American zogbots shoot their own civvies for entertainment, I think they can handle shooting some foreigners too.
'zogbots'...are you fucking serious?
A pretext for a war with the Cartels would serve US interests in the long term. But no POTUS could be stupid enough to trigger it in the current political climate. This is a rare era where even the right wing is anti-war.
Eh, Mexico and the Cartels are a proxy war with the CCP, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela these days.
But because some of the cartels are US controlled, DC won't actually do anything meaningful south of the border, no matter how justified.
Until we get someone willing to do a modern day Pershing Expedition and a Marshall Plan for Mexico, we're just spinning our wheels and pretending that Mexico isn't a failed state with a proxy war on par with Iraq or A-stan going on.
Plus, well, the cartels help the Dems shift new 'voters' north, and that is no accident.