War Against the Cartels is Justified

Philosopher Ed Feser argues that if President Trump decides to take military action against the Mexican drug cartels, he is justified in doing so according to traditional Just War principles.

President Trump has ordered that Mexican drug cartels be designated “foreign terrorist organizations.”

As the order notes:

The Cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.

The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States. In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities, controlling nearly all aspects of society. The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere. Their activities, proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States pose an unacceptable national security risk to the United States.

One implication of the president’s move is that it could pave the way to possible U.S. military action against the cartels, such as missile strikes or the sending into Mexico of American special forces.

It may be that the president does not plan actually to carry out such action, but rather intends for the executive order merely to pressure the Mexican government into taking more vigorous action itself. Still, Trump has indicated that military action is possible. Could such action be justified in light of the principles of traditional just war theory? Yes, I think U.S. military action against the cartels clearly could be justified — depending on the details.

Drawing on St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas famously teaches that for military action to be just, it must be taken for a just cause, by lawful authority, and with a right intention (Summa Theologiae II-II.40.1). Commentators sometimes note that there is also a fourth condition implicit in Aquinas’s treatment, which is that the war must be fought using right means. Let’s look at each of these conditions, and see how military action against the cartels could meet them.

Just cause

Given the circumstances described in the passage from President Trump’s executive order quoted above, attacking and indeed destroying the cartels would clearly be just. Consider how just war theorists have traditionally spelled out the “just cause” condition. Aquinas emphasizes that the target of a military attack must “deserve it on account of some fault.” The cartels obviously are guilty of actions that merit military retaliation – of murder on a massive scale, of trafficking in narcotics that cause widespread addiction and death, of destabilizing local governments and persistently transgressing national borders. Nor is it controversial that they are guilty of this, so that another element of the “just cause” condition is also clearly met, viz. that the cause should not only be just, but should be known to bejust.

The “just cause” condition also includes three further criteria: the proposed military action should be proportionate to the evil it is rectifying, should have a reasonable hope of success, and should be entered into as a last resort. Obviously, whether an attack on the cartels would meet these criteria depends on the details, but it is easy enough to imagine scenarios in which it would meet all three. Suppose such an attack involved drone strikes on cartel leaders or facilities, or special forces being sent into cartel territory to kill or arrest leaders. That would hardly be out of proportion to the evildoing of the cartels. Of course, the U.S. would have to take care to limit its intervention so as to minimize risks to innocent bystanders, but innocents are already routinely caught up in the conflict between the cartels and the authorities as it is.

Given U.S. military might, there is no reasonable doubt that at least such a limited operation would be successful. As to the last resort criterion, presumably the Trump administration would attempt to pressure the Mexican authorities to do more before the U.S. opts to intervene itself. But it is at least arguable that the last resort criterion has already been met. The problem has been festering for decades, previous American efforts have not worked, and the Mexican authorities seem unable or unwilling to do much more than they have.

Lawful authority

Elaborating on the “lawful authority” condition, Aquinas emphasizes that it is governments, rather than private individuals, who have the right and responsibility to fight wars when they are necessary. Obviously, the military action we are considering here would be one undertaken not by any private individual, but by the U.S. government.

Still, some would object that the U.S. government is not the right lawful authority to carry out such action. Commenting on the prospect of American intervention, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said:

We collaborate, we coordinate, we work together, but we will never subordinate ourselves … Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country and we do not accept interference.

But according to the natural law theory from which traditional just war principles derive, while national sovereignty certainly entails a presumption against outside interference, that presumption can be overridden. As Johannes Messner notes in his classic Social Ethics: Natural Law in the Western World:

If, as has been shown, according to natural law principles there is no absolute sovereignty, but only a sovereignty in conformity with the order of individual state and of international society, as indicated by those principles, it necessarily follows that there is a right of intervention against a state which seriously offends against this order. Traditional natural law theory has always upheld the right of intervention against such states. Under present-day conditions there is, according to natural law principles, a right to intervention…against a state which directly or indirectly offends seriously against international regulations in matters such as the drug traffic. (p. 499)

Whether such intervention would be legitimate in any particular case would depend on the circumstances, but as Messer indicates, if the right circumstances held, the intervention might involve “partial or general economic blockades… economic sanctions… and war” (p. 500).

In the present case, the obvious rationale for intervention in the affairs of a sovereign country like Mexico would be that evildoers within her borders are doing grave and ongoing harm to the American people, whom the U.S. government is duty-bound to protect. At least under circumstances where Mexican authorities are either unable or unwilling to solve the problem themselves, the U.S. government has no other way of fulfilling its duty to its own citizens than to take it upon itself to intervene.

Right intention and right means

If the cause is just and a war is fought in order to fulfill that cause, then the intention behind it is right. It can happen, though, that there are, as a matter of objective fact, just reasons for fighting a certain war, and yet those are not the true reasons for which a government proposes it. Aquinas notes that “aggrandizement” and “cruelty” can be among the wrong intentions for which leaders push for a war that could otherwise be just.

But there are simply no grounds for attributing these or any other wrong intentions in the present case. The situation with the cartels is bad enough, and has persisted for so long, that simple exasperation and a desire at long last to resolve the problem are the most obvious motivations one might have for intervention. Ockham’s razor tells against attributing to U.S. leaders any more sinister motive.

To employ right means has to do with avoiding immoral methods of making war. For example, it is always gravely wrong intentionally to target civilians (say, to terrorize the enemy into capitulating). And while it can (given the principle of double effect) sometimes be licit to carry out actions that will have the foreseen but unintended effect of civilian casualties, it is always wrong to do so if such harm is clearly out of proportion to whatever good such actions might achieve. For example, it would be immoral to destroy a small squad of enemy soldiers by means of a bombing operation that, in the process, killed thousands of civilians.

In the case at hand, it is not difficult to imagine scenarios wherein military intervention against the cartels was limited enough that great damage could be inflicted on the cartels themselves without great risk to civilians. Obviously, though, much would depend on the details, and on how long and far-reaching U.S. intervention would be. It would be wrong to destroy the cartels if the cost were massive numbers of civilian casualties and the destabilization of Mexican society. Again, though, there is nothing in the idea of military intervention per se that entails anything that extreme.

It would also be wrong intentionally to kill family members of cartel leaders. It is true that, almost a decade ago and while running for president, Trump temporarily floated the idea of targeting the families of terrorists. This would be gravely immoral, and in particular would clearly violate the “right means” condition on just war. Happily, though, the idea was abandoned after he became president the first time, and has not been revived since. Nor would the American military implement such a proposal, which would violate U.S. law against intentionally targeting civilians.

The people of Mexico have themselves suffered greatly under the cartels. The U.S. must make sure that any action it takes does not make their situation even worse. In particular, it must be careful to take all reasonable steps to avoid harming civilians. And though the U.S. has the right to intervene unilaterally if necessary, it would be best if it first tries to secure the cooperation of the Mexican government. But provided that these conditions are met, it seems clear that a limited military intervention could be justified on traditional just war principles.