The last 24 hours have been a blizzard of news coming out of Mexico. American visitors to that country's popular vacation resorts have been worried, and rightly so. For a while, it looked like Mexico's civil law enforcement and even the military were getting set back on their heels, but things seem to be calming as of Monday morning - at least, for now.
It isn't over, though. This was a battle, not a war. One key player, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, or "El Mencho," the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, has had his birth certificate permanently revoked, and un-aliving cartel kingpins is always a good thing to do. But the cartels have shown some troubling capabilities; they apparently have some pretty significant stocks of military-grade weapons, vehicles, and materials, and you can bet money they have a leavening of former military in their ranks, who know how to best use that equipment, and how to train others.
I think it's unlikely, but what if the cartels manage to win this war? What would a Mexico run by the cartels look like?
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In short: If the various cartels managed to combine forces and take over Mexico, because that's what it would take, it would be a military, legal and humanitarian crisis of unimaginable scale. Narco-terrorists, with their own country, with control of the country's military? Imagine an Iran on our southern border, only run by drug smugglers instead of mullahs, but just as troublesome, just as atrocious, in the original sense of that word. The entire hemisphere would be destabilized.
First, essential government functions would cease. The military, or what remains of it, would be under the control of whatever goblins the cartels chose to put in the job, and the job would be to protect the cartels and their drug trade. Each faction, each separate cartel, and the factions within those cartels, would likely claim a share, and within days or weeks, fighting would break out over turf. This wouldn't be the usual gangland turf wars; these would be wars with military equipment, vehicles, likely even aircraft, certainly with drones and other high-tech means. Mexico would break up, each cartel controlling a portion of the territory; at this point, Mexico no longer exists as a nation-state.
Second, this would be a massive humanitarian crisis. Here in the United States, we're used to seeing the usual influx of people claiming "refugee" status just to get their foot in the door, but a cartel takeover of Mexico would produce wave after wave of legitimate refugees; ordinary people fleeing a territory now utterly lawless, ruled by ruthless gangs, with no property rights, no notions of law and order, and routine internal conflict. These refugees would head north by any means available; they would head for the United States, because where else would they go? We could not, in good conscience, turn them away, either, even though the crisis would cost the United States billions.
Third and finally: What would the United States do? That's the real question; here's why, and I'm going to tell you. This isn't some failed state in Africa or Asia. This problem would be on our doorstep. And yes, it would certainly pour over our border. We are already seeing cartel operations along the border. Even the more stringent border enforcement by the Trump administration hasn't stopped the influx of trafficked humans and smuggled drugs. It's a long, long border, much of it in remote places, and it's the work of a generation to get it all completely under control.
In this case, though, we wouldn't be able to lock down the border and hope for the best. We would have to teach the cartels what it's like to play in the big leagues, and the initial phases of a full-scale, full-bore, American military incursion aimed at un-aliving every single cartel goblins would probably move right along; but we might remember the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when so many of Saddam Hussein's worst just dropped their uniforms and disappeared into the general population, only to resurface as guerilla fighters later. That's what would happen here. It would be a generations-long war, and the only way it could be resolved would be with the United States occupying Mexico as a military district, under martial law. No votes for the population, no civil rights guaranteed by our Constitution; a military governor, appointed by the president, laws enforced by military tribunals. The occupation would cost us billions, probably trillions of dollars, and who knows how many lives - Mexican and American.
Better we help Mexico to stamp out the cartels now, along with continuing to dismantle their drug-carrying boats with high explosives.
We shouldn't take this possibility lightly. While unlikely, it isn't impossible that the cartels could overwhelm at least parts of Mexico. Dislodging them completely would be the work of generations. What would emerge from the other side wouldn't be anything anyone in the United States or Mexico today could foresee. Would Mexico stay fragmented into smaller states? Would the country somehow emerge intact? It's hard to say. There are few good historical precedents for a completely poop-show like this.
Fortunately, it doesn't look like this thing is going to approach this level, at least, not this time. But if Secretary of War Hegseth doesn't have some high-forehead types in the War Department devoting some skull-time to wargaming this possibility, then it's something they ought to look into, and pronto.
