Even Cartels know that shooting down civilian aircraft in US airspace would be an escalation that would lead to heavy retaliation. Doesn't seem likely to me.
This is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.
Much as I despise them, I'm not so sure that would be the case. I seem to remember folks saying the same about the Taliban, and the cartels have a lot more money and high-tech kit, than the Taliban.
The Taliban was repeatedly crushed. All of the leadership was killed many times over. The problem is the Taliban is an idea that transcends individual human members and it can always be reconstituted. It also benefited from being able to harbor supporters in Pakistan, which is a nuclear power the US was not willing to also invade.
There isn't a real analogy there because cartel leaders have no official state support anywhere, let alone in a bordering nuclear power, but even if they did, it hardly seems reassuring from their perspective to know the drug trade will outlive them after they all get killed. It's different when you're deeply religious and believe what you're doing is worth dying for and the larger arc of history is more important than your own life and wellbeing. I don't think drug lords think that way.
All this is true. Yet the cartels operate like militarized insurgents. Adopting similar tactics seen in Ukraine fighting so it’s interesting to say the least that they might be utilizing drone technology for their purposes.
I didn’t mean to start this giant thread about Mexican Cartels but here we are. Most think it’s just an isolated problem. Others know it’s more widespread. I simply stated that these murderous thugs are out there in full force with technology and armored vehicles. If provoked, they would lash out. It’s ridiculous because of course going up against the US is a losing proposition but each “generation” of cartel leader thinks they can somehow manage it.
I don’t think the technology matters nearly as much as the asymmetry. Iraq had better technology than the Taliban and their military didn’t last a week.
True enough, but the cartels are also experts at running what is basically guerrilla warfare, against each other. Not sure if the Mexican Army has ever tried to take them on. A lot of cartel soldiers come from the army.
* A conventional military war, on a battlefield: Neither Saddam Hussein's military nor the cartels nor the Taliban would last long against the US.
* An unconventional insurgency: The Iraqis quickly turned to this approach and it worked very well for them, as it did for the Taliban. The Taliban won, and the Iraqi insurgency almost drove the US out of Iraq and was eventually co-opted.
The cartels of course would choose the latter. They, the Taliban, etc. are not suicidal.
I think the key difference between the Taliban and the cartels is that the Taliban were a bunch of ideologues who actually enjoyed being an insurgency and living under siege in caves, with making money from the drugs trade being a mere means to their real purpose of fighting infidels, whereas the cartel leadership sees wealth and power from controlling the drugs trade as an end, crushing local rivals as a means, and would really rather avoid the sort of conflict that's bad for their medium term business prospects.
I mean, some sort of cartels would bounce back after any "war on drugs" because supply and demand, but the people running them aren't hankering for martyrdom or glory over consolidating their territory and accumulating.
How are they not rational? Violence is a tool. They operate an illegal business so they can’t sue other parties for breach of contract. They can't call the police if they are robbed or file an insurance claim for what was taken. Even the over-the-top violence has a rationale. They aren't punishing the victims as much as they are attempting to broadcast that there is a higher price to be paid than any gain from giving information, to reduce their future losses and enforcement efforts. It isn’t moral or ethical, but I wouldn’t say it is irrational.
Lots of organized crime around the world manages to operate without cutting all the limbs off somebody then arranging them like flowers in a "vase" made out of the poor soul's ribcage. The cartels take violence far beyond what is pragmatically necessary. Their system of crime breeds excessive violence and insanity.
I would recommend reading the Freakinomics book or listen to their podcasts on drugs.
TL;DR: drug cartels are run like businesses. They are very rational. But, unlike your boss, their boss can also shoot you in the face if you annoy them too much
In any case that was a war against a hardened, experienced, determined enemy fighting for its freedom from any form of colonial occupation, both as a formal military and as an insurgent force in South Vietnam.
I scarcely think the Mexican population would rise up in defense of the cartels here.
