No military strategy can stop Mexico’s cartels

On Aug. 13, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration corralled 26 narcotraffickers onto planes destined for the United States, where they will be prosecuted for a litany of drug and violent offenses. One was wanted 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 29 cartel figures to the U.S. Justice Department.

All of this is coming at a time when the Mexican security forces are accelerating counter-narcotics operations throughout the country. According to Mexico’s secretary of public security, homicides have declined by more than 25% during Sheinbaum’s first 10 months; more than 1,200 drug labs have also been dismantled.

If the Trump administration is impressed with the progress, officials haven’t shown it. In fact, Washington is enlisting the U.S. military to help with the problem 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 4,000 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 government, 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.

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 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared a full-scale war against narcotrafficking organizations, complete with the deployment of tens of thousands of Mexican troops to the country’s most violent states and looser rules of engagement. Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, had implemented the same strategy with a special emphasis on targeting the cartels’ leadership structure. Even Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who campaigned on a “Hugs, Not Bullets” approach, came to rely on the Mexican army during the latter years of his presidency.

The result was precisely the opposite of what Mexico hoped to achieve. Although some 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 government officials have all been targeted by the cartels, and the massacre of civilians is now the norm. Last year, Mexico experienced its deadliest election campaign in history, with around 200 politicians, candidates and public 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 difficult for the state to contain the problem. 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 trade have seen an exponential rise in killings. In 2006, when Calderón declared war on the cartels, Mexico registered approximately 10,000 homicides; today, the figure has more than tripled.

If the Trump administration green-lights military operations, the United States is unlikely to mimic the Mexican government’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 officials 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. The drug business is, in a word, big. The cartels rake in billions of dollars every year from the trade. The rate of return, particularly on fentanyl, is huge; according to a 2023 indictment, hundreds of dollars in precursor chemicals can net profits 200 to 800 times larger. It’s very difficult 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 market share.

There is no magic bullet to stopping the drug trade. 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. Border control officers need more technology to detect drug shipments. Washington and Mexico City must strengthen their bilateral intelligence cooperation, which has already picked up during the first 10 months of Sheinbaum’s term. And while sanctions aren’t a panacea, they can deter some Americans from working with the cartels.

Bombing Mexico, however, won’t do anything but jeopardize the very relationship with Mexico the Trump administration needs to contain the problem.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.