Congress that would authorize military force to target Mexican Cartels and the consequences of military intervention in mexico. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is justin logan, i am the director of defense and Foreign Policy here at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this form of this uncommonly, wonderful sunny august afternoon in washington to our forum on proposals for using u. S. Military at the border and counter fentanyl. You are going to hear a lot of reasons this afternoon why proposals for using u. S. Military in and around mexico to counter fentanyl is a bad idea. But, i think it is important to state at the outset there is a real underlying crisis happening in the United States vis vis fentanyl. Overdose death or precise data on Overdose Deaths are hard to come by. But, as near as we can tell somewhere on the order between 60 and 80,000 americans per year last year in 2022 anyway, are dying of fentanyl related overdoses. Provisional data from the cdc, for example, suggests there were more than 70,000 frontal Overdose Deaths in the country last year. So, there is, i think a real underlying crisis happening in the United States vis vis fentanyl. That helps to explain why politicians have begun to latch onto the problem. In a june nbc news paul illustrated the public is quite anxious about this problem. Respondents were asked whether a president ial candidate who supported deploying the u. S. Military to the Mexican Border to stop Illegal Drugs from entering the country would make someone more or less likely to vote for that candidate. Speaking of the public generally, it made people, it made 55 of people more likely to vote for such a candidate and only 29 of people less likely to vote for such a candidate. Speaking about republicans in particular, 86 of people who were more likely to vote for a candidate who favored deploying the u. S. Military to the border to counter drugs and only 6 of republicans were more likely to oppose such a candidate. So, i think you have a real underlying crisis happening in the United States and you have politicians sort of groping around at solutions be just because something is marketed as a real solution to a real problem does not necessarily mean that it is a real solution to a real problem. That is probably the right way to set up the discussion we are about to hear this afternoon. Im very pleased to have what i think is a panel of diverse experts that get this problem from different angles. I think they will flow from your left to your right. Senior advisor for the u. S. Program at the International Crisis group and a nonresident senior fellow at the rice center on security at nyu law school. He previously served as attorney advisor at the u. S. State Department Office of the Legal Advisor and his work on u. S. Foreign policy security, foreign affairs, Foreign Policy, just security and other outlets. He holds a jd from yale and he is going to comment on some of the legal aspects of the proposals, particularly in congress for using the military vis vis the cartels. Her Research Interests include border studies, Drug Trafficking, organized crime, us mexico relations, obviously germane to the discussions this afternoon. She is the author of , corporation, energy, and civil war in mexico. Shes working on a book project about Human Trafficking and transnational crime networks. She earned a ba in economics from the university ibero americana in the mexico city. Finally, we were here from jeff singer, my colleague here at cato, where he is a senior fellow in Health Policy studies. Is also the founder and president emeritus of valley surgical clinic in phoenix, ozona. He is a physician by trade. He has practiced general surgery for more than 40 years. In march, jeff testified before the house subcommittee on crime and federal government surveillance about drug prohibition and the role that prohibition is played in fentanyl crisis. He earned a ba from Brooklyn College and md from new york medical college. I think its probably best to start off by asking brian to talk a little bit, weve heard from particularly republican president ial candidates that we are going to be very tough, youre going to use the military against the cartels but not a tremendous much of detail, i think those proposals. We have, by my count, three pieces of legislation wending there with recoverable that involve or at least adjacent to use of the military vis vis cartels, fentanyl, mexico. Can you talk a little bit about what, if any powers those would grant the government using the military and what the applications of these legislations would likely have . Let me preface my remarks by noting that because the legal guardrails on the unilateral use of force by the u. S. President are weak, it is not necessary that Congress Enact any additional legislation for the president in practical terms to be able to wield the military against cartels in mexico. Just something to bear in mind. But, so, reflecting both the scale of the fentanyl crisis and also its political failing, political statements, there one, 145 piece of vegetation that refer to fentanyl in congress and they cover a broad range of topics from strict and criminal penalties to increased border control, to Harm Reduction. Im going to focus on some of the more bellicose measures that is been introduced that frame the war on drugs as an actual war and propose either use of military force or some sort of militarized approach to countering fentanyl. The first and most extreme of these is the ms cartel introduced by dan crenshaw. This is a real deal war authorization cut and pasted from the 2001 authorization for use of military force. That is the authority for the u. S. War on terror. This measure reproduces many of the pathologies of that war on terror authorization, it