Foreign policy is often neglected during U.S. presidential campaigns, with most candidates leaning into domestic affairs instead. After all, what happens in the world can seem distant, with abstract and indirect impacts back home, whereas domestic policy often directly affects the pocketbook issues that drive voter behavior. As political strategist James Carville aptly put it to describe then-candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign theme during the 1992 presidential election, “It’s the economy stupid.”
But if candidates tend to avoid weighing in on foreign policy, it’s also because when it is brought up, they can sometimes seem out of their depth. Indeed, the foreign policy discussion during the U.S. presidential campaign season can often veer toward the absurd.
That is exactly what happened a few weeks ago during the first debate between the Republican presidential hopefuls vying for the party’s 2024 nomination. While the debate featured some discussion of prominent foreign policy issues, such as continuing military assistance to Ukraine, news coverage that followed the event focused on one of the more offbeat topics to come up: whether or not the U.S. should invade Mexico.
In describing how he would address the problem of fentanyl being smuggled across the U.S. southern border by Mexican narco-traffickers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis forcefully declared, “Would I use force? Would I treat them as foreign terrorist organizations? You’re damn right I would.” Similarly, in a subsequent interview, Nikki Haley—who previously served as the governor of South Carolina as well as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations—said that she would “send special operations in there and eliminate them just like we eliminated ISIS.” Sen. Tim Scott, also of South Carolina, issued a campaign ad promising to “unleash” the U.S. military on the drug cartels in Mexico. And businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said he would use “military force to decimate the cartels, Osama bin Laden-style, Soleimani-style” immediately after taking office if he wins the presidency.
While he didn’t participate in the debate, the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, has also reportedly expressed interest in using the military option for Mexico. It was reported back in March that, while still president, Trump had asked then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper if the U.S. could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.” And a source close to the former president said that Trump also “wants battle plans” for using military force against Mexico should he win next year’s election.
The impetus for these calls is the impact in the U.S. of the illicit drug fentanyl, which causes tens of thousands of deaths from overdoses every year. Mexico’s government has been engaged in a long-running, violent and ultimately losing battle with the Mexican drug cartels that produce and transport fentanyl into the United States. According to the claim bandied about at the Republican presidential debate, given that the Mexican authorities have been unable to stop the cartels, decisive U.S. military action is required.
When combined with the key Republican talking point of a “crisis” at the U.S. border, where the flow of undocumented migrants into the U.S. is overwhelming border personnel, the calls for military action in Mexico might be seen as nothing more than a performative political stunt. For the current GOP candidates, it has the twin benefits of making them look tough while also potentially appealing to Republican voters who were drawn to Trump’s “Build the Wall” campaign mantra in 2016. But calls to invade Mexico also betray three sad truths about U.S. foreign policy generally, and Republican foreign policy in particular.
The calls by GOP presidential candidates to invade Mexico point to a general tendency in U.S. foreign policy: When in doubt, Washington’s first instinct is to turn to the military.
First, it illustrates a recent tendency within the Republican party to securitize and militarize Washington’s Latin America policy. Over recent years, this was most prominently and notably on display with the Trump administration and its calls to build a wall to control the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States. Indeed, the Trump administration went as far as to deploy troops to the border in 2018. Though that was largely seen as a political stunt at the time, recent polls show that using military personnel to bolster the U.S. border with Mexico is overwhelmingly supported by Republican voters.
But this tendency to militarize U.S. policy on Latin America policy went beyond Trump’s obsession with a wall. While president, he also threatened to invade Venezuela. It also goes back further than Trump. Think of the invasions of Grenada in 1983 under then-President Ronald Reagan and Panama in 1989 under then-President George H. W. Bush. Of course, one could quite correctly point to the infamous “Bay of Pigs” incident during the administration of former President John F. Kennedy, or even highlight how the U.S. previously invaded Mexico during the administration of former President Woodrow Wilson, both Democrats. But over the past few decades, it has been the Republican party, more so than the Democratic party, that has often viewed unilateral militarization as the first solution to issues at, or south of, the U.S. border.
Second and related, calls to invade Mexico by Republicans point to a general tendency in U.S. foreign policy to militarize problems: When in doubt about a foreign policy problem, Washington’s first instinct is to turn to the military. Need democracy in the Middle East? Militarily invade a country. Need to bolster relations between two rivals? Provide each with military aid. Need to stop the use of narcotics in the United States? Harden the border and deploy the troops.
It’s not just that the military option is “always on the table.” It’s that the military option always seems to be the option within easiest reach on the table. Part of this stems from a tendency in U.S. foreign policy to “securitize” issues that are not traditionally matters of the military, whose essential function is to counter the threat of invasion by foreign troops against the U.S. homeland or against U.S. allies. But from the “War on Drugs” to the “War on Terror,” issues that might be best dealt with by economic development, intelligence-sharing and policing—which has also been militarized in the U.S., but that is a matter for another column—are instead viewed as matters requiring the use of military force.
Third, this entire episode highlights the lack of a comprehensive U.S. policy toward Latin America. This is related to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, because in the absence of a comprehensive policy in a given issue area, Washington turns to the easy option when problems arise. In U.S. foreign policy, that easy option is the military.
Historically, Washington’s long-standing Latin America policy, dating back to former President James Monroe, was to prevent other major powers from interfering in the Western Hemisphere. But that was mainly to clear the way for the United States’ own long history of meddling in the region. And even though the U.S. effectively abandoned what came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine in the post-Cold War period, it has not replaced it with any comprehensive approach toward the region.
Indeed, after leading a recent congressional delegation to Brazil, Colombia and Chile—where 50 years ago this week the U.S. infamously backed the coup that overthrew the elected government of then-President Salvador Allende, ushering in almost two decades of dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the Biden administration to apologize for that long history of U.S. meddling. “I believe that we owe Chile, and not just Chile but many aspects of that region, an apology,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t think that apology indicates weakness,” she added, “I think it indicates a desire to meet our hemispheric partners with respect.”
To be clear, if the Mexican government itself requests assistance in the form of counternarcotics training or intelligence-sharing, such as during the Merida Initiative from 2009 to 2017, then using the U.S. military to help in those matters is sensible. The U.S. similarly provided extensive military training and support to Bogota under Plan Colombia, which targeted rebel groups and drug cartels operating in that country from 2000 to 2015.
By contrast, the calls for the United States to unilaterally use military force in Mexico are absurd. Unfortunately, absurdity can at times point us in the direction of harsh truths, and that’s the case with these calls. It might be tempting to laugh them off as political posturing, but they point to harsh truths about U.S. foreign policy that are no laughing matter.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.