Over the last few months, a policy proposal of sorts has picked up steam within the Republican Party, particularly amongst its nationalist wing: in order to stop the flood of fentanyl and other illicit drugs from pouring over the US-Mexican border, the United States should undergo some sort of military campaign within Mexico. What such a campaign would look like is unclear. Proponents have been maddeningly unspecific, but the general contours would seem to involve declaring the cartels to be terrorist organisations and using the United States military to disrupt and destroy their operations within Mexico.
Lest you think that this is merely being propagated by one or two interventionists, think again: the libertarian magazine Reason conducted a review of statements on the subject by all major announced GOP candidates and found that more or less all of them had, to some degree, spoke positively of using military force in Mexico. Reason, of course, took a negative view of the concept. On this point, conservatives and libertarians should be seeing eye-to-eye, however. Invading Mexico to wipe out the cartels would effectively jettison everything America learned from our mistakes in the War on Terror. It would be costly, both in lives and treasure. It would be deeply unpopular — and it would fail.
For starters, the cartels are not mere gangs. The cartels effectively control chunks of Mexico and are in many ways ingrained into society there. They are not a separate external growth which can be lasered off with a well-aimed cruise missile: the infection has spread throughout the body. Wiping out the cartels would require our soldiers going door to door, house to house, waging war. This is not to even mention the massive cost of such an attack. A Harvard study found that the total cost of the Iraq War was about $3 trillion; we have no reason to think Mexico would be cheaper.
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