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ARTURO SARUKHAN is an international consultant and a former career diplomat and ambassador. He served as Mexican Ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013.
How Sheinbaum Can Counter Trump’s Threats
Arturo Sarukhan
There is a particular kind of vertigo that comes from watching a diplomatic scenario you spent decades trying to prevent materialize in real time. For more than two decades, I served on the frontlines of the U.S.-Mexican relationship, including as Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. With government colleagues, as well as NGOs and civil society partners, I sat through years of complex negotiations with U.S. officials, from both Republican and Democratic administrations, over counternarcotics cooperation and efforts to build a shared, holistic vision for the United States’ and Mexico’s common security. During that time, U.S. policymakers accepted high levels of cartel violence because they believed that their Mexican counterparts were fighting the same battle they were. They focused less on the number of arrested kingpins or drug seizures and more on their partners’ political will and institutional capacity to resolve the structural issues driving those statistics. My colleagues and I all understood then that the most dangerous moment in U.S.-Mexican security relations would arise not from a spike in violence but rather if and when Washington concluded that Mexico could not or would not solve the problem on its own terms—if it perceived Mexico City to have made a separate peace with the cartels, either tacitly tolerating them or directly negotiating with them. The moment that such a perception hardened into consensus across the U.S. intelligence community, Congress, and key government agencies, the logic of the bilateral relationship would shift from cooperation to coercion.
That moment has now arrived—in dramatic fashion and after a long buildup. For six years, beginning in 2018, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador approached criminal organizations with the mantra “hugs, not bullets”—which I would better characterize as “hugs for thugs.” This policy led to a de facto pax narca that today hangs around the neck of his successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum. The damage that policy did to Mexican security and to U.S.-Mexican relations was untenable, and it finally provoked the scenario that my colleagues and I so dreaded. In November 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs.” He has continued, on multiple occasions, to say that cartels, and not Sheinbaum, “run” Mexico, reaching for unilateral tools such as sanctions and formal designations of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations to address the problem.
This series of events would explain Sheinbaum’s decision to finally go after the leadership of the most powerful and violent transnational criminal organization in Mexico (and likely in the entire hemisphere). In late February, the Mexican government carried out an operation that led to the death of drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho. The feat served as powerful proof that Mexico can act decisively against powerful organized crime groups. But its aftermath also demonstrated how far the country still has to go, as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel retaliated for its leader’s death. Violence erupted across nearly a dozen Mexican states—vehicles burned, highways were blocked, gunfire was reported at the Guadalajara International Airport, and 25 members of the Mexican National Guard were killed in coordinated reprisal attacks.
This moment is particularly dangerous because once the United States sees Mexico as no longer a struggling partner but as an unwilling one, no single operational success is likely to restore the earlier presumption of good faith. But Mexico’s best argument against U.S. unilateralism is that cooperation produces better outcomes than coercion. Making that argument is the easy part; the harder task is proving it true, through measurable reductions in cartel violence and improvements in the rule of law, justice, and democracy. Every failure on those fronts does not merely embarrass Mexico and weaken its diplomatic position vis-à-vis the United States—it also hands Washington a justification for bypassing Mexican institutions in its fight against transnational criminal organizations. The argument, in other words, is only as strong as the results that sustain it.
Mexico must prove, by demonstrating that it can deliver security and build regional and international coalitions, that its sovereignty is not an obstacle to solving the cartel problem but the precondition for solving it sustainably. And although a U.S. unilateral use of force against the cartels is not inevitable, Mexico must prepare for its possibility, even as it keeps the door open to continued security cooperation.
Portraying U.S. pressure on Mexico as imperialism or an infringement on sovereignty might be jingoistically satisfying for Mexicans, especially Sheinbaum’s left-wing base, but it is not a substitute for strategy. There is no doubt that the Trump administration has fundamentally upended a key tenet of the U.S.-Mexican relationship—namely, that shared responsibility is the only way to tackle transnational challenges such as border security, organized crime, migration, or scarce water resources. But Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington over the past decade have been conveying a genuine concern for Mexico’s long-term security.
What Washington’s hawkish voices on unilateral U.S. military action now underestimate or ignore, though, is that such an intervention on Mexican soil would be catastrophically counterproductive to the United States’ own national security. It would trigger a collapse in the bilateral intelligence-sharing arrangements that disrupt cartel operations, harden Mexican public opinion against cooperation with Washington, fracture the architecture of North American integration, validate anti-American sentiment across Latin America, provide China and Russia with easy propaganda wins, and likely drive cartels to restructure in ways that make them more dispersed and resilient.
The raid against El Mencho worked precisely because it drew on U.S.-Mexican cooperation without compromising Mexican sovereignty: Mexico commanded operations on the ground, using intelligence and likely kinetic support from the United States. This kind of cooperation is something López Obrador undermined and avoided, frequently inveighing against what he saw as U.S. interventionism—including the funding of Mexican NGOs and watchdogs against corruption—stating that Mexico City could not cooperate with Washington because there was not enough trust. But in fact, the history of U.S.-Mexican ties shows that cooperation is what fosters and builds mutual trust.
