Invading Mexico Will Not Solve the Cartel Problem

In an era of seemingly never-ending foreign and domestic crises, the incoming Trump administration has signaled openness to an idea to tackle an issue that straddles both spheres: the use of military action against Mexican drug cartels. Republican rhetoric on this issue is not new, from the thinly defined plan of “shock and awe” offered by then-presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy to the targeted airstrikes and special operations raids, used “selectively and thoughtfully,” as proposed by the senator-elect from Pennsylvania, David McCormick. 

Muddying the conceptual waters and adding to the overheated rhetoric was Tom Homan, the “border czar” for the incoming Trump administration. During a recent appearance on Fox News, Homan declared that the incoming president “will use [the] full might of the United States special operations to take ’em out.” Such rhetoric presents varying military force levels, often without clear strategic goals or a plausible account of Mexican involvement.

In a seemingly milder form, in 2023, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas proposed a Mexican reboot of “Plan Colombia,” using U.S. military forces partnered with their Mexican counterparts. Yet even Crenshaw, who has denied that his plan for military action in Mexico would constitute an invasion and ridiculed such charges, has agreed that the U.S. government should not take unilateral military force off the table. Crenshaw, along with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), the prospective national security advisor, drafted a vaguely worded and open-ended Authorization for the Use of Military Force against the cartels, which belies the Texan’s denials.

While economic and legal arguments stand arrayed against the idea, it also poses political costs, strategic considerations, and possible tactical dangers. These combined drawbacks should give pause to anyone, including Trump-aligned conservatives.

The further militarization of the war on drugs, especially unilateral military action within Mexico, would jeopardize two of the Trump administration’s big-ticket agenda items: controlling illegal immigration and countering a rising China. Regarding the former, Mexico, like the United States, is straining under mass migration from Central and South America. As political scientist Sarah Zukerman Daly has observed, Mexico and the United States “face increasingly aligned interests on migration,” with the public in each country clamoring for further immigration enforcement. While Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has struck a rhetorically neutral tone on migration and her relationship with the United States, she has signaled a willingness to work with the future Trump administration on migration issues. A military incursion into Mexico would jeopardize the Trump administration’s most crucial bilateral relationship for pursuing his number one domestic agenda item. If history is any guide, a prolonged war on (narco) terror would worsen the migration crisis.

Military incursions into Mexico would similarly risk undermining another agenda item of the forthcoming Trump administration, countering China. In recent years, the Mexican government, like Trump and his supporters, has come to view its economic dependency upon China as a net negative. A combination of trade deficits and the prominence of Chinese-owned businesses in Mexico have caused members of the Sheinbaum administration to look to its northern neighbor to diversify Mexican trade. Military incursions into Mexico would risk slamming shut this opening door and weaken America’s geostrategic position in its backyard. Such a foray could likely have ripple effects throughout Latin America, a region with similar histories of American invasions, and further hand China a compelling narrative that it could use to pitch its growing ambitions in the Western Hemisphere.

Such tradeoffs could perhaps be excused if the use of American military force against the cartels came with a high probability of success. Yet a cursory look at the strategic picture suggests otherwise. Supporters of this idea, some of whom are themselves Special Operations veterans, nevertheless neglect strategic considerations that would render unilateral or partnered military operations against the cartels untenable. Primary among them is the notion that U.S. military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) constitutes an operational model that the U.S. government can implement in Mexico. The idea neglects to mention a glaring fact: The U.S. Special Operations was not the only entity arrayed against ISIS, with the (now defunct) Assad regime, the Russian military, Iranian paramilitaries, and Kurdish militias all involved. 

What comparable force would fill this function if the U.S. military successfully and sufficiently degraded the cartel networks? If the central Mexican government is unwilling or unable to do so, there is no countervailing power to stop said networks from rebuilding. One does not have to look very far for an example of this phenomenon in action. Indeed, Mexico’s recent history proves that degrading and splintering cartel networks is easy; eliminating them is seemingly impossible. Over the last 20 years, Mexico’s cartels have fractured due to Mexican military action as well as infighting, but the northward flow of drugs continues. If anything, the fracturing of the cartels has accelerated the accompanying violence of the drug trade, a toll in blood that has spilled over the border. Given this recent history, McCormick’s “selective and thoughtful” raids would be strategically insignificant and come at a considerable political cost. 

