Why Trump’s Plan to Send Troops to Mexico to Defeat the Cartels will Fail

If there was one thing that I agreed with Trump on, it was deploying troops to Mexico to fight the cartels. The reason? I had seen—and I still see—the damage those criminal organizations have caused on U.S. society: the dozens of people—from the 18 year old boy to the fifty year old woman—standing crumpled on the sidewalks of downtown LA,  staring blankly at the ground and muttering discordant words under their breaths, the endless coverages of one teen overdose to the next, the interviews of mothers sobbing, holding framed images of their child in their lap, the consequences that the individuals who sell the Cartel’s drugs deal with, like the man who I witnessed be sentenced to prison, the man whose younger sister wailed as she watched her brother be taken away for five years. It makes sense, then, why I supported the forceful elimination of the Cartels. It was out of hate—for the lives they had ruined, for the ones that they had taken away. However, in my  research for this blog, I came to realize that the army is not the answer to the question of the Cartels. It is not as easy as just taking out some drug lord or bombing a drug lab. The issue runs far deeper and, therefore, so does the solution.

While it is true that the cartels bear much of the responsibility for the harm drugs have caused in the United States, it is important to establish that the root of the issue is self-produced, American made. According to a 2019 Stanford University brief, big pharma, specifically, companies like Purdue Pharma, pushed the American populace onto becoming reliant on prescription pain killers as a cure for nearly every ailment: from mild back aches to severe post surgery pains. So, Americans did. They became reliant. More than reliant, they became addicted—resulting in a 300 percent increase in prescription related overdoses between the years 2000 and 2010. When the U.S. government cracked down on these drugs, the collective wound of addiction did not seal. It was left gaping, gasping for something to fill the hole. Heroin compensated. Once again, when the federal government took preventative measures, Americans shifted—this time to Cartel made fentanyl. In 2016, 5800 people overdosed. In 2020, 30000 died. In 2024, 74000 perished. 

Clearly, Mexican cartels have capitalized on America’s hunger for hard drugs. But how did they manage to do so? Perhaps the question should be framed differently: while the cartels certainly exploited U.S. demand, they also took advantage of their own region—not just Mexico’s geography, with land and sea access to the U.S. at its north and links to Central America in the south, but above all its fragile political state. According to a Council on Foreign Relations article from February of this year, Mexico’s seven decade ruling party—that is the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP)—helped the Cartels flourish. This centralized government operated through a system of patronage, in which political loyalty was exchanged for favors and local control. Such a system enabled cartels like the Sinaloa Cartel to infiltrate state politics and secure enough influence to consistently produce and transport drugs—such as fentanyl—across the country without facing significant political backlash. 

After the PRI disintegrated and President Vicente Fox took office in 2001, the cartels continued to maintain their power, increasingly through violent attacks against civilians, police officers, and politicians. In August 2010, Los Zetas executed seventy-two migrants after the victims refused to work for the cartel—an atrocity that illustrates the extreme lengths cartels will go to when their commands are defied. In March 2015, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel ambushed a National Gendarmerie convoy—a subdivision of the Federal Police—in a residential neighborhood, killing fifteen officers—an assault that demonstrates both the cartel’s military coordination, which rivals that of the Mexican state, and its audacity in directly confronting security forces. Most recently, in June 2025, members of Carteles Unidos allegedly assassinated the mayor of Tepalcatepec and her husband outside their home—a tragedy that underscores the cartels’ willingness to eliminate anyone, regardless of political standing, whom they perceive as a threat.

The above image is of the mayor of Tepalcatepec

The cartels’ tight grip on power and the violence they have inflicted across Mexico serve as my first contention for why Trump’s plan to deploy troops there would be ineffective. History shows that U.S. military interventions often provoke resistance rather than quell it. When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban, insurgent groups instead regrouped, expanded, and escalated their attacks. A similar dynamic is virtually guaranteed in Mexico, however, on an even greater scale. Unlike terrorist organizations such as the Taliban, Mexican cartels are multi-billion-dollar enterprises. According to a 2024 Cato Institute report, these organizations command armored vehicles, armed drones, improvised explosive devices, and even surface-to-air missiles. Beyond their arsenal, cartels like Sinaloa effectively control entire regions and maintain deep networks of local influence. In such an environment, U.S. soldiers would not only face well-equipped adversaries but would also be fighting on unfamiliar ground against an enemy with intimate knowledge of the terrain and population. The result could mirror—or even exceed—the quagmire of Vietnam: thousands of    American lives lost in a conflict where the enemy holds both the home-field advantage and the economic resources to fight indefinitely. 

Touching on the point of Vietnam, U.S. deployment of troops could unintentionally fuel nationalist resistance. In Mexico, American forces might even bolster sympathy for the cartels as defenders against an invading superpower. As a London School of Economics critique observed, ‘Instead of curbing cartels, military intervention would likely legitimize the Mexican government’s resistance to U.S. pressures and bolster anti-American rhetoric.’ To legitimize is to validate one’s motives and aims; in this case, it would mean doing the very opposite of the United States’ intent—granting credibility to the cartels’ brutal methods. Rather than dismantling cartel power, such intervention risks reinforcing it, winning the cartels not only greater local support but also international sympathy. At the same time, the destabilization and violence would tarnish America’s reputation throughout Central and South America, cementing the image of the United States as a power that responds to challenges with excessive and destructive force.

