OPINION:

President Trump has apparently taken a page from Tom Clancy’s novel “Clear and Present Danger” and undertaken a covert war with the drug cartels. I say “apparently” because The New York Times originally reported it. More responsible sources have followed with their own coverage, so it is presumably true.

The Times report says Pentagon planners have begun working on the covert war and that Mr. Trump’s action “signals [his] continued willingness to use military forces to carry out what has primarily been considered a law enforcement responsibility to curb the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs.”

If Mr. Trump has done it, there will be one big difference between his action and the one in Clancy’s novel. Unlike the scandal in the book, Mr. Trump’s move will have been taken lawfully by a presidential decision directive. These are usually kept secret, so they are prime targets for leaks.

The problems with Mr. Trump’s decision, if he has made it, don’t end there.

First, there’s Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the assassination of foreign public officials. If we are to engage the cartels, we will have to kill many of their leaders. Executive Order 12333 is satisfied by the fact that the cartel leaders are not elected public officials and that their organizations have been declared foreign terrorist organizations. We have to remember that in September 2011, President Obama ordered a drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen whom the Obama administration had declared was an al Qaeda leader. The killing of al-Awlaki was done without due process or any sort of trial. It has been open season on terrorists since then.

Then there’s the question of conducting U.S. military operations inside Mexico.

The U.S. has conducted three major operations inside Mexico, beginning with the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and Gen. John J. Pershing’s unsuccessful attempt to capture Pancho Villa in 1916 and 1917. A covert war in Mexico, and possibly Haiti and Venezuela, is a new concept.

Mexico is a failed state, as is Haiti. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has completely failed to assert control over the cartels, even though the government declared war on them in 2006. That war has been lost. According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, Mexico has had more than 460,000 homicides since 2006.

Ms. Sheinbaum will protest the reports of Mr. Trump’s covert war and may even take her case to the United Nations and its Security Council. Secretly, however, she may be cheering on Mr. Trump in his efforts to eradicate the cartels.

Mr. Trump’s goals in the cartel covert war should be threefold.

First, Mr. Trump should be remorseless in killing and destroying the cartels’ leaders and their assets. The drug cartels are the primary means for the smuggling of fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine into the U.S. According to the Justice Department, they are also smuggling precursor chemicals for synthetic drugs into the U.S. from China.

Second, Mr. Trump has to deal with the criminal violence the cartels are responsible for along our southern border. Cartels such as Los Zetas and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel use sophisticated tactics and weaponry, including military-grade equipment, communications and intelligence-gathering methods. The cartels are responsible for the enormous increase in violence along the border, including killings, human smuggling and trafficking, arms trafficking and fuel theft. Their violence extends to border control officers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, FBI agents and civilians.

Third, Mr. Trump’s covert war should aim to unite South and Central American governments against the cartels. That may be a false hope, as some of those governments profit from the cartels’ activities. Nevertheless, some more friendly governments may want to support the covert war, at least publicly.

The covert war Mr. Trump has declared on the cartels will be a special operations war. It will feature several kinds of drones, including drones for reconnaissance as well as those that can kill. It is an opportunity for us to test out new drones that can smell drugs and those that can pass unseen because of their size or stealth, or both. It will require our special operations forces to penetrate the cartels with deadly force.

America has had a sort of tradition of trying out military forces in Mexico before undertaking a larger enemy, such as Pershing’s “punitive” expedition into Mexico a century ago. We may not get to see another bunch of U.S. Army Special Forces troops charging the fort at Mazar-e-Sharif, as we did in the early stages of the Afghanistan War, but through the inevitable leaks, we will hear of its successes and failures.

We have endured too much crime and drug smuggling by the cartels. Best of luck to Mr. Trump for a quick and thorough destruction of the cartels.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.