How Trump must use the military to smash the cartels and build the border wall

The highest responsibility of our president is to ensure the defense of our nation — but for four years, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have neglected this crucial role. 

Rising threats from China, Iran and Russia are a reminder that keeping America safe requires more than just reacting to attacks and provocations; it demands an active strategy to deter, dismantle, and destroy our enemies’ ability to do America harm. 

Concerningly, commitment to this principle has been lacking most clearly at our border with Mexico.  

By allowing transnational drug cartels to operate with impunity — indeed, by embracing a program of policies that have made the cartels rich beyond their wildest dreams — Biden and Harris, his border czar, have allowed a clear threat to America’s national security to metastasize across our southern border and into our country.  

How can the next administration fix the mess Biden and Harris have created?

First, we have to secure our side of the border. 

We must immediately enforce the Remain in Mexico policies we negotiated in the first Trump administration and make clear that the only way to enter our country is by following the law.  

Accordingly, we should deploy military resources under NORTHCOM’s command to finish the border wall efficiently, and we should keep those resources there until the flow of migrants has been meaningfully reduced. 

We have the tools in place to do this — we just need leaders willing to take our border security seriously.

Next, we should focus our energy on degrading and destroying the primary cause of illegal immigration: transnational drug cartels that help terrorists cross into our country undetected, manufacture and distribute poisonous drugs that kill our citizens, and drive an immigration crisis that has destabilized our nation.   

Taking on the cartels will be a massive task, but it is necessary.  

Fentanyl overdoses account for hundreds of American deaths each day, and they are the leading cause of death for Americans from 18 to 45 years old. 

This poison is destroying families and hollowing out towns across America, and the criminals who produce and distribute it need to be taken down.  

The cartels are a key driver behind the immigration crisis, too: By driving waves of illegal immigrants across our border, they overwhelm our Border Patrol and create opportunities to smuggle their illicit products into America undetected. 

Actually destroying the cartels is not something that will happen overnight; it will take years of concerted effort and require a fundamentally different approach to our relationship with Mexico, a shift that was begun under the Trump administration but abandoned under Biden and Harris. 

For too long, America has focused our funding and efforts on eliminating top cartel leadership while overhauling Mexico’s legal system and improving its security forces to stop the cartels’ operations. 

In response, the cartels adapted: They have become less concentrated and have sowed even greater corruption within Mexico’s civil society. 

The cartels’ organizational infrastructure now encompasses many smaller groups that are spread across, and embedded within, civilian populations throughout Mexico — a characteristic they share with terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. 

While military action against the cartels may seem appealing, these facts mean that precision strikes and joint operations alone are not enough to take them down.  

We must establish a new status quo, one based on the principle of reciprocity.  

If any country, be it Mexico or otherwise, stands with us in fighting back against dangers that threaten our homeland, then we should stand with them and support them in every way possible. 

We should engage in joint military operations, targeted strikes, intelligence sharing, and dynamic training programs with such allies. 

But if a foreign government becomes complicit — or even friendly — with our enemies, we need to treat them accordingly. 

We should end any financial support of that nation, sanction individual political leaders, and be prepared to take unilateral military action to end the threat.  

Experts estimate that a third of Mexico is currently under cartel control. 

The threat they pose is real and growing, and we must act in America’s best interests. We have to put America First back into our foreign policy. 

Finally, we should strongly consider officially designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. 

This move would send a clear message to partners and adversaries alike — from Mexico, where the cartels operate, to the Chinese Communist Party, which permits Chinese companies to sell fentanyl precursor compounds to the cartels, and even to the rest of the world — that America will take whatever steps necessary to destroy the cartels, with exactly the same urgency as if ISIS were attempting establish a caliphate south of our border. 

Yet these prescriptions will matter little if the American people do not elect leaders who are serious about confronting the cartels and securing our southern border.

Biden and Harris have neglected this duty; only President Trump will deliver the national security Americans deserve.

Mike Pompeo was secretary of state from 2018 to 2021.