Militarizing Mexico: Trump's Push Towards War

President Trump's recent approach to foreign policy on our southern border is an echo of 21st-century American failures. This August, the president signed a directive authorizing the Pentagon to prepare strikes against Mexican drug cartels, groups the administration has now designated as terrorist organizations. In response, over 30 humanitarian groups have sounded alarms, warning that the move could launch a new front in the "forever wars" of the Middle East, destabilizing our continent.

The logic of Trump's orders is familiar. Under the guise of "national security," the armed forces are being prepared to be unleashed on problems that history has shown can't be solved through bombs. Far from just bad foreign policy, this step towards militarism is only another step towards authoritarian power, both at home and abroad.

While this should be simple, our government has already spent more than a trillion dollars trying to eradicate the drug issue through force and prohibition. Meanwhile, deaths from drug-related causes only continue to climb, well surpassing 100,000. For decades, aggressive drug policy across Latin America has been unsuccessful and has only increased violence: from Plan Colombia, which armed anti-leftist leaders without actually decreasing drug usage, to the Mérida Initiative, which resulted in Mexican torture camps rather than real solutions. Despite billions going towards violent means of combating the drug crisis, the result has been more than 350,000 dead, and tens of thousands more have disappeared.

Far from weakening cartels, Trump's campaign will only encourage them to splinter into more violent and destructive factions. In past years, militaristic crackdowns haven't decreased violence; instead, they create new incentives for traffickers to diversify their routes toward more dangerous areas, adopt more deadly tactics of smuggling, and resort to more violence. The idea that Trump's proposed raids will be the factor that finally dismantles cartels isn't just naïve; it risks making the issue worse.

By branding cartels "terrorist organizations," Trump is reviving the post-9/11 toolkit of drone strikes, surveillance, and extrajudicial assassinations. That framework led to sprawling wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond, costing trillions while destabilizing entire regions. As a result of these past failures, the Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that our interventions have left between 4.5-4.7 million people dead and created tens of millions of refugees.

Replicating this model of failure in Mexico would not help the drug crisis but leave Mexico's communities to bear the brunt of the bloodshed that U.S. military interventions have caused. As Stephanie Brewer of WOLA notes, "overseas military strikes certainly won't solve drug overdose deaths in the U.S.," issues that would be better addressed through healthcare and harm-reduction programs.

Mexican President Sheinbaum has rejected Trump's prospect of troops crossing her border. After hearing Trump's rhetoric, she declared that "there will be no invasion … it's absolutely off the table," showing that Trump's move can only be done through War on Terror-era violations of sovereignty. The push for unilateral action from the White House jeopardizes decades of our economic and political ties to Mexico that have been, for the most part, focused on trade and intelligence sharing rather than armed incursions.

If Trump ignores the threats from Sheinbaum and pushes ahead anyway, it risks causing anti-American sentiment to rise throughout Latin America, causing more violence, as we saw with our interventions in the Middle East. U.S. attacks on Mexico (Veracruz) in 1914 to anti-democratic interventions throughout Central America throughout the 20th century remain as wounds that Trump's threats risk reopening.

Though it may seem so, considering Trump's tendency to make baseless statements, Trump's threats aren't unfounded in action. Yesterday, Trump ordered Navy warships into Latin American waters as part of this new campaign targeting cartel operations. Sources in the Pentagon confirm that the admin is looking into naval and drone strikes across our border, showing that despite Sheinbaum's pushback, plans are going ahead. Each new report draws us further away from Trump's campaign promise of "No new wars."

The calls for military presence in Mexico are inseparable from Trump's approach to domestic policy. Already in Washington D.C. (with plans to expand across the Nation), the administration has expanded the military presence of U.S. troops on our soil, and along the border where migrants are detained without Constitutional rights under military authority. This blurring of the lines between "war powers" and law enforcement is being used by Trump as an excuse for authoritarian denial of civil liberties.

As the Financial Times explains, the rise of Latin America's cartels isn't a justification for greater military escalation, but, on the contrary, evidence of the failure of policies that don't address the root systemic causes of drug-related crimes. By doubling down on the Marines and military strikes, Trump is creating conditions for further cartel violence abroad while furthering justification for authoritarian policy at home.

The drug crisis isn't one with no solution. Portugal's decriminalization model has reduced overdoses and freed police resources to target more serious crime, by ensuring that drugs are monitored for safety, cartels have less power for violence by monopolizing control of drugs, and greater resources are allocated to mental health and addiction-based centers (rather than the current approach of fear of prosecution among addicts). Drug crises are best fought not with guns, but with mental health care, investment in communities, and prioritization of education.

Investing in Mexican communities: schools, jobs, and anti-corruption measures, offers far more potential for reducing drug trafficking than any military solution. As a recent study from Cornell suggests, long-term social spending, rather than violent crackdowns, reduces the dominance of cartels in Mexico.

Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, has the authority to wage war. Civil advocacy groups are urging lawmakers to block Trump's recent acts before war becomes imminent, as any unilateral incursion into Mexico would not only be dangerous but also unlawful. For decades, both domestically and abroad, we have seen the United States repeat the cycle of militarized failure. Trump's more recent push only threatens to entrench it for another generation: fueling violence, deepening attacks on our Constitution, and leaving the actual crisis unsolved. If the public or Congress doesn't stop him now, we may find ourselves in another forever war, but this time in our hemisphere.