Failed 'War on Drugs' Redux? Secret Trump Order Would Aim US Military at Overseas Cartels

The New York Times reported on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a secret order directing the United States Department of Defense to use the American military to combat drug cartels in foreign nations.

According to the Times, the order gives the military authorization to carry out operations against cartels both at sea and on foreign soil. What's more, the paper reported that "U.S. military officials have started drawing up options for how the military could go after" the cartels.

The report then outlined some of the thorny legal issues involved with bringing the military in to handle what has traditionally been a matter for law enforcement. Among other things, the Times said that it's an unresolved question whether "it would count as 'murder' if U.S. forces acting outside of a congressionally authorized armed conflict were to kill civilians—even criminal suspects—who pose no imminent threat."

Shortly after the Times report broke on Friday, The Guardian reported that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday tried to shoot down any talk of an American incursion into her country.

"The United States is not going to come to Mexico with their military," she told reporters during a news conference. "We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will be no invasion. It's off the table, absolutely off the table."

Experts who cover Latin American relations were quick to raise alarms about the Trump administration's plans, which they said would likely lead to needless civilian deaths while also failing to curtail the flow of drugs into the United States.

"The legality of this move should certainly be under scrutiny, but we should also discuss the mountains of evidence that show militarizing the war on drugs has never resulted in minimizing the market and rather increased violence against civilians massively," commented Renata Segura, the director of Latin America and the Caribbean Program at the International Crisis Group.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is now a senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, commented on Bluesky that he's long been warning about unilateral military involvement in Latin America to fight the drug cartels and linked to an analysis he published earlier this year at Just Security in which he declared such a strategy to be "almost certainly illegal" and "definitely counterproductive."

In his piece, Finucane argued that any plans to bomb drug labs would likely turn into a Whac-A-Mole-style game given how "low-tech" and simple to build such labs have become, as evidenced by the American military's failed efforts to bomb opium-processing facilities in Afghanistan.

Additionally, Finucane warned that Mexico would likely look to retaliate against the U.S. for violating its sovereignty with military operations in its territory, which would damage Trump's goal of stemming the flow of migration to the southern U.S. border.

"Mexico could respond by curtailing or terminating assistance in stemming the passage of migrants through its territory," he explained. "Further, the unilateral bombing of drug labs or killing of narcos would also shut down the possibility of counter-narcotic cooperation with Mexico in the future."

Risa Brooks, a political scientist at Marquette University, argued on Bluesky that a U.S. military campaign in Latin America could be part of a broader effort to politicize the military and make it into an institution primarily loyal to the Republican Party.

"Missions that involve the U.S. military in counter cartel, as well as immigration and law enforcement roles, embroil it in controversy, because the public's attitudes about those missions are so polarized," she explained. "People that support the administration and these missions applaud the military's involvement. Those that don't come to mistrust it. The public starts to see the military as supporting one side in U.S. politics."

All of this, Brooks added, "normalizes the idea of the military as a partisan force" that is expected to serve at the behest of a political party rather than a nation.