With President Biden landing in Mexico City Monday for his “three amigos” summit with President Lopez Obrador and Prime Minister Trudeau, reigniting the war on drugs may well emerge as the top issue in the two-day meeting. 

While politically fraught immigration issues have all of a sudden gained urgency on Mr. Biden’s to-do list, the arrest last week of Ovidio Guzman, known as “el-Raton,” or Mouse, exposed the complexity of tackling the narcotic trafficking business. Mexico and America disagree on the nature of the problem. 

Synthetic drugs that filter in through the southern border kill more Americans than Covid, traffic accidents, or gun violence. According to the CDC, 71,000 people overdosed on fentanyl and other narcotics in 2021. America has long seen its southern neighbor’s lawlessness as the source of many evils. 

Not so in Mexico. Since President Nixon launched the war on drugs, many Mexicans have been appalled by the violence it entailed. They accuse an unsatiated American thirst for the next high as the main cause of the deadly war in their country’s streets. 

Mr. Lopez Obrador, known by his initials, AMLO, is the product of a leftist Latin ideology steeped in anti-Americanism. Yet, when pressured, he usually caves to White House demands. 

Last Thursday, Mr. Lopez Obrador ordered Mr. Guzman’s arrest at Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. The 23-year-old allegedly heads the Sinaloa crime cartel, which was founded by his father, Joaquin Guzman, known as “el-Chapo,” or Shorty.  

The arrest was followed by a bloody gun fight between the Mexican military and cartel members, who demanded the release of Mr. Guzman. At least 19 gang members and 10 military personnel were killed. Shortly afterward, a Mexico City judge denied an American demand to extradite the younger Mr. Guzman. 

Following his inauguration as president in December 2018, AMLO has all but ended his country’s participation in the war on drugs, taking significant steps to reduce cooperation with Washington. His reluctance to battle the cartels was further complicated in 2019, when an arrest of Mr. Guzman was followed by so much violence that Mr. Lopez-Obrador caved in. The Sinaloa kingpin was released, and his legend as a can-do crime boss grew. 

Thursday’s reprise of that battle led to speculation in the Mexican press that Mr. Lopez-Obrador’s order to arrest the high-profile Mr. Guzman — whose father is the most famous Mexican criminal currently in an American prison — was done as a gesture to Mr. Biden.

El-Chapo’s own legendary status derives in part from his daring escapes from Mexican jails. He gained his freedom several times before finally being extradited to America, where, after a conviction on 10 criminal enterprise counts, he is now serving a 30-year sentence.

It took Mexico quite a long time to finally extradite el-Chapo, and sources in Mexico City tell the Sun that his son will eventually be extradited as well. Yet, AMLO is likely to take his time, as he’ll want to show he is no Yankee servant. 

In 2021, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for information that would lead to the arrest of el-Raton. He is wanted by federal authorities for allegedly overseeing the Sinaloa cartel’s smuggling and production of narcotics, including manufacturing up to 5,000 pounds of methamphetamines monthly in his Sinaloa labs. 

Additionally, Mr. Guzman is sought on alleged involvement in several particularly gruesome murders, including, according to American authorities, an order to assassinate a popular singer. The unidentified singer was allegedly murdered for refusing to perform at el-Raton’s wedding. 

Mr. Guzman’s arrest is “a significant blow to the Sinaloa cartel and a major victory for the rule of law,” a former DEA chief of international operations, Michael Vigil, told the Associated Press. “It will not, however, impede the flow of drugs into the U.S.” 

That is an understatement, considering the depth of the problem. During a visit to Sinaloa a few years ago, a Culiacan official explained his dilemma to this reporter: Each time the Mexican federales arrest a major cartel kingpin and parade him in front of television cameras, he said, lower-level criminals increase their struggles to inherit his place.

While a cartel boss is in power, the official said, the streets of his city are relatively quiet. Once the top guy is out of the equation, they become awash in blood, as potential successors fight to inherit the criminal enterprise. The federales then leave the new bloodbath for local police forces to deal with. The locals, however, are ill-funded and likely corrupt. Many of them end up joining the gangs instead of doing their jobs. The cycle repeats itself each time a crime boss is arrested. 

After Mr. Biden ignored the border crisis for as long as he could, he now faces a huge immigration headache. Yet that may soon pale in comparison to the woes associated with the drug problem.

With a reluctant Mr. Biden and a non-cooperative Mr. Lopez Obrador in power, a renewed war on drugs will be fought with half measures, if at all. As a result, expect an eruption of unprecedented violence in Mexico and record levels of deaths from narcotics in America.