Let's not take up the next war ...

While the many of us were looking elsewhere, Republicans have normalized the idea of the U.S. bombing Mexico. No, really. Trump claims he'll do it if elected in 2024.

Mexico City: independencia and global commerce

It is true that the fentanyl deaths all around us in the United States are the consequence of a kind of quadrilateral trade whose end product is murder. The precursor chemicals to the drug enter Mexico from China. Inside our southern neighbor, the drug cartels manufacture the addictive poison and from there ship it to our abundant population of American users. With the proceeds, the cartels arm themselves with military quality guns which travel in the reverse direction. In Mexico, the cartels subvert and battle the government for unfettered power; 30,000 Mexicans are killed in Mexico annually by the drug cartel conflict.

Adam Tooze lays out the frightening contours in a long Substack post, "So far from god" ... friend-shoring and the debate in Washington over whether to bomb Mexico". This begins with a concise survey of Mexico's fraught history with its imperial neighbor (that's us), looks at Mexico's current relationships with Latin America and China -- and then takes up the crisis looming over the drug trade. His conclusions are terrifying and should be demanding of those of us who don't want to compound the drug war with an international atrocity.

The problem for those favoring restraint is that the situation is truly disastrous, they have no good alternatives to offer and America’s planetary conception of its own security provides no official with any wiggle-room. It is their duty to protect Americans everywhere from every threat and to use the tools at their disposal to do so.

So in March 2021, Head of U.S. Northern Command General Glen VanHerck stated that 30%-35% of Mexico constitutes an “ungoverned space”, which as he warns opens the door to cartels and their foreign friends. That then raises the question of how any American President could stand by and allow a lethal threat to America to develop on its border without acting. As the explosive memo to a putative President Trump highlighted by Rolling Stone, remarks: “It is vital that Mexico not be led to believe that they have veto power to prevent the US from taking the actions necessary to secure its borders and people.”

... At one level this is an outrageous carte blanche for an infringement of Mexican sovereignty and a forever war on drugs. At another level it is merely the assertion of the basic principle of self-defense in the face of an unregulated transnational threat on America’s borders. America’s sovereignty and the paramountcy of its own interests means that Mexico can have no veto. To concede anything less is tantamount to treason. ...

Tooze is not arguing for a new (renewed?) Mexican War. But he has made the threat implicit in the current situation real. Those of us who find military action against Mexico unthinkable and absurd should take notice. This is not just habitual Republican posturing, bellicosity, and racism. 

As in so many arenas, the Biden administration is struggling to manage the complicated, ugly, multilayered challenges which confront a country learning to live as one fish (a big one) among many. If we care about peace and justice, Tooze has convinced me that this is a vital direction in which to be paying attention.