From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm John McKay in for Chris Boyd.

The relationship between Mexico and the United States has seen better days, much better days. President Donald Trump has

argued, for all intents and purposes, drug cartels are in charge in Mexico. He has threatened

to order the U.S. military to strike them inside Mexico.

Claudia Schaenbaum, Mexico's president and others vehemently disagree, pointing to the recent death of the

country's most wanted drug dealer while attempting to escape capture. Real threat or not,

Arturo Sarukhan believes Donald Trump's warning needs to be taken seriously. He is an international

consultant and career diplomat who from 2007 to 2013 served as Mexico's ambassador to the United States.

He just wrote, can Mexico avoid a confrontation with the United States for Foreign Affairs Magazine?

He joins me this hour.

Mr. Ambassador, welcome to think.

It's a pleasure, John.

Say, we really are at a tipping point, you believe, right?

Look, there's no doubt that we are probably living the worst moment in the U.S.-Mexico bilateral

relationship since the 1980s, when again an issue related to organized crime completely collapsed the bilateral

relationship. And I'm referring to the murder of a DEA agent on Mexican soil, Enrique Camarena,

in 1985. And curiously, it happened at the same time of geopolitical volatility in the Americas, because Mexico and the US at that time,

and you may recall this is the Reagan administration, we're in the midst of what we used to call

Cold War 2.0, when the United States decides that the potential encroachment of the Soviet Union in the

hemisphere, particularly in Central America, in support of the Sandinista movement that sought

to topple dictator Somosa, the Farabundo-Marti movement in El Salvador that was also trying

to topple an authoritarian regime

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