they had managed to put Colombian society into a stranglehold. Political figures sat in their pockets. Security services were bought off. It was only thanks to American largesse that the two gangs were smashed. A follow-up initiative, Plan Colombia, spent $10 billion to help the Colombian state increase stability and take out leftist guerilla organizations that had moved into narcotic trafficking. From a Colombian perspective, the plan was mostly a success. The country became a safer place during the Plan Colombia years, and the Medellin and Cali cartels no longer exist in any significant way. From an American perspective, though, the plan might have to be called a failure. Rather than end cocaine production and shipments into the United States, it simply shifted the networks north. Mexican cartels moved in to replace Colombian ones. Is there any reason to think smashing Mexico's cartels with brute firepower would have a different outcome? Probably not.\n\n## Practical Barriers: Why Targeting the Cartels Is Fiendishly Difficult\n\nWhen one really starts to dig down into the ramifications of this plan, it becomes clear there are serious practical barriers. Anyone embarking on even a limited military operation needs to think things through, to make contingency plans, to identify targets. It is at this point that the first speed bump emerges. Even finding targets in such a mission would be fraught with danger. Speaking to the Washington Post, Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, outlined the ways cartels integrate into local communities. \"The traffickers aren't small, isolated groups of outsiders,\" the Post reported him saying, \"but people rooted in their communities with ties to local and national politicians, as well as security forces and business leaders.\" To take them out, he noted, \"you'd have to bomb the whole area.\" This gets at the inherent problem with fighting any gang. Rather than soldiers in uniforms, they are often members of the communities one is trying to protect. The Small Wars Journal has argued that we should stop thinking about cartels as unified structures, and instead try to see them as \"a transnational network of smaller and relatively independent businesses operating horizontally.\" This means there is a lot of room in the system for adaptability. Take out a leader, and the system works around their death. Blow up a bunch of drug factories, and the remaining links in the chain reorientate themselves to wherever the market provides opportunities. Speaking of blowing up drug factories, that too presents a fiendish challenge. Those who advocate bombing fentanyl production centers probably have in mind something like the Colombian cocaine factories of the past — sprawling places that can be quickly identified via satellite or located with drones. Fentanyl production, though, is far harder to spot. The Post states: \"Fentanyl labs are often small and simple. They don't emit heat signatures, chemical fumes, or powerful odors, as methamphetamine labs do. Fentanyl can be made with small amounts of chemicals in kitchens, basements, or garages.\" Missile strikes, then, might be off the table. It is one thing to demolish a factory way out in the countryside. Another to hit a random house in a small Mexican town — even if one is one hundred percent sure it is churning out opioids. Another part of the proposed plans is the potential to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Yet even this would not be straightforward. The US legal definition of terrorism is: \"Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.\" The key part there is \"politically motivated.\" As War on the Rocks has argued: \"Mexican drug cartels are not terrorists or insurgents because their goal is to maximize profit, not fundamentally change society and politics.\"\n\n## Mexico's Firm Opposition and the Economic Stakes\n\nReally, though, none of this matters when placed against the most obvious obstacle of all: the lack of consent from the Mexican government. Without that, any adventure south of the border would be doomed from the start. The oddest part of the discussion about war with the cartels is that it routinely ignores what Mexico has to say. This is not because the Mexican government is being cagey about its opinions or sending out mixed signals. They have repeatedly, loudly made it clear that this would be unacceptable. Marcelo Ebrard, who was Secretary of Foreign Affairs until he recently resigned to run for president, said of the idea of American military intervention in his nation: \"In one act, you'd destroy all the security cooperation between Mexico and the United States.\" That is a straightforward assessment, and it is likely widely shared. The Mexican government has previously retaliated over much smaller things than missile strikes. Just the act of designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations has caused huge diplomatic headaches. There is a reason Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump all quietly dropped the idea. More concretely, there is the recent case of Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. In 2020, the DEA arrested him in Los Angeles on suspicion of drug trafficking. The issue: Cienfuegos is a former Mexican defense secretary. When President López Obrador found out, he blew his top. Since then — despite Cienfuegos being freed — Mexico has limited cooperation with the DEA, arguing it violates national sovereignty. This is a much smaller infraction on America's part than cruise missiles hitting a site of fentanyl production, or US special forces conducting raids on Mexican soil. As Small Wars wrote, this is even more true now than it was previously. A big thing in politics at the moment is the idea of \"nearshoring\" — returning crucial parts of supply chains from adversary nations like China to nearby partners like Canada or Mexico. Undertake unilateral military action, and that all blows up. At a bare minimum, bilateral trade with Mexico would completely break down, scrambling supply chains and handing a huge advantage to America's competitors. The journal Responsible Statecraft succinctly put it: \"The economic ramifications of invading one's second largest trading partner would be uniformly unpleasant. Our relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America would not recover in our lifetimes.