Second, those who trumpet such schemes take it for granted that throughout the Global War on Terror (GWOT), Special Operations Forces (SOF) operated in theatres where the conventional military was dominant or where the host governments lent support. Whether it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or West Africa, throughout the GWOT, SOF units benefited from large conventional forces that supplied a measure of operational security and, more importantly, copious air assets that provided an edge in actions against hostile units of comparable size. Without such enablers and support from the host country (successive Mexican governments have roundly rejected the idea of American military action within their borders) the unilateral and surreptitious use of SOF units would become a strategic liability.   

Tactical considerations compound strategic liabilities and have gone unremarked by supporters of military action in Mexico. Mexico’s obvious proximity to the United States obscures the country’s size, rugged terrain, and the expanse of the cartel issue. Mexico is three times the size of Afghanistan but hosts similarly punishing terrain populated by people who possess a traditional resistance to outside governance. And, like the Taliban, the cartels enjoy, either through coercion or acquiescence, varying levels of local support. Local political dynamics would make generating actionable intelligence difficult and highly improbable without the partnership of the Mexican government. While supporters of military action may boast about the ease with which SOF operators could “destroy” the cartels, they neglect the more difficult task of “finding and fixing” them.

Additionally, even a cursory look at a map of cartel activity reveals that their presence is not merely a cross-border problem but a nationwide issue fueled by an insatiable American appetite for drugs. Precision raids, even if successful, are unlikely to affect an outcome any different from that of Felipe Calderón’s government, which killed or captured 25 of the nation’s 37 top drug lords. Mexico’s own war on the cartels has shown that stacking up tactical wins does not always add up to strategic victory. 

Lastly, supporters of the idea of sending SOF into Mexico ignore that the cartels possess the equipment, size, and training of a competent asymmetric force. While the Mexican military has achieved operational success against the cartels in the past, such (fleeting) victories resulted from sizable and overmatched formations measuring in the thousands. Conversely, SOF units instead operate in teams as small as a squad (12+) and, at most, a platoon (30+). Given such a light footprint, SOF units could very well find themselves arrayed against comparably armed cartel elements that possess crew-served weapons, man-portable heavy weapons systems, and other enablers such as weaponized drones and improvised explosive devices. The unilateral use of SOF risks putting them into the field under conditions that could leave them overexposed. A single Eagle Claw-type incident or a repeat of the Battle of Culiacán, where the Sinaloa Cartel amassed 800 gunmen against a Mexican security force of 350 and forced their surrender, would prove politically disastrous. The combination of these likely tactical issues, be they terrain, poor intelligence, or the risk of overexposure, poses significant hurdles to the notion that selective SOF raids upon the cartels could assuage the problems they create.    

While it is undoubtedly true that the cartels are vicious and depraved organizations chiefly responsible for producing the fentanyl that has killed thousands of Americans, proposals to use military force inside Mexico would run significant risks while doing little to solve the issue. Unilateral military action inside Mexico would almost assuredly shatter bilateral relations at a time when the forthcoming Trump administration tries to address the migrant crisis and the rise of China’s involvement in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, there is little guarantee of strategic success in directing SOF units to attack and degrade cartel networks. Proponents of such plans take it for granted that such operations during the GWOT took place within the footprint of large conventional forces, enablers that would be absent in unilateral military action. 

Additionally, the cartels have proven themselves highly resilient to network degradation. Supporters of American military action have not articulated how they envision achieving strategic success where the Mexican government has struggled. Lastly, sending small SOF units into Mexico would present significant tactical risk. Intelligence gathering difficulties, vast and brutal terrain, and competently armed and trained cartel forces add up to a considerable risk of overexposure. There are no easy solutions to America’s fentanyl crisis and the criminal violence that accompanies it. But, policymakers must consider their proposed solutions against their potential costs lest they be worse than the scourge they are meant to cure.

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