The Nation is Dead South of the Border

President Trump should take the gloves off in Mexico

Within hours of cartel leader El Mencho’s death, CJNG shut down two international airports, blockaded a major city, burned cars and infrastructure across the state, and forced airlines to divert flights. The question isn’t whether Mexico has a cartel problem, the question is whether Mexico as a sovereign state still exists in the ways that matter.

The traditional symbols of sovereignty are monopoly of violence, control of territory, taxation and economic power, service provisions, and international influence. CJNG and other cartels operate with all of these. They field a paramilitary force with drones, anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles, and a willingness to engage the Mexican state military directly. They operate as the dominant authority in their territory, controlling all elements of daily life. Extortion networks parallel a tax system. They distribute food and provide security. They operate in dozens of countries. These cartels are not criminal gangs, they are multinational enterprises with foreign policy and institutions. They are nationlike.

The frameworks we have would call this a state. What do you do when a sovereign country exists with a litany of national tumors, these cartels? You get Mexico. The only reason we engage with Mexico as a legitimate country is out of diplomatic convenience and a fear of intervention. It’s a fiction that persists out of our cowardice and in support of our convenience. We treat the border as a demarcation between two sovereign countries when, on the southern side, the operating authority is, in places, not a true state but instead a designated terrorist organization generating billions from a trade that kills tens of thousands of Americans annually.

The truth is, the cartels are their own nations. Bastardized, corrupt, disfigured ones perhaps, but nations nonetheless. And they are de facto at war with the United States.

The death of this cartel leader will be celebrated, but it is no victory for us. It is the kind of defeat that has been mistaken for victory for twenty years.

Cartel decapitation has done nothing to upset the “cartel equilibrium” in Mexico. There is no reason to believe this will be any different, and strong reason to believe that things will get worse. These organizations, while resilient, are prone to violent fragmentation. Each disruption in equilibrium results in a conflict for existence, relevance, and control. You do not see a succession war, rather thirty fought simultaneously across multiple territories.

This does not mean that decapitation fails because leaders are unimportant. Instead, decapitation assumes that these cartels are simply weeds to be trimmed rather than threats to be destroyed. You can kill every kingpin one at a time for the next fifty years and you will be no closer to solving the problem. You must destroy the ecosystem that produces them: uncovered territory, limitless revenue, a corrupt Mexican state, and the absence of a superior force to restore order.

We should not invade and occupy Mexico. It is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Those were distant wars fought for abstract goals in faraway, foreign lands, sustained by optimistic theories of democratic transformation where it may not belong. Every honest conservative has reckoned with this and drawn the correct lessons.

The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan are not that American power must be restrained, or that its use is inherently foolish. The lesson is that American power must be applied in the service of concrete American interests, against real threats, with achievable objectives. By every one of these metrics, we must destroy the cartels.

The Mexican drug trade has killed tens of thousands of Americans every year. It is persisted by designated foreign terrorist organizations. No one disputes this dynamic. The only dispute is what to do.

We do not have to rebuild Mexican governance. We merely have to destroy the operational abilities of a designated terrorist organization operating inside, on, and beyond America’s border. We have spent decades developing the most sophisticated counter network capabilities in human history. We built the hammer to break Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The tools exist, but we have refused to act. It is time we turned that hammer on our enemies down south.

This would send a hemispheric message. For two hundred years, American strategic doctrine has rested on the idea that the Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood, and our responsibility. We do not tolerate hostile powers operating in it. President Monroe declared it, Teddy Roosevelt operationalized it, now Donald Trump resurrects it. The cartels are the most dangerous hostile power in our hemisphere since Soviet missiles were emplaced in Cuba. It is past time to act accordingly.

Until we act, the machinery of death will continue unabated. The drug trade will continue to flow north, and tens of thousands of Americans will lose their lives every year.

The United States is the most powerful nation in the history of the world. We possess the most capable military ever assembled by human civilization. Our intelligence can track a single human being across the surface of the earth. We have the legal authority, the moral standing, and the strategic imperative to act. America has spent two decades watching a network of narco-states consolidate power on our doorstep, killing Americans by the thousand, while Washington furrows its brow and murmurs about restraint and patience.

This is the failure of empire. Paralysis. Cowardice pretending itself prudence.

The cartels are not a Mexican problem that inconveniences America. They are an American problem that wears Mexico like a skin suit. We don’t need to ask permission, we’re the United States of America. It’s time to act like it.

El Mencho’s death should be the beginning.