Trump administration considering using drone strikes to target drug cartels in Mexico.

 

A shipment of confiscated Methamphetamine and Fentanyl. NBC News/Washington Post/Getty. 

The Trump administration is considering using drone strikes to target drug cartels in Mexico. NBC News. No decision has been made, though the main goal appears to be getting Mexico on board with the strikes. Unilateral strikes are seen as a measure of last resort. The United States and Mexico have worked together to deal with the cartels before and are now using surveillance flights to track the dealers. However, it is unclear if Mexico would go along with any strikes, with Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum saying that strikes would not happen. However, the United States has long held that they could strike at targets in countries that threaten their national security and the drug cartels have been declared a terrorist threat. Still, securing support from President Sheinbaum is seen as desirable due to the fact that she is cooperating on immigration and other issues. The justification for the strikes would be the tens of thousands of American citizens that die from Fentanyl overdoses every year, the majority of which came from Mexico. 

My Comment:

If this sounds like the plot from Clear and Present Danger, the Tom Clancy book and Harrison Ford movie, you would be correct. The main difference would be that these strikes would be in the open and not a covert operation and the motivation is the thousands of Americans killed indirectly by the Cartels. 

Open warfare with the Cartels would be an escalation. There are pros and cons to the strategy but I feel the cooperation of Mexico is absolutely critical. Without their help and approval launching strikes on their territory would be an act of war. Not that Mexico itself is a military threat, but they could absolutely punish the United States in other ways, including sanctions, tariffs, immigration and an end to cooperation on fighting the very Cartels, which is the whole point. And the second a civilian, innocent or otherwise, was killed in the strikes, they would have a major diplomatic victory against us. 

I do think securing support is possible. I don't see Claudia Sheinbaum as being a strong president and she has already knuckled under on other issues. She has helped a lot with drug smuggling already and her response to tariffs has largely flown under the radar. I think she would help if we gave her something major in return, and Trump absolutely likes to make deals. 

Would strikes even work? It depends. I don't think killing the leadership will do much long term. We have tried that in the past and all it led to is the cartels fighting each other in a major succession crisis. That resulted in a lot of deaths but not much change in day to day activity, as the mid level people and logistical supply chains were not disrupted. 

Targeting those supply chains though, that could work. Targeting drug labs and convoys would absolutely help in disrupting the flow of drugs into the United States. It's hard to smuggle drugs when the drugs are blown up and the smugglers are dead. Finding the targets would require fairly extensive military intelligence operations, which is another reason why we need the cooperation with Mexico. 

There are downsides of course. One of the major problems is that the Cartels have diversified in the past few years and now commit all kinds of different crimes to fund their organization. Human smuggling, stealing oil, kidnapping and just general "protection" schemes are all major sources of income for the Cartels, though human smuggling has taken a major hit under President Trump. Killing their leadership and targeting their drug labs wouldn't stop any of those. 

There is also the possibility that the Cartels would retaliate. Right now the Cartels usually leave Americans alone, both in Mexico and in the United States itself. If we declare war against them, they might do the same against us, and launch kidnapping schemes, murder plots and even out and out terrorism against military and civilian targets throughout the United States. The Cartels have a lot of battle hardened and ruthless men in their ranks and they could absolutely cause chaos in the United States, should they try to do so. 

Still, something absolutely needs to be done about the Cartels. Not only do the drugs they smuggle into the United States kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, they represent a major security threat to the United States and could even lead to Mexico becoming even more of a lawless disaster than it already is. Are strikes the way to do it? I am not sure, but at least we would be trying something different. The status quo isn't working for sure.