Domestic and foreign policy issues are intimately intertwined in the U.S.-Mexican relationship, and the nationalist chauvinism that Trump and Sheinbaum resort to from their respective bully pulpits makes their complex relationship even more so. To counter this unhelpful rhetoric, the Mexican government must make the case to Washington, through every channel that is reachable, that a unilateral use of force would politically destabilize Mexico and spell catastrophe for the United States. Avoiding a scenario in which the Trump administration does resort to such a use of force, however, will also require much more than words.
On this front, Sheinbaum must address an urgent structural problem that her predecessor largely sidestepped: the deep, corrosive entanglement of organized crime with Mexico’s political institutions. Decades of cartel expansion have not occurred in a vacuum; they have been sustained, in many cases, by the complicity of local officials, state police, prosecutors, governors, and other government officials who enable, intermediate, or outright operate with criminal organizations. For U.S.-Mexican antidrug cooperation to move beyond the transactional exchange of intelligence and extradition, Sheinbaum must be willing to name the political-criminal nexus for what it is and pursue it with the full weight of federal prosecutorial power. Otherwise, bilateral enforcement efforts risk remaining superficial, disrupting transnational criminal logistics at the margins while leaving intact the political scaffolding that allows trafficking networks to regenerate.
Sheinbaum should also state, publicly and unequivocally, that the greatest threat to Mexico’s sovereignty stems not from U.S. pressure but from the illicit and violent activity of criminal organizations operating on both sides of our shared border. A clear presidential declaration to that effect would not only reframe the sovereignty debate on Mexico’s own terms, signaling to Washington that security cooperation is a shared imperative rather than an imposed condition, but it would also strengthen the hand of Mexican security institutions seeking closer operational ties with U.S. agencies and force a long-overdue public reckoning with where the true assault on Mexican sovereignty originates. An effective corollary to that statement would be a commitment to fully restart the security and intelligence-sharing agenda and apparatus that Mexico and the United States built through the Mérida Initiative, which was launched with the Bush administration in 2007, expanded and reinforced with the Obama administration in 2009, but destroyed by López Obrador’s shutting down of key channels for dialogue and security cooperation. Doing this will require Mexican-led bilateral counternarcotics operations that go beyond temporary tactical and operational changes and criminal renditions, which do little to strengthen the institutions and state capabilities and thus fail to move the needle on Mexican and North American security.
A truly comprehensive approach to North American security would need to involve more than solely going after Mexican cartel operations. Consider the cross-border fentanyl crisis. The trade of the illicit drug brings in enormous profits to—and fuels violence among—Mexico’s criminal groups. But the thriving fentanyl business is also a consequence of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s unscrupulous over-prescription of opioids in the early 2000s, beside a chronic underinvestment in addiction treatment. The business persists because of U.S.-based demand, a supply chain for fentanyl precursors that runs primarily through China before reaching Mexican laboratories, and weapons that arm cartel organizations flowing in enormous volumes after being illicitly sold in U.S. gun shops and gun shows and trafficked across the border. Any North American security framework would need to address all these dimensions to bring the crisis to an end.
Mexico also needs to show its neighbors and its own people that the government is thinking big. It should propose a new security institution that includes Canada and the United States: a permanent North American security secretariat with a rotating chair, binding procedures for consultation and coordination, and a technical staff drawn from all three countries. A lack of such institutionalization is the single greatest vulnerability of the current cooperation model. A permanent secretariat could oversee a joint U.S.-Mexican border and customs agency and a trilateral financial intelligence unit focused on cartel money laundering that enables coordination among the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Mexico’s Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera, and Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre. A jointly operated and financed addiction- and demand-reduction fund could also develop programs to reduce drug consumption and pursue harm reduction programs, while investing in durable treatments for addiction.
Other important elements of a North American security framework would include a unit focused on arms trafficking interdiction, to formalize the joint tracking of weapons flowing south and drugs flowing north, and a trilateral precursor chemical monitoring regime, which would work to intercept sea- and land-based flows of fentanyl and chemical precursors en route to North America. The three countries should also make efforts to streamline their cybersecurity protocols and policies to enhance security around the critical infrastructure that would enable these capabilities. Merging existing trusted traveler programs—Global Entry between Mexico and the United States and Nexus between Canada and the United States—into one unified North American secure traveler program would also help to reinforce border security protocols and immigration procedures.
Building a North American security architecture will take time and substantial political capital. For now, Mexico can concentrate on proving its sovereign ability by ensuring security in preparation for and during the 2026 World Cup, which will be held this summer in 16 cities across North America. The Mexican government will need to effectively deploy the National Guard and military to all three host Mexican cities (Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey); integrate U.S. and Canadian officers into Mexican-led security operations, and working with FIFA; the international soccer organization, to establish public security protocols.
