The GOP Declares War on Mexico
by Ted Galen Carpenter Posted
on September 04, 2023
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2023/09/03/the-gop-declares-war-on-mexico/
The 8 candidates for the Republican presidential
nomination featured in the August 23 televised debate feuded on several issues,
including U.S. aid to Ukraine and the future role of former president Donald
Trump. There was no meaningful discord on one issue, however. All 8
participants agreed that the flow of illegal drugs out of Mexico, especially
fentanyl, poses an alarming threat not only to public health in the United
States but to America’s security. They then vied to take the most hardline
positions possible. Their favorite policy panacea was to advocate sending
U.S. Special Forces into Mexico to eradicate the powerful drug cartels.
It was not a new stance for the current crop of
leading Republicans. Indeed, most of the presidential aspirants had staked
out that position weeks or months earlier. Nikki Haley, who is reliably
belligerent on nearly every foreign policy issue, stated during a March 2023 speech to the American
Enterprise Institute: “When it comes to the cartels, the Mexican president said
yesterday we don’t want the U.S. to do anything. Well, you know what?
You tell the Mexican president, either you do it or we do it. But
we are not going to let all of this lawlessness continue to happen.”
Both the advocacy of a militarized strategy against
the cartels and the display of utter contempt for the wishes of Mexico’s
government or the Mexican people now typifies the GOP’s perspective. When
asked during the debate if he would order Special Forces to confront the
cartels, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis replied “Yes, and I will do it on day one.” On
another occasion, he stated that he also would be open to ordering drone strikes on cartel targets inside Mexico.
Of the candidates on the debate stage, only former
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson dissented from the idea that the U.S. military
should barge into Mexico. And his objection was only to the unilateral use
of force. Instead, he favored exerting concerted economic pressure to
compel cooperation from the Mexican government.
GOP enthusiasm for the military option has been
building for years. In his memoirs, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of
Defense, Mike Esper, recalled that his boss asked him at least twice in 2020
about the feasibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug
labs” and wipe out the cartels. The president considered such
a drastic step to be justified because Mexican leaders were “not in charge
of their own country.”
Not surprisingly, Trump quickly joined the current
lobbying campaign to attack the cartels. He has explicitly embraced the proliferation of congressional proposals for
an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Rolling
Stone reported that Trump also “has been asking policy advisers
for a range of military options aimed at taking on Mexican drug cartels,
including strikes that are not sanctioned by Mexico’s government.” Since
polls show that Trump remains the leading candidate for the GOP presidential
nomination, his aggressive stance is no small matter.
The latest phase of the campaign for military
intervention received a major boost with an op-ed in the March 2, 2023, Wall Street
Journal by former Attorney General William Barr. His article
epitomized both the logic and the emotion among advocates of a confrontational
approach. “America can no longer tolerate narco-terrorist cartels,” Barr
argued. “Operating from havens in Mexico, their production of deadly
drugs on an industrial scale is flooding our country with this poison. The time
is long past to deal with this outrage decisively.” The danger that the
trafficking organizations pose to the United States, Barr insisted, requires
treating them as “national-security threats, not a law-enforcement
matter.” According to Barr, such “narco-terrorist groups are more like
ISIS than like the American mafia
He later confirmed that he wanted to use “special ops units” for missions in Mexico, and he voiced the same
disdain for Mexico’s sovereignty that Haley later expressed. “It would be
good to have the Mexicans’ cooperation,” Barr conceded, but “I think that will
only come when the Mexicans know that we’re willing to do it with or without
their cooperation.”
The GOP’s growing enthusiasm for using military force
against the drug cartels threatens to poison relations with our southern
neighbor. A high-level Mexican official warns that “Any military intervention in Mexico would
be a monumental setback for the U.S. and would derail the bilateral
relationship. It can destroy the North American trading bloc and worsen
the security situation, triggering a wave of migration in the region.”
Fortunately, the Biden administration and nearly all leading Democrats continue
to oppose the military option inside Mexico, but as Republicans whip-up fears
about the “fentanyl crisis,” advocates of restraint are likely to be waging a
difficult, defensive political struggle.
Rising enthusiasm for the military panacea shows a continuing
misunderstanding about the realities of the drug trade. Drug warriors
refuse to face an inconvenient truth. Governments are not able to dictate
whether people use fentanyl or other destructive substances. Such
behavior has been part of human culture throughout history. Only the
drugs of choice shift over time. Governments can determine only whether
reputable businesses or violent criminal gangs are the suppliers. A
prohibition strategy guarantees that it will be the latter – with all the accompanying
violence and corruption. The ongoing bloody struggles among rival Mexican cartels to control the
lucrative trafficking routes to the United States confirm that historical
pattern.
Using the U.S. military against targets in Mexico will
not change those economic incentives, especially the robust consumer demand for
fentanyl and other mind-altering substances. GOP leaders would merely escalate
yet another endless, unwinnable crusade while destroying relations with an
important, neighboring country.
Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph
Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. He
also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the
Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than
1,200 articles on international affairs. His books on the drug war in
Latin America include Bad Neighbor Policy (2003) and The Fire Next Door (2012).
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