{"id":50375,"date":"2024-12-04T10:02:45","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T18:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50375"},"modified":"2024-12-04T10:02:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T18:02:45","slug":"a-cartel-war-is-incredibly-stupid-but-trump-will-do-it-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/04\/a-cartel-war-is-incredibly-stupid-but-trump-will-do-it-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cartel War Is Incredibly Stupid, But Trump Will Do It Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Van Jackson identifies<\/a> some of the things that we can reliably predict about Trump\u2019s foreign policy:<\/p>\n

Will Trump preside over a growing defense budget that officially eclipses more than $1 trillion? Will US grand strategy remain primacist? Will economic statecraft consist primarily of tariffs and sanctions? Will the US military end up conducting operations of some kind inside Mexico\u2019s borders? Will the US continue providing a blank check to Israel?<\/em><\/p>\n

The answer to all these questions is assuredly \u201cYes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It remains to be seen what changes Trump will to the foreign policy he is inheriting, but judging from his first term it is safe to assume he will preserve the worst of Biden\u2019s policies while reneging on any remaining useful diplomatic agreements. Trump is also likely to introduce some of his own ill-conceived policies. Launching attacks in Mexico will be one of these. James Bosworth warned<\/a> last week that \u201cthe signs are that the incoming Trump administration is preparing for an actual war against the drug cartels in 2025 that goes well beyond the \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Military action in Mexico under the next administration does seem likely. Rolling Stone<\/em> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Within Donald Trump\u2019s government-in-waiting, there is a fresh debate over whether and how thoroughly the president-elect should follow through on his campaign promise to attack or even invade Mexico, as part of the \u201cwar\u201d he\u2019s pledged to wage against powerful drug cartels.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHow much should we invade Mexico?\u201d says a senior Trump transition member. \u201cThat is the question.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The fact that this is a question that is being seriously discussed at the highest levels of the next administration is more proof that Trump\u2019s foreign policy is going to be awful. If this is the sort of policy that they are debating, there is no telling what other reckless and destructive things they might attempt. Military action inside Mexico shouldn\u2019t be an option at all, but among Trump and his advisers it is already taken for granted that it will happen in some form. It is a measure of how thoroughly the \u201cwar on terror\u201d has corrupted and distorted our foreign policy debate that the idea<\/a> of treating drug cartels as terrorist organizations and attacking them with the military is not only taken seriously but has a real chance of being turned into official policy.<\/p>\n

A \u201cwar on cartels\u201d will do nothing to address the flow of drugs into this country. It will impose huge costs on both the U.S. and Mexico. Military action in Mexico is the wrong tool in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera explained<\/a> last month why a militarized approach gets everything wrong and pointed out the serious consequences it would have:<\/p>\n

Declaring a war on cartels could be considered an \u201cact of war against Mexico\u201d and could have severe repercussions for the relationship between the United States and its southern neighbor. Sending U.S. troops to Mexico could violate Mexico\u2019s sovereignty and bombing cartels would likely cause massive destruction and death. Any U.S. war on cartels would be rooted in fallacies and a general misconception of the drug epidemic in the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Van Jackson identifies some of the things that we can reliably predict about Trump\u2019s foreign policy: Will Trump preside over a growing defense budget that officially eclipses more than $1 trillion? Will US grand strategy remain primacist? Will economic statecraft consist primarily of tariffs and sanctions? Will the US military end up conducting operations of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[747],"class_list":["post-50375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Military action inside Mexico shouldn\u2019t be an option at all, but among Trump and his advisers it is already taken for granted that it will happen in some form."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50375"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50379,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50375\/revisions\/50379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50375"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}