Various high-ups in the Republican party have recently proposed a war with Mexican drug cartels. This proposal has primarily come from those who claim to represent a new, less interventionist variety of Republicans. Each of the three republican candidates who are currently leading in the polls has proposed declaring war on the drug cartels, with Vivek even suggesting that the U.S. should redirect weapons from Ukraine to protect against the invasion on the southern border. Such a claim is ludicrous. Does the U.S. need aerial bombers, tanks, and cluster munitions against the cartels?
It is worth considering the desirability of this proposal given its popularity, even in spite of how it may initially sound farcical. The lesson of the failed war on terror seems to be that countries should think very hard before going to war—it’s unwise to let the mere existence of a problem justify a brutal intervention. When one seriously considers the desirability of such an intervention in the cartel crisis, it becomes clear that it would be a complete failure—every bit as unsuccessful and bloody as the war in Iraq.
There are three primary reasons to oppose the war on the cartels. First, such an intervention would be flagrantly illegal and damaging to diplomacy. Second, it would cause lots of unnecessary deaths. Lastly, it would paradoxically serve to increase the power of the cartels.
Diplomatic Damage
Under international law, nations do not have unilateral authority to launch invasions of other countries merely because those other countries produce drugs that are sold to them. Canada could not, for example, bomb opioid producers in the U.S. on the grounds that opioids cross the border. As Brian Finucane from The International Crisis Group notes:
“First, any U.S. intervention would likely have to proceed without Mexico’s cooperation. The latter has indicated that it opposes U.S. military action against the cartels, meaning both that those operations would be illegal under international law (as Mexico’s foreign ministry has pointedly noted) and that they would be uncoordinated–compromising whatever chance they might otherwise have of achieving operational success.”
When the U.S. undermines international law, it undermines a powerful bulwark against aggression. This country cannot consistently condemn other countries for violating the law of nations when it, the most militarily powerful nation in the world, violates international law with impunity. If any other country declared a war on their neighbors to allegedly stem the flow of drugs, they would be condemned them as the clear aggressor.
Unwarranted, Unproductive Violence
A war on the cartels would be bloody, brutal, and violent. Proponents of such wars often claim that it would be quick, bloodless, and efficient, but this view is impossible to maintain given relevant past events. There were those who said the same thing about Iraq, for instance—every war looks easy until it begins.
In order to see if a war on the cartels would escalate violence, we can compare it to previous efforts to declare war on the drug cartels. Surely if previous militaristic solutions carried out by the government of Mexico have dramatically escalated violence, then so too would a militarized approach carried out in explicit defiance of the government of Mexico.
The historical record is relatively unambiguous when it comes to the question of whether or not war on the cartels would fail. Mexico’s militarized war on drugs—and more broadly on the cartels—has already killed north of 100,000 people. The U.S. has been aiding Mexico in their drug war by providing it with arms, but as a result, in Mexico, most homicides are now carried out with U.S. arms. The CMPDH concludes, in a detailed 34-page report on guns sold to Mexico that Mexico’s drug war “has provoked escalated violence in the country, where organized criminal groups, police officials at all levels of government, and soldiers have committed serious crimes, including murders, forced disappearances, and torture. In that context, criminal organizations and state agencies have committed crimes against humanity.” In fact, precincts with access to guns—used to fuel Mexico's militarized drug war—had more violence than matched gunless precincts.
Jose Merino, Editor-in-Chief of Neurology Journal, set out to debunk claims that the drug war escalated violence. However, when he examined the empirical record, he found that it was quite conclusive—the militarized approach pushed by backers of a U.S. war on the cartels led to more violence in Mexico where it was tried. A militarized approach to stemming the flow of drugs has failed over and over again. The Council on Foreign Relations noted in a detailed report on Mexico’s drug war that a variety of groups have accused "the military, police, and cartels of widespread human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial killings, and forced disappearances."
Proponents of the war on the cartels often make analogies to the war on terror. For instance, Senator Tom Cotton stated in a press release:
“Imagine what we would do if ISIS or Al Qaeda set up shop on our border and committed a fraction of these atrocities. That’s exactly what we should do to the cartels. We must wage a war against the cartels that doesn’t end until every one of their criminal members is dead, imprisoned, or neutralized as a threat.”
