If there wasn't demand, guns would not be crossing the border.
2
My ACLU card is going to be cancelled for this, but sometimes it's easy to forget that the greatest civil liberty of all is freedom from unlawful violence, also known as the king's peace, or the people's peace. And sometimes, in rare situations, stuff needs to get sorted even if Amnesty, HRW, the ACLU, and all the bleeding hearts object to it.
Sorted, with extreme prejudice.
The cartels simply need to have their leaders and retinues killed. Flat out killed. Airstrikes, drones, artillery, commandos, whatever. No hesitation and no mercy unless they're actively surrendering. If anyone is captured alive, they can take a long fall arrested by a short rope after they get their swift due process.
And if the members don't quit, move on to them. Kill them. Shoot first and ask questions later. Collateral damage will occur. Ignore it.
Eventually, with enough gangsters killed, people will realize that being a gangster is a swift way to die, not an opportunity to make money.
Now my fellow liberals will point out that this strategy is morally wrong. And it is morally wrong. In fact, this strategy is evil. But sometimes, when all else fails, we are forced to choose between evils, and this strategy is a lesser evil than the alternative which is to allow Mexico's 100 million+ people to fall into anarchy, a war of all against all.
Finally, a strategy like this has to be approved by the Mexican people themselves, through their democratic institutions.
Signed, A Complete Monster.
16
Just what Mexico needs: the advice of an American neo-con who didn't even bother to mention Americans consume most of Mexico's drugs and Americans manufacture most of Mexico's guns.
18
It's almost comical to listen to the Mexican government try to blame its problems on guns from the United States. A group of Mexican men massacre a bunch of women and children--including a pair of six month old twins in car seats--and the problem is... the guns of course!
The Mexican government obviously doesn't have a problem with its cartels having guns. It's clear that what really terrifies them is the thought of honest, hard working, decent Mexican people having their own guns. They know if that happened, their whole world would come crashing down on their heads.
6
Something like hugs not bullets is probably Mexico's best hope. All actors here, unlike in Syria or Iraq, are all thoroughly of the same nationality. A patriotic Mexican national epiphany, where drug lords and politicians and judges all repent in a nationally televised ceremony could turn things around overnight, not only in Mexico, but perhaps the entire planet.
If the demand for drugs go away in the U.S. there will be no need for drug cartels in Mexico. Quit blaming the victims and suggesting a military solution to a social problem, caused by us.
6
What he have are failed states inside of failed “states.”
For example, Mexico has the failed states of Guerrero and Sinaloa.
We have Florida and West Virginia.
It’s a toss up.
5
This month is the 30th anniversary of the explosion of an Avianca airplane by Pablo Escobar's cocaine trafficking organization. Mexico now looks quite similar to Colombia in 1989. Terrible situation. Immigrants will try to cross the border in droves. This is like WWII. America needs urgently to develop strategies and actions similar to D-Day both in Mexico and in Colombia.
About 3 million persons left Colombia during the administration of Ernesto Samper. It's not impossible that 5 million, or more, Mexicans decide to look for a better future in the United States.
We will never forget our very dear friends that died in that infamous flight. Never. And we still have tears.
1
It is very frustrating how this Times' writer and some of the readers commenting here like to give their (ignorant) opinions based on a 5-minutes chat or article read.
This is international politics and economics you are talking about, and it is much more complex than saying the new Mexican president, after 10 moths in power, elected by 70% of the population, in inefficient...
If you are truly interesting in having a smart voice about the subject, inform yourself well, learn your basic 101-Mexican politics facts, and then take on the incredibly complicated subject of the relationship between the oldest civilization of this continent and the powerful and very young America.
We will then truly learn from your opinions. Not now, for sure.
4
The author obviously has very little familiarity with Mexico, a growing middle income North American country with areas of significant wealth and industrial activity. This article seems to be based more instead on stereotypes and misperceptions.
3
Mexico obviously has a big problem. There not a single word about all the drugs that pour into the United States and the money that goes into Mexico. The drug cartels get their fuel from American money.
5
Every American recreational drug consumer is indirectly complicit in hundreds of thousands of murders. Now that less than a dozen caucasian women and children are murdered in Mexico, will this finally be a tipping point? I doubt it. The capacity of drug users (and alcoholics) to lie to themselves and to others is reprehensibly infinite. If you buy drugs, your dollars finance murder. How do you feel about that?
8
@Charlie Chan
"The capacity of prohibitionists to lie to themselves and to others is reprehensibly infinite."
If you are a prohibitionist, your laws finance murder. How do you feel about that?
1
I blame Mexico itself for this problem more than Trump... who I detest btw. Mexico is a corrupt, failed state-and has been, basically forever.
5
The war is on the border, across Mexico and well into the streets up here.
Legalize every illicit drug the traffic and take away their financial base. It's already showing with the legalization of weed in many states and all of Canada.
The cartels have to fight over a shrinking mpie. So, they kill each other and anyone else they want. Where to the get the guns and ammo? Who buys their drugs?
The USA.
Trump doesn't care about Mexico. Mexico hates Trump.
Great situation.
Add terror murders, kidnapping and extortion - oh, don't forget massive money laundering, bribery, political corruption, human trafficking and armed robbery to the pile.
You don't have to travel to the Pakistan/Afghan border to get in real harm's way. Drive south.
3
Another big problem is that the Cartels are armed to the teeth with Made In America weapons. Who needs crime control in Mexico when there is money to be made!
4
This is a war about water
1
I wonder if people ever give thought to the idea that buying drugs illegally is enabling this violence? There is not one party at fault - our insatiable appetite for drugs and the rapacious violence of the gangs.
I am not sure we can blame America on the guns epidemic - the financial rationale for the cartels would implore them to buy guns from another source.
2
The war on drugs started with prohibition and has been a failure for the last 100 years. We have to think outside the same old box if we want at least a chance at solving it. Legalize drugs and outlaw guns and amnunition. Make government agencies the only legal buyer of the crops and have them pay the farmers double or triple what the cartels pay. Make this a public health problem not a legal problem. Make the manufacturers of guns and ammo libel if it ends in the hands of terrorists, cartels, or criminals.
2
We want the drugs, they provide them. Supply and demand. Capitalism working the way it is supposed to work. Surely, Mr. Stephens can’t complain about that.
3
Mexico's biggest problem is the several million cash paying drug addicts in its northern neighbor. US citizens provide the dollars that fuel the cartels and US gun companies are only too happy to satisfy the drug cartels desire for weapons. Furthermore while NAFTA was not perfect, it was helping our southern neighbor to develop a modern economy. Trump's idiotic border policy will block that safety valve and if (and when) Mexico and Central America lapse into failed states we will have unimaginable problems here in the USA. Our stupidity is breathtaking.
4
You must put strong and incorrupt institutions before democracy. You can rather afford a weak democracy than a weak state. And if a nation is close to failure, you sometimes even need an authoritarian regime, and accept all the dangers, that come with it.
The drugs and people move North, and the guns and money move South. That's the dynamic in Mexico, and Mr. Stephens has completely missed it.
