Special to WorldTribune.com

Analysis by Allan Wall,  January 11, 2026

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about the U.S. government attacking Mexican drug cartels in Mexico.

A recent example is Sean Hannity’s interview with President Trump on Jan. 8, in which Trump said:

“And we are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch, see what happened to that country. But the cartels are running and killing 250-300,000 in our country every single year.”

What would a U.S. attack on Mexican drug cartels consist of?

Would lobbing missiles at cartel bosses solve the problem?

To begin with, which cartels?

A Jan. 9 CNN article by Mary Beth Sheridan explains the challenge:

“Most of the old cartels have splintered. Around 400 groups of different sizes now operate around the country, said Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia Intelligence, a Mexican consulting group that tracks them. ‘They’re practically everywhere,’ he said. The biggest ones have become more sophisticated and more complicated. The most powerful, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, is composed of around 90 organizations, Guerrero said, up from 45 just a few years ago. ‘This fragmentation has meant that you’ll need a more complex, more sophisticated strategy to weaken and dismember them,’ he said.”

What about sending in Delta Force to kidnap drug lords, as they just did with Maduro of Venezuela?

“Even snatching several of the top drug lords wouldn’t necessarily cripple a trade worth billions of dollars a year. Mexican authorities tried that approach in an aggressive, decade-long hunt for narcotics ‘kingpins’ starting around 2007. The Mexican military and police, backed by US intelligence and equipment, arrested or killed dozens of leading cartel figures. But others emerged to take their place. Tons of drugs continued to flow over the US border.”

“The cartels have evolved into intricate economic networks with a large consumer base, more like multinational corporations than traditional terrorist groups, said Benjamin T. Smith, author of ‘The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.’ ”

” ‘If you took out the CEO of Coca-Cola tomorrow, you wouldn’t stop Coca-Cola sales,’ he said. ‘As long as you have a major demand for the drugs, you’re not going to get rid of the supply.’ ”

“Indeed, many analysts argue the ‘kingpin’ strategy backfired, fracturing cartels into smaller groups that battled each other and the government and leading them to change the way they operate.”

“Increasingly, they have sought to control territory and impose ‘taxes’ on nearly everyone in their turf. That includes both legitimate businesses like avocado growers, and smugglers moving drugs and migrants toward the United States. Those who don’t pay risk being killed.”

We often hear that the cartels “run Mexico”? Is that really correct?

“What makes the country’s security particularly challenging is that ‘no one is firmly in control, neither the cartels nor the government,’ said Falko Ernst, a researcher of Mexican organized crime. In some areas, like Mexico City, the government has the upper hand. In others, armed groups rule.”

“ ‘You have a mosaic of different forms of power,’ he said. ‘This makes it so complex that you cannot simply execute one simple solution for the entire country. Power, conflict violence, drugs and crime don’t follow one model. They follow 1,000 models.’ ”

“The cartels have become ever more resilient as they have penetrated the country’s political structure. That was evident in the 2024 national elections, when crime groups openly sought to install their own mayors in different regions. Three dozen candidates were killed during the campaign, and hundreds more dropped out because of intimidation.”

“Crime groups are embedded in many local police forces and have assumed a growing role in the economy. In some areas they effectively operate their own intelligence services, paying or threatening local street vendors, construction workers, taxi drivers and others to report on the movements of security forces.”

“Removing the leaders of cartels won’t eliminate that kind of structure, Smith said.”

This all indicates that defeating the cartels is much more difficult than shooting rockets or missiles at them. It’s very complex.

We often hear Americans talk about drug cartels spreading their poison in our country and thus killing people.

That’s true, but there’s another side to it.

Many Americans are willingly seeking and purchasing their products.

Part of defeating the drug cartels is reducing the demand for the products.

If drug users don’t get their drugs from the Mexican cartels wouldn’t they look elsewhere for them?

  Cartels’ integration into Mexico’s economy, political structure makes them elusive target