As regular readers of this blog know, I have been blogging about the Mexican drug wars for a while now. For some reason (perhaps because Barack Obama’s meeting with Felipe Calderón, which was a routine visit following a long tradition), now Memeorandum features a story on the ongoing drug wars in Mexico.
As you can read in the 2007 CRS Report for Congress on Mexico’s Drug Cartels, the Mexican drug wars represent a clear danger to the US.
U.S. military report warns ‘sudden collapse’ of Mexico is possible
Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
While this may sound far-fetched, I have had conversations with Mexicans who don’t rule out the need for an invasion from the US military within the next five to ten years. Considering how territorial Mexicans can be, that is an astonishing statement on their parts.
Not surprisingly, then, that the U.S. Joint Forces Command may be contemplating the scenario:
“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military’s capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said “Predictions about the future are always risky … Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America.”
Related post from Nov. 15, 2008: Huge weapons cache on Mexican border drug wars. As Instapundit said back then,
I hope that those troops we’ll soon be able to bring back from Iraq won’t have to put their counterinsurgency and urban-warfare skills to work closer to home . . .
I also hope that the Obama administration does not decide to cut the size and funding of the US military.
UPDATE
The same issue, but discussed from the North American Union point of view.
Update 2
Douglas Farah
The descent into chaos is a real possibility, all the more so because the new administration will struggle to meet the internal economic crisis and will have little time and few resources to look south. Unfortunately, that will only exacerbate the downward spiral there.
It is certainly not just Mexico. With Mexico will go Guatemala, Honduras and much of the rest of Central America. How it will play out in the so-far complacent states of Nicaragua and Venezuela, currently view the cartels as allies in their anti-U.S. coalition, remains to be seen.
The paper should be a starting point for far more serious discussions about a region where we remain largely blind to the threats that loom.
I’ve blogged on these drug wars too. Americans are completely oblivious to what is going on right next door! I’m afraid by the time the media wakes up, it will be too late to do anything but intervene militarily.
I just finished reading through the JOE 2008 report, not very detailed on Mexico, the El Paso Times article pretty much covered it. A colleague of mine and I had a conversation about this yesterday, in light of Chertoff indicating the DHS would be putting more people on the border. The colleague, someone intimately familiar with technology, was telling me that the lack of foresight, coupled with the fact that those who cross the border and are caught are simply shipped back, does nothing to deter Mexicans from crossing into the US, thus making a spillover effect much more likely.
Calderón made it abundantly clear in the WH press conference that security was a major issue, and is quite cognizant of the fact that this does have spillover potential. It would behoove Obama to pay attention to this, 1) because Calderón leaves office in 2012, so they’ll have to deal with each other, guste o no, throughout the Obama administration, and 2) the Merida money could be put to more effective use instead of just hardware if the money is strategically used to target particular initiatives (police training comes to mind).
Although I don’t believe (or perhaps I should say “I’m hoping”) that things don’t come to ‘sudden-collapse’ of Mexico, I have often argue with an American friend who lives there how serious is president Felipe Calderon about fixing the current situation in his country. See, we both agree that the “Merida Initiative” may not be as useful as is cracked up to be and neither just sending the army around to do police work.
My friend says that all they do is drive around and there is not much security provided or interaction with the population. But I have often argue about the $20 billion the Mexican government spends in a gasoline subsidy. Forget for a minute that a subsidy that size doesn’t make much sense from an economic standpoint when even rich moguls like Carlos Slim benefit from it, along with those american living in border states close to Mexican gas dealers.
As a sovereign nation Mexico has a right to spends is resources as they please, but if the security situation is so dire, why not use those $20 billion (or even just $10 billion) to improve the security situation? Consider this: The Merida Initiative just provide $400 million in 2008 and of that amount, so you could fund 25 Merida Initiatives with half of the money spend in gasoline subsidies.
Another important fact: According to this MSNBC report back in June, Mexican drug cartels get $12 to 15 billion from their U.S. operations. So, my point again: If the security situation is as bad as it’s claimed to be (I have no way of knowing, I live in Kissimmee, FL), is president Calderon doing all that needs to be done to solve this problem?
Just think for a minute about what Alvaro Uribe did in Colombia when he came to power, his country almost overrun by the FARC, right wing paramilitaries and others outlaw groups. They implemented a special tax to aimed at modernizing the police and the armed forces (more info here, .pdf, in Spanish). I don’t have time or the inclination of doing a dissertation of what Colombia Democratic Security Policy implies, but president Calderon should definitely have a good look at it, learn from it and act before is too late.
The U.S. is a stakeholder in this mess, by its proximity, by being the main market for the narcos “business” and their main source of weapons. But Mexicans are the ones called to decide if cheap gas is more important than saving their country from becoming a failed narco-state.
Is there anything that our nation could do to avoid a mexican sudden collapse?
If there is anything that could be done to prevent that situation, it must be done. A war in our own neighbourhood would have terrible economical, political and social consequences.