US at war with Mexico? The Republicans and the NY Times hypothesis

  An epidemic that closely follows the one unleashed by legal opioids, after the billionaire lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that encouraged the reckless use of these drugs, leading millions of Americans to addiction. Republicans are no longer just pointing the finger at the White House's oversights. The front of the GOP candidates for the presidency, led by Donald Trump, is ever closer to the idea of launching a real war against the Mexican cartels, using US military power.

No more actions in coordination with the Mexican police, but the use of real Special Forces for cross-border raids and aerial bombing of drug traffickers' strongholds. “I will impose a total naval embargo against drug cartels and employ the military to inflict maximum damage on their operations,” Trump announced in a video recorded at the border. “I will freeze their assets, build the wall and enable the most powerful military in the world to fight these terrorists,” added the other GOP candidate, Tim Scott. As for Trump's main challenger, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, for now does not support the use of military force, but assures that in the event of an election, especially in an anti-immigration key, he will use a tough fist against criminal organizations mexican.

In Congress, meanwhile, the foundations are being laid for legislative instruments that would allow military operations within the borders of a friendly country and trading partner of the United States. GOP deputies Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz in January introduced a bill in the House to authorize the use of military force against cartels, equating them to other terrorist groups. However, Mexico, which since 2006 has also launched a real war against drug cartels, with mostly unsuccessful results, does not accept being labeled a potential battlefield. In March, after the kidnapping (by mistake) of a group of Americans across the border and the killing of two of them, in response to the "winds of war" blowing from the Republican candidates, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador retorted harshly:

"We are a free, independent and sovereign state. We are not a protectorate or a colony of the United States." A concern, that of a disastrous crisis with Mexico, which is not only of the current administration. In March, during a conference, General Mark Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised against "any action taken without the support of Mexico". Even on the republican front, however, there are those who are more cautious. Military action against Mexican cartels is a potentially effective idea, he told Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but "essentially it would be like declaring war on Mexico."