2
Of course conservative Bret Stephens wants to call Mexico a
"Failed State" now because it has progressive president. It was just as bad before, though.
What a shame that the world's sole super power and richest country by far which has done stuff for others all over the world has not helped Mexico get it together.
It is a testament to the greed and selfishness of the wealthy and how it stops good things from happening for mankind.
3
Quite a few suggest we legalize to cut supply from demand. Legalizing heroin, cocaine and the like is wrong-headed. Pushing back against drugs like these may well be a sisyphean task but to abandon the effort wholesale is akin to throwing swaths of humanity in the bin. And you can't compare heroin, cocaine, meth, fentanyl etc. to marijuana when it comes to legalization.
The idea that trading cartels for corporate drug pushers would be an improvement is shockingly mistaken. I'm sure dead-eyed analysts, corporate interests and venture cap would relish the chance to squeeze out a whole new industry faster than you can imagine, a Purdue Pharma on every block. They would partner with these murderous cartels, legitimize operations, expand. Look at what legal opioids have done here... some would add heroin, crack, coke to the all-you-can-eat buffet?
Cartel violence will never hold a candle to the loss of life & well-being directly attributable to the drugs themselves.
I would rather fight to keep this garbage out of the lives of ordinary people (our children, spouses, grandkids) and know it's a never ending effort than give up on those people.
We already let millions die of legal drugs (tobacco/alcohol/RX) to keep the mafiosa out, call it business as usual, and we would open the floodgate on all of it?
Cynics and go-getters want to make this poison accessible, turn a business opportunity and doubly extract the blood from the stone/people with tax policy. Win-Win? Appalling.
Maybe Trump was right. "some, I presume, are good people"
Drugs come across the border to feed the steady market for drugs here and in return we send more guns south to feed the steady needs of the cartels. Guns and drugs, drugs and guns a deadly self reinforcing cycle that will require a more trusting relationship than we currently have with Mexico. Make that the world.
2
And why do Americans consume the drugs that are ruining Mexico? Because they are unhappy - victims of capitalism.
Need to send our special ops teams into Mexico to take care of business, no different than what we did with bin Laden & Al Baghdadi. No need for US ground troops in Mexico, but some covert, special ops missions would certainly put a massive dent in the cartels.
The recent massacre gives us the pretext for one of those short lived invasions followed by 'negotiations'. Land troops south of the trouble zone and comb thru going north. Set scaffolds up in the bigger towns.
It's what I recommended be done in Aghanistan but was told we had to stay to be sure we would bring "democracy".
We can't succeed in planting democracy but we can have order on our terms.
Many commenters here are objecting to the characterization of Mexico as nearing the status of a "failed state", seemingly "because" (?) the US, for various Trump related reasons, is also nearing the status of a "failed state". The illogic of that sort of thinking is striking. Both Mexico and the US may presently be headed toward the status of "failed state". There is plenty of room for many failed states in this world. Come one; come all.
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"On a working visit here, I have dinner with one of the country’s elder statesmen and listen to him describe its greatest challenges. He names three: “Rule of law. Rule of law. And rule of law.”
Funny, those are our biggest challenges too.
2
The drug-prohibition related violence engulfing Mexico is an example of government related violence (GRV) since drug-prohibition is governmental action.
Instead of recognizing government related violence (GRV) as a cost that government imposes on society, the government's partisans, such as Bret Stephens, have to shift blame.
Stephens blames insufficient government, advocating something akin to "a counter-insurgency campaign", "stronger" judiciary, and "strong prison authorities."
Of course, all the costs that this policy would entail would be imposed on ordinary people without consent. Otherwise the government could degenerate into a dreaded "failed state".
Notice that partisans of government need a concept such as "failed state" to blame for any or all of the bad things it does. Some might tell you government could become "corrupt" to explain its evil. For example, under its rule of law, tens of thousands of innocent people are caged. Yet the partisans of government are unfazed -- it is due to government becoming "corrupt," they explain, or in dire cases, such as the Maduro government, "failed."
2
@Al
Mexico is a democracy. AMLO is supposedly the savior of the Mexican people. So, the people who voted for this government are committing violence against themselves?
U.S consumption? Yes. But what about European, Asian and Australian consumption? The demand is just as strong in London and Madrid is it is in New York.
Legalize drug use and that will eliminate the violence in the trade. Really?
That is simply a pipe dream {no pun). Users will still have to buy from dealers and dealers will definitely not be getting free drugs from the suppliers. Even so, cheaper drugs will only increase the user base.
The solutions to this problem are very far from easy. Enough already, with simplistic suggestions.
I often agree with much of what Brett Stephens says but just as often I'm infuriated by what he fails to mention. His commentary is cleverly crafted to leave out anything he considers an inconvenient truth. Let's start by discussing the vast American market for drugs (and the riches that flow into Mexico to pay for this contraband), and then talk about who's profiting from the deadly trade of lethal weapons that flow back into Mexico. With its vast resources, why hasn't the U.S. resolved this crisis from its own side of the border? Now tell me: which state is failing?
3
@smb
It's not a competition. It is possible for both Mexico and the U.S. to be deteriorating. By any objective measure, Mexico is doing worse.
To be sure, AMLO's pacifistic approach will need to be reconsidered in the light of recent escalations in violence. But to blame him principally for the problem is absurd. Stephens gives a pass to his two corrupt right-wing predecessors, when the reality is that AMLO is harvesting the bounty of their failures.
One rationale for AMLO's soft approach had to be the recognition that Mexico's police and military forces, both national and local, have been deeply corrupted by the cartels and are of questionable reliability. Rooting out this corruption will be a huge preliminary task that is capable of exhausting AMLO's political capital and preventing other programs from moving forward. He probably hoped to buy time on the issue of taking on the cartels by adopting a less confrontational stance. It didn't work, but its failure needs to be understood in the context of the historical situation. If Mexico is a failed state, it is one that AMLO inherited the people that Stephens admires.
2
My wife and i moved to Mexico three years ago and we are outraged at your depiction of Mexico as failed state. A steady stream of Americans and Canadians have relocated to Mexico to enjoy the weather, the people, and the culture. We also are fleeing the rise of right~wing hate groups and the ever present threat created by rabid culture of guns and extremism. America is much greater danger of becoming a failed state, because political corruption and the rise of a rapacious oligarchy.
70
@Smokey I do not know where you live in Mexico but surely enough we are seeing a tremendous growth in crime in most of Mexico today. The current government here is led by a decrepit old man full of resentment and blaming our current woes on past administrations. It is no secret that he wants to establish a socialist-style regime and hold on to power past the constitutional 6-year presidential term.
9
The Le Barons immigrated to Mexico almost 100 years ago. They are not "American", they are Mexicans who happen to have dual nationality. Would you call a family that came to the USA from Ireland 100 years ago Irish? To use them as a drumbeat to invasion is disingenuous and dangerous. The killing of children is always gut wrenching, anywhere, but should Canada invade the USA as a failed state because of the almost monthly killings of innocent children in malls and schools?
