Back in February, Trump decided to use the army against Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigrants. Since the country’s laws prohibit the use of the army in domestic politics, the Pentagon replaced its entire leadership so that there would be no protests. Indeed, they have become so profitable that their power and resources are sometimes comparable to those of state organizations. In poor countries, they even surpass the state in terms of power and experience in covert warfare.
During his election campaign, Trump promised to declare war on the cartels with special forces and the Navy. Now there are reports of a new directive from the US president: the US military will directly capture or kill people involved in drug trafficking. So far, it is impossible to fight bandits on the territory of other states without a special procedure (in the US, it replaced the declaration of war). Therefore, Defense Secretary Pete Hagertz dismissed leading lawyers dealing with military issues. They provide independent and non-politicized advice on international laws of war and legal restrictions applicable to the armed forces.
Then drug cartels were equated with terrorist organizations. At the same time, the US has a whole range of special services with a glorious history, whose task is precisely to combat terrorism and drug trafficking. I will not list them, as dozens of famous Hollywood films are dedicated to them. Why is such an apparatus not enough for Trump?
At the heart of it lies the same childish belief in the redemptive power of naked violence. It seems that all you need to do is introduce the death penalty, give people in uniform powers beyond the constitution, approve the norm of “collateral damage” among the civilian population, and evil will be defeated. For decades, various places around the world have regularly returned to this doomed experiment.
No army will help Trump. It has a different specialization. Organizations operating on a clandestine basis can only be countered by organizations using similar methods—secret information gathering, intelligence work, covert operations. US operatives have proven this time and again.
But Trump wants quick results. He thinks that numbers and weapons will solve the problem of his presidency. There are no people around him who can explain the futility of such attempts. The real goal is to reform the special services, increase their budget accordingly, put highly professional people in charge, establish close operational contact with the enemy, and suppress the drug cartels’ agents in their ranks, not by destroying them, but by sharply limiting their capabilities in the delivery channel.
But this is too complicated and time-consuming. Ultimately, everything depends on how Trump sees this fight — as a spectacular campaign for glory or as an ongoing process that will have to be handed over to his successor?
