President-elect Donald Trump said he wants to use the United States military to combat Mexican drug cartels, a plan his opponents suggest could exacerbate the border crisis and worsen trade relations with Mexico.
“If the US government sends forces down there surreptitiously, it could go sideways pretty quickly and create a crisis for the Trump administration that could really give his administration a black eye,” Brandan Buck, a foreign policy research fellow at the Cato Institute, told the Washington Examiner.
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As one of his major campaign promises, Trump said he wants to crack down on drug cartels — even going as far as labeling them as “terrorist organizations” so the U.S. can deploy military forces against the drug lords.
Tom Homan — Trump’s appointee to “border czar” — shared on News Nation back in November that he supported Trump in his effort.
“I believe he should, and he will,” Homan. “The reason why they should be designated terrorist organizations is because the criminal cartels in Mexico have killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined.”
Homan went on to cite how more than a quarter of million Americans die from fentanyl poisoning.
Trump’s pick for national security adviser — Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) — coauthored a bill with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that would create “Authorization for Use of Military Force” to go after drug cartels. The bill was introduced last year.
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“It’s time to go on offense,” Waltz said in a statement. “Not only are these paramilitary transnational criminal organizations responsible for killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but are actively undermining our sovereignty by destabilizing our border and waging war against US law enforcement and the Mexican military.”
But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has rejected Trump’s use of U.S. forces against the cartels, calling the strategy “entirely a movie.”
And according to Buck, Trump’s deployment of U.S. military operations into Mexico without permission could really “burn some bridges.”
“If he’s really sincere about wanting to keep a rise in China out of our own backyard, the idea of going into Mexico to fight the cartels puts that project at serious risk,” Buck said. “Not just for Mexico itself, but for the rest of Latin America where memories run very long about the history of the U.S. government and its interventions in Latin America.”
Buck also pointed out that the United States military campaigns in Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan have only exacerbated issues in the country — leading to a refugee crisis.
“God, help us if we got involved in some kind of serious campaign down there,” Buck said. “Wars lead to the displacement of people. That’s almost a constant, of course, not that the cartels aren’t doing that themselves with their own violence, but you have to weigh these things against each other.”
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In fact, Carolyn Gallaher, a professor studying guerrilla and paramilitary violence at American University’s School of International Service, told Rolling Stone magazine that using the military to kill off “capos” will just cause a greater rise in violence.
A prime example of this would be when President George W. Bush backed Mexican President Felipe Caldero in the Mérida Initiative. Also known as Plan Mexico, the partnership between Mexico and the United States began in 2007 and lasted until 2021 to combat drug cartels.
In 2006, Caldero declared a war on cartels — which led to 10,000 homicides in Mexico that year. In 2008, homicides skyrocketed, and since 2016, there have been over 25,000 homicides in Mexico each year. Meanwhile, the flow of drugs into the United States has only increased.
“And that’s what’s happened thus far with Mexico’s own war on drugs,” Buck said. “If they take out cartel leadership, the cartels fracture, and they’re still able to maintain their business, albeit, you know, even more fragmented, but it still hasn’t stopped the flow of drugs.”
In 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 80 million fentanyl-laced fake pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder.
“Fentanyl is so cheap to make,” Buck said. “It’s not like cocaine, and it’s certainly not like traditional opiates, like heroin. So it’s hard to see any kind of military campaign having any real substantive ability to interdict fentanyl into the United States.”
Brandan said that the best bet to combat drug traffickers is to prosecute them to the full extent of the law. And in terms of keeping Americans safe from drug overdoses, policymakers should focus on harm reduction.
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“You have to realize that the war on drugs is probably never going to be fully won,” Buck said. “It could just be assuaged, but using military force in this way would certainly just make it worse.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
