WASHINGTON: As the 2024 Republican race for the White House gathers steam, threats by the party’s presidential candidates to launch military strikes against Mexican drug cartels are being taken more seriously, raising concerns on both sides of the border.
In a party debate last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a distant second in the polls behind former President Donald Trump — said if elected he would send U.S. forces to take out Mexican drug labs “on day one.”
DeSantis said: “When I talk about using the military to fight drug cartels because they’re killing tens of thousands of our citizens, we have every right to do that.”
Trump, who skipped the debate, made some of the strongest calls for military strikes.
Rolling Stone recently reported that he asked his advisers for military “battle plans” to launch against Mexico if he is re-elected next year.
Three other candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, also supported the idea.
In March, Haley – a former US ambassador to the UN – said the US should reach out to Mexican traffickers as it does to the Islamic State jihadist group.
“We can do it by putting special operations in there … just like we dealt with ISIS, you’re going to do the same with the cartels,” she said.
Foreign policy experts warn that the calls must be taken seriously and that they pose a dangerous threat to Washington’s always tenuous relationship with its key southern neighbor.
“It’s pure madness,” former Mexican ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan, now at the Brookings think tank in Washington, told news agency.
It’s not a new idea. During his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump has shown interest in cross-border strikes against cartels.
But aides reportedly talked him out of it, and it was never considered a real political option.
What has changed since then has been an increase in deadly fentanyl flowing across the border from Mexico, fueling America’s epidemic of drug overdose deaths.
In addition, Sarukhan says Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has reduced cooperation with US authorities on drug trafficking, illegal immigration and other issues.