would give the president the authority to use necessary and appropriate force against a list of named organizations in mexico. But also, unilateral authority to add additional groups against whom the president could use force. Because this authorization is so broad, the president would have the authority to launch an indeterminate number of new wars against organizations in mexico and potentially even the mexican state itself. Theres also in the house recently been passed out of the House Foreign Affairs committee by voice vote a project precursor act, which would direct the secretary of state and fentanyl as a chemical weapon under the chemical weapons convention. In the senate, Lindsey Graham introduced a measure that would designate Drug Trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. There have also been measures introduced in the house that would direct the secretary of Homeland Security to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass distraction. Earlier this year, President Biden received a letter from 18 states attorneys general making a similar request, that fentanyl be designated as a weapon of mass destruction. Now, the prospect for any of these measures actually become law being enacted is pretty dim at this point. Ministration is showing no interest in signing these into law. The danger in these framings, the danger and measures that cast the war on drugs as an actual war and cast the use of military force as an appropriate policy tool is like we hear on the campaign trail, using force against cartels, and phone strikes, blockades, shooting suspected drug traffickers, they normalize the audio that the use of military force is an appropriate policy response to this crisis. And, they make it more likely that a future president will actually use that authority. Again, the president doesnt need any Additional Authority given the week guardrail said yes but they normalize the notion that this is an appropriate policy response for a future occupant of the white house to rely upon. , let me do my best to keep this from becoming the representative crenshaw show this afternoon but theres a lot of that representative crenshaw has done vis vis this policy. He has done, again, and authorization for the use of military force, as you point out, has very clear parallels to the 2001 authorization of the use of military force. I want to read you a quote. He has done this sort of back and forth hiding the ball on what the legislation would do. He sort of is aghast and says no one is talking about an invasion or a war with mexico. Rather, the bill provides, as he puts it, the minimum authority needed to operate with the mexican military, this is what i want to ask about your analysis of, as weve done with other allies battling internal insurgencies. There seems to be this underlying conceit behind the way we have framed this problem is that whether you want to frame it as mexico is engaged in a counterinsurgency or low grade civil war and what is faxing us is they dont want our help or they dont want help in the right way or they dont want enough help. Do you, what are we to make of this . Do you buy that sort of sub rosa analysis is underpinning what is going on here . If so, what are we to make of it . I think it is disingenuous. You dont need a aumf , you dont need a statute drafted in this fashion to provide the authority he is referring to there. What exactly he has in mind, hes fairly vague there. In terms of if we want to share intelligence with the mexican state to combat fentanyl trafficking, the president would not need additional authorities to engage in intelligence sharing, which im sure is taking place right now. I think this is an attempt to walk back the clear applications of his own legislation, to distance himself from the clear text of the statute. It reminds me of some of the measures, the steps and language from the vote for the iraq war of authorization, after it was used to invade iraq, try to distance himself from the vote, we didnt intend it to be a student tour, despite the fact that it provides the authority. Anytime you see members of congress introduce a war authorization, take it seriously. Guadalupe correacabrera, and rescue, we got specificity about repetitive crenshaws bill, he had a post, i know where he was speaking, on instagram recently, where he talked about having gone to high school in columbia and visited columbia recently and talked about how much columbia is a different place than it was when he was there in high school. According to representative crenshaw, columbia is the model. He says the reason columbia changed over 20 years was because of what American Partnership meant for them. Our American Military working hand in hand with them, the colombians, the police, or Law Enforcement, all of it very close relationship. Weve heard a lot about insurgencies, battling insurgencies. I was sort of aghast because you can track record with counterinsurgency over the past 20 or so years is not one people should want to replicate, particularly on our border. So, it was, in one sense, a relief that we didnt want to replay the iraq and afghanistan experience in northern mexico. But, at the same time, vexing that the columbia experience is what we are supposed to be replicating in mexico. You have done work on trafficking. You are conversed in columbia in the 1990s. Is columbia a good analog for what we should be trying to achieve vis vis the cartels . What you make of this analogy . It is a very bad analogy. First of all, the name of the bill, the war on cartels and cartel as a concept is the wrong concept to use. I understand that this concept is used in the medium. Everybody uses that to refer to criminal groups in mexico. And in columbia and make, the body of the cartels in the colombian conflict. But, first of all, we are not