This article got me thinking of how it would actually play out if this actually happened.
Suppose that Trump’s advisors hadn’t been able to talk him out of it, and instead went ahead and followed his orders to launch a missile attack at suspected Drug labs in Mexico, and then denied having launched them.
To flesh out the hypothetical, Mexico receives no warning of the attack, the attacks destroys a few buildings kill/injure a few dozen people including some Cartel leaders. There is clear evidence that the attack came from the US, but the administration sticks to their guns and declares it all to be fake news. To give Trump the benefit of the doubt assume that all the targets were indeed either drug labs, or residences of Cartel leaders.
What would be the repercussions of this.
Obviously is was a major breach of Mexico’s sovereignty to the point of being an act of war. But Mexico can’t take any form of military response, and any economic sanctions would hurt them as much or more than us. Similarly there isn’t a whole lot of incentive for any other countries to take actions against the US.
So my best guess is that other than some sharply worded press releases condemning the actions, and behind the scenes maneuvering to adjust to the reality that the US is no longer a reliable ally not much would happen.
Domestically in the US, I doubt much would change, Democrats would rightly freak out and condemn Trump for violating basic international norms, Republicans would decline to speculate whether or not the attack came from the US, but would state unequivocally that if it had it showed decisive action and was the right thing to do, and all of the world leaders condemning it are just jealous. USA first fuck everyone else.
No. These attacks would have some moderate to severe repercussions depending on details. They would be poorly received in Central and South America as well as Mexico and probably Canada. This in the longer term may lead to less friendly local governments. And 18% of the American population is of Hispanic origin. Some have been in Upper America for generations and, in part due to conservative family values, a number support Trump. This does not mean they would take a reckless attack killing innocents lightly.
Such attacks would, at my best guess, do little to disrupt drug trade for long. It would likely solidfy more anti-American politics in Mexico for years due to its illegality and lack of respect for sovereignity. But the details would affect the amount of political hay. This would also affect Canada due to its NAFTA and similar subsequent agreements. True, the economic effects would take time to appear. They could be represented in mild sanctions, legal requirements, new investments, complaints to trade bodies and increasing nationalism.
But this is hypothetical. A lot would depend on the number of innocents harmed and the specifics. If there was high level involvement from the Mexican government than the effects would likely be less severe.
I find that the Newtonian law “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” to be applicable to social scenarios, too. I’m not saying that it always tracks, but violence begets violence.
So, expect some terrorist attacks in the U.S that loosely track back to Mexican drug cartels.
I’m not surprised by either his moronic plan or his belief that he could easily lie his way out of it. As if anyone else could be behind a drone strike. What a fucking pathetic child.
Given that this is a part of the world where things go “kaboom” with distressing regularity, why would anyone think to investigate whether it might be a US missile strike? Assuming the Mexican government has the necessary forensic investigation resources, would law enforcement even be able to access cartel territory?
It seems like there aren’t many parties in Mexico who have both the means and the incentive to get to the bottom of something like that. Write it up as another Sinaloa truck bomb,and you can keep cashing those government paychecks in good health. It seems like there would be exactly zero people who would have any reason to sift debris to see if it was actually an American missile.
About a zillion air traffic control radars would pick up that missile in a second. No way they keep that a secret. Ditto the personnel needed to prep and launch such a strike. Not to mention the myriad Russian and Chinese sats monitoring the US.
There’s also the somewhat ignored problem that drug labs, while not entirely trivial to set up, aren’t exactly billion dollar operations. Take one out, and it slows things down for a few weeks until another one (or 10 - why not build in more redundancy just in case) is set up.
So, all that results from that ‘decisive action’ will basically be bupkis. And while the spin machine may be able to keep the base satisfied, nobody else will be. It’s like trying to deal with an ant infestation with a blowtorch. You’ll burn your house down, maybe even the neighbors’ houses, and the ants will still be there.
This was, in fact, the war-porn conceit of Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger: The U.S. Navy, under direct presidential order, began intermittently bombing narco cartel bosses’ homes using a long-range guided zero-residue bomb and tried to make it look like an internal gang conflict car-bombing rivals.
Most recently, it was “paint the Chinese flag on the side of fighter jets, send them to Ukraine, and shoot down some Russians. They’d never suspect us!”
I’m starting to get the feeling our former President isn’t the best military strategist around …
I’d bet that at one point he claimed that nobody knew more about military strategy than him. And the people that knew better snickered amongst themselves and didn’t bother challenging him on it. So the knuckle-draggers accepted it as fact. That and his other idiotic boasts that went unaswered. And here we are.
I’m not really sure why he’d want to keep it a secret. Why not just claim “These drug labs are a menace to US society, and we’ve decided this course of action would save thousands of lives. If Mexico doesn’t like it, they can start taking out the labs themselves.” The MAGAt base would have done cartwheels.
^^ This. One strike, a dozen or a hundred would slow the operations but never stop them. As long as there’s demand someone will always find a way to provide supply.
Until the headline reads “Illegal US Drone Strike Into Mexico Destroys School Full of Children”. Puts us right besides Putin in the international war crimes trial of public opinion.
And what is this idea that Mexico doesn’t have the forensic capability to examine a bomb site and determine what caused it in cartel territory? Its payoffs that keep them out of cartel territory, the cartel would welcome in their paid off cohorts in law enforcement if it made the US look bad.
When is our government going to realize that not every solution to a problem is to go to war against it because its just too hard to deal with social/economic problems by actually addressing them. Our government has been at war against its own people long enough, attacking Mexico will not solve it.
“Mexico shouldn’t let cartels build drug labs right next to schools! They’re just brown kids anyway.” The outcry would have only made the MAGAt crowd even happier.
We’re talking about the Trump administration here. Sensible solutions to complex problems were not, to say the least, in their wheelhouse.
It’s not confined to the Trump administration, or we wouldn’t be calling everything a War on (Drugs, Poverty, Fraudulent Voters, whatever else they’ve cast as a battle).
Although I’ll grant you, Trump’s probably the only president who thinks these are actual wars involving munitions and artillery and stuff like that.
I’ve said before that Trump is running the political equivalent of a pigeon drop.
The idiots are aware that Trump is pulling a con. But they think that they’re in on the con and the suckers are the liberals. They’re not smart enough to see that they’re the suckers and Trump is conning them.