The United States is facing the worst drug crisis in its history. Fentanyl is killing Americans at record rates. When President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1971, annual overdose deaths were 6,771. Last year, 107,375 Americans died from drug overdoses, and fentanyl was responsible for nearly 70 percent of those deaths.
Unfortunately, efforts to cut off the flow of fentanyl are at an impasse due to frayed relationships with other countries involved in the supply chain. In response, a growing number of American politicians are calling for military action. This dangerous rhetoric will only exacerbate the crisis and alienate key partners. Declaring a war on drugs has never solved the problem. It’s time to take a different approach.
Fentanyl production starts in China, where seemingly legitimate Chinese pharmaceutical companies sell precursor chemicals to front companies for the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels in Mexico. These two cartels then synthesize the chemicals into fentanyl and move it to the United States by land, sea, and air to safe houses for nationwide distribution.
China had initially showed promise in collaborating with the United States to stop the flow of fentanyl, cracking down on direct sales, and even working with U.S. law enforcement on drug busts. But as tensions rose between the two countries, collaboration fell and was formally severed after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
The U.S. relationship with Mexico is less strained by comparison but has deteriorated since the United States arrested one of Mexico’s former defense ministers in 2020 for allegedly working with a cartel. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (widely known as AMLO) responded with intense pressure and threatened to kick Drug Enforcement Administration agents out of Mexico until the general was returned. The United States ultimately complied and dropped all charges, but law enforcement and intelligence cooperation between the two countries fell apart. Although high-level bilateral meetings last April may pave the way for improved collaboration, AMLO has avoided acknowledging Mexico’s role in the epidemic, instead blaming American families and “a lack of hugs” for the fentanyl crisis.
Some politicians have responded to the lack of cooperation by source countries with calls for military intervention. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) recently called on President Joe Biden to use the U.S. military to go after cartels inside Mexico, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has made similar comments. Earlier this year, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) also introduced a bill seeking authorization for use of military force that would “put us at war with the cartels.” Crenshaw was later tapped to lead a task force on the Republican response to the criminal organizations. For many of these U.S. officials, China’s contribution to this problem is just another reason for an adversarial approach.
Former President Donald Trump has mentioned using special forces and cyber warfare against Mexican cartels if he were reelected and asked his advisers for “battle plans” to attack Mexico. GOP presidential hopeful and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made similar campaign promises. AMLO has called these statements both irresponsible and offensive to the people of Mexico, stating that his country “does not take orders from anyone.”
Even if this kind of intervention seems farfetched, such comments by sitting U.S. officials and presidential candidates are alarming. Deploying military force against cartels in a foreign country explicitly against the will of that government would constitute an act of war, and these aggressive statements directly undermine bilateral efforts at renewed collaboration.
The United States has already designated the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels as Transnational Criminal Organizations, which authorizes the use of economic sanctions and other financial tools. Lawmakers in both chambers want to take this a step further by designating each as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, which would enable strike options for the U.S. military.
But the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. In exchange for fracturing our relationship with our largest trading partner, at best such actions would take out a few individuals — not the fentanyl trade. If anything, unilateral military action would increasingly destabilize much of Mexico’s ungoverned territory, sending large swaths of asylum seekers to the U.S. border and further overwhelming the U.S. immigration system.
It's easy for a country with a powerful, well-resourced military to default to using force, and laying blame on other countries helps pave the way. But rather than fix America’s drug crisis, these actions would significantly limit U.S. foreign policy options. Instead, the United States should continue efforts to improve bilateral cooperation on this issue and focus on domestic solutions that will not only help Americans but also our relationship with Mexico.
AMLO has said that Mexico’s domestic security problems take priority over helping the United States with the drug epidemic, so the White House must make clear that the two go hand-in-hand. Every year, 200,000 guns are smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico, arming the cartels and contributing to horrific gun violence. An estimated 70-90 percent of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2014 to 2018 came from the United States. Taking steps to reduce that impact could go a long way toward facilitating cooperation, and it could weaken the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
The White House is also limited by its reliance on Mexico to tackle the immigration issue. Comprehensive U.S. immigration reform would provide Washington with more leverage to induce cooperation with Mexico.
There will be no quick fix to the current drug crisis — only multipronged solutions that address both the supply and demand of fentanyl. Prioritizing collaborative, diplomacy-first foreign policy over a militarized response is a critical place to start.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
