Candidates for anointing of the Republicans ahead of the November 2024 presidential election, they promise that if elected, they will crack down on drug cartels in Mexico.

A threat that is seen as increasingly serious and of increasing concern, on both sides of the border.

In the Republican presidential nominee’s first televised debate on Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis — second in the polls behind former President Donald Trump — gave his unqualified endorsement of unilateral border action.

Asked if he would send US special forces to destroy drug labs in Mexico if elected, Mr DeSandis replied: “I would from day one.”

Mr. Trump, who did not participate in the debate with the other candidates, has asked his advisers to prepare “battle plans” that would see the deployment of the U.S. military against Mexican drug traffickers if he is re-elected, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

Three other candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, also favor such businesses.

In March, Nikki Haley, the only woman among the GOP nominees and a former US ambassador to the UN, argued that Washington should treat Mexican cartels the same as members of the Islamic State group.

“Pure Madness”

For experts in international politics, these statements cannot be taken lightly. And they pose a serious threat to the ever-delicate relations between Washington and its southern neighbor.

“This is pure madness,” former Mexican ambassador to the US Arturo Sarucan, who now works for the Brookings think tank in the US capital, told AFP.

However, the idea is not new. Donald Trump, when he was US president, wanted to launch missiles against clandestine drug labs in Mexico, but his advisers talked him out of it, according to a book released in 2022 by his administration’s Secretary of Defense (2019-2020) Mark Esper .

But since then, the U.S.-Mexico border has seen an explosion in the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic drug blamed for 110,000 deaths last year, according to U.S. health authorities.

Besides, former ambassador Sarucan notes, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has reduced cooperation with US authorities in efforts to combat drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

And so the Republicans are demanding to start UAV strikes and night raids against the cartels, the tactics used against jihadist organizations in Iraq, Syria, or even Somalia, where the diplomatic consequences are negligible.

In January, Republicans in Congress proposed giving the president extraordinary war powers to order US troops to take unilateral action against Mexican drug traffickers.

And in March the party introduced a draft law designating nine cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” expanding the ability of any president to order the deployment of armed forces against them, mirroring the policy against jihadist organizations.

“irresponsible”

Far from being mere demagogic bluster, “this attitude carries real risks,” Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group think tank pointed out in July.

He mainly referred to the possibility of a rupture in relations between Washington and Mexico, a complete interruption of cooperation, which would further threaten US national security.

The Mexican president had earlier this year called the possible US unilateral military action “irresponsible”, “a lack of respect for our independence and our national sovereignty”.

“We will not allow any foreign government to intervene, even less the armed forces of a foreign government,” he had stressed.

For Arturo Sarucan, a unilateral operation would make Mexico appear even less willing to stop the flow of migrants and drug trafficking to the US.

The Mexican government would likely share even less information on the fight against terrorists, while fundamental bilateral cooperation agreements, such as those on water resources, would also be at risk, he said.

It would be “an act of war and a violation of international law” — and “Mexico is not Somalia,” the former ambassador stressed.