And yet if we look at the track record of the war on terror, rather than our untrained intuitions, it’s been a complete disaster—as I’ve argued elsewhere. By provoking instability, the war on terror has made people more likely to join terrorist groups and, as a consequence, millions have been killed and both violence and terrorism have increased. Such a result would also accompany a war on the cartels waged by the U.S.
Defenders of the war on the cartels often analogize it to U.S. efforts to aid the Colombian government in its own similar war. U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw, for instance, made this argument recently. Such a claim does not stand up to scrutiny. For one, the U.S. approach to Colombia was multifaceted, and the specifically militarized component failed—as did similar efforts in Afghanistan. Despite extreme actions taken in Afghanistan, only around 5% of opiate production was seized—when drug production is stopped in one area, it simply shifts to another area. For another, in Colombia, the U.S. had the support of the Colombian government; with Mexico, the U.S. faces clear opposition. Finally, in Colombia, it’s not even clear that the U.S. was especially successful. In terms of stopping the flow of cocaine, for example, U.S. efforts “hardly made a dent on the supply of cocaine to the United States.”
Wasted Efforts
This brings us to the third reason that the war on cartels would be a terrible idea—it flatly wouldn’t work. Reasons abound to consider this approach another catalyst of cartel violence. The Rand Corporation released a detailed 155-page report on the subject, concluding that militarized efforts to stop drug production are wildly unsuccessful.
Mexico’s previous approach led to many large cartels fracturing into smaller, more violent ones that face troubles with infighting. They have not stopped the violence, but only changed its form. Even if such actions were effective in Mexico, U.S. consumers would simply find sellers elsewhere. When demand is high, suppliers find a way. It is impossible to eliminate the vast number of actors who have something to gain from selling a lucrative product. Removing them from Mexico could subsequently relocate the drug supply, not solving the old problem so much as creating a new one. Fiona Harrigan, assistant editor at Reason, notes:
“Simply stopping the supply of drugs into the country is an impossible task, as decades of prohibition show. Republicans would be far better off embracing harm-reduction strategies rather than pushing for another episode of military adventurism that is destined to fail.”
The next ignorant war never looks exactly like the last one; Iraq didn’t look exactly like Vietnam. The conundrum of whether or not to go to war with Mexican cartels is a test of sanity. It’s a test of whether the U.S. has learned the lessons from previous failed wars.
The war on terror’s failure wasn’t a consequence of terrorism being a non-issue, nor was it of democratic promotion in the Middle East being an unworthy aim. It was instead when the U.S. carelessly dropped bombs that accomplished some goals, but left innocent people dead. Just as defenders of the Iraq war claimed the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, so too do defenders of the cartel war claim “Mexico has just as much—if not more—of an interest in cracking down on the cartels as the U.S.” A militarized approach that fuels instability leaves people no choice but to turn to the cartels, and delivers weapons directly into the hands of cartel members.
In Closing
Since around 2006, the U.S. and Mexico have adopted a militarized approach to the cartel problem. This approach has failed, just as it has all over the world. This is not a close call. It is a test of whether the U.S. will repeat the mistakes it has made, and launch a failed violent war on some major problem—one that only makes the problem bigger. It is a sad indictment of our political incentives that such a terrible proposal has been amplified by all the frontrunners in a major political party—especially when those frontrunners claim to represent opponents of U.S. wars.
Similarities to counter-terrorism are only partial. Cartels aren't driven by ideological anti-Western sentiment. Locals angry at botched US intervention would not be similarly motivated to join them. The cartels are also not merely hiding in certain regions but functioning as quasi-governmental organizations (and often with support of local government officials), so destabilizing the governance of those areas is not as unambiguously bad.
The fundamental problem with Mexican drug cartels is that they have government backing. Naturally one arm of Mexican government trying to shut down the cartels will be neutralised by the other arms which are making out like, uh, bandits from the drug industry.
You seem to think that the cartels are innocent choirboys victimised by a ruthless state police. Not so. A couple of times a week the equivalent of a Nova Massacre people die, some innocent victims of the cartels, some cartel foot-soldiers in inter-gang warfare, some state security forces and a few, a very few, killed by the state. How do you think those US weapons got into the hands of the cartels? They were given to the cartels! Wars tend to be bloody, brutal and violent. We are dealing with bloody, brutal and violent criminals. As Neville Chamberlain discovered, olive branches simply don't work.