By German Lopez | NYT Morning Newsletter | JUL. 31, 2023 | Photo by Todd Heisler
Mexico has been one of America’s closest allies for years under both Democratic and Republican administrations, even Donald Trump’s.
That may be changing. Republican officials and voters have not only expressed criticisms of Mexico but also outright hostility against America’s southern neighbor.
The starkest example involves repeated calls by Republican presidential candidates to bomb Mexico or unilaterally send troops there to stop the illegal drug trade, which would be an act of war.
Trump led the way: He asked defense officials about striking Mexico with missiles while he was president, and during the 2024 presidential campaign he has supported military action. Ron DeSantis has called for using deadly force and a naval blockade of Mexican ports to stop drug traffickers. More moderate candidates, like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, have also backed using the military against drug cartels in Mexico.
“You know what you tell the Mexican president? ‘Either you do it or we do it,’” Haley said in March. “But we are not going to let all of this lawlessness continue to happen.”
These calls haven’t become a major focus of national attention because the Republican campaign remains in its early stages. But as the campaign picks up — including at the first debate, on Aug. 23 — you will probably hear more about this issue.
Taking cues from Trump’s 2016 campaign playbook and presidency, other Republicans have already translated his disparagement of Mexicans and other Latinos into policy, particularly on immigration. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott put razor wire, floating barriers and state troopers along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter people from coming into the country illegally. The federal government sued Texas last week to try to stop him.
What is going on? The posture represents a genuine shift within Republican politics. For most of the past few decades, Republicans have backed closer ties with Mexico. (The 1990s free trade deal, NAFTA, had bipartisan support.) And in the first days of Trump’s presidency, most Republican voters said in polls that Mexico was an ally of the U.S. Now, Republican voters are evenly divided on whether Mexico is an ally or an enemy, as this chart shows:
Source: YouGov | By The New York Times
Extreme approach
Republicans often portray the idea of fully militarizing the war on drugs as an evolution in policy: treating Mexican cartels like ISIS or other terrorist groups. But unilaterally deploying the military to Mexico would be a significant escalation of U.S. policy.
I spoke to half a dozen drug policy and counterterrorism experts across the political spectrum. All of them criticized the approach as extreme, ineffective and self-destructive. “In 35 years, this takes the prize as the stupidest idea I have ever heard,” said Jonathan Caulkins at Carnegie Mellon University.
In addition to the likely humanitarian toll and the hit to U.S. standing in the world, any incursion into Mexico could worsen the same problems Republicans are trying to address. To the extent that the U.S. has succeeded in stemming illegal immigration and drugs in recent years, it has relied on Mexico’s close cooperation. Both Trump and President Biden have worked with Mexican officials to stop South and Central Americans from traveling to the U.S. through Mexico.
Mexico would almost certainly stop collaborating if the U.S. sent troops or let missiles fly. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said that talk of sending the U.S. military south of the border is “irresponsible” and “an offense to the people of Mexico, a lack of respect for our sovereignty.”
Representatives of the Trump, DeSantis and Haley campaigns did not respond to questions about using the military against Mexican cartels. A spokeswoman for Scott restated his support for the idea, but didn’t respond to questions about whether he would ask for Mexico’s approval before deploying the military there.
Political talk
Some of the language can be pinned on the presidential primaries, when politicians tend to take more extreme stances on all sorts of issues before moderating themselves in the general election. That could be happening here.
Politicians are also desperate to look as if they are doing something about illegal immigration and the drug overdose crisis, often with deceptive promises of quick fixes and decisive action. But enduring solutions to these problems have eluded the U.S. for years.
