When conservative commentators began suggesting earlier this year that then-candidate Donald Trump would use the U.S. military to attack Mexico’s drug cartels if he won the presidential election, the most common response was disbelief. Dropping bombs on fentanyl labs and sending special operations forces to assassinate cartel leaders seemed too far-fetched to debate. This was especially true given Trump’s stances on U.S. military support for Ukraine and other hot spots in the world, which seemed to indicate a reduced global security role for the United States.
Yet, the fact that many reasonable analysts think military attacks on cartels are a bad idea and contradictory to Trump’s foreign policy positions elsewhere does not mean that he won’t launch them. In fact, when asked about it by Fox News in July, Trump replied, “Mexico is gonna have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is absolutely.” One of Trump’s defense secretaries during his first term, Mark Esper, says Trump asked for lists of military options for countering the Mexican drug cartels back then and was barely dissuaded from going that route.
Having now won re-election, Trump appears to be moving toward a more aggressive use of the U.S. military at the border to combat migration, and his advisers are also building a case for cross-border military operations into Mexico. In other words, the signs are that the incoming Trump administration is preparing for an actual war against the drug cartels in 2025 that goes well beyond the “War on Drugs” of the past. That means that whether or not we think this is a debate worth having, it is a debate we must now have.