Trump Doubles Down on the Forever Drug War
If people thought Iraq and Afghanistan were drawn-out quagmires, just wait until the military takes on the cartels.
THERE’S A LOT ABOUT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION that makes me laugh—because it’s ridiculous, because it’s shocking, or just to keep from triggering my PTSD. So when I read that President Trump is planning to task the CIA with a major new role in the war on drugs, I laughed. Dexter Filkins did the world a disservice when he coined the term “Forever War” for the wars I fought in—Iraq, Afghanistan, the Global War on Terror. The real forever war has been going on for half a century, ever since President Nixon signed the Substance Control Act in 1971, and it shows no signs of stopping.
Over the decades, Democrats and Republicans came together to spend more than a trillion dollars—and probably much more—enforcing prohibitions on a wide range of psychoactive chemicals. While that’s not much of a price tag compared to Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m a little jealous that there was more bipartisan commitment to long-term victory over pot than over al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Every year, millions of Americans are arrested for possessing or selling drugs, and a short stroll around any college campus makes it obvious that the total number of drug users is much higher. These arrests overwhelmingly affect black and Hispanic populations. Of the nearly 2 million Americans currently in prison, one in five was arrested on drug charges. (Many of those people, admittedly, probably pleaded guilty to drug offenses rather than face a jury on more serious charges.) Despite the time and resources invested in the drug war, Americans continue to seek illegal drugs. The statistics are alarming: Half of Americans older than 12 have used illicit drugs, and some 700,000 Americans have died from overdoses since 2000.
Now President Trump and his national security team are doubling down. The Trump administration is reportedly split between direct military attacks on the cartels or an approach that would support more aggressive moves by the Mexican government. This debate mimics the war on terror, in which we transitioned from fighting terrorists directly to fighting them “by, with, and through” partners like the Kurdish Peshmerga. I’ve seen both sides of it, and neither option is great.
On February 20, the State Department labeled Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (aka MS-13), and six major Mexican drug cartels (Sinaloa, Jalisco Nueva Generación, Noreste, Nueva Familia Michoacana, Golfo, and Cárteles Unidos) as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists. These designations alone hint at the geographical challenge of winning the war on drugs. The Mexican Cartels already have deep networks throughout the United States, not to mention significant political and security control of swaths of Mexico. MS-13 is a Salvadoran gang, and Tren de Aragua is Venezuelan. That’s a 4,000 mile front, from Baja California to the Amazon basin, which is a lot even for the CIA. (Unless the plan is just to try to dismantle the criminal organization in the United States and leave their foreign bases alone, which raises the question of how much the CIA, which conducts exclusively foreign intelligence, would be involved.)
President Trump is reportedly considering sending America’s most elite special operations units to tackle Mexican organized crime. Northern Command is already increasing surveillance on the cartels, and other commands are itching to get into the fight. Although Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has suggested deep cuts to the Department of Defense’s budget, he still intends to achieve “operational control” over a border spanning nearly 2,000 miles (and even longer if you count the shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico). This herculean effort will require extraordinary manpower, resources, and attention, which will be difficult for the DoD to manage—especially considering Trump’s pick for under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, is obsessed with China to the exclusion of all other threats and commitments.
To make matters more complicated, the proposed fight likely won’t be limited to the southern border or even the Western Hemisphere. “The Mexican cartels’ reach is unlimited,” according to Lt. Gen. Haibitullah Alizai, former commander of the Afghan National Army. “The Taliban routinely did business with them and their partners in South America.”
In 2006, the Mexican government declared war on the cartels. Since then, nearly 460,000 Mexicans have been murdered. While many of Mexico’s most lethal cartels are rivals, it would be only natural for them to set aside their differences when faced with an avowedly existential threat from the United States. And they would present a significant foe to the American military: a disparate network of cells boasting 175,000 people and some impressive arsenals.
Beyond mere numerical strength, the Mexican cartels are also sophisticated. As early as 2012, they were using social media to hunt informants and recruit future soldiers. Within a decade, they were using state-of-the-art Israeli-designed spyware to target journalists, politicians, and dissidents. They obtained the technology from the Mexican government, which had bought it to use against the cartels, illustrating the deep corruption of the Mexican government. The Mexican military’s record is staggering. Even senior-ranking Mexican general officers have ties to various cartels.
Perhaps the greatest advantage the cartels and other gangs possess is their ability to hide in and among civilians and otherwise use the laws of war to their favor. It wouldn’t even be the first time an organized criminal group had evaded the American military in Mexico.
“Targeting the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Haqqani Network was incredibly difficult,” said a retired senior noncommissioned officer who requested anonymity to discuss this topic due to fear of retaliation. “Even though the intelligence community boasts scores of native-born Mexicans, they will struggle to pinpoint targets, especially in some of Mexico’s slums. The United States military will face a formidable challenge in identifying and neutralizing the cartels’ operations, especially given the complex and often densely populated urban environments in which they operate.”
The parallels between the Mexican cartels and Hamas in particular are chilling. The Mexican cartels know their territory intimately and in many places have terrorized the population into submission. They have dug tunnels to smuggle people, drugs, and other supplies into the United States. They will use their arsenal of improvised explosive devices to wreak havoc on American military forces.
While the Trump administration might be using bellicose rhetoric to pressure the Mexican government into arresting more senior cartel members, they are inching ever forward into plunging the American military into a decades-long war that it cannot win.
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