6
We are all start to miss the Monroe doctrine!
get Americans to stop buying drugs from across the border. legalize marijuana in the United states then watch drug cartels fold.
@eastbackbay But I thought marijuana was already decriminalized? The majority of states allow its sale to adults. There are federal laws on the books, but they're not really enforced.
Let's not forget where Mexican criminals get many of their weapons and ammunition, the US. They get our guns and we get their drugs - great relationship.
1
We used to vacation in Mexico. We got tired of seeing soldiers with automatic rifles. Nothing wrong with the soldiers, but, they are there for a reason. Too many kidnappings, too many murders, so, we stay in the U.S. We know this hurts Mexicans and will spur immigration, but, you have to look out for your safety.
2
In this particular matter of massacring innocent people , I agree with Bret.
USA and Mexico are failed states.
Legalize drugs. Ban weapons. Done.
1
dont forget the U .S. is also on a fast track to a failed state. One party is openly devoted to sedition.
Who, exactly, is buying all those drugs? Those are the people funding cartel violence. If the lives of 100 million people in el Norte are so bad that they need to spend every waking hour stoned, then maybe they are the problem, not Mexicans.
Ultimately the blame lies with the insatiable american appetite for drugs. That's what keeps the cartels alive.
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@Robert Gendler
Prohibition created the cartels and keeps them swimming in money
1
@Robert Gendler
The fact that the drugs are illegal is even more to the point. Legalize them, and all this goes away.
2
But, my friend, good people tend to NOT take adavantage of another's weakness. In the world of law enforcement, taking advantage of someone else's weakness is called predatory.
1
As Mexico's "perpetual" prexy, Porfirio Díaz, reputedly once lamented:
"Poor Mexico; so far from God, so close to the United States."
2
Have Mr Stephen forgotten the availability of war weapons in the US, and it's illegal traffic to México ?
2
Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States...
1
There's no doubt that Mexico has a lot of problems, but before using a phrase like "failed state", look closer to home. Mexico isn't running up trillion-dollar deficits, and it isn't neglecting infrastructure.
1
How is it that the US can demand drugs, supply guns, and predict the downfall of Mexico all in the same breath?
5
Your attempt to pin any aspect of Mexico's degeneration into a failed state on Trump is laughable. Mexico has been on this spiral for decades, greatly accelerated by the Colombians partnering with the cartels in the 80s to push cocaine up through Mexico, and furthered by Peña Nieto's policy of attempting to decapitate the cartels by eliminating their leaders, which created hundreds of splinter groups, which are now at war with each other. Mexico's problem is that it has always been utterly and completely corrupt: a system of haves and have nots, with an utterly undemocratic political culture. Relationships between men and women, fathers and children, bosses and employees, all show little respect for individuals, and respect for 1 and only 1 thing: the "strong man" or caudillo, which are what the cartels and sicarios have capitalized on. It is in this culture of lies, secrecy, greed, lack of empathy, and absence of civic duty that has fed the beast that has now manifested itself in the cartels. In sum, Mexico was always ripe for further rottening into the true narco state that we see now.
4
Stacey....I suspect you have spent some time in Mexico. My experience having spent some years there has led me to your conclusion. Your comment is right on. Mexico should have been annexed to the US long ago with a melding of the cultures. California is largely Mexican. Most of my kids friends are Mexican. The majority of their classmates are Mexican but they by being in the US are adopting our Anglo Saxon heritage and value system. California is not doing too badly.
2
Not that the murders aren't gruesome. However, NPR reported yesterday the LDS Church has disavowed any connection with the LeBarón family. Apparently they are members of a fundamentalist sect of the Mormon faith.
For those who don't know, there's Mormon and then there's Mormon. The official Mormon Church is LDS. These other groups are known as FLDS. FLDS includes Warren Steed Jeffs, the known polygamist convicted for child sexual abuse. You can't help but wonder if the LeBarón family was only in Mexico in order to avoid certain US laws.
Before we start comparing 19th century Mormon colonists to the 21st century diaspora, I think we need to be careful who exactly we're talking about. At the moment, that answer is far from entirely clear. You don't typically live in a dangerous part of a failed state willingly unless the failed state is providing something desirable in return. Just saying.
1
I guess Bret hasn't realized that the US is already a failed state with a president who thinks he can do no wrong, takes his orders from Russia, lies practically all the time, and is robbing the country blind while installing grifters in every position to make sure.
2
because the Iraq-style 'surge' has brought so much tranquility and increased quality of life to that region.
1
They should adopt our example - of how to slow-track to being a failed state.
The author was right to mention the stool approach, except that he got the legs all wrong. The things that will work are:
1. reduce the profit in the drug trade
2. Increase the law enforcement effort against it
3. increase the economic security of Mexican citizens
This can be done by taking some bold steps:
1. Make drugs legal in America. Treat the drug epidemic as a medical problem and provide help and treatment for addicts instead of jail. Use mass media to demythologize drug use. Create more economic opportunity outside of the drug business in the US.
2. Send the US Army into Mexico a la General Pershing and clear the drug gangs out of all states near the border. And train and equip Mexican police to take over.
3. Create a Mexico-Canada-US trade agreement that lowers tariffs and guarantees unions and minimum wages in Mexico. Tax Corporations to provide the social services necessary to bring Mexico up to humanitarian minimums.
This could be done in a year. In a few more Mexico could be turned into a prosperous and law abiding trading partner, but Republicans must be removed from all decision making positions in both the US and Mexican governments. (Application of existing criminal statues can be used to remove most Republicans from office and voter education can remove the rest.)
In other words, start a revolution to help the people and create a true peoples democracy in both countries.
3
Did you just say that moving Mexicos military to the southern border sapped their ability to fight the cartels? Because actually, the military and police are so corrupt that they are working hand in hand with the cartels. This is the problem. The Mexican military acts as a feeder of soldiers to the cartels, because their skills are needed by the cartels and they pay a heck of a lot more. Look closely at the videos of chapos son being apprehended. These cartel guys are doing military maneuvers, using military weapons extremely well, in short, they have had military training. Failed state? No. Civil war first, between the gov and cartels, involving civilians that turn into combatants at night, a la the Taliban? Yes. Many more stages to go before failed state, Sir. And even if the cartel soldiers of mexico are defeated, the cartels will recruit hondurans, salvadorans, et al from the south. Draconian solution that worked in ridding the mafia from sicily? Arresting wives and non-minors family members on the basis that they are complicit in what their dads are doing. Take the minors and put them in foster homes to keep them away from mafia danger as Italy is doing right now. You mess with their families and guys wont join the business as much. Simple. Second, you need less soldiers and more financial investigators. Cmon, we know that Mexico relies on lucrative and corrupt deals with the cartel money and quid pro quo. Shut down the money. Not hard to do guys. Click of a button.
2
For the last 100 years Mexico's best and brightest who weren't born into the rich 100 families have left their country and gone to the other side-- 'el otro lado'-- or the U.S. This brain drain has removed pressure for the country to reform and every year life there becomes less and less promising for those not born to privilege. Joining a gang is the only alternative to migration to the US and humiliation in a Trumpian world. Mexico is about as rich as Italy, but the wealth is so unequally distributed among its population that the country itself has become a grotesque mirror image of the happy, bicycle riding skeletons of José Guadalupe Posada. Is Stephens really proposing another gringo invasion? No wonder Mexicans have no hope that the Giant of the North will ever do anything in their interest.
2
One very simple part of a "solution" would be to take power away from drug cartels. How to do that? Simple. Legalize all drugs. Then tax the sale of drugs and use the money to help people get treatment for addiction.
Portugal decriminalized all drug use and abuse in 2002. They shifted resources to health services, because drugs are a HEALTH issue, not a criminal issue. It worked. Treating susceptible people as criminals, while ignoring their obvious health issues related to drug use is logical, cost efficient, and produces positive social change. We MUST change. The war on drugs failed, is failing, and will always fail. Facing the issue with the tools of health services will save lives, and restore respect (while eliminating a huge source of corruption) for law enforcement, who will be better serving us without having to chase drug users.
@Slann Correction: Treating susceptible people as criminals, while ignoring their obvious health issues related to drug use is illogical and a waste of resources.
Shifting to Portugal's strategy is logical, cost efficient and will produce positive social change.
1
Surprising no mention of US drug demand. The cartels fight for turf in bringing product north fueling violence in Mexico. There is very little in Yucatan because it's not on any major land route. People are so woke now about animal welfare when buying food but there lacks an awareness of the real price in blood of taking drugs.
Wasn’t Obrador’s predecessor on the payroll of the drug cartels. I don’t feel like there is much new about enormous influence of the cartels. This has been going on for a long time. America looked the other way.
It's true that Mexico has a gun violence problem with 17,000 deaths in the first half of 2019. Consider, however, that the death toll from gun violence in the United States in 2019 stands, so far, at 33,314. In Mexico, politicians are afraid of the cartels. In the U.S. they are afraid of the NRA. (Gun Violence Archive)
5
The US can also help by stopping the flow of US guns to the drug cartels.
2
If we literally close the border and inspect every single container from top to bottom from Mexico we can stop the cartels, or if that doesn't work, just stop every single container from coming out of Mexico into the U.S.
That certainly is drastic, but given that we have basically a war-torn country on our southern border, it is the only solution that will work. If we prevent the cartels from exporting drugs into the U.S., they will be put out of business.
Mexico is a failed state.
Mexico's borders are easily breached by thousands of criminals every day. Nothing stops the drugs, the human trafficking, and the general flow of illegal and corrupt activity that passes between the U.S. and Mexico everyday. The few wealthy families and businesses that run Mexico are immune to the poverty that saturates all of Mexican society. Every day people are shot, stabbed, hung, burned and executed by the criminal cartels. It is impossible to be safe in Mexico. Laws are not enforced and the judicial system is filled with corrupt judges, lawyers and others paid off by the drug cartels. The rule of law is non-existent in Mexico.
The slaughter of innocent women and children by gun shot and burning to death is unusual because the victims were American and clearly innocent of any crime related to the drug or human trafficking cartels. We're appalled but not surprised.
Donald Trump is not to blame for this carnage nor is his unbuilt wall. The blame goes all the way back to administrations prior to Ronald Reagan who allowed the drug cartels to emerge and operate without reprisal. The U.S. should have partnered with Mexican authorities long before the cartels became as powerful and violent as they are now.
Mexico views the colossus of the North, the U.S. as the cause because of demand for drugs and lax gun laws. Mexico can't see its own culpability.
A military coup or revolution is probably on the horizon. Real slaughter is on its way.
3
Do United States would seem to be on them equally fast track to failed state status. Will Mexico pay for it?
1
If the Mexicans lose their democratic rights in this fight then history shows that they will have lost both security and freedom. To bring in a more muscular response to the narcos problem can be done by the norms of a democratic state, you just need the right people.
Mexicans expected their government to decrease the high criminality rate and change the poor living conditions but now they know it will not happen. Children and young people will face a cruel and dangerous future. No one is safe not even the soldier's families and for that reason more people will try to cross the US border illegally. People in Mexican towns build their houses and live well thanks to the money their relatives working illegaly send to them. The American companies that move to Mexico did it because it is convenient for them. Mexicans workers get paid less and they have a contract that lasts only for a month. There are a lot of robberies in public transportation early in the morning as well as in fancy restaurants or parking lots. Drivers and pedestrians have to be alert because kidnappers may get them at any moment. There is a high risk of being raped both for women and men. Mexicans love their country and do not want to leave it but it is really hard to make ends meet as well as survive violence. They are on their own.
1
There is no magic pill. Mexico is largely a third world country with limited economic opportunity that is legal. The drug money is too ingrained, the graft too widespread. However the rich Mexican growing season offers more supply and ideal for US export. Think banana republic created this third world status. So how about reparations? We created A totally dependent Mexican society that hangs on the whims of nafta and subsidized US farming. Stop the cash to US farmers and buy Mexican.
The United States has always looked at Mexico with disdain. Their land (i.e. Texas) has been lusted after & seized. Immigrants have been considered "Unamerican". So Trump was actually just plainly stating what US policy has always been.
That said, we have to look really hard at the appetite for drugs in this country & what can be done to reduce their use. Until then the cartels will find a way to supply them.
It is also doubtful about what the US can contribute to a large scale crackdown in Mexico.
2
The inability of the Mexican government to rule by law is a problem that predates the emergence of the drug cartels in the late twentieth century. The problem began about two centuries ago.
From 1820 up to the establishment of Porfirio Diaz' dictatorship (1876 - 1911), the country underwent more than fifty violent changes of federal administration. Diaz then ruled by fear and co-option for more than three decades. From the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1916 to the 2000 presidential election, a single political party governed the nation through a combination of corruption and intimidation with the army repeatedly intervening to restore order.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans died as a result of the various efforts to crush the drug syndicates. The bottom line is that the situation requires a paradigm shift on the part of Mexicans and that is something they and not we can provide. Perhaps this is moment for the U.S. interventionists of both the Right and Left to sit down until the urge passes.
5
I wonder just exactly what world you live in Mr. Stephens that you only see the problems of others and never your own.? It must be gratifying to be the arbiter of truth. We are deeply intertwined with Mexico and it`s cartels, through our love of guns flowing south, to cascade the violence there into a full blown war. We could stop the flow of weapons south, just as we could have some basic common sense gun laws here. Of course that won`t happen; to much money to be made! So on and on we go blaming each other, when it is us and our brothers to the south who are all equally at fault.
So Mr. stephens you might look to the good book for more wisdom on that.
4
As an immigrant coming from a country not so different, let me point out the main problem that Mexico has: a very high, pervasive tolerance for lawlessness and violence.
The never ending North-American thirst for illegal drugs certainly is the background, but not everything can be blamed on it. After all, the drugs get sold in the US, and north of the border there is no shortage of organized crime, hitmen and wannabe kidnappers and extorsionists. The difference is that here the dominant culture is such that the bandits are not allowed to hold the country to ransom.
