Candidate for Pa. Senate. McCormick supports using the military to fight drugs

STEELTON, Pa. (AP) – A Republican challenger trying to flip a U.S. Senate seat in the swing state of Pennsylvania said he would insist that U.S. military actions in Mexico target fentanyl trafficker networks, a controversial and complicated idea that appeared to come from former President Donald Trump.

David McCormick, who is challenging the third term of Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, is incorporating the idea into his plan to combat the scourge of fentanyl, which has played a large role in the campaign and has been the centerpiece of dueling television ads in the race.

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The idea of ​​using the military gained attention during last year’s GOP primaries, before Trump emerged as his party’s presidential nominee for the third straight year.

But now McCormick — a decorated Army combat veteran and hedge fund CEO who served on Trump’s Defense Advisory Board — is testing the message of unilateral U.S. military action in Mexico in a state that could decide which party wins the White House and a Senate majority in the November elections.

McCormick envisions using U.S. military drones and special operations teams in Mexico to take down fentanyl-trafficking cartels, though he emphasizes that the military should be used “selectively and thoughtfully.”

“I’m not saying we’re going to send the 82nd Airborne Division to make a jump into Mexico,” McCormick said. “I want to say that the combination of special operations and drones could, in my opinion, destroy production plants, destroy distribution networks and cause real damage to what is terrorist activity.”

Military action is justified, McCormick says, by what he calls “the biggest killer in our country.” He said the United States should not wait for the blessing of the Mexican government, which has not solved the problem of fentanyl production and trafficking.

“So the time to negotiate with the Mexican government to get the DEA on this has passed,” McCormick told an audience member in September. “We have to be tough on this. And that’s what I would do.”

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The idea received a lot of attention when, in 2022, Trump’s former defense secretary, Mark Esper, said Trump had asked him about firing missiles into Mexico, a precedent-setting idea that Esper and other defense officials quickly rejected.

The idea gained favor among some Republican lawmakers last year, and Trump embraced it, saying: “It’s time for America to declare war on the cartels.”

Trump’s then rival on the main trail of the Republican Party’s presidential campaign also adopted this idea, but the discussion died down. Legislation providing military authorization failed to receive a committee vote in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and while McCormick’s proposal lacks detail and echoes an idea raised by Trump, it goes further than what most – if not all – of the other Senate candidates across the Senate are claiming. US

Critics of the U.S. military’s use in Mexico say such operations would do little to harm the cartels or stem the flow of fentanyl, while raising sensitive questions about sovereignty.

McCormick and other Republicans compare the number of fentanyl-related deaths to combat losses during the Vietnam War: About 110,000 drug overdose deaths over the past two years, in which fentanyl was the primary culprit in two-thirds of the cases, compared to 58,000 reported war casualties in the USA.

“What we are in is unprecedented,” he said. “The numbers are beyond anyone’s imagination given what we are currently experiencing.”

McCormick says the closest model for what he has in mind is the U.S. military’s cocaine interdiction effort in cooperation with the Colombian government against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. McCormick called the effort “extremely successful.”

But Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said the Colombian operation did not stem the flow of cocaine.

It’s true that Colombia has become more stable, its governance has improved and cartel activity has stopped, Logan said. However, the price of cocaine in the U.S. has dropped significantly, which he called a sign that cocaine is more widely available.

“And I think that’s the first reason to be skeptical of the claim that the use of the U.S. military against the cartels in Mexico will have an impact in the United States on the amount and abundance of fentanyl in the United States,” Logan said.

Analysts say it seems unlikely that Mexico will agree to U.S. military operations on its territory.