What Could Trump’s ‘War’ Against Mexican Cartels Entail?

MEXICO CITY — As President Trump amps-up his “war” rhetoric against the Mexican drug cartels, new questions are arising as to what such an effort might look like. “The cartels are waging war on America and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing,” Mr. Trump told Congress Tuesday night. Does “war,” though, mean merely escalating American-Mexican tariff skirmishes, or would it include dispatching American warriors south of the border? The president did not clarify. Most drastically, Mexico City sources say, America could send troops to aid Mexican law enforcement in fighting the cartels. Americans are already assisting by operating surveillance drones that fly over cartel-controlled areas. Could those drones be armed? Also, could Americans operate in Mexican ports, where fentanyl precursors arrive from Communist China? If America and Mexico cooperate, “they can build a very nice bilateral dynamic,” a Mexico City-based security consultant, Eduardo Guererro, tells the Sun. “I think it’s a big opportunity, and this opportunity will be lost if the Americans just act unilaterally.”In July, one of the founders of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, was kidnapped and brought to El Paso, Texas. He’s now on trial at New York. His disappearance has escalated a war among the remaining factions of the Sinaloa cartels, which have been fighting each other since the top cartel kingpin, Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was sent north in 2023. Now residents of Sinaloa state’s capital, Culliacan, fear going out at night, as lethal fights between factions of the cartels wreak havoc on their streets. “It’s a crisis that was generated by the American government, because they just wanted to have El Mayo,” Mr. Guerrero says. Under President Sheinbaum, Mexico has intensified its war on the cartels. Her predecessor and mentor, President Lopez Obrador, believed in a “hugs not guns” approach to narcos. Ms. Sheinbaum, in contrast, has sent law enforcement to fight the cartels. She clamped down on fentanyl labs, and recently extradited 29 narco kingpins to stand trial in America.Much of it had to do with Mr. Trump’s pressure. Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada is vowing to impose sharp retaliatory measures in response to Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariffs. Ms. Sheinbaum, in contrast, is merely threatening tariffs. She is saying she will specify the details on Sunday, likely hoping to get a reprieve from Mr. Trump before that. Mexican critics of Ms. Sheinbaum say that by allowing extraditions to proceed before demanding that Mr. Trump rescinded his tariff threat, she lost a top negotiation card. Mr. Guerrero says she might now offer even more, by extraditing corrupt Mexican politicians who had worked with the cartels. “She will choose people who are not very close to Lopez Obrador,” Mr. Guerrero says. “She has to consolidate her power, so she can’t currently have conflict” with the former president. Yet, extradition of corrupt politicians would be a step up in the war on the cartels. While visiting Capitol Hill recently, Mr. Guerrero said he heard talk about using American drones that are now merely utilized for surveillance to wage actual war.Crime lords fear the possibility of armed drones entering the war, a Mexico City-based Drug Enforcement Administration special agent, Todd Zimmerman, told the LA Times recently. “They could be in a car, they could be in a house, and they could be vaporized,” he said. “They’ve seen it in the Afghan and Iraq wars.”For public consumption, Ms. Sheinbaum is adamant, though, that any such measure must be done in cooperation between Washington and Mexico City. Last month she proposed a constitutional amendment to defend the country’s sovereignty. Americans “can call the cartels whatever they want, but with Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion,” Ms. Sheinbaum said. “We do not negotiate sovereignty.”Even though Ms. Sheinbaum is now fighting the cartels harder than some of her predecessors, Mr. Trump insists her measures would not suffice to end America’s fentanyl crisis. “The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture, and exercise total control — they have total control — over a whole nation, posing a grave threat to our national security,” Mr. Trump said in his Tuesday speech to Congress.Ms. Sheinbaum already matched Mr. Trump’s 10 percent tariff on Communist China. Since then, the American president imposed an additional 10 percent tariff. His aides explain that the reason is that fentanyl precursors are shipped to Mexico from China. “This deadly poison is being produced” in China, “and it’s being distributed through our neighbors, and there needs to be consequences for that. Period,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters Wednesday. Will America now take over Mexican ports to better control the flow of fentanyl precursors?Under Mr. Trump’s pressure, Ms. Sheinbaum has been more cooperative with America than her predecessors. Yet, she is adamant that any “war” against the cartels be Mexican-American, rather than merely American.

What Could Trump’s ‘War’ Against Mexican Cartels Entail?

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