Many in Mexico would like to return to the good ol’ days when the one-party PRI state kept a lid on things and the cartels limited their violence, focusing on the totally acceptable smuggling of drugs in the US.
How naive would somebody have to be not to realize that eventually the cartels would use their countless billions to own the country ?
5
Mexico’s problems are not going to be solved easily. Corruption and rule of law was always an issue but the past few decades has seen the cartels become more entrenched and branch out past drugs into all facets of everyday life demanding payments from store owners and bus drivers. So it’s no longer just legalize drugs and they’ll go away.
A realistic solution is much harder than sound bites and tribal rebuttals. Going after the kingpins obviously does nothing. Stopping the flow of guns wouldn’t do anything about the stockpiles they have now.
Ending corruption and enforcing the rule of law is obviously needed but how to get there, that is the dilemma. Would a surge help tamp down violence? Probably but would it help solve the root issues? Probably not.
3
The appetite of the U.S. for illegal drugs is the cause of Mexico's war. The guns that are arm the drug cartels come from the U.S. The governments of Mexico are highly infiltrated by the drug cartels.
The solution is to legalize the drugs that are transported through Mexico. The U.S. has to reduce it's drug consumption and stop making drugs more valuable. Only legalization will deprive organized crime the income they kill for.
The drug war in Mexico is at the level of a civil war by common definitions. Thousands have died. Nothing is getting better. There is no reason for Mexicans to be killing themselves over American drugs, except greed.
Take the profit out. Legalize drugs, save Mexico.
78
@Jiro SF Actually, for the most part, guns do not come from the U.S. However, you are correct that the drug appetite is a big problem.
@Jiro SF
President Trump is not responsible for the
mess down in Mexico .
Mexico, a beautiful Country with lovely people ,
unfortunately , has been corrupt and dysfunctional for
decades . Now we have the drug cartels and all
that entails .
It is a pure spiritual battle , in many places .
And by the way, do you not think that the chaos
and stress caused by massive
illegal immigration in this Country and this ridiculous
impeachment process , are making it harder and
harder for people to resist taking drugs in order to
cope ? I live in
Southern Ca , and is it a mess of stress , frankly .
3
@Jiro SF The fact that drug use in the US is helping to destroy our neighbor does not get enough attention. It is beyond shameful. US citizens who purchase drugs think they are committing a victimless crime, but in reality they're enabling homicides on massive scale. I don't know that legalizing drugs would save Mexico. Reducing the consumption of drugs couldn't hurt. I have never used marijuana, but the fact that is is illegal in the majority of states is mind blowing. It doesn't seem like the states where pot is now legal have turned into hellscapes.
2
Twenty Years ago, I drove out of San Diego through Tijuana and down the coast of the Baja. I was shocked at the empty beautiful coastline. I came back thinking only an incompetent government could not take this asset and turn it into a profitable region and eradicate poverty in the region, without destroying the environment and beauty.
Similarly, I ask myself what innovations have come out of Mexico that can help improve the economic status of the country and its people. Technology, pharmaceuticals, science inventions? I can’t name any. Why is this the case? It’s certainly not because Mexicans aren’t as smart as citizens in the U.S. or Germany or China.
There is a fundamental rot in the society that starts with the rich at the top of the society.
Nothing will change until there is an economic revolution. Merely increasing the military assault on the drug cartels won’t solve the inherent weakness in the society that is a breeding ground for the cartels.
8
Mexico has big problems. No doubt about that. But Mr.Stephens assertion that it can become a failed state is so over the top. He is used to making such bombastic statements/suggestions. Almost, a decade ago he suggested to buy Pakistan's nukes before it becomes a failed state. I think he is way too obsessed with the idea of failed states.
3
If the rule of law is the problem in Mexico, it extends far beyond the drug cartels and attacking the drug cartels may not be the best way to restore the rule of law. The drug cartels take advantage of long-existing patterns of corruption and use these patterns to defend themselves.
Taking on the cartels might result in the cartels becoming operations of a thoroughly-corrupted government; this might reduce the violence but will make the government an operation of the cartels or of one supercartel as one of them uses the government to eliminate the others.
A strong man with little respect for the rule of law, a Duterte or Bolsonaro, might make progress against the cartels but might also be swallowed by them.
The surge in Iraq was spearheaded by American forces that were immune to the religious and ethnic forces that corrupted the country; their main corruption was to have development projects that made money for American contractors but did nothing for Iraqi development. Mexico does not have any similar forces to spearhead an anticorruption drive.
The first duty of any government is to ensure safety of its citizens. If it fails to do so, it has no right to exist, whether it was democratically elected or not. Democracy is great but it is not the ultimate value. Survival is. Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) describes the social contract which gives power to the sovereign, so he can protect the weak from the depredations of the strong. Maybe it is time to revive this theory in Mexico and other failed states where criminal gangs prey on the population. A military regime might be preferable to living in the state of anarchy. Instead of giving the gangsters hugs, give them bullets - and I don’t care whether these bullets come with a court order or not.
2
Any proposal to solve Mexico's violent crime problem is a joke compared to the only one that will ever work: legalization of all drugs. Where are the alcohol cartels? They don't exist, because alcohol is legal. But when alcohol was illegal, they did exist. It seems pretty simple to me. We as a society must accept that, whether hard drugs are legal or illegal, there will always be a small percentage of the population addicted to them. It's better to have a legal marketplace of hard drugs where addicts can purchase what they want instead of the atrocities and chaos that are now taking place in Mexico, in other parts of Latin America, and (let's not forget) the U.S.A., where, as in the developing world, a large percentage of murders are related to the illegal drug trade. Hard drug legalization is off the table for practically all politicians and voters because they see the terrible effects of drug addiction. But which is better: a person who is addicted to cocaine who has some hope of recovery and sobriety in the future or a corpse full of bullet holes?
5
@Phil
Quite a few comments suggest we legalize to cut supply from demand. The thought of legalizing drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth is wrong-headed, preposterous. Pushing back against drugs like these may well be a sisyphean task but to abandon the effort wholesale is akin to throwing great swaths of humanity in the bin.
The idea that trading drug cartels for corporate drug pushers would be an improvement is shockingly mistaken. I hope we never see that come to pass. I'm sure the dead-eyed analysts, corporate interests and venture cap would relish the chance to squeeze out a whole new industry faster than you can imagine...a Purdue Pharma on every block. They would partner with these murderous cartels, legitimize operations and pusue a hungry legal market expansion. No.
Not to mention the guns that are exported into Mexico as the drugs come into the US.
@Phil
Agreed.
www.drugpolicy.org
How is it that Mexican authorities seize drugs by the ton but we rarely see a large shipment intercepted on the US side of the border? Mexicans know the most powerful cartel is the "Cartel of the Potomac", that shadowy alliance of lobbyists, PR firms, and fixers persuading Americans to focus on asylum-seekers and would-be dishwashers instead of narcotics traffickers. Why is meth from Mexico cheaper today than it was a decade ago if the border is so secure? There is a well-developed industry of alarmists encouraged or paid to distract American policymakers from tightening inspections at the border, chasing Central American children instead. Every CBP agent caging children is 1 less hunting drugs. Just as we send DEA agents to Mexico the Mexican government should send agents to the US to hunt weapons smugglers arming the cartels. Instead President Trump presses Mexico to send the new National Guard to Mexico's southern border, detaining 4-year-olds instead of pursuing traffickers. Columns such as this one serve the interests of the cartels because they encourage law enforcement to look in the wrong places. These are not "cartel insurgents", they are narco-capitalists drawing support from dark money flowing via Citizens United to American politicians who protect, not police, drug movements.
2
The ability of New York Times columnists to blame Trump for everything--including another sovereign nation's years of failure--is breathtaking.
That Mr. Stephens managed to write this column without once using the word "drugs" is astonishing. The Mexican cartels exist to supply a market. That market is in the USA.
Now the cartels are using their expertise in piercing our southern border to hustle human beings along the supply-lines. And there are Americans who think this traffic is, somehow, humanitarian.
Memo to Bret: it ain't about the Donald. It's about us.
7
@richard cheverton
I don't this the article specifically blames Trump for the problem, but it does point out areas where Trump policies have exacerbated the underlying issues.
The cartel violence is fueled by demand for illegal drugs in the US. We have a big role to play in all of this, because the abject failure of the War on Drugs (TM).
4
Mexico needs to mobilize all its armed forces, declare martial law, hold military tribunals for cartel leaders and their soldiers and treat them as domestic terrorists, overhaul its justice system and deal with corrupt courts and police as enemies of the state, and have a government willing to make the hard choices and act swiftly. As the saying goes, "Take no prisoners" when it comes to cartel leaders and members.
2
With the current leader in the WH I'd say it's a close race as which nation will be a failed state first, the USA or Los Estados Unidos Mejicanos. If he gets re-elected it'll be a close race.
Maybe we should go down there and take their oil as we did before. Of course Mr Stephens does not mention that our wreckless policies have not helped our neighbors progress toward becoming a viable state.
1
The slaughter you refer to was horrific, Mr. Stephens. So are the countless mass murders that take place in your country. Is the US in danger of failed state status? I would argue that the death of thousands by guns in your country, coupled with the death of truth, thanks in large part to your chosen party, brings your country as close to failed state status as Mexico.
123
@John David James Our murders are horrible, but they way they are distributed allows the society to still function pretty well (unless you are in one of the high crime area or part of the population that receives extra policing for no good reason).
My point is not to discount any of that. The role of bigotry in cording off area of greater problems in the US is particularly horrid. Still, we've got to remember that the break down in Mexico is far far worse because it affects a far larger percentage of the population.
1
@John David James Way way different, and if you can't see the bad analogy I'm not sure anything I can say will change your mind. The biggest difference is that mass shootings in the US, at leas the ones that garner media attention, are by and large lone wolf attacks, whereas the one's in Mexico are by organized crime groups. In the last election cycle over 100 candidates for office were assassinated, nothing even close to comparable occur here. Theses gangs have territory where they exercise exclusive control with impunity, nothing similar exists here. There is massive corruption of the bureaucracy and elected officials perpetrated by these organized crime groups, nothing similar exists here. It is such a bad analogy that it doesn't warrant serious consideration.
23
@Taylor you seem to believe that the violence used by criminal elements in Mexico to corrupt the political process and wield power is existentially different than corruption and death wrought in your country by your billionaires. They do through money what the cartels do by violence. They control the political process. They corrupt it for their own purposes and gain. They buy there way to power. How many deaths do you think will be attributable to the Koch brothers, and others, purchased influence in rolling back environmental regulations? The deaths attributable to your health company's continuing war on reasonable and affordable health care for all. How many hundreds of thousands of deaths are attributable to the Sackler family billion’s successful resistance to regulatory oversight of their criminal empire? In America, white collar crime kills by the tens of thousands. It may not offend the sensibilities the way Mexican crime does, but dead is dead.
12
I lived in Mexico in 2007-2008 and President Calderone escalated the war against the cartels to disastrous effects. It was during this period that violence exponentially increased, and the army proved to be no match for the cartels. This was 10 years or so before Trump. There were kidnappings, fires that blocked major highways, and even the youth become emboldened to commit more crimes, since no one was being held accountable for any criminal activity. But let us be clear. Although it seems implausible, the fact remains that the majority of Mexico remains safe and secure. There are pockets of drug cartel activity, yet most people rarely if ever are confronted by such aggression and violence. It would be like saying all of the US is a 'failed state' because of four or five areas that are crime infested. The fact is there are two facets to the drug problem- supply and demand. Both in drugs and guns. For drugs, Mexico has the supply and we as US citizens provide the demand. For guns, we have the supply and Mexico provides the demand. Yes, Mexico can and should increase their security apparatus, but we can destroy this scourge by following lives that are drug free. We should also legalize as much as we can. And of course, we need to stop the flow of guns heading south.
4
This one is not Donald Trump’s fault. I worked in Mexico confronting some of the issues discussed in this op ed. Corruption has been ingrained in Mexico for decades. The violence then, and even more so now, defies logic and description. Our agents and agencies fighting these problems know that almost no entity there is trustworthy. Legalizing drugs will not eliminate the cartels- they are business people who have diversified their pursuits, and they have a literal death grip in many areas including trucking, money laundering, and human trafficking, among others. The only way things will change is when a cultural paradigm shift occurs, and gives the money and power at stake, it’s unlikely there will be one.
152
@NYerExiled , I am in no way an expert on Mexico, but your words ring true. Like any business that wants to stay successful, the cartels have adapted and will continue to adapt. This situation reminds me of organized crime in the U.S., which got a big boost from Prohibition but survived its repeal very nicely.
18
@Marcia - Dear Michael: The Mafia was constricted by the end of alcohol prohibition, and law enforcement has minimized its presence, since. Now, it only survives in small and corrupted geographic confines, and legalizing recreational drugs would further de-fund the Mafia.
9
@NYerExiled corruption at the top levels of our own government is much greater than the endemic but lower type that infects Mexico.
4
I travel frequently to Mexico, and lived there for several years. I feel safer in Mexico then I do at any shopping center, synagogue, or school in the United States.
3
Statistics would disagree with you. Strongly.
All states are going to fail, its been foretold for millennia, this system is going to be completely destroyed forever at the hands of the Kingdom of God. A few states may appear to get better but on the world stage things are going to continue to get worse until God steps in and says enough.
If we're serious about the well being of Mexico we might start by reforming both our gun laws and our own drug laws.
We are the final destination of the illegal drugs that make up the cartels empire. Our banks launder their money and make enormous fees in the process. Yet, prosecutions of those banks rarely occurs and when it does, like HSBC, they pay a fine and move on.
Not a single bank executive has ever faced prosecution for laundering drug money.
We also know that by decriminalizing drug use and treating it as a public health issues in the US we can substantially reduce the profits from that industry.
Most of the guns wrecking havoc throughout Mexico come across the border from Texas, where they can be bought legally, shipped in illegally and sold for huge profits.