talking about organizations in columbia that come together, that sit together, form and illegal politic and decide the a lot of drugs they are going to use and transport in order to operate as a monopoly. First of all, the concept is wrong. And, what about columbia . I do not understand if repetitive crenshaw remembered, it is surprising that he lived there. But, he does not remember how much distraction this partnership that was a learning process cost for colombian citizens. Not only that, what are we fighting . Its a war against drugs, its a war against fentanyl, it is a war that is going to leave this country free of drugs or is going to diminish the levels of drug consumption. Well, what happened in columbia is a failed war. Why . The objective was to reduce the levels of consumption of cocaine. If that is what we want, what is the final aim of this collaboration, right . And the narcotics cooperation between the United States and the Different Countries of latin america having a failed world. More drugs, and the United States than any other time in history. The opioid epidemic, now the fentanyl crisis. After 1 trillion being spent on the war on drugs. Columbia is an example of the destruction that militarization of the fight or the militarization of Anti Narcotics policies. What has happened in mexico . When mexico started to militarize under the umbrella of the maridine initiative, that is exactly the time when homicides started to increase exponentially. After 2007 to today, we have more than 350,000 homicides, some of them likely related to the militarization of the Security Strategy that today continues and continues even though the current president of mexico does not talk about a war on drugs. He has militarize completely Public Security at the federal level. I want to bring this up because we have a slide here. We started talking about columbia because we were talking about cocaine and started talking about mexico because we were talking about fentanyl. This is a draft from, that was released by the institute for defense analysis through the office of the National Drug control policy, which is housed in the white house. These are the prices at Different Levels of quantity of a pure gram of cocaine. You can see the reagan drug warriors are on the left inside. Obviously the years of the colombian are there in the 1990s. As you can see here, if we are interested in the columbia because of cocaine or we are interested in mexico because of fentanyl, what you would want, ideally, is to reduce the length of cocaine or to reduce the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States, which is my economics 101 professor is reminding me over my shoulder right now, should have the effect of driving the price up. In fact what happened is we see that the price of cocaine went down dramatically. Then during the hot and heavy use of plan columbia, the prices were relatively flat, with a few ephemeral spikes. So, if the reason that we are interested in the cartels now is because of fentanyl, the example of the columbia experience does not give us a lot of reason to be hopeful. There was a lot of reason to be optimistic about mimicking the colombian experience in mexico. Thank you for bringing this slide up. I wanted also to ask you a little bit about the politics of this issue inside mexico. It is, to my mind, as an elementary Political Science conversant person, it is a little bit of a hot issue. People get fairly agitated about it. The mexican president didnt like the idea of an authorization for the use of military force in the u. S. Congress. This was the least surprising thing to happen in my recent memories. But, theres a lot of consternation that this would be a hot topic inside of mexico. Can you talk a little bit about both at the elite level and at the mass level how this issue plays and is likely to play or would be likely to play in mexican politics . My superficial understanding of mexican politics, i cant think of a political, politically relevant force that would say we think this is a swell idea. Maybe you can tell us differently, that there is such a force. Mexico today is very divided along party lines, as is the United States. But, beyond that, that critical position might be somewhat happy with that idea but not, lets try to discuss this better. Absolutely for any tactic and citizen just the idea of a military involvement, direct military involvement in mexico is pretty traumatic because of the traumatic experience of military involvement in latin america. Not only that, it is, in, there is a sense, of course, of sovereignty. But, what has happened, the experience and also the brutality that can, that this can create. Because of the brutality that has been created within mexico because of the involvement of the military. There is an important segment of the mexican population that supports the mexican military on the ground. But, there is a lot of criticism. How many people have disappeared, have died because of the confrontations between the cartel and the mexican military . I cannot understand what that would mean to mexico. If the u. S. Military is involved but the concern also is about intervention. It is about the United States causing massive death. Another thing that is reported to consider, what is a Mexican Cartel again . Not all of these cartels are dedicated to the drug trade. United states does not necessarily have to go after all criminal groups that sometimes started connected to the drug trade but maybe they dont dedicate themselves to traffic drugs. Some of them specialize in different criminal activities, extortion, kidnapping, exacting vent from mexicans. Are you going to do . If you are going to bomb, what are you going to go after . Are you going to go after any criminal groups that operate in the country . Are you going to b