A non-aligned population will look out for their own interests and are aware that the attention of the US is temporary but the cuadillismo that lead to cartels are a durable cultural artifact.
The Battle of Culiacán, also known locally as the Culiacanazo and Black
Thursday, was a failed attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Sinaloa
Cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who was wanted in the United States
for drug trafficking.
Around 700 cartel gunmen began to attack civilian, government and military
targets around the city, despite orders from Ovidio sent at security forces'
request. Massive towers of smoke could be seen rising from burning cars and
vehicles. The cartels were well-equipped, with improvised armored vehicles,
bulletproof vests, .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles, rocket launchers, grenade
launchers and heavy machine guns.
The problem is you can't just target the cartels, the cartels are made up of random Mexican people. There is an almost guarantee that any significant US strikes would be 90%+ civilian casualties.
The destruction of cartels would involve careful policing and corruption controls, the best American administrations have been bad at this. The worst... can barely put its pants on much less dismantle foreign organized crime. You can't shoot a missile at a cartel and poof it's just gone.
They'd probably quickly stop cheering as their own homes and families were destroyed as collateral damage, which is what would happen if the "full force of the US military" were deployed against the cartels.
I don't really think you thought through that one. It sounds like what your saying is that the Vietnamese won and thats the outcome that matters. It does matter but that isn't the issue - it is the cost that everyone is talking about: the amount of destruction that was brought upon the country and people was terrible.
The distinction is those are cases where they are murdering Mexican citizens. If a cartel murdered a bus of people in America I suspect most any administration would retaliate in some form.
Merely pointing out that the US administration is operating like a cartel now a days.
I doubt Mexicans see the Mexican cartels as “theirs” in the same way. Cartels have only been interested in paying off politicians and (as far as I’m aware) weren’t interested in being politicians. However, our politicians here… would LOVE to be Cartel members and make millions it seems. Because they definitely don’t give a shit about law and order.
See, Drug cartels over here operate with the blessing and favor of our president. They are tightly connected.
If a cartel dared to ground a US flight. The US government would have a "free pass" to break all hell loose in Mexico, and Sheinbaum wouldn't have a way to stop it.
She doesn't want that in any way, so the message to the cartel bosses would be to be very careful in that respect.
Sure, there have been US citizens killed within Mexico here and there, but those can easily be attributed to local violence. And as retribution, Mexican government sends a couple of wanted criminals to the US.
Yeah, if a cartel actually used anti-aircraft weapons on a US passenger plane in US airspace? It wouldn't even matter if MAGA or the Democrats were in charge. The US would collectively lose its shit and spend the next 10 years and several trillion dollars retaliating against the cartels. The media would be ecstatic, because it would give them a decade of story arcs, starting with "our brave troops in uniform" all the way through to covering the eventual quagmire and anti-war protests. By year 6-8, editorial columnists would be writing columns reconsidering their initial support for the war.
Unless the government is planning an attack on the cartel[s] that is so existential that such action wouldn't be considered an escalation but rather a tic for tat.
A trapped animal will generally use all its facilities regardless of its expected effectiveness.
Remember that there is no "the" cartel, just so many different towns and interests and bribed officials. It makes it a significant (and perhaps convenient) misnomer dont get me wrong, but maybe important to remember.
Extremely good, highly researched book if you want to get angry at me or call me idiot!
Good point. I guess it depends on the force, size, and especially effectiveness of any potential strikes. (i.e. How cornered a cartel might feel and how much flexing an outsized response might stand to gain them.)
Not hard to imagine these days? Wouldn't you hope for an intervention if it were known that a hostile, state-level military planned to down civilian aircraft?
I had a quick check, and there were zero Americans on board this Malaysian aircraft shot down by a nuclear power over Ukraine, so I don't know how you think it's relevant to an American aircraft full of Americans being shot down in American airspace by cartels immediately on the other side of the American border.
EDIT: Unless you think Malaysia not bombing the Kremlin in retribution is somehow indicative of how America would respond to the situation we're actually talking about.