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According to recent New York Times reporting, President Trump has ordered military strikes against cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Most such cartels are based in Mexico, suggesting that Trump aims to follow through on his oft-stated ambition to carry out unilateral strikes in Mexico as part of a counter-fentanyl policy. Many experts have raised deep concerns about the efficacy, consequences, and legality of such strikes, and their work can help inform public debate about potentially dropping bombs on our southern neighbors. Below are a collection of articles and reports journalists can draw from in their coverage:

• In February, Win Without War Education Fund conducted a tabletop exercise simulating the consequences of U.S. airstrikes against cartels in Mexico, much like the ones the administration has now ordered, according to recent New York Times reporting. The exercise brought together former officials from the U.S. and Mexico, as well as academics and think tankers from both countries. The exercise found that:
  • Strikes did not reduce the quantity of fentanyl reaching American communities in the long term. 
  • Military strikes weakened some cartels, but empowered rivals, sparked internecine conflicts, and spread violence across Mexico. 
  • Trade war accompanied military escalation, plunging Mexico into a recession and devastating U.S. auto manufacturers and other trade-dependent industries. 
  • The Trump administration used its “war on cartels” to justify a crackdown on civil liberties at home. 
  • The Mexican people were ultimately the greatest victims.

The full report on the exercise can be found here.

A Foreign Policy article summarizing the findings can be found here.

• Drug policy scholars and activists have said for years that military solutions – including strikes in Mexico – will do little to address the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. 
  • The Washington Office on Latin America held a webinar in 2024 with criminologist Peter Reuter and human rights activist Lisa Sánchez that covered the failures of violence-first responses to the rise of the synthetic drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • The Drug Policy Alliance’s fact sheet on health-first approaches to drug crises covers the global failures of punitive drug policy, including in the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship, to limit drug use and the harms it produces.
    
• Regional experts have long warned that increasing militarization of drug policy between the U.S. and Mexico inflicts outsized harms on vulnerable people on both sides of the border.
  • Amnesty International has identified drug enforcement operations as a key driver of human rights abuses, as detailed in the report “Time for change: advancing new drug policies that uphold human rights.”
  • The Washington Office on Latin America released a report in 2023 tracking how drug enforcement agreements between the Mexican and U.S. governments have led to an increasingly militarized political life in Mexico and a decline in human rights protections there.
    
• Experts on war powers have repeatedly made the case that military strikes against cartels in Mexico would be illegal under both international and U.S. law. Brian Finucane, a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, wrote in February that such strikes would be “illegal and counterproductive,” an assessment that he has repeated in recent days.

Download the PDF version of this resource here.