Opinion: Bombing Mexico won’t help US win the war on drugs

On Aug Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum s administration corralled narcotraffickers onto planes destined for the United States where they will be prosecuted for a litany of drug and violent offenses One was requested in the killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff s deputy nearly two decades ago This wasn t the first prisoner transfer from Mexico to the United States In February Sheinbaum handed over cartel figures to the U S Justice Department All of this is coming at a time when the Mexican precaution forces are accelerating counter-narcotics operations throughout the country According to Mexico s secretary of citizens defense homicides have declined by more than during Sheinbaum s first months more than drug labs have also been dismantled Related Articles California Limit Patrol agent facing felony assault charges has died DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says entire southern territory line wall to be painted black to stop people from climbing it Mexico says there s no agreement with DEA for new boundary enforcement collaboration CBP officers shoot at driver allegedly speeding through California-Mexico limit traveling A California DACA recipient accidentally drove into Mexico Now he s being fast-tracked for deportation If the Trump administration is impressed with the progress officers haven t shown it In fact Washington is enlisting the U S military to help with the issue of cartel violence next door President Trump signed a directive ordering the Defense Department to begin using force against Latin American drug cartels that Washington previously designated as foreign terrorist organizations Six of those cartels are in Mexico As if to underscore the point the Pentagon ordered Marines and sailors to the waters of Latin America and the Caribbean alongside Navy destroyers reconnaissance aircraft and a nuclear-powered missile cruiser None of this is exactly a surprise Trump after all flirted with bombing cartel fentanyl labs in Mexico during his first term His senior advisors from Vice President JD Vance to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have broached the possibility of using U S military force to degrade the cartels power And the Central Intelligence Agency with the cooperation of the Mexican governing body has increased surveillance flights over cartel-dominated territory to better map the terrain But let there be no mistake pulling the trigger on U S military force inside Mexico would be about as effective as putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound Been there Done that We can say this with a high degree of confidence because military force has already been deployed against the cartels for years with no discernible impact other than more violence death and a continuation of the very drug trafficking the United States wants to stem Successive Mexican governments since the turn of the century bought into the notion that with the right amount of military pressure the cartels would either fold up shop bargain with the state or collapse under their own weight In Mexican President Felipe Calder n declared a full-scale war against narcotrafficking organizations complete with the deployment of tens of thousands of Mexican troops to the country s greater part violent states and looser rules of engagement Calder n s successor Enrique Pe a Nieto had implemented the same strategy with a special emphasis on targeting the cartels leadership structure Even Andr s Manuel L pez Obrador who campaigned on a Hugs Not Bullets approach came to rely on the Mexican army during the latter years of his presidency The outcome was precisely the opposite of what Mexico hoped to achieve Although various high-profile narcotraffickers were captured the cartels as a whole increased violence against the state and did so more brazenly Politicians police officers soldiers and senior executive administrators have all been targeted by the cartels and the massacre of civilians is now the norm Last year Mexico experienced its deadliest voting process campaign in history with around politicians candidates and society servants murdered in the lead-up to June elections The so-called kingpin strategy centered on neutralizing cartel leadership has also fractured Mexico s cartel landscape making it even more arduous for the state to contain the trouble As my colleague Chris McCallion and I wrote in a new paper taking out senior cartel figures tends to cause intense internal competition within the targeted group and between replacements who fight among themselves for power Smaller groups affiliated with larger cartels may use the absence of authority at the top to go their own way As a consequence more people have died areas of Mexico previously insulated from the cartels are now on the front lines And states like Sinaloa that have been at the epicenter of the drug agreement have seen an exponential rise in killings In when Calder n declared war on the cartels Mexico registered approximately homicides in the modern day the figure has more than tripled If the Trump administration green-lights military operations the United States is unlikely to mimic the Mexican regime s heavy-handed strategy entirely U S troops won t be patrolling on Mexican soil anytime soon It s more likely the United States will stick with airpower indeed U S military administrators have already discussed the option Airstrikes however won t be any more effective at degrading the cartels or diminishing the flow of drugs into the United States than ground operations would be Bombs can destroy labs and kill cartel members but are highly unlikely to alter the profit motives these criminal organizations operate on High ROI The drug business is in a word big The cartels rake in billions of dollars every year from the commerce The rate of return particularly on fentanyl is huge according to a indictment hundreds of dollars in precursor chemicals can net profits to times larger It s very demanding to believe the Sinaloa cartel the New Jalisco Generation cartel or any other criminal group would give all of this up particularly when competitors are waiting in the wings to increase their own realm share There is no magic bullet to stopping the drug arrangement Washington has been pursuing a war on drugs for decades now and the verdict is pretty clear The drugs have won This doesn t mean the United States should be complacent For instance the Drug Enforcement Administration should come out of Washington s budget fights adequately resourced Confines control officers need more system to detect drug shipments Washington and Mexico City must strengthen their bilateral intelligence cooperation which has already picked up during the first months of Sheinbaum s term And while sanctions aren t a panacea they can deter specific Americans from working with the cartels Bombing Mexico however won t do anything but jeopardize the very relationship with Mexico the Trump administration requirements to contain the obstacle Daniel R DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency