Trump wants to attack drug cartels. How can Mexico respond if he does?

MEXICO CITY — She has won acclaim for facing down tariff threats, shunning political bluster and skirting White House provocations — while winning admiration from President Donald Trump.

"A cool head" has been her motto.

But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum may soon face her most challenging test — and her response could define bilateral relations for years.

At issue: Trump's stated determination to deploy U.S. military force against Mexican drug cartels, six of which his administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Trump has vowed to "wage war" on cartels, which, he said, exercise "total control" in Mexico and pose a "grave threat" to U.S. national security.

In response to U.S. pressure, Mexico has cracked down on drug trafficking and illegal immigration, dispatching thousands of troops to its northern frontier and even shipping 29 accused cartel capos to the United States, skirting Mexican due process guarantees. The Sheinbaum administration has also agreed to expanded U.S. surveillance flights, reportedly including CIA drone forays over Mexican territory.

Still, Sheinbaum rejected Trump's offer — delivered in a testy telephone call last month — to send the U.S. Army to Mexico. Boots on the ground, she said she told her counterpart, is a red line that Mexico would "never accept," adding: "Sovereignty is not sold."

Her unequivocal response — which reflected Mexico's enduring memories of U.S. invasions, land grabs and bullying — was widely praised in Mexico, where the nationalist card can always be dealt in response to perceived gringo aggression.

"We are all with the president and ready to defend Mexico," said Alfredo García, 56, who runs a cafeteria in Mexico City. "Trump and the United States are very powerful, but we cannot let this happen."

But Sheinbaum seemed to leave little wiggle room for future negotiations on the explosive issue. Trump appeared exasperated.

"The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can't even think straight," the president told reporters aboard Air Force One.

An adherent of kinetic actions — Trump has already amped up troop numbers along the southwestern border — the U.S. president seems undeterred by expert opinions that strikes would have little effect on Mexico's highly dispersed drug-trafficking gangs and their networks of primitive, kitchen-sink laboratories.

Trump has long contemplated launching the military against Mexican cartels. According to one of his former Defense secretaries, Mark Esper, Trump mused in 2020 about firing missiles at drug labs. In his memoir, "A Sacred Oath," Esper wrote that the president said the U.S. could simply deny responsibility for any attack.

For years, Mexican police, sometimes with U.S. assistance, have been destroying drug labs and taking out kingpins — to no apparent effect on cross-border smuggling.

"It's all for show," Mike Vigil, former head of international operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said of Trump's talk of a U.S. strike on cartels.

Nonetheless, Sheinbaum's rejection of Trump's troop proposal seemed to some observers here an uncharacteristically nuance-free reaction from a leader who, despite her leftist activist pedigree, has earned a reputation as a pragmatic interlocutor with the mercurial U.S. president.

"The response of the president was correct, but incomplete," said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexican security analyst, who suggested that Sheinbaum could have appeased Trump with proposals for enhanced cooperation, short of U.S. troops on Mexican soil.

"Mexico can use help," he added, noting a potential need for U.S. training, technological aid and armaments. "The power that organized crime has amassed is such that the Mexican state clearly cannot contain the threat."

The contentious Trump-Sheinbaum exchange fanned fears that Mexicans would wake up one day to a once-unimaginable scenario: news of U.S. strikes, be they aerial assaults or ground incursions, or some combination of attacks, on cartel targets.

The prospect hangs like a "sword of Damocles" over Mexico, wrote columnist Denise Maerker in Mexico's Milenio news outlet.

"It's a fact that President Sheinbaum has navigated these dark and terrible waters with enormous grace," the columnist wrote. Still, she added, Mexicans "must live with the worry that one of these days ... Trump resorts directly to action. Whether he does it, or doesn't do it, doesn't depend on us. It may simply reflect his political need at a given moment."

And what if Trump does launch a strike? How might Sheinbaum react?

By all accounts, the Mexican president would have few good options.

"A covert, unauthorized action by the United States on Mexican territory would create a serious crisis," said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University. "But it is not like Ms. Sheinbaum has a lot of room to maneuver."

Sheinbaum would undoubtedly face intense public pressure to respond in the strongest possible diplomatic terms. But experts seem to view a complete rupture in U.S.-Mexico diplomatic relations as unlikely, given Mexico's profound dependence on U.S. capital and markets.

"Entirely severing diplomatic relations would be extremely costly for Mexico because of its consequences on trade," said Gustavo Flores-Macías, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell University.

Instead, said Flores-Macías, Mexico would probably issue a strongly worded formal protest and possibly recall its ambassador from Washington — while expelling the U.S. envoy from Mexico City. Mexico might also reduce — at least temporarily — cooperation in crucial bilateral arenas, such as immigration and security.

In addition, Mexico might seek international condemnation via the United Nations or the Organization of American States, but Trump has long expressed disdain for such international bodies and would probably brush off such criticism.

Past U.S.-Mexico crises — such as the 2020 arrest of former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos at Los Angeles International Airport — resulted in Mexico curtailing access for U.S. anti-drug agents. In the Cienfuegos case, the Trump White House, facing a furious reaction from then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, relented: Washington dropped federal drug-smuggling charges against the retired general and allowed him to return to Mexico, where he was later decorated by the president.

Mexican reaction to any U.S. incursion would probably be shaped by the severity of the strike, be it by special ground forces or through aerial attacks. Any loss of life would also be a factor.

"Collateral victims may lead her [Sheinbaum] to raise the rhetoric," said Payan. "But I definitely do not think that it would mean breaking off diplomatic relations. Ms. Sheinbaum inherited a tough hand — expansive organized crime, which the U.S. can help with, and a collapsing economy — for which she needs access to U.S. markets and capital."

In some areas of Mexico, residents are so fed up with organized crime that more than a few say they would welcome U.S. intervention.

"Where I come from, there are areas where the government and organized crime work together," said Rosario Salazar, 42, a nurse from the central, violence-racked state of Michoacán. "So obviously the government isn't going to do anything. I don't think the people would mind if the gringos came and guaranteed to do away with violence and insecurity."

One possible location for a U.S. strike might be western Sinaloa state, home to the eponymous cartel, where a war between gang factions has been raging for months.

"The cartels have completely destroyed people's rights," said Lilian González, 33, a public relations worker in the port city of Mazatlán. "The president [Sheinbaum] should be grateful" if there is a U.S. attack, González said, adding: "Because she has failed to resolve the crisis of violence in Sinaloa."

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—Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City and Aaron Ibarra in Culiacán contributed to this report.