\"\n\n## What a Realistic Intervention Might Look Like — and Why It Still Would Not Solve the Crisis\n\nAssume that war with the cartels becomes official Republican policy in 2024. Assume, too, that a change in Mexican politics leads to the faintest possibility of joint military action. What would that action look like? Although they are almost unanimously against strikes, the one thing military analysts seem to agree on is that fighting the cartels will only be possible with Mexico onside. If the government somehow comes around to Washington's way of thinking, then it might be possible to stitch together a successful intervention. Like Plan Colombia, it would likely involve the US donating large amounts of money and equipment to the Mexican military and working with them to achieve very specific outcomes. That might include a combination of American and Mexican special forces cooperating to dismantle the most violent, most destabilizing cartels. Or it could be even smaller — a period of behavior modification where crackdowns are used to threaten the cartels into curbing their worst excesses. The Small Wars journal suggested: \"The most promising approach would be a sequential, focused, and systematic targeting strategy aimed at cartel behavior modification.\" That is a lot less dramatic than sending cruise missiles smashing into drug labs, but it is also more likely to succeed — not in ridding Mexico of the cartels, but in weakening their grip on certain regions, in forcing them to play nicer and commit fewer utterly egregious acts of violence. The plus side is that it would require little in the way of an American military footprint. Working with and through the Mexican military would be the priority, limiting US involvement to intelligence and occasional deployment of special forces. The downside is that such an approach is unlikely to end the fentanyl crisis. While it would probably disrupt drug trafficking routes for a period, the cartels would eventually adjust. Per Responsible Statecraft: \"Even if such an operation somehow succeeded, it would not stop the flow of drugs into the United States. The sad truth is that there will never be an end to the drug trade as long as Americans are willing to spend exceptional amounts of money to get high.\" The other model envisages America going in without Mexico's consent: either in the form of airstrikes or conducting cross-border raids. Even ignoring the damage this would do to the US-Mexico relationship, this approach would likely end in disaster. There is little chance gang members would stand around waiting for Uncle Sam to arrive. Instead, they would evaporate back into the communities they came from, disguising themselves as civilians until the danger was over. This same dynamic played out in Afghanistan, and it is a central reason the US never managed to crush the Taliban despite a two-decade occupation. Not that occupation would be an option here. No matter what else changes, there is zero chance Mexico's government will accept American troops occupying its states, setting up roadblocks and hunting for cartel members among the civilian population. Airstrikes and drone attacks, too, come with their own set of problems. Such strikes could very well kill civilians — as was seen happen on multiple occasions in Afghanistan. Those accidents caused outrage in Kabul, but since the government was being propped up by the US troop presence, it was not as though they could kick the Americans out. Mexico has no such considerations. The moment a single civilian was killed, all hell would break loose. And Mexico is simply too important an economic and diplomatic partner for Congress to just shrug. While decades of over-the-horizon strikes in places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan may have given the impression that the US can do such things with impunity, that would not be the case below the border. At absolute best, it would create the mother of all diplomatic crises. At worst, it could destroy relations between the US and Mexico for decades to come. At the end of all that, the broad opinion of the defense establishment holds: going to war with the cartels without Mexico's approval would be a really bad idea. It is awful that cartel-aligned policemen can disappear 43 innocent students, that drug dealers can become staggeringly wealthy presiding over an empire of horrors. But military power has its limits. The sovereignty and dignity of Mexico is as important to protect as that of America. It may be that there is an unorthodox way to deal with the cartel problem that will work. But these plans are not it. And it is only once their flaws are accepted that people might begin looking for a truly workable solution to this pressing problem.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### Why has military intervention against Mexican cartels become a mainstream political proposal in the United States?\n\nThe proposal gained mainstream momentum in spring 2023, driven by the scale of America's fentanyl crisis. