This is the Cato Dealing podcast for Wednesday, November 27th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For a variety of reasons, and at the risk of overstating the obvious, we have to say it again.

Going to war with Mexico over fentanyl is a terrible idea.

Cato's Brandon Buck details the costs and risks the U.S. will assume by invading Mexico in a more vigorous anti-drug campaign.

I hate to start with a laundry list, Brendan, but it seems that we have a pretty good laundry list of reasons why a U.S. invasion of Mexico over an illicit substance

being imported into the United States is a bad idea. Would you walk us through some of those

basic reasons? Well, there's a number, right? So there is obviously an economic reason, a diplomatic one, a humanitarian one.

But I would like to start with what I believe to be the strategic and potentially tactical

reasons not to do an idea such as this.

A lot of people who are abandoning this idea about, many of whom are admittedly Special

Forces veterans,

I think they take for granted that throughout the global war on terror, which is where they draw most of their experience on these matters, you know, special operations, they operated

in theaters where the U.S. military maintain a dominant footprint or where host countries

lent their at least tacit support, thinking places like,

of course, Iraq and Afghanistan, even in Syria. They had, you know, they had partnered,

supported partnered forces, particularly in the Kurds. And I think in the case of Mexico,

thinking about this idea, without either of those, the U.S. government would risk sending very small special

operations teams into hostile areas where they would risk being overexposed. And I see this as a

recipe for escalatory spiral. Now, to be fair, there are a number of ideas that are being

bandied about. You know, Dan Crenshaw last year talked about applying a Clay Columbia model to Mexico, which would use

Mexican forces primarily.

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