Mexico must not reduce its security posture to symbolic gestures, such as high-visibility arrests of cartel operatives and kingpins that draw press coverage or appease Washington, but which entail no effective and sustained action against financial networks, political protectors, or command structures that sustain criminal organizations. Nor should it allow its legitimate concern about U.S. threats to undermine valuable intelligence sharing and cooperation. Retreating into defensive nationalism will only foreclose the cooperation that Mexico and the United States need to address their shared security interests. At the same time, Mexico must not assume that because U.S. unilateral military action would be counterproductive, it will not happen. Domestic political imperatives have, more than once, overwhelmed strategic calculation, and Mexico must be prepared for that moment if and when it comes.
The Trump administration’s designation of the Jalisco cartel and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations, its stated readiness to strike cartel territory, and its deployment of U.S. drones over Mexican territory could all be laying the groundwork for a more substantial military operation. Should the United States take unilateral action, Mexico’s response must be calibrated, legal, and sustained—avoiding the reactive nationalism that would preclude future cooperation.
In such a scenario, Mexico could immediately convene an emergency session of the UN Security Council, formally invoking Article 2(4) of the UN Charter—which prohibits UN member states from using or threatening force against the territorial integrity of another state—to request a binding resolution that condemns the violation of the country’s territorial sovereignty. On a regional level, Mexico might activate the nonintervention provisions of the Organization of American States Charter (of which the United States is a signatory) and convene emergency consultations with the broader inter-American community, drawing as much support as it can for a principled legal stand and reinforcing the norms that protect all middle powers from great-power coercion.
Mexico also holds significant economic leverage over the United States that it can prepare to use if needed. It has done this before, drawing up, in 2009 and 2019, a list of tariffs targeting U.S. agricultural products from political swing states—pork from Iowa, apples from Washington, cheese from Wisconsin—in response to U.S. NAFTA violations and steel tariffs, respectively. It could also threaten to limit or halt exports of goods that are key nodes in U.S. national security–related supply chains, such as aerospace components; throw up obstacles to or delay trade regulations, labor inspections, or permitting for U.S.-owned manufacturing operations, which are deeply integrated across the border; dial back cooperation on migration enforcement; or halt water deliveries from the Rio Grande. U.S. companies that have staked billions on Mexican production cannot rapidly relocate without catastrophic cost. In the event of unilateral military adventurism, Mexico City should open conversations with American businesses immediately—not to threaten them, but to make clear to a U.S. constituency with aligned interests and sway in Washington that U.S. military action would endanger U.S. investment.
Nonetheless, the most difficult task both countries would have to tackle during and after unilateral U.S. action on Mexican soil would be the continuation of counternarcotics cooperation. If a military incursion were to occur, Mexico must not—despite how politically costly and unpopular it might prove to be—allow it to become a pretext for abandoning intelligence sharing or bilateral security cooperation across the board. Transnational criminal organizations benefit from every rupture in government coordination, and handing them such a win would hurt Mexicans’ security and well-being more than continued bilateral cooperation would wound national pride. To strike the best balance possible, Mexico should protest a U.S. violation of its sovereignty through every legal and diplomatic channel while preserving the working relationships that make counternarcotics operations effective.
Mexico’s strongest case against unilateral U.S. action is the one whose defense requires the most from the Mexican government: demonstrating that it can and will address the cartel threat effectively through its own sovereign mechanisms. The lesson that decades of navigating this relationship teaches above all others is that Mexico is most effective when it engages the United States from a position of confidence rather than anxiety. That confidence must be demonstrated, not merely asserted. The El Mencho operation—the strongest evidence ever assembled for the country’s sovereign capacity—must be treated as a template, not a conclusion.
There will be more tests of Mexico’s security capabilities to come. The succession dynamics that typically follow a kingpin killing are well understood, and they are not reassuring. The Jalisco cartel could fragment into competing factions, which would then likely produce a period of intensified violence as former cartel lieutenants contest territory and resources. The network disruption caused by the incarceration of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in 2017, produced the same dynamic: a more dispersed, more resilient cartel infrastructure that took years to partially reconstitute. The changes that occur within cartels that lose their leaders make deep, institutionalized U.S.-Mexican cooperation more urgent, not less.
Sheinbaum must implement a counternarcotics strategy that is sustained, internationally credible, and protected from political transitions. This means reforming Mexico’s security apparatus—addressing corruption in federal police and prosecutorial bodies, and investing in judicial capacity so that high-value cartel targets, when apprehended, are prosecuted under conditions that prevent them from continuing to operate. It means prosecuting senior politicians with documented cartel ties, disrupting cartel financial networks, and verifiably reducing flows of fentanyl precursor chemicals. And it means beginning to sketch out the blueprint for a comprehensive North American security framework that can outlast any administration in Mexico City, Washington, and Ottawa.
None of this is easy. Some of these efforts will generate political resistance from domestic actors who benefit from the status quo and the disorder it creates. But the strategic logic is inexorable: Mexico’s most durable protection against U.S. unilateralism is the erosion of the justification for it.
The threat of unilateral American force is real and serious. It deserves a response equal to its gravity—legally prepared, diplomatically sophisticated, and grounded in the demonstrable truth that bilateral cooperation that respects Mexico’s sovereignty is effective. Mexico’s task is to make that case undeniable, and to make it now.
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