Bringing the War on Terror to Our Southern Border Can Only End in Disaster
04/16/2025•Mises Wire•Connor O'Keeffe
https://mises.org/mises-wire/bringing-war-terror-our-southern-border-can-only-end-disaster
According to a report last week from NBC News, the Trump
administration is considering launching drone strikes against cartel leaders
and infrastructure in Mexico.
If the report is accurate, it
shines more light on the rumored discussions within Trump’s team about engaging
the cartels militarily in an effort to stop, or at least hamper, the flow of
fentanyl across the southern border.
What made this latest
revelation notable was that, reportedly, the Trump administration is willing to
conduct these operations even if the Mexican government opposes them.
The US has already been
shifting more military, intelligence, and law enforcement assets toward
combating the cartels. Earlier this year, Trump officially designated six cartels as terrorist organizations.
And reports suggest that the CIA has stepped up drone
flights over Mexican territory to identify fentanyl labs along with the
whereabouts and routines of cartel operatives. So, in many ways, it feels like
it’s only a matter of time before direct operations begin.
It’s remarkable that this has
to be said at all, but starting a war using the same approach as the disastrous
War on Terror directly on our southern border is a terrible idea.
For starters, it almost
certainly will not stay contained to a couple outposts and labs in northern
Mexico. The fantasy that some seem to have that the US can launch strikes with
unmanned aircraft, sit back, and watch the cartels collapse—bringing the bulk
of the American drug trade down with them—is just that, a fantasy.
In reality, the cartels would
most likely not sit there and take it without responding. That could take a lot
of forms. They may launch drones of their own over the border, targeting
American infrastructure. Or they could purposefully move women and children
into targeted areas or even bomb them themselves to turn public opinion against
the strikes. It’s naïve to think these groups are above doing something like
that.
Or they could go to war with
the US. Our military would, of course, crush them in a conventional war, but
these cartels don’t fight conventional wars. Cartel wars are nasty irregular
conflicts where the preferred strategy in recent decades has been to target low-level
operatives—which have meant rival cartel soldiers or police officers—and their
families. These groups also use torture extensively against those targets, not
primarily to gain information but to terrorize and demoralize the other side.
As brutal as these cartels
have been to each other and to Mexican police, they have so far generally avoided targeting US law enforcement. That could
easily change if US forces begin targeting the cartels directly.
And American soldiers and cops
and their families would not be untouchable because they’re on this side of the
border. As irregular warfare scholar Bill Buppert explained in a recent interview, the cartels have
extensive networks and operations within the United States. It’s not as if
drugs are dropped off a few miles past the border and then magically find their
way to users in towns and cities across the nation. The cartel footprint is
already here.
Any kind of serious
retaliation against American operatives or their families would almost
certainly escalate the conflict and bring about a full-on war right on our
border.
The Terror Wars the US
launched across the Middle East—which also began with the use of “surgical”
strikes—not only spiraled out of control and brought an unfathomable scale
of death
and destruction to that region, they created one of the largest
refugee waves in modern history. Tens of millions of people fled north into
Europe, where many remain today.
Trump just won the election
thanks in large part to the popularity of his promise to secure the border. Why
on earth does his team think it’s a good idea to replicate the conditions that
caused Europe’s mass migration crisis directly to the south of our country?
And that’s not all. A hot war
with the cartels also hands governments like Russia or Iran an easy way to give
Washington a taste of its own medicine by waging a proxy war on our border.
All of that is bad enough, but
on top of that, it won’t even work. Attacks on the cartels will not stop the
drug trade, and they especially won’t put an end to fentanyl production.
These cartels are not
unaccustomed to having their infrastructure seized or destroyed, and their
leaders captured or killed. That has been happening continuously for the last
fifty years. Over that period, as individual cartel leaders were taken out and specific
smuggling routes or stockpiles were discovered and dismantled, the cartel model
has thrived—not despite the crackdown on the drug trade that started under
Nixon, but because of it.
When the War on Drugs
was launched in the 1970s, the illegal drugs being
smuggled into the US were mainly coming from South American countries like
Colombia via propeller planes or small boats. As law enforcement agencies like
the new DEA put an end to that, drug trafficking shifted to over-land routes
that were much harder to stop.
The cartels in northern Mexico
grew to prominence because the approach and extent of the crackdown on drug
smuggling created demand for their services. Many leaders and even several
entire cartels have come and gone, but the demand for their services remains
strong.
Americans pay over $100
billion a year for illegal drugs. As long as that remains the case, people will
find a way to meet that demand.
That’s especially true thanks
to the adoption of synthetic drugs like fentanyl. Now, all it takes is a couple hundred dollars
worth of industrial chemicals and a tub to produce millions of dollars worth of
fentanyl—which, thanks to its potency, is also much easier to hide and traffic than plant-based drugs.
Even successfully taking out all the Mexican cartels would not be enough to
stop fentanyl production. As long as prohibition laws keep fueling demand for
it, fentanyl is here to stay.
As Americans, we have to start
facing the fact that so many people in our country are desperate for substances
that make them numb to their lives. If we can begin to address some of the many
factors that are causing that while abandoning the prohibitionist policies that
have been driving people to rely on criminal organizations to get their fix for
over half a century, our drug and trafficking problems will improve
drastically.
But the worst thing we can do
is significantly escalate the approach that brought this terrible status quo
about in the first place. Destroying some more cartel infrastructure or taking
out a few more drug “kingpins” will not suddenly start making a difference. And
using the military to do so risks making our current situation significantly
worse. The American public has enjoyed a lot of distance from the direct
consequences of Washington’s wars for a long time. Starting a hot war on our
own border under the naïve theory that it will effectively dismantle the drug
trade and stay contained will bring an abrupt and unnecessary end to our long
period of peace on the home front.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario