(NewsNation) — Republican leaders are doubling down on calls to fight Mexican drug cartels with the United States’ military force.
One of the latest pushes came during Wednesday’s GOP presidential candidate debate when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would send the U.S. military into Mexico on “day one” if he were elected to office.
It’s part of an ongoing debate about how to stymie the deadly fentanyl problem in the U.S.
Proponents of the military action say targeting the cartels will send a message and limit the flow of fentanyl over the border. Experts, however, question how Republicans plan to target the cartel, adding that the nation’s military presence would stand to make matters worse.
“I don’t know how you find the cartel,” said Peter Sanchez, professor emeritus of political science at Loyola University. “I don’t think they have bases. … I guess you can find the labs, but they could be set up very easily. Basically, it would turn into an endless war.”
DeSantis wasn’t alone in calling for military action Wednesday night. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Vice President Mike Pence said they would support some amount of military involvement if Mexico were on board.
Former President Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy have supported the idea too.
Pence backed efforts to “hunt down and destroy” drug cartels. Hutchinson was more reserved, calling for intelligence-gathering efforts in tandem with the Mexican government.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., previously told NewsNation, “I want to blow them up.”
Beyond that, it’s unclear what the hypothetical military action against drug cartels would actually look like. The U.S. Department of Defense declined to comment when asked by NewsNation what a cartel strategy could look like.
Earlier this year, Reps. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, and Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced legislation to create the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) “to target Mexican drug cartels” moving fentanyl.
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the 100,000 fatal drug overdoses in 2021, 65,000 were linked to fentanyl.
According to Waltz, an AUMF would give the president “sophisticated military cyber, intelligence, and surveillance resources to disrupt cartel operations.”
Cornell University Government and Public Policy Professor Gustavo Flores-Macías, however, argued the bill seemed to generally grant unilateral military action against cartels. If that were to result in any kind of military violence, it could drive more people out of Mexico and into the U.S., he said.
“These calls for unilateral military interventions should think hard,” he said. “You can unleash a wave of migration of people from Mexico as a result of increased violence. You’re trying to fix a problem, and you’re not fixing them … you’re creating additional problems.”
Crenshaw’s office declined to speak on the record for this article. He previously told NewsNation that his bill would treat cartels “like a terrorist organization legally, without calling them a terrorist organization.”
During a May interview with a Texas local news station, Crenshaw clarified his intention isn’t to have the U.S. invade Mexico. Rather, he wants to work “with and through the Mexican government” to send cartels a message using “whatever means necessary to get to them.”
Working with Mexico’s government in that way isn’t an option that’s currently on the table, however.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been steadfast in his opposition to the idea of U.S. military troops battling cartels on Mexican soil. Instead, he said the U.S. should focus on its own “social decay” that he said is driving fentanyl addiction.
“We are not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene,” López Obrador said during a news conference in March.
Bypassing those objections could additionally have unintended consequences on U.S.-Mexico trade and is likely to be unsuccessful at curbing drug use, Flores-Macías said.
Drugs have been seized during attempted smuggling operations at both the nation’s northern and southern borders, and an estimated 200,000 firearms are smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico annually. Experts say those weapons contribute to Mexico’s drug and cartel violence.
“As long as there is demand, you can obliterate all Mexicans and there will be always someone that steps in to supply drugs to satisfy that demand,” Flores-Macías said. “There’s this misguided sense that you can only tackle one side, and then the problem will go away.”