My second contention is that military action would be ineffective because it would not stop the drug problem itself. The U.S. has a large demand for drugs, and as long as demand exists, cartels will meet it. When the U.S. cracked down on narcotics in Panama, cartels shifted operations to regions with weaker American influence. That is how Mexico became the center of trafficking: after Panama, operations moved to Colombia, and after major busts in the 1980s, they migrated again—this time into Mexico. Just as American users transitioned from OxyContin to heroin to fentanyl, cartels will continually change their geography. U.S. military intervention in Mexico, then, would accomplish little. Even if Mexican cartels were dismantled, new ones would inevitably emerge elsewhere—meaning American lives would be sacrificed not to solve the problem, but only to watch it resurface in new places.

So what should the United States actually do to dismantle the cartels and prevent more American lives from being lost? As I have argued before, as long as there is demand, drugs will continue to pour into the United States. Instead of cutting funding for addiction treatment programs—as Trump did with eleven billion dollars, according to a March NPR report—the billions of dollars that would be spent deploying troops should instead be invested in addiction resources and rehabilitation services. That money would directly save the lives of Americans struggling with substance abuse, the very people the government has a duty to protect.

Secondly, if Trump truly wanted to do everything possible to weaken the cartels, he would not begin with military force but with politics. From a liberal perspective, the solution lies not in imposing U.S. will on Mexico, but in cooperating with the Mexican government to help root out corruption through Mexico’s own institutions. Only by stripping cartels of their political influence can they be destabilized in a lasting way.

Lastly, if military deployment were ever to be considered, it should not involve waves of U.S. troops flooding into Mexico, which would only provoke massive resistance. Instead, small, carefully coordinated tactical units—working alongside Mexican police—could be used to target the most dangerous cartel leaders and infrastructure. This joint approach would match the cartels’ own level of organization without triggering nationwide backlash. Thus, my point is this: deploying troops to Mexico should be viewed only as a last-resort chess move, reserved for eliminating the most essential targets. Before that stage is even on the table, the United States must first tackle the cartels’ political foundations and, at home, reduce demand by taking Americans off drugs.

“Asesinada a balazos la alcaldesa de Tepalcatepec junto a su esposo en la puerta de su casa.” El País (México), June 17, 2025. https://elpais.com/mexico/2025-06-17/asesinada-a-balazos-la-alcaldesa-de-tepalcatepec-junto-a-su-esposo-en-la-puerta-de-su-casa.html?

Cato Institute. “Reconsidering U.S. Special Forces Deployment against Mexican Cartels.” News release, November 13, 2024. https://www.cato.org/news-releases/reconsidering-us-special-forces-deployment-against-mexican-cartels

Council on Foreign Relations. “Mexico’s Long War: Drugs, Crime, and the Cartels.” Backgrounder, January 21, 2025. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels

Kurmanaev, Anatoly. “Donald Trump’s Radical Second-Term Agenda Set to Test Mexico’s Fragility.” Financial Times, July 21, 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/637b9511-6f16-460b-bc09-32e07c064f5a

Raziel, Zedryk. “Asesinada a balazos la alcaldesa de Tepalcatepec junto a su esposo en la puerta de su casa.” El País (México), June 17, 2025. https://elpais.com/mexico/2025-06-17/asesinada-a-balazos-la-alcaldesa-de-tepalcatepec-junto-a-su-esposo-en-la-puerta-de-su-casa.html?

LSE USAPP Blog. Zapata Celestino, Kevin, and Omar Alejandro Loera González. “Why a US Invasion of Mexico Would End in Disaster.” March 25, 2025. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2025/03/25/why-a-us-invasion-of-mexico-would-end-in-disaster/?

NPR. “Addiction, Trump, Mental Health Funding.” March 27, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/27/nx-s1-5342368/addiction-trump-mental-health-funding

OCCRP. “Mexico: 15 Policemen Killed in Suspected Cartel Ambush.” April 8, 2015. https://www.occrp.org/en/news/mexico-15-policemen-killed-in-suspected-cartel-ambush

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). “The Opioid Crisis: Tragedy, Treatments and Trade-offs.” Policy Brief. https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/opioid-crisis-tragedy-treatments-and-trade-offs

The Guardian. “Survivor Tells of Escape from Mexican Massacre in Which 72 Were Left Dead.” August 25, 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/25/mexico-massacre-central-american-migrants

The Brookings Institution. “How the Sinaloa Cartel Rules.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-sinaloa-cartel-rules/?

War on Drugs. HBO Max Documentary. Accessed September 2025. https://play.hbomax.com/video/watch/593199d4-1ea5-4920-8401-41ed15d655a5/3cfd3787-296f-4a95-903e-701aa4795b62