Dealing with the Mexican cartels

What is the desired end goal?

I am going a little bit out of my lane with this article, but I felt like writing an article about the Mexican cartels. As I am sure that you have heard, President Trump designated the Mexican cartels and other organizations as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)” and “Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).”

This has raised a lot of speculation about direct military action against the Mexican cartels within the United States and in Mexico. Some people have speculated that doing so is a game changer in the war against the cartels. This designation is clearly important, but it is not clear that it is a first step towards successful military action.

Recently I watched an excellent Ironland interview of Pierre Rausini, who was closely involved with the Mexican cartels for decades. Rausini did a great job explaining how the cartels work.

I would urge you to watch this video, if you are interested in the topic. It is very enlightening.

Here are a few key highlights from the interview:

• The Mexican cartels are not one big organization and have not been since the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989. Gallardo founded the Guadalajara Cartel and convinced all the other cartels to work together in one big cartel in the 1980s. I would recommend the Netflix series, Narcos: Mexico, to learn more about how Gallardo accomplished this.

• Since 1989 the cartels have been involved in violent turf wars ever since. Any destruction of one cartel just gives the other cartels room for territorial expansion.

• The cartels have heavily penetrated all levels of the Mexican government, including the Presidential Cabinet, so any Mexican-American cooperate will inevitably lead to early warnings of military operations. So the United States military will likely have to act unilaterally within Mexico, which means very little actionable intelligence.

• In the early 2000s, the Sinaloa cartel bribed high-level Mexican politicians to focus their enforcement on their rival cartels. The Mexican politicians convinced American law enforcement to do so as well.

• The American government deliberately exaggerates the number of cartel members to make convictions easier. They characterize the customer of the cartel as cartel members, when they are not.

• Each cartel actually has very few members. The cartels recruit Mexican locals to do their dirty work, but arresting or killing those low-level members will do little to disrupt operations. They are easily replaceable.

• The high-level cartel members are thousands of miles away from the American border. This makes cross-border raids from the US extremely difficult.

• There are only about 60 cartel members in the entire United States. They run the hubs of the drug distribution networks in:

  • Los Angeles (the main drug distribution hub with 50% of the cartel members in the US)

  • Chicago

  • New York City

  • Atlanta

  • North Carolina “right outside of Fort Bragg.”

  • A few emergency hubs in case one of the hubs gets shut down by law enforcement.

• The cartel members in those hubs only interface with Mexican nationals who have been throughly vetted and have known family members in Mexico (who are de facto hostages). This makes it very difficult for American undercover agents to penetrate the cartels.

• The military side of the cartels is:

  • Led and trained by former US Special Forces

  • With middle-level leadership from former Mexican Special Forces.

  • With troops staffed by former Mexican military.

• All the Mexican cartels have a strict policy of not harming American law enforcement, American diplomats, and American tourists. This was an outcome of arrest of Felix Gallardo, who ordered the execution of DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985. The overwhelming American response taught the cartels to never do the same again.

• The biggest fear of the leaders of the Mexican cartels is going to American prison. They are not afraid of Mexican prisons, as they are like luxury hotels (for cartel members) and they can still conduct cartel business from inside.

• If the US government uses direct military action against high-level members of the cartels, they can easily respond with sabotage operations in the American homeland that could do massive economic damage.

I think Pierre Rausini makes clear that an Iraq/Afghanistan military confrontation with the Mexican cartels could have very negative impacts on the United States that far exceed any gains from destroying the cartels.

But I don’t think that this means that the United States needs to accept the status quo. I believe that the United States needs to creates incentives so the Mexican cartels and the Mexican government voluntarily chooses to do what the US wants. To do this, we need to think carefully about our goals and desired outcome.

The US government cannot force a change in the behavior of the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels. The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants.

What should be the goal?

I believe that President Trump needs to think very carefully about what he is trying to accomplish in Mexico. A broad goal of “destroying the cartels” or “ending the drug trade” will likely end in failure and could lead to a massive increase of violence or economic sabotage within US borders.

Based on the above, I would say the goal of American foreign policy with Mexico should be to establish an implicit policy that the cartels must not:

• Traffic illegal immigrants across the border.

• Traffic fentanyl across the border or distribute it within the United States.

In addition, the Mexican government must stop all illegal immigrants before they get to the American border and ship them back to their country of origin.

What are the means to achieve that goal?

This does not require a summit meeting or signing of a treaty. President Trump just needs to publicly announce:

• What unacceptable behavior by both parties is, and

• What the consequences of that behavior will be.

If the cartel or the Mexican government does not do all the above, United States will:

• Implement 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico. This gives a strong incentive to the Mexican government.

• Conduct raids to arrest or kill high-level members of the cartels. Any arrest will lead to decades in American prison (which is what the cartel leaders fear most). This gives a strong incentive to the Mexican cartels.

• (if the above does not work) Shut down all cross-border traffic on the border. This gives an even stronger incentive to the Mexican government as this could collapse their economy.

Because the Mexican economy is far more dependent on the American market than the American economy is dependent on Mexico, this is leads to an asymmetric outcome. It hurts the United States, but it hurts the Mexicans far more. It would be far cheaper for the Mexican government to station Mexican army on their northern border.

As for the Mexican cartels, it is not clear to me that fentanyl and human trafficking is essential to their financial existence. They can make so much money from cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine that they can still stay in operation. Yes, it would to great to end the trafficking of these substances, but it is far less important than ending the trafficking of fentanyl.

Is this enough?

I am sure that some people will say that my proposed goal is unethical because it tolerates unethical behavior. The goal should be the destruction of the cartels or the end of all drug trafficking or the end of violence in Mexico. Perhaps, but I do not think that these alternative goals are achievable in the next few years.

Until the Mexican government is fully committed to destroying the cartels and rooting out all corruption, I just do not see a positive outcome in American attempts to do so. The Mexican people will blame the American government, and any cartel sabotage operations in the United States will cause the American people to blame the American government.

I do believe that the political influence of the cartels will wain and the violence will decline sometime in the future. For example, Colombian in the 1970s and 1980s was much worse off than Mexico is today. Partly with the assistance of the United States, Plan Columbia has returned the nation to something like normalcy. But this was only possible because President Álvaro Uribe was committed to ending the political dominance of the cartels.

We need to pursue a more limited strategy that has a higher possiblity of achieving the most important objectives as opposed to wider goals with much higher chances of failure and collateral damage.