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, opioids kill about 1,500 Americans every week, and the Washington Post calculated that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49. American officials believe most fentanyl is now produced in Mexico and shipped north by cartels, prompting figures including former Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham to publicly call for military action and compare the cartels to ISIS.\n\n### What happened when President Trump asked about missile strikes on Mexican drug labs?\n\nAccording to Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, Trump twice asked in 2020 about using missile strikes to destroy drug laboratories in Mexico. The Washington Post reported the idea was opposed by the US military, and no strikes were ordered. After leaving office, Trump reportedly directed campaign advisors to draw up battle plans to attack Mexico if he won a second term, with plans including unilateral military strikes and troop deployments.\n\n### What does Mexico's own 2006 military crackdown teach about the limits of cartel-busting?\n\nPresident Felipe Calderón launched a military campaign against major cartels including Los Zetas in 2006. Initially it appeared successful, with cartel leaders killed and networks smashed. But rather than destroying the organizations, the violence rose steeply and spread beyond targeted communities. Cartels simply fractured into smaller gangs that launched brutal turf wars over newly contested territory while drug trafficking into the US continued as before. The experience is a central reason analysts are skeptical that American military force would produce different results.\n\n### Why would targeting cartel drug factories with airstrikes be so difficult in practice?\n\nUnlike Colombian cocaine factories — sprawling facilities detectable by satellite or drone — fentanyl labs are typically small and simple. They emit no heat signatures, chemical fumes, or powerful odors and can be operated in kitchens, basements, or garages. The drug can be produced with small amounts of chemicals almost anywhere. Beyond the targeting problem, as the International Crisis Group's Mexico analyst noted, cartels are not isolated outsider groups but people deeply embedded in communities with ties to local politicians, security forces, and business leaders, making surgical strikes on production sites without mass civilian harm essentially impossible.\n\n### Why is Mexico's consent the single largest obstacle to any military intervention?\n\nMexico has made clear through repeated official statements that it would consider American military action on its soil an unacceptable violation of sovereignty. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard said such an intervention would destroy all security cooperation between the two countries. Beyond diplomatic damage, Mexico is the United States' second-largest trading partner, and the journal Responsible Statecraft argued that the economic fallout of invading a major trading partner would be uniformly unpleasant and that US relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America would not recover in a generation. Gen. Mark Milley also cautioned that he would not recommend action without Mexico's support.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [The US Navy SEALs: Origins, Evolution, and Modern Operations](https://warfronts.pub/special-operations/us-navy-seals-origins-and-evolution)\n- [The Dark History & Future of Biological Warfare](https://warfronts.pub/defense/the-art-of-war-biological-warfare)\n- [ISIS Killed Three Americans in Syria: Inside the Islamic State's Dangerous Resurgence](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/isis-killed-three-americans-syria-resurgence)\n- [Why Did Russia Abandon Venezuela? Analyzing the US Operation That Toppled Maduro](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/why-russia-abandoned-venezuela-us-operation-maduro)\n- [America’s Middle East Peace Plan: Can It End the War?](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/americas-middle-east-peace-plan-can-it-end-the-war)\n\n## Sources\n1. \n2. \n3. \n4. \n5. \n6. \n7. \n8. \n9. \n\n[1]: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/perspective-war-cartels-more-complicated-it-sounds\n[2]: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/perspective-myth-mexican-cartels\n[3]: https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/mexican-drug-cartels-are-violent-but-theyre-not-terrorists/\n[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/29/mexico-us-fentanyl/\n[5]: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/fentanyl-and-us-opioid-epidemic\n[6]: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/04/03/ripping-up-trumps-battle-plan-of-attack-on-mexicos-cartels/\n[7]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-mexico-military-cartels-war-on-drugs-1234705804/\n[8]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-shouldnt-use-the-military-to-fight-mexicos-drug-cartels\n[9]: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/gop-bomb-mexico-fentanyl-00091132\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/could-america-go-to-war-with-mexicos-cartels.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/could-america-go-to-war-with-mexicos-cartels datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/wDX9VYaQ7Gg/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 3f3352aa88f8fbc22de178889e47f3f85720ad438bd5e916009748d317fa8b94 tokens: 7538 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/could-america-go-to-war-with-mexicos-cartels.md.summary.md --- It is one of the most controversial policy proposals in years — an idea that, if carried out, would have ramifications for the whole of North America. Since the spring of 2023, there has been a steady drumbeat on parts of the American right for military intervention in Mexico: using special forces, sophisticated cyber tools, or even missiles to target cartels. The goal is to destroy drug laboratories and cripple the ability of gangs to create fentanyl, a drug that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. In defense circles, the plan is unpopular. