Deadly drugs, illegal immigrants, masked men killing hostages, and a failed state whose “president” is reaching out to communist China, the United States’ most dangerous enemy.
This is the anarchy of Mexico today, the result of Beijing’s destabilization of democracies globally, politics in Latin America, and U.S.–Mexico relations.
The stakes have never been higher, as more than 100,000 Americans die annually from drug overdose, mostly from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Tens of millions more are at risk, as more than 60 million use illicit drugs.
Some U.S. lawmakers see few immediate solutions other than military strikes on the Mexican drug cartels that produce most of the fentanyl invading the United States and add it to cocaine, heroin, and meth and fake Xanax, Oxycodone, and Adderall. China supplies most of the chemistry, yet Beijing refuses to cooperate with U.S. counternarcotics.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to kill Americans. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for 18-to-45-year-olds in the United States. Almost as many Americans have died from fentanyl as all U.S. soldiers killed in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined.
If Beijing intends for U.S. fentanyl deaths to occur, it amounts to genocide by the U.N. definition.
Mexico is the CCP’s launch pad. The country is a failed state in which drug cartels corrupt high-security officials, including allegedly its FBI chief. Illegal drug dealers in Mexico bring in up to $30 billion annually, so there is plenty for political bosses. The cartels operate military-style forces and control territories that amount to statelets.
Arizona Border Recon identified Montana Peak as a cartel scout location just north of the U.S.–Mexico border near Arivaca, Ariz., on Dec. 8, 2018. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
A Chinese cartel in Mexico operates a veterinary business in addition to its illegal drug business. Perhaps not coincidentally, large quantities of illegal fentanyl in the United States now have a veterinary tranquilizer mixed in, making it difficult to revive drug users with the primary antidote to opiate overdose, naloxone.
Some argue there is only one reason to mix animal tranquilizers into fentanyl: to kill the customer. There is no good business reason.
A Chinese pharmaceutical company linked to the Chinese cartel, run by the Zheng family, was sued for up to $120 million by one father in Ohio whose son died from a fentanyl overdose in 2015.
The Epoch Times spoke with the father, James Rauh, and learned that he won his case. He said his private investigator had confirmed that the Zheng cartel is operating in Mexico.
Rauh said there is no other use of the fentanyl precursor ANPP than to make fentanyl. Yet companies in China continue to ship it to Mexico without intervention by Beijing. The CCP must know that the cartels take delivery of these precursors from China-based suppliers because the CCP deploys some of the world’s most advanced surveillance systems.
So much fentanyl is smuggled into the United States now that Rauh is concerned that it could be deployed in a terrorist bomb. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), he said, is seizing only 5 to 10 percent of the total fentanyl smuggled into the country, yet what they do seize is enough to kill millions of Americans.
In 2022 alone, the DEA seized 379 million deadly doses’ worth, enough to “kill every American,” according to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
Despite this obviously existential threat to the United States, Rauh said neither Republican nor Democratic politicians have been forthcoming with solutions when his organization contacted them.
Rauh said he wants Congress to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. He recommends that the U.S. government seize cartel money and supplies, effectively cutting off the flow of precursors from China.
Others want to link economic sanctions and tariffs on Mexico and China to the fentanyl issue. Still others want the U.S. government to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which would, at the very least, bring more attention to the threat.
Some Republican congressmen say cross-border U.S. military strikes should target the cartels. Armed drones, fighter jets, or special forces could be used and might save lives, including in Mexico, from fentanyl poisoning.
The so-called president of the failed state south of our border has decried these military options, denounced the United States for criticizing his human rights abuse, and turned to China for “help” in countering fentanyl production. He should have done this long ago. Now Beijing refuses to cooperate, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s attempts are too little, too late.
Defending innocent people—including children and first responders who can overdose from unintentional contact with fentanyl—now requires U.S. military force. López Obrador can still prove us wrong by destroying the cartels himself. But he'd better do so quickly, before the bombs go off.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Anders Corr has a bachelor's/master's in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea" (2018).
