Intervention in Mexico or War South of the United States?
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
A prospective analysis of an intervention in Mexico is incomplete if it fails to recognize that the most critical battlefront for U.S. national security is not in the Sierra Madre, but rather in the arteries of its own territory.
Before attempting to cross the Rio Grande south, the Donald Trump administration must confront the reality that drug trafficking and institutional erosion have already colonized the Sun Belt states.
California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida are not just border states; they are the operational center of an informal economy that has permeated local power structures, creating a scenario where the distinction between transnational crime and everyday life is almost nonexistent.
As Langley’s hypothesis and Samuel Huntington’s studies on the Hispanic challenge warn, the lack of effective cultural assimilation and the porous nature of the law have allowed the Mexican cacique model to be successfully replicated on U.S. soil.
If Washington seeks to prevent the country's disintegration, the true "punitive expedition" must begin within its borders.
An internal purge in the southern United States is the mandatory prerequisite for any external action.
Order cannot be restored in a neighboring country when the border cities themselves operate under the logic of Mexamerica, where corruption in public administration and infiltration of intelligence agencies have created a sanctuary for the very actors they are meant to combat.
The danger, as George Friedman rightly pointed out, is that an invasion of Mexico without a prior purge in the southern United States would trigger an internal asymmetric resistance of incalculable proportions.
The most powerful drug traffickers are not farmers in Sinaloa; they are invisible figures operating from luxury condominiums in Florida and logistical centers in Texas.
Starting a war in Mexico while these actors maintain their mobilization capacity within the United States is to guarantee a low-intensity civil war on its own soil.
Huntington established that linguistic and cultural fragmentation poses a risk to national identity; however, the immediate risk is the fragmentation of the monopoly on the use of force.
The capture of drug cartel leaders or high-ranking politicians with ties to organized crime, as has occurred in countries like Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama, has often proven to be a limited and short-lived strategy, since in Mexico such a measure is practically useless.
This is because the Mexican government lacks effective control over criminal organizations, which operate in an environment of complete chaos and violence.
The existence of multiple cartels, acting independently and in constant conflict, prevents authorities from focusing on specific capture targets, creating a scenario in which eliminating a leader only leads to the rapid reconfiguration of these groups.
Furthermore, history has shown that, instead of weakening them, the death or capture of a leader fosters the proliferation of cells and the creation of new criminal structures, which quickly adapt to the power vacuum.
This phenomenon turns the fight against drug trafficking into a kind of chess game in which, instead of eradicating the disease, it is perpetuated and exacerbated, transforming criminal organizations into a cancer that spreads and becomes more resistant with each failed attempt.
For all these reasons, focusing solely on capturing leaders, without addressing the root causes of the problem, is an incomplete strategy and, in many cases, counterproductive to the country's security.
Therefore, the drug war strategy for Mexico must be, above all, a strategy of internal regeneration.
The United States must apply in its own South the iron fist it plans to export. Eliminating local power brokers in California and Texas, dismantling the money laundering networks that sustain the informal caste system in the southern metropolises, and purging the bureaucracy that has facilitated this exchange is the only way to safeguard the Empire. Only when the southern United States ceases to be the playground of the drug oligarchy can Washington hope to stabilize Mexico through a strong interlocutor.
The battle for American sovereignty will not be won at the Altiplano, but rather through a thorough cleansing of its own borders, before the Hispanic challenge becomes the definitive fracture of the American dream.
