The following is part of an op-ed in The Washington Post by Greg Sargent:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared that he’s prepared to authorize drone strikes against drug cartels in Mexico. Bedecked in military-looking garb at the border, he recently vowed to blockade Mexican ports. DeSantis is not alone: Many MAGA-fied Republicans are demanding stepped-up military action against the flow of fentanyl — including inside Mexico, without that country’s assent.
This talk isn’t just insanely reckless. It also exposes a profound absurdity embedded in the MAGA worldview, one that treats migration to the United States as a security problem to be “solved” with maximal force, not a hemispheric challenge that requires international cooperation and diplomacy. . . .
True, Republicans sometimes say they’ll seek Mexico’s permission to wage war on its soil. The idea of more U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation against drug cartels is not inherently problematic. But other times, Republicans tout the threat of waging military action without Mexico’s consent as a badge oftheir own toughness.
Last week, for instance, DeSantis answered “yes” when an Iowa voter asked whether he’d use drones to “take out” cartels in Mexico. If Mexico won’t help, DeSantis continued, the United States will “do what we have to do.” And his suggestion of naval blockades to prevent precursor chemicals from entering Mexican ports comes with a hint that the action wouldbe unilateral if Mexico “drags its feet.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has proposed sending in Special Operations forces and said if Mexico doesn’t want to help, “so be it.” Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld wants the United States to “bomb Mexico,” meaning the cartels, even “if Mexico won’t agree.”
As David Frum writes for the Atlantic, such talk addresses a political problem for Republicans. Huge numbers of the opioid epidemic’s victims are rural and White, and a broader domestic crackdown might demonize or criminalize many GOP constituents; threatening Mexico instead spins a tale of “virtuous middle-Americans beset by alien villains.”
But that tale runs into a problem. DeSantis recently said he would reinstate “Remain in Mexico” as the primary way of disincentivizing migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. . . .
It might be argued that “bomb Mexico” talk could exert more pressure on Mexicoto restart the policy if the next U.S. president demands it. But, with Mexico’s leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,regularly lambasting DeSantis’s anti-immigrant policies, GOP war fever will make it politically harder for Mexico to acquiesce, said Bárcena, who was ambassador during “Remain in Mexico” under Trump.
“All cooperation will be less likely if the Republican candidates continue with the threat of use of force,” Bárcena said, as Mexicans will criticize Obrador for “yielding to the U.S.”. . .
But to DeSantis and MAGA, all that matters is whether we are “tough” enough. If we are, migrants will give up. DeSantis’s immigration blueprint says nothing meaningful about root causes of migration or how to address them through multilateral action,dismissing migration as an “invasion” and not a complex phenomenon with profound human rights implications.
Similarly, the fentanyl crisis has myriad complicated causes. As Ryan Cooper writes for the American Prospect, we’d do better to redouble treatment at home and beef up technology at ports of entry — where most fentanyl enters — rather than launch new military adventures south of the border.
But as long as the war-whooping thrills the MAGA masses, that alone counts as mission accomplished.