If Mexico is on the verge of becoming a failed state, we seem oblivious to our contribution to their problems.
Ultimately Mexico will have to address these issues. But the US should not be making that effort more difficult. Yet, we are and for some reason Stephens seems to omit this fact.
317
@Drspock I think Eric Holder can help you on that gun thing. In fact, he defied a Congressional subpoena to explain how the cartels got a thousand high powered rifles from the Dept. of Justice while he was AG. In fact he was found in contempt because he refused to say how the cartels got those guns.
If they don't get guns from us, they'll get guns from elsewhere (Israel, Russia, etc..) . Many of the guns being used aren't AR's..but are AK's..inferring Russia and Cuba are directly involved in this drug & guns supply chain.
6
@Drspock 100% correct. America's gun trade and its appetite for illegal drugs are the source of Mexico's misery. Yes, poverty and corruption feed the problem as well but those would be irrelevant if not for our greed and addictions.
1
@Drspock Mexico is a great place to live and work. People do not own guns or do hard drugs. This is being manipulated into a media incident as the victims are white- Well how about they were coerced and kidnapped into that "lifestyle" of gangs - this is a gang on gang crime. LeBarons - hah! A polygamy cult founded by an assassin! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervil_LeBaron These women were old enough to leave. Married to the mob.
And where do the drug cartels get their power? From money, by selling drugs. And who is buying the drugs? US citizens. Maybe we should frame the argument as the US has a drug problem that is affecting the social fabric of Mexico. For as long as I can remember, Mexico has had a corruption problem. What has changed is the extent to which drug money has flowed into the country from the US. We need to work together to solve this problem. Brett's idea of a large powerful 'civil military' seems particularly dangerous as it raises the specter of a military junta taking over the country and destroying Mexico's democracy.
452
@melissa
Will Mexico remain a democracy without some intervention? Or will the increasing chaos ultimately lead to a military coup in any event?
14
@Meg
Is Mexico really a democracy?
After reading Don Winslow's "Power of the Dog" and "Cartel", and Michael Glennon's "National Security and Double Government", I have come to the conclusion that it is not.
11
@melissa and where do the cartels get their guns? Increasingly its also from the US
17
Also interesting to note that so many commenters explicitly feel that “democracy” in Mexico is threatened and that it must be “saved” by US intervention.
Apparently many commenters ignore that our current President lost the popular vote, was likely aided by a foreign power in his election, and has engaged in tax fraud and is a kleptocrat trashing the Constitution. Just now the governor of Kentucky is defying the popular vote after losing an election. And both US political parties ran the son and wife of ex-presidents as successors. Not to say of school shootings, massive incarceration, etc.
Mexico has had direct effective popular vote campaigns for years, alongside many political parties both lively and active; the wives and sons of Presidents would never dream of imposing dynastic rule, and Mexico’s President is honest and popular. School shootings are unheard off, and the top political class is well educated and values science, process, and respectful speech —and human rights for victims and law breakers.
It might be that Mexico is not the only failed state here!
1
If Mexico is becoming a failed the US is not far behind. It cannot control its illicit drug problem. It cannot control guns. And it cannot secure the border - a border with a narco-state. Not only has America failed to address these problems over decades there is no prospect of it coming to grips with them in any forseeable future. Mexico is in the same boat - they won't have police, prison or judicial reform 50 years from now either.
The cartels are funded and armed in effect by the US, by the flows of drug money and American-made high-powered weapons. The cartels would be paralyzed if these flows were cut off. But they are rooted in American dysfunction, so they can't be.
America and Mexico are joined at the hip. Two states enabling each other's dysfunction. No end in sight.
1
"I am shocked, shocked to find there is gambling going on here"
The latest violence in Mexico is EVERYDAY LIFE for Mexicans who can be murdered, raped and mutilated and then disappear without a trace and where justice is absent. How Mexicans must smile in charming restraint at the mock outrage and horror exhibited by the media. If the gangs kept their violence within it would be scarcely a problem, but they don't.
It seems no act of violence is too great to cause the citizenry to rise up in revolt and the government is too corrupt or scared to act.
Something must be really wrong with you to consider that USA intervention in Iraq was "surgical" and "saved" anything but the economical interests of the USA government (military interests), and the companies it owned or represented. To go on and "recommend" the same for México would be a good joke if it wasn't so tragic. The best help that USA can provide to Mexico consists in:
1. Stop you drug addictions and drug distribution within USA.
2. Stop the great business you are doing sending weapons to México.
3. Stop thinking that building walls is the best investment you can do to help México.
I don't think that you or your president care about any another thing but how to make lots of easy money.
4
US gun manufacturers are arming the Cartels.
US gun deaths were just under 40,000 last year. Most of them suicides. While 60% were suicides and some were accidental about 37% over 14,500 were homicides.
We are exporting gun violence to Mexico and central America and importing a drug epidemic into the US.
The comparison to deaths at the peak of the Iraq war is shameful for a neocon like Stevens to even mention. There were likely 600,000 civilian deaths in Iraq because of the war. Not to mention the refugees and broken families who still bear the horror.
Stevens is the last person to lecture about the rule of law.
I hope when these cartel guys are caught, emphasis will be placed on giving them a speedy trial together with speedy justice.
Aren't we being a tad self righteous here? Our people buy the drugs that gives the cartels the funds to buy the weapons from us that they use to slaughter people in Mexico. Also are we as outraged about the killings of Mexicans by the Cartels?Now a recommendation of a surge like we had in Iraq? Why not have a surge in America to stop our folks from buying the poison that the cartels sell us.
4
Yes, blame the US for Mexico’s problems. (We don’t have a cartel problem here) It is really a cultural problem of being too passive and too afraid to fight for why Mexico is being run by cartels.
2
@Nino Actually the "Cartel of the Potomac" is the powerful alliance of PR specialists, lobbyists, and fixers that encourages the publications of columns urging we chase aspiring dishwashers rather than narcotics smugglers or sending Mexico's National Guard to its southern border, far from the centers of narcotics smuggling.
1
Legalize all drugs. Problem solved.
2
Yes, Mexico is on the way to be, actually Mexico is the failed state, and that is the fault of the Mexicans and nobody else. This is but one particularly gruesome illustration.
And it is not helpful to try to identify who else is to blame for that.
That has nothing to do with Trump (or USA in general) but I understand that on the pages of NYT it is mandatory to blame him for any negative event happening anywhere in the world.
2
It has a lot to do with our drug laws, and our citizens’ appetite for such drugs in the first place.
What about addressing the demand side of the drug problem? This element is absent in your argumentation.
Trump,as usual, makes policy with his “gut” rather than rely on readily available, solid information.The man is, among other things, an ignoramus.
Mexico's predominant 'problem' is el Norte. Us. Our bottomless appetites for illegal drugs. Our made-in-the-USA guns. So, we can go in there with six-guns blazing but the problem--us--is not going to be resolved with more bullets.
And this is after the U.S. taxpayers already absorbed 1/3 of Mexico over the past decades - the poorest, illiterate and unskilled. Yet, they keep cranking those out.