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley has taken great pains to discourage it. Yet this may not ultimately matter. With the 2024 election on the horizon, multiple Republican candidates have expressed a desire to intervene in Mexico. In Congress, bills have been put forward to authorize action against the cartels. Should the GOP win big, it is possible military intervention could take place. ## Key Takeaways - Former Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham have publicly endorsed military action against Mexican cartels, comparing them to ISIS. - Secretary of Defense Mike Esper revealed that Trump twice asked about using missile strikes to destroy drug labs in Mexico in 2020, an idea the military opposed. - Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-49, with opioids killing about 1,500 Americans every week according to the National Center for Health Statistics. - The Center for Renewing America released a white paper advocating military strikes against high-value cartel targets on Mexican soil, modeled after Plan Colombia. - Mexico's 2006 military crackdown under President Calderón shattered cartels into smaller gangs that launched brutal turf wars, increasing rather than decreasing violence. - Plan Colombia spent $10 billion and successfully dismantled the Medellin and Cali cartels, but simply shifted cocaine trafficking networks northward to Mexican cartels. ## Danger on the Border: How the Proposal Went Mainstream The idea of using the military against Mexico's cartels has long kicked around the fringes of American discourse. But in the spring of 2023, it went vaulting into the mainstream. Using the military against Mexico's cartels could turn out to be one of the most complex operations the US military has ever undertaken, far from being a cakewalk. Back in March, former Attorney General William P. Barr wrote in praise of a Joint Resolution in the House of Representatives that would give the president the power to deploy troops in Mexico. A move he claimed was justified by saying: "These narco-terrorist groups are more like ISIS than like the American mafia." A month later, Senator Lindsey Graham hammered the point on Fox: "We need to put our military into the game to stop this. We are under attack — there are more Americans being killed by Mexican drug cartels than ISIS, al Qaeda, the Germans and Japanese combined on the homeland." Nor were Barr and Graham the only ones. Representative Mike Walsh of Florida has called for using drones and cyber capabilities against the cartels. Of the 2024 Republican primary contenders, three have come forward to support similar moves, including Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is no longer a fringe position, but one that has become almost mainstream. A feeling that Mexico cannot handle its own problems has been a feature of American politics for decades. Frustrated with the brutality of cartels, both Barack Obama and George W. Bush seriously considered designating them as foreign terrorist organizations — a move that would give the US wider powers to freeze assets, implement travel bans, and prosecute anyone who materially supports them. In both cases, the plans were abandoned after pushback from the Mexican government. Same deal with Donald Trump. Following the 2019 slaying of nine dual US-Mexican nationals in a burst of gang violence, the president tweeted: "This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth." He later clarified he meant slapping them with the terrorist designation. Once again, though, the plan was rejected over the massive damage it would cause US-Mexico relations. ## From Missile Strikes to Battle Plans: The Trump-Era Escalation The 45th president's interest in fighting the cartels did not end with the terrorist designation. In the Trump era, issues around the southern border took on massive importance in US political life. This was compounded by a sense that previous policies had failed. Even as Congress beefed up border security and the president promised to build a wall, record amounts of drugs were flowing into US markets. In Mexico, billions of dollars provided by the US had been spent modernizing security, tackling corruption, and funding developments in poorer regions in an attempt to stop migration — an attempt that had broadly failed. Cartel smuggling and illegal migration are two separate issues. Nonetheless, they combined in the popular imagination to give a sense that the southern border was in crisis, that these were extraordinary times, and that extraordinary measures could be justified. The most extraordinary of all came in 2020. According to Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, Trump twice asked him about using missile strikes to destroy drug labs in Mexico. The Washington Post would later drily sum up the defense establishment's response: "The idea was opposed by the U.S. military." There it could have maybe ended — another Trump-era plan, like buying Greenland, that the president hyped for a while before forgetting about altogether. But not this time. Although Trump never ordered the strikes, he seems to have left office bitterly regretting the fact. In April 2023, it was reported he had ordered advisors on his new election campaign to draw up "battle plans" to "attack Mexico" if he wins. The think tank magazine Responsible Statecraft has claimed these plans "include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments." The former president is backed by the Center for Renewing America, which recently released a white paper on how the US could "wage war against the cartels." Their plan envisages a joint operation with the Mexican government, one that would enable military strikes against high-value targets on Mexican soil — like how Plan Colombia saw Bogota and Washington work together to destroy coca fields. The trouble is, there is no sign the Mexican government is willing to get involved. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has lashed out at the proposals, calling them "irresponsible." On the American side, Gen. Mark Milley cautioned: "I wouldn't recommend anything be done without Mexico's support." Buried in the Center for Renewing America's paper is the phrase: "It is vital that Mexico not be led to believe that they have veto power to prevent the US from taking the actions necessary to secure its borders and people." That implies a future president should be willing to take unilateral action against the cartels, bombing them even if it causes a major diplomatic incident. ## America's Fentanyl Crisis: The Desperation Behind the Proposal To understand the feelings behind this proposal — the feelings of despair and hopelessness that would make such extreme action seem justified — it is necessary to understand America's greatest modern crisis: opioids. Every single year, the US loses the equivalent of a small city's worth of lives to drug overdoses. In 2021, some 107,000 Americans died this way. In the vast majority of cases, the drug responsible was a form of opioid. Just thirteen years ago, heroin was, for decades, the choice of opioid for users across America, and responsible for most overdoses. Around 2010, though, heroin began to drop out of favor. A new wave of synthetic opioids — drugs that can be up to 100 times stronger than morphine — came into place. The most popular of all is fentanyl. Originally synthesized back in the 1960s, small amounts of fentanyl are still used today in medical settings for vital treatments. Mostly, though, fentanyl gets used in modern America by people who have acquired it in illegal ways. Many are people who got addicted to other opioids in the era when unscrupulous pharma companies were pushing them as cure-alls for chronic pain. The vast majority — around 70 percent — are non-Hispanic whites. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, opioids kill about 1,500 Americans every week. Roughly two thirds are caused by synthetic opioids, which in most cases means fentanyl. These are stratospheric numbers. The Washington Post has calculated that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18–49. The Council on Foreign Relations, meanwhile, estimates nearly a million people have been killed by opioid overdoses since 2000 — a death toll on a par with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a death toll that is also rising. Drug overdoses in the US have quadrupled since 2010, with the biggest spike coming in the last couple of years. Perhaps it is no wonder Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas recently called fentanyl "the single greatest challenge we face as a country." The fentanyl crisis is directly relevant to the military intervention debate because of where the drug is produced and how it is getting into the country. Last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized fifty million fake prescription pills containing fentanyl at the borders. Most were intercepted not at shipping ports, but at land crossings with Mexico. The Washington Post reports fentanyl seizures on the southern border have tripled since 2020. As recently as 2019, over fifty percent of fentanyl was shipped to the US from China. Now, US officials believe most of it is being produced in Mexico and shipped north by cartels. As the DEA put it in a December press conference, most fentanyl "is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China." Mexico disputes these claims. President López Obrador has said the drug is still being manufactured in Asia, and that Mexican cartels are only involved in shipping it. But not according to American intelligence. The cartels are now the main producers and suppliers, feeding a bottomless market of Americans who each year spend over $153 billion on illegal drugs. ## Historical Lessons: Colombia, Afghanistan, and Mexico's Own Drug War Every year in Mexico, roughly 30,000 people are murdered. Staggering numbers are linked to the country's gangs. Law enforcement, students, journalists, activists, politicians — the list of those targeted by the cartels is long, grim, and unrelenting, a grimness compounded by the sadistic methods gang members often employ. With statistics like this in mind, one might think that ordinary Mexicans would welcome an intervention. But Mexican history is alive with periods when the United States came stomping in, only to leave chaos in its wake. The military journal Small Wars put it: "The Mexican-American War, Punitive Expedition, cross border raids, and the occupation of Veracruz are footnotes in US history books, but they are key components of the Mexican national narrative." The majority of Mexicans are unlikely to see an American assault on cartels in a particularly rosy light, especially given the ongoing catastrophe that is the Mexican Drug War. Back in 2006, President Felipe Calderón initiated a military crackdown on what were then some of the biggest cartels — chief among them Los Zetas. Initially, it seemed like the policy could be called a success. Cartel leaders were killed, their deputies arrested, and scores of criminal networks smashed by land, air, and maritime units. But then a funny thing happened. War on the Rocks records: "Instead of destroying these organizations, violence rose precipitously, and spread beyond targeted communities." Drug trafficking — including into the US — continued as