President Donald Trump has secretly instructed the Pentagon to begin using military force against the eight drug cartels his administration designated as terrorist organizations in February. According to reports obtained by The New York Times, U.S. military officials are already outlining options for how they might pursue the cartels, though even the Republican administration appears unclear about the legal or diplomatic implications of such operations.
In response to her counterpart's latest blunder, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo asserted that the executive order will only apply within U.S. territory and asserted that the presence of U.S. military personnel in Mexico is absolutely ruled out, as it is neither permitted nor part of any agreement. The president announced that Washington had previously informed her government about this measure and had received assurances that it has nothing to do with Mexican territory.
For his part, the United States ambassador to our country, Ronald Johnson, issued a statement that, far from providing reassurance, raises alarm bells about the lengths to which Trump and his officials are willing to go to turn the public health crisis facing American society into a war with no winner other than the superpower's military-industrial complex. Of the 14 lines that make up his Spanish-language text, Johnson used eight to defend the decision to classify six Mexican-based criminal organizations as terrorists. This constitutes a semantic and legal nonsense, given that terrorism uses violence to advance a political and ideological agenda, while cartels are entities driven by profit, just as the (US) pharmaceutical companies that caused the opioid addiction epidemic like fentanyl, the (US) manufacturers and distributors of the weapons without which the cartels would not exist, and the (mainly US) banks that launder hundreds of billions of dollars each year from all kinds of illicit activities, are. Significantly, Johnson did not mention any of these actors in his statement.
However, the main reason why Mexico and the international community must vehemently reject the confusion of organized crime with terrorism lies in Washington's extraterritorial application of its laws; in this case, granting the White House resident the power to order bombings, selective or indiscriminate assassinations, covert operations, and other forms of military aggression without congressional approval against any person or group he accuses of being a terrorist, with or without evidence.
In this context, Johnson twists language to Orwellian extremes by claiming that we are united and working collaboratively, as two sovereign allies, since his government's unilateral use of armed force denies Mexican and other nations' sovereignty. The only way the United States can demonstrate its willingness to cooperate within a framework of respect for sovereignty is by withdrawing the threat of taking military action outside the UN mandate here or anywhere else.
As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated in response to the ambassador's statements, addressing the causes of addiction and combating the trafficking of arms to the south are as important as combating the flow of narcotics to the north. Likewise, the diplomatic mission and the government it represents must take note that Mexico does not and will not accept the participation of U.S. military forces in our territory, and that all bilateral cooperation must be based on the principles of mutual trust, shared responsibility, sovereign equality, respect for territorial integrity, and cooperation without subordination.
