Headlines on both sides of the border have, for weeks now, been trumpeting the cynical, dangerous, and warmongering Republican “solution” to the fentanyl crisis in the United States: bomb the cartels away, with or without the permission of the Mexican government.

The new Republican line links the quite real US synthetic opioid crisis — over 70,000 lives lost in 2021 alone — to “bad hombres” south of the border. Some 60 percent of Republicans now believe that “unauthorized migrants” are smuggling fentanyl across the US-Mexico border. In reality, US citizens are doing the vast bulk of that smuggling.

But that fact doesn’t seem to matter. The bombs-away “solution” out of the right-wing fringes has now entered the mainstream — and Democrats share the blame.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for instance, could have rejected the right’s new line when he testified recently before a US Senate panel. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham wanted to know where the Biden administration stood on his proposal to designate organized crime groups as “foreign terrorist organizations,” a vital first step in carrying out unilateral military action inside Mexico. Blinken said the White House would “consider” that absurd notion, instantly breathing life into it.

Last week, México sent a large, high-level delegation to Washington to discuss security, arms trafficking, and fentanyl with their US and Canadian counterparts. The Biden administration essentially minimized the meeting’s importance, bringing to the table officials not at a comparable rank to the members of the Mexican delegation.

That lukewarm US approach to partnering with México on developing real solutions to the trafficking of synthetic opioids is helping the right’s push for unilateral military action gain traction. US military action against the cartels, let’s keep in mind, would lead to immeasurable suffering inside México, since the cartels’ irregular armed groups would quickly blend themselves into civilian populations upon any attack.

US policy makers, on both sides of the aisle, appear to care much more about political posturing than the Mexican blood that any new “war on drugs” would spill. US politicians need to come to their senses: Unilateral military action would blow up the US-México relationship. México surpasses both Canada and China as the largest U.S. trading partner. Any violation of México’s sovereignty via an act of war would drag the US down with it.

José Luis Granados Ceja, a Mexican freelance journalist, is currently studying human rights and popular democracy at the Autonomous
University of Mexico City. His writings on democratic struggles in Latin America appear regularly online at his Antimperialistia site.