Republican-proposed attacks on Mexican cartels could lead to American
casualties
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[September 22, 2023]
By Jonathan Landay, Idrees Ali and Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sending troops or firing missiles into Mexico to
battle cartels, as proposed by Republican 2024 presidential candidates
including former President Donald Trump, could lead to casualties and
bloody reprisals on American soil without stemming the flow of illegal
drugs, current and former U.S. military and government officials told
Reuters.
Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki
Haley are among several Republican candidates who have said they might
authorize military force in Mexico - should they win the election - to
stem the flood of the cheap and potent synthetic opioid fentanyl into
the United States.
Fentanyl seizures at the southern U.S. border have exploded in recent
years, rising from just 10.7 kg (24 lb) in 2014 to around 8,400 kg
(18,500 lb) in 2022, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection
data.
Almost 80,000 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses in 2022,
according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, with fentanyl being
the primary culprit.
But sending troops into America's top trade partner risks failing for
several reasons, the current and former military and State Department
officials said.
They argued that cartels could retaliate in U.S. territory and U.S.
troops and Mexican civilians could die in firefights with heavily armed
cartel members. Mexico would likely cut off cooperation with U.S. law
enforcement, while fentanyl labs are hard to locate.
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In any case, most fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens.
"You send over a SEAL team. You take out a cartel leader. Okay, now
who's in charge? This could create the blowback effect of fracturing the
cartels," said a U.S. military officer with experience in Mexico,
speaking on condition of anonymity. "We create more and more violent
splinter groups that are harder to contain."
The officer said cross-border U.S. raids could ignite gunbattles with
cartel gunmen armed with military weapons, including machine guns and
rocket launchers.
"This is just a much more sophisticated enforcement problem than I think
a lot of people understand," said Earl Anthony Wayne, a former U.S.
ambassador to Mexico and fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center think tank.
Fentanyl labs are "hard to find," he said. "But it's easy to hit the
wrong apartment and kill a bunch of innocents next door, kids,
families."
As an example of what could happen, the military officer pointed to
January gunbattles in the city of Culiacan between cartel gunmen and
Mexican soldiers during the arrest of a son of jailed kingpin Joaquin
"El Chapo" Guzman. At least 10 troops and 19 gunmen died.
Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official who worked on
counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues, said cartels could respond
to U.S. special forces raids by having their operatives attack civilians
in the United States. He is running in the 2024 congressional election
for a New Jersey-based seat as a Democrat.
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![](../images/092223PIX/news_a34.jpg)
A woman is pictured through a bullet-riddled glass of a store, days
after a gun battle between police and hitmen, in the municipality of
Villa Union, state of Coahuila, Mexico December 2, 2019.
REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Jul/22/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
In practice, a significant amount of fentanyl is smuggled by
Americans via legal border crossings - making the use of deadly
force against smugglers politically unpalatable and almost certainly
illegal.
A U.S. military spokesman declined to comment on the proposals,
saying: "This is a hypothetical, and it is against our policy to
speculate about hypotheticals."
IDEA GAINS TRACTION
Trump raised the idea of launching military strikes into Mexico in
the final year of his presidency.
According to a memoir by Mark Esper, Trump's second defense
secretary, Trump asked at least twice in 2020 if the military could
"shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs."
Esper wrote that he replied that it would be illegal and an act of
war.
But Republican strategists say the calls for military action have
intensified during the Republican presidential primary campaign as
the fentanyl epidemic worsens.
"We're not going to wait. We're not going to let any more Americans
die," Haley told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.
"Either (Mexico) does it, or we do it. But one of us is doing it."
In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52% of respondents supported
"sending U.S. military personnel to Mexico to fight against drug
cartels," while 26% were opposed. Republicans were supportive by a
64% to 28% margin.
Still, most Americans - including most Republicans - said they would
oppose such actions if the Mexican government did not approve, the
poll found.
"It's Hollywood. It looks great. We could do it. It would be easy to
send them in, a couple of (special forces) teams that could go and
extract in extraordinary renditions," said the military officer.
"But the question is why? There's no real purpose to it."
The odds of any Republican ordering unilateral military action once
in office probably are slim due to the negative collateral effects
such an action would have, strategists told Reuters.
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"That said, I think if Trump was able to kill a major drug dealer
the political benefits would be real," said Alex Conant, an adviser
to Republican Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign.
Sergio Alcocer, a former Mexican deputy foreign minister responsible
for North America, said such a move would hamper
intelligence-sharing on organized crime and immigration and damage
economic relations.
"It's unacceptable for Mexico," Alcocer said, "just as it would be
on the other side if we were to do it."
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Idrees Ali and Gram Slattery;
Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Ross
Colvin and Rosalba O'Brien)
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