before. Rather than break, the cartels simply shattered into smaller gangs that then began brutal turf wars to take control of newly contested territory. The experience of the Mexican military is a major reason analysts are skeptical an American initiative will achieve different results, especially when the US has its own recent track record in failing to curb drug gangs. Between 2017 and 2019, the Defense Department oversaw a massive campaign to end Taliban drug production in Afghanistan. Special forces were sent in to disrupt trafficking networks. Airstrikes blasted drug labs into flaming ruins. Yet the drugs never stopped flowing. Opium production increased. All this is not to say there are no examples of US firepower breaking powerful cartels. Washington once helped smash the biggest of them all. At their height, the Medellin and Cali cartels were like nothing else on Earth. Not only were they turning incredible profits shipping cocaine into the US, but they had managed to put Colombian society into a stranglehold. Political figures sat in their pockets. Security services were bought off. It was only thanks to American largesse that the two gangs were smashed. A follow-up initiative, Plan Colombia, spent $10 billion to help the Colombian state increase stability and take out leftist guerilla organizations that had moved into narcotic trafficking. From a Colombian perspective, the plan was mostly a success. The country became a safer place during the Plan Colombia years, and the Medellin and Cali cartels no longer exist in any significant way. From an American perspective, though, the plan might have to be called a failure. Rather than end cocaine production and shipments into the United States, it simply shifted the networks north. Mexican cartels moved in to replace Colombian ones. Is there any reason to think smashing Mexico's cartels with brute firepower would have a different outcome? Probably not. ## Practical Barriers: Why Targeting the Cartels Is Fiendishly Difficult When one really starts to dig down into the ramifications of this plan, it becomes clear there are serious practical barriers. Anyone embarking on even a limited military operation needs to think things through, to make contingency plans, to identify targets. It is at this point that the first speed bump emerges. Even finding targets in such a mission would be fraught with danger. Speaking to the Washington Post, Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, outlined the ways cartels integrate into local communities. "The traffickers aren't small, isolated groups of outsiders," the Post reported him saying, "but people rooted in their communities with ties to local and national politicians, as well as security forces and business leaders." To take them out, he noted, "you'd have to bomb the whole area." This gets at the inherent problem with fighting any gang. Rather than soldiers in uniforms, they are often members of the communities one is trying to protect. The Small Wars Journal has argued that we should stop thinking about cartels as unified structures, and instead try to see them as "a transnational network of smaller and relatively independent businesses operating horizontally." This means there is a lot of room in the system for adaptability. Take out a leader, and the system works around their death. Blow up a bunch of drug factories, and the remaining links in the chain reorientate themselves to wherever the market provides opportunities. Speaking of blowing up drug factories, that too presents a fiendish challenge. Those who advocate bombing fentanyl production centers probably have in mind something like the Colombian cocaine factories of the past — sprawling places that can be quickly identified via satellite or located with drones. Fentanyl production, though, is far harder to spot. The Post states: "Fentanyl labs are often small and simple. They don't emit heat signatures, chemical fumes, or powerful odors, as methamphetamine labs do. Fentanyl can be made with small amounts of chemicals in kitchens, basements, or garages." Missile strikes, then, might be off the table. It is one thing to demolish a factory way out in the countryside. Another to hit a random house in a small Mexican town — even if one is one hundred percent sure it is churning out opioids. Another part of the proposed plans is the potential to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Yet even this would not be straightforward. The US legal definition of terrorism is: "Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." The key part there is "politically motivated." As War on the Rocks has argued: "Mexican drug cartels are not terrorists or insurgents because their goal is to maximize profit, not fundamentally change society and politics." ## Mexico's Firm Opposition and the Economic Stakes Really, though, none of this matters when placed against the most obvious obstacle of all: the lack of consent from the Mexican government. Without that, any adventure south of the border would be doomed from the start. The oddest part of the discussion about war with the cartels is that it routinely ignores what Mexico has to say. This is not because the Mexican government is being cagey about its opinions or sending out mixed signals. They have repeatedly, loudly made it clear that this would be unacceptable. Marcelo Ebrard, who was Secretary of Foreign Affairs until he recently resigned to run for president, said of the idea of American military intervention in his nation: "In one act, you'd destroy all the security cooperation between Mexico and the United States." That is a straightforward assessment, and it is likely widely shared. The Mexican government has previously retaliated over much smaller things than missile strikes. Just the act of designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations has caused huge diplomatic headaches. There is a reason Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump all quietly dropped the idea. More concretely, there is the recent case of Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. In 2020, the DEA arrested him in Los Angeles on suspicion of drug trafficking. The issue: Cienfuegos is a former Mexican defense secretary. When President López Obrador found out, he blew his top. Since then — despite Cienfuegos being freed — Mexico has limited cooperation with the DEA, arguing it violates national sovereignty. This is a much smaller infraction on America's part than cruise missiles hitting a site of fentanyl production, or US special forces conducting raids on Mexican soil. As Small Wars wrote, this is even more true now than it was previously. A big thing in politics at the moment is the idea of "nearshoring" — returning crucial parts of supply chains from adversary nations like China to nearby partners like Canada or Mexico. Undertake unilateral military action, and that all blows up. At a bare minimum, bilateral trade with Mexico would completely break down, scrambling supply chains and handing a huge advantage to America's competitors. The journal Responsible Statecraft succinctly put it: "The economic ramifications of invading one's second largest trading partner would be uniformly unpleasant. Our relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America would not recover in our lifetimes." ## What a Realistic Intervention Might Look Like — and Why It Still Would Not Solve the Crisis Assume that war with the cartels becomes official Republican policy in 2024. Assume, too, that a change in Mexican politics leads to the faintest possibility of joint military action. What would that action look like? Although they are almost unanimously against strikes, the one thing military analysts seem to agree on is that fighting the cartels will only be possible with Mexico onside. If the government somehow comes around to Washington's way of thinking, then it might be possible to stitch together a successful intervention. Like Plan Colombia, it would likely involve the US donating large amounts of money and equipment to the Mexican military and working with them to achieve very specific outcomes. That might include a combination of American and Mexican special forces cooperating to dismantle the most violent, most destabilizing cartels. Or it could be even smaller — a period of behavior modification where crackdowns are used to threaten the cartels into curbing their worst excesses. The Small Wars journal suggested: "The most promising approach would be a sequential, focused, and systematic targeting strategy aimed at cartel behavior modification." That is a lot less dramatic than sending cruise missiles smashing into drug labs, but it is also more likely to succeed — not in ridding Mexico of the cartels, but in weakening their grip on certain regions, in forcing them to play nicer and commit fewer utterly egregious acts of violence. The plus side is that it would require little in the way of an American military footprint. Working with and through the Mexican military would be the priority, limiting US involvement to intelligence and occasional deployment of special forces. The downside is that such an approach is unlikely to end the fentanyl crisis. While it would probably disrupt drug trafficking routes for a period, the cartels would eventually adjust. Per Responsible Statecraft: "Even if such an operation somehow succeeded, it would not stop the flow of drugs into the United States. The sad truth is that there will never be an end to the drug trade as long as Americans are willing to spend exceptional amounts of money to get high." The other model envisages America going in without Mexico's consent: either in the form of airstrikes or conducting cross-border raids. Even ignoring the damage this would do to the US-Mexico relationship, this approach would likely end in disaster. There is little chance gang members would stand around waiting for Uncle Sam to arrive. Instead, they would evaporate back into the communities they came from, disguising themselves as civilians until the danger was over. This same dynamic played out in Afghanistan, and it is a central reason the US never managed to crush the Taliban despite a two-decade occupation. Not that occupation would be an option here. No matter what else changes, there is zero chance Mexico's government will accept American troops occupying its states, setting up roadblocks and hunting for cartel members among the civilian population. Airstrikes and drone attacks, too, come with their own set of problems. Such strikes could very well kill civilians — as was seen happen on multiple occasions in Afghanistan. Those accidents caused outrage in Kabul, but since the government was being propped up by the US troop presence, it was not as though they could kick the Americans out. Mexico has no such considerations. The moment a single civilian was killed, all hell would break loose. And Mexico is simply too important an economic and diplomatic partner for Congress to just shrug. While decades of over-the-horizon strikes in places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan may have given the impression that the US can do such things with impunity, that would not be the case below the border. At absolute best, it would create the mother of all diplomatic crises. At worst, it could destroy relations between the US and Mexico for decades to come. At the end of all that, the broad opinion of the defense establishment holds: going to war with the cartels without Mexico's approval would be a really bad idea. It is awful that cartel-aligned policemen can disappear 43 innocent students, that drug dealers can become staggeringly wealthy presiding over an empire of horrors. But military power has its limits. The sovereignty and dignity of Mexico is as important to protect as that of America. It may be that there is an unorthodox way to deal with the cartel problem that will work. But these plans are not it. And it is only once their flaws are accepted that people might begin looking for a truly workable solution to this pressing problem. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why has military intervention against Mexican cartels become a mainstream political proposal in the United States? The proposal gained mainstream momentum in spring 2023, driven by the scale of America's fentanyl crisis. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, opioids kill about 1,500 Americans every week, and the Washington Post calculated that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49. American officials believe most fentanyl is now produced in Mexico and shipped north by cartels, prompting figures including former Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham to publicly call for military action and compare the cartels to ISIS. ### What happened when President Trump asked about missile strikes on Mexican drug labs? According to Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, Trump twice asked in 2020 about using missile strikes to destroy drug laboratories in Mexico. The Washington Post reported the idea was opposed by the US military, and no strikes were ordered. After leaving office, Trump reportedly directed campaign advisors to draw up battle plans to attack Mexico if he won a second term, with plans including unilateral military strikes and troop deployments. ### What does Mexico's own 2006 military crackdown teach about the limits of cartel-busting? President Felipe Calderón launched a military campaign against major cartels including Los Zetas in 2006. Initially it appeared successful, with cartel leaders killed and networks smashed. But rather than destroying the organizations, the violence rose steeply and spread beyond targeted communities. Cartels simply fractured into smaller gangs that launched brutal turf wars over newly contested territory while drug trafficking into the US continued as before. The experience is a central reason analysts are skeptical that American military force would produce different results. ### Why would targeting cartel drug factories with airstrikes be so difficult in practice? Unlike Colombian cocaine factories — sprawling facilities detectable by satellite or drone — fentanyl labs are typically small and simple. They emit no heat signatures, chemical fumes, or powerful odors and can be operated in kitchens, basements, or garages. The drug can be produced with small amounts of chemicals almost anywhere. Beyond the targeting problem, as the International Crisis Group's Mexico analyst noted, cartels are not isolated outsider groups but people deeply embedded in communities with ties to local politicians, security forces, and business leaders, making surgical strikes on production sites without mass civilian harm essentially impossible. ### Why is Mexico's consent the single largest obstacle to any military intervention? Mexico has made clear through repeated official statements that it would consider American military action on its soil an unacceptable violation of sovereignty. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard said such an intervention would destroy all security cooperation between the two countries. Beyond diplomatic damage, Mexico is the United States' second-largest trading partner, and the journal Responsible Statecraft argued that the economic fallout of invading a major trading partner would be uniformly unpleasant and that US relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America would not recover in a generation. Gen. Mark Milley also cautioned that he would not recommend action without Mexico's support. ## Related Coverage - [The US Navy SEALs: Origins, Evolution, and Modern Operations](https://warfronts.pub/special-operations/us-navy-seals-origins-and-evolution) - [The Dark History & Future of Biological Warfare](https://warfronts.pub/defense/the-art-of-war-biological-warfare) - [ISIS Killed Three Americans in Syria: Inside the Islamic State's Dangerous Resurgence](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/isis-killed-three-americans-syria-resurgence) - [Why Did Russia Abandon Venezuela? Analyzing the US Operation That Toppled Maduro](https://warfronts.pub/geopolitics/why-russia-abandoned-venezuela-us-operation-maduro) - [America’s Middle East Peace Plan: Can It End the War?](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/americas-middle-east-peace-plan-can-it-end-the-war) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. [1]: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/perspective-war-cartels-more-complicated-it-sounds [2]: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/perspective-myth-mexican-cartels [3]: https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/mexican-drug-cartels-are-violent-but-theyre-not-terrorists/ [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/29/mexico-us-fentanyl/ [5]: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/fentanyl-and-us-opioid-epidemic [6]: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/04/03/ripping-up-trumps-battle-plan-of-attack-on-mexicos-cartels/ [7]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-mexico-military-cartels-war-on-drugs-1234705804/ [8]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-shouldnt-use-the-military-to-fight-mexicos-drug-cartels [9]: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/gop-bomb-mexico-fentanyl-00091132 <!-- youtube:wDX9VYaQ7Gg -->