The Mexican drug wars have raged for decades. Drug cartels are inherently business oriented organizations who, for the most part, limit the violent aspects of their trade south of the border as not to raise the ire of the United States government.
And it is a violent trade: 33,000 murders took place in Mexico in 2018. To put that statistic in perspective, in the same year, about 20,000 people were killed in the Syrian civil war.
While it is true that the so-called “war on drugs” becomes less of a priority for each subsequent administration, it is also true that the United States has maintained a low level military-to-military advise and assistance program with the Mexican government. This takes the form of intelligence sharing and coordinations, not the sort of boots-on-the-ground advise, assist, and accompany type of operations that U.S. Special Forces are known for from Afghanistan to Niger. This is largely due to concerns that Mexican officials have over neo-colonialism, it is a point of national pride and adherence to Mexican federal law. One group known to have especially benefited from this relationship is the Mexican Marines, who have become known as the most effective and least corrupt strike units in the country.
The Mexican drug wars have been a persistent issue on America's southern border and one that border patrol agents have long felt has been neglected. This week, it took the killings of a American family to get many Americans to pay attention to what has been happening in Mexico for decades.
The LaBarons are Mormons with dual US-Mexican citizenship. They are a part of a Mormon faction that broke away from LDS in order to live in Mexico and practice polygamy in their own Church of the Firstborn. Three women and six children from the LaBaron family were murdered when the vehicles they were traveling in were either caught in the crossfire of a cartel attack or were deliberately ambushed. The perpetrators have yet to be identified, but the region of northern Mexico where they were killed is controlled by the Sinaloa cartel, the oldest cartel in Mexico with the deepest institutional ties to the Mexican state.
This is also the cartel once run by the notorious “El Chapo” Guzman who was captured by the Mexican Marines during Operation Black Swan and then extradited to the United States where he is now imprisoned. In October, Chapo's son was arrested on a U.S. extradition order by an “elite unit” -- probably the Mexican Marines. The cartel mobilized, engaged in a wild firefight the sprawled across the city, and eventually backed down the military, forcing them to leave the junior Chapo behind and save themselves.
Into this morass entered President Trump yesterday, tweeting about the LaBaron murders. In a series of tweets he said it was time for the United States to wage war against the drug cartels and that sometimes you need an army to fight an army. It is unknown if this represents an actual policy shift on the part of the Trump administration; the President often changes his mind about these things.
But what would it look like if the US government did engage the drug cartels with the U.S. military?
Drug cartels in Mexico form almost a shadow state within a state, although unlike past revolutionaries, they don't actually want to control the institutions of government. Who wants that mess?
They are business oriented and want the government weak enough that they can continue to conduct their own business, but not so weak that the Mexican state actually collapses into anarchy. The cartels are organized, financed, and heavily armed. They present a asymmetrical threat and function as a criminal guerrilla army nested within the cultural, social, and political lattice work of Mexican society.
To meet this unconventional threat, the U.S. military would likely respond with unconventional forces. Re-enacting the U.S. Marine Corps siege of Fallujah in 2004 would be sub-optimal to say the least.
What this type of military intervention would look like may have already been previewed by a leak to the press back in 2012. The hunt for El Chapo was still on at that time and America was high in the saddle after taking down Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Mexican magazine Proceso cited anonymous Mexican military sources, claiming that NORTHCOM had briefed the Mexican government on a plan for U.S. Navy SEALs to locate El Chapo in the mountains, then infiltrate the target area on helicopters, raid his compound, kill him, and then take his body away. The mission would be supported by armed drones circling overhead. In essence, it was the same template as the Bin Laden raid. The leak to the press likely occurred because Mexican military officers were opposed to the notion of American troops operating in their country in this manner. Still, the idea was born, if it was ever a serious operationalized plan to begin with.
But if President Trump ever did deploy the military to fight drug cartels, it would almost certainly be partnered with Mexican Marines and other elements of the Mexican military and police. The model would likely resemble the find, fix, finish tactical cycle that the Special Operations task force utilized in Iraq. This involved targeting so-called high value targets. By removing leadership nodes in the enemy network, it delays, degrades, and hinders cartel operations allowing the task force to get inside the enemy's decision making process.
If Special Operations units are able to get that far ahead of the drug cartels, it may allow a joint task force to execute an enterprise take down, similar to how the FBI targets the mafia in the United States. This would involve bringing down an entire network over the course of twenty four hours before the enemy can reorganize. Although it seems incredibly unlikely, if Special Operations units were deployed to Mexico this would likely be the model: fast paced operations that quickly process incoming intelligence which lead to multiple strikes during each period of darkness.
That said, this is all speculative at best if not outright fantastical.
For starters, the task force would run into the same problems in Mexico that it did in Iraq. Deploying operators and having them raid targets can result in tactical successes by putting the enemy on their heels and stymieing their operations. However, into that void that is created the other institutions of government must assert themselves. Killing high value targets is one thing, creating a functioning state that is legitimate in the eyes of local citizens is something else entirely, and not something that America has a great track record with. Killing the enemy is easy, changing the underlying social and political push/pull dynamics that created the conflict itself is another matter.
Furthermore, such an American intervention would enrage the Mexican military and is illegal under Mexican law. The deployment of armed American soldiers to Mexico would stir up anti-imperialistic sentiments and would almost certainly be opposed by the vast majority of the Mexican people. Winning the “hearts and minds” campaign would be difficult if not impossible. This is largely why the U.S. military has thus far focused on enabling the Mexican Marines using a light footprint approach.
It is also an approach that works. The U.S. government works hand in glove with the Special Action Force (SAF) in the Philippines, with the Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG) in Kurdistan, and with various NDS controlled para-military units in Afghanistan. These relationships are key, and keep America from treading too hard on local populations while enabling the host nation to run their own counter-terrorism missions.
It remains to be seen if the latest Trump tweets on going to war with Mexican drug cartels materialize into actual policy, but for now it seems that it is still on the Mexican military to lead with America pointing them in the right direction.
Want to get more connected to the stories and resources Connecting Vets has to offer? Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.
