What to make of Mexico.
The North American nation of 127 million people should be a powerhouse economically, militarily, and diplomatically. But it’s none of those things.
Instead, it appears to be a failed state, and is recognized as such on the FSI, or Fragile State Index, where it’s listed in the WARNING category, one below the worst category of ALERT.
I’ve been aware of the Mexican situation forever, and I’ve been concerned, but since I don’t travel there for any reason, such awareness can be easily replaced with awareness of things closer to home. Recently, though, with the killings of Canadians and Americans either visiting as tourists or attending a medical appointment, the situation there has come into greater light.
I hope that doesn’t sound like I finally took a closer look after white people were killed, rather than indigenous or Latino people. Those killings just popped Mexico into a more prominent news story recently, and as for my commentary, you have to start somewhere.
To me, if a central authority cannot maintain control over its sovereign territory, then it can’t function as a state. And that’s where Mexico is at the moment, not subject to a foreign occupying force but rather subject to an occupying force of Mexican crime families, primarily drug cartels.
Extreme violence, murder on an industrial scale, intimidation, extortion, bribery, you name it, Mexico’s got it at a level that the government can’t seem to do anything about. Drug cartels are in a perpetual state of war with one another and/or the central authorities, and the direct and collateral damage is on a scale difficult to imagine.
Civilian police murdered along with their families, often in ways that deliver a “lesson” to anyone else who might consider getting in the cartel’s way. Civilian politicians murdered. Journalists murdered or kidnapped. Clergy murdered and kidnapped. And all manner of innocent civilians, also murdered and kidnapped. Possibly the families of all of the above, as well.
Mexican State Police are a shambles, wracked with corruption, and in no way looking to get involved with the cartels and their reign of terror, instead turning a blind eye to it for a pocketful of cash. The military, with around 350,000 personnel and another 100,000 in reserve, can’t cope, for some of the same reasons as the police.
There appears to be little political will on the part of the country’s leadership to do anything about this, tantamount to surrendering the countryside to bandits.
Yet we trade with them. We visit their resorts. We pump our dollars into their local economies. And sometimes we come back alive.
I honestly don’t know what to do about this whole thing, not that my phone’s ringing with requests for advice.
To my amateur eyes, some sort of reconciliation must take place between the cartels themselves, the police, and the federal government to come to some sort of arrangement that guarantees peace and establishes proper sovereign control. I have no idea what such an arrangement would look like, but I’m pretty sure it would be far from perfect. Another option would be the Mexican military taking physical control of the cartel-run areas, Mexico invading Mexico if you will.
That last option could be done in concert with the U.S. military who could provide all manner of non-lethal support to the Mexican military. It would be messy, but it already is messy, and there may be a need for more drastic measures to be applied in order to diminish the violence that already exists.
In the 1980’s, Columbia was a failed state, run by cocaine cartels. The same type of circumstances were present there that are present in Mexico. Today, though, Columbia has emerged as a fragile, yet improving democracy. Unfortunately for Columbia, though, Venezuela next door fell apart, and that’s where we stand now.
Mexico is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and the United States. There seems to be something incongruent about us trading so extensively with a state that lacks the basic rule of law. We sanction other such states, but not Mexico.
Or maybe its the same for us as it is for the Mexican government. The cost of doing something may seem to be prohibitive in terms of dollars and cents.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 