1
"We have come an seen the enemy, and it is us!" The typical short-sighted-ness of the malignant narcissist Trump, America First, could cause the final destruction of Mexico...followed bu the US?
Drugs from Mexico to the US, with its huge market, and the sales of assault weapons from the US to Mexico, are the two immediate culprits that have to be dealt with by...the US, not just Mexico!
Well, the drug cartels probably have more military and financial firepower (i.e. guns, weapons, and $$$) than the Mexican government does.
One thing to look out for is a staged attack on Americans on the American side of the border by parties who want the American military to get involved.
Make the sale of automatic and semi automatic weapons illegal and decriminalize drugs in the US and you cut off most of the funding and most of the weapons to the cartels.
Mexico's corrupt police and military will not be fixed by giving them weapons to sell top the cartels, so let's not go there.
1
@Doug
The sale of automatic weapons in the US to civilians is generally already illegal. Only those made before 1986 may be sold and only with government permission.
The cartels are not just getting weapons from the US. They are getting weapons from all sorts of arms dealers (European, Chinese, Israeli, Russian) and from the Mexican military.
When is the last time you heard about automatic weapons being used in a crime in the US. That is a pretty regular occurrence in Mexico along with routine murders of police and journalists.
Not everything in the world or in Mexico is the fault of the United States.
I miss traveling to the Sea of Cortez. Things really began changing viscerally in the mid to late 90’s as Americans’ addictions gave rise to the Cartels, making travel across the border a bit more questionable. Also questionable is the flood of firearms into Mexico from the US that enables terror and murder of civilians, reporters, or any civil worker who opposes them.
1
And when the surge ends, and the soldiers go home, what then?
Global society is failing. The gap between the rich and poor widens. Corrupt politicians and tyrants rule on the back and life breaking efforts of the much poorer masses to enrich the very few. What we are seeing in Mexico is a power struggle between the narco cartels using their new money and the poor masses to corrupt the government and rule of law. Mexico lacks a sufficiently large or incorruptible middle class to do the bidding of the elites in controlling and fooling the poor. This has allowed the cartels to exist as an authoritative parallel entity to the government. Mexican society is rife with feudal societal remnants struggling with the new world order. I can’t tell if they are ahead of or behind what’s in store for the rest of us.
4
"Rule of law"? Trump has America on the fast track to a failed state too on the basis of lack of "rule of law" alone - but will share Mexico's fate with the assistance of the NRA that profits from arming the narco-gangs in Mexico. Any "Iraq-style ‘surge’" in Mexico will also result is in a profitable surge of weaponry flowing to Mexico.
One can see trump replicating the Mexican government's rule-of-law stool corruption model by ignoring the rule of law with the assistance of his pit bull AG, compromising the judicial system packing it with his cronies (thanks Moscow-Mitch), and naming and persecuting law enforcement agents and agencies. All to support a crony-capitalistic-fanaticism in this country with the have-everything at the top and the rest of us with nothing more than debts incurred my the wealthy.
Which country will fail first? That depends on what happens in 2020, but I think it will be a tie and we sink together.
While there's not question that the US demand for drugs is an issue, if you think that legalization of drugs here will solve the cartel problem, you're crazy. The cartels will simply switch to other things. kidnapping, human trafficking, guns - pick your poison. The cartel members have grown up in crime and power and they won't suddenly revert to driving school buses or working at a MacDonald's because we legalize drugs.
And we're not going to do that anyway.
2
The only new thing here is the attack that killed 9 Americans. The police have worked with (been paid off by) the drug cartels for decades. That is the essence of a failed state. It's one thing for a country to have criminal gangs & quite another to have law enforcement & government, sometimes at the highest levels) in cahoots with the gangsters.
2
Perhaps the Republicans could stop the guns from traveling south but that is unlikely.
Mexico’s illegal narcotics problem begins and ends with the United States market for illegal narcotics. Deeper still, the most revealing question remains: why IS there a market for illegal narcotics in America?
1
@William Carter For the same reason there is a market for illegal narcotics in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa...
But by all means, we should just open our southern border and not worry about it. Everybody coming through has a good reason and is a good person. We don't need to know who or where they are.
"...managerial incompetence and ideological inanity from Donald Trump..."
I'm fairly certain 'managerial incompetence' and 'ideological inanity' could not be spun into high crimes and misdemeanors but these two most prominent features of Trump's administration are why he should be impeached.
1
The cartels are more powerful than the government. Obrador may as well just throw the cartels the keys.
1
Republicans simultaneously argue that the Trump administration is trying to end wars and being soldier home, AND that we need to invade/deploy hundreds of thousands into South and Central America.
Cognitive dissonance is often described as the discomfort that a person experiences from having two or more inconsistent or opposite beliefs/ideas/actions.
The problem is, Republicans don’t have any discomfort. They’re not actually experiencing cognitive dissonance because they don’t even care, at all, that one thing that they say is the complete opposite from the next thing they say.
The modern GOP is the perfect manifestation of the Big Brother rally where the party leader announces that Oceania was at war with Eastasia but all al the banners were wrong. The party leader didn’t skip a beat. There was no discomfort. There was no cognitive dissonance. It was just double-speak. And that is what we are watching in real time. The entire Trump administration is just one long Big Brother rally.
1
It is preposterous for the author to blame President Trump for the failure to pass the much improved USMCA agreement. The only reason why it has not been passed is because Democrats are playing politics in not letting the President score a victory that would help all three nations. The new agreement improves the rights of Mexican workers and requires competitive pay more in line with the US and Canada which would benefit everyone with better jobs, fewer job losses and a better standard of living for Mexicans.
7
@Iconoclast Texan
Maybe not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico%E2%80%93Canada_Agreement#cite_note-54
Corruption is part of the culture. Payoffs to law enforcement to look the other way,to government officials to expedite paperwork. Elected officials become wealthy while in office.
Cartel network smugglers,human and drugs, have foothold in the US facilitated by sanctuary cities and lax border control. Anecdotal evidence in our neighborhood indicate cartel profits are being used to invest in real estate and businesses using illegal labor. Prostitution of young girls.
3 of our police recently killed by these people.
Our elected officials maintain the polyana view unfettered immigration is desirable while these horrible organizations gain a foothold in the US.
Mexico is a hopelessly corrupt,that corruption is here and shouldn't be allowed to continue.
1
What fuels the cartels? Money and guns. Where do they come from? Us. Solution: We make drugs legal. We make selling automatic weapons to civilians illegal. Killing off the flow of money and guns to Mexico would cripple the cartels. That's not on Mexico. That's on us.
281
@BillB
Please stop blaming the US for all of Mexico's.
6
@BillB
ROFL. You think the violent subhuman cartels won't simply buy guns from other nations? See: How well arms controls worked in the mideast.
8
@James
There is a big difference between blame and explanation. BillB's explanation of the US as both the drug market and the gun source is exactly correct. If you choose to call that "blaming", well then I guess it is to you, but still true.
13
It seems Mr. Stephens is a little confused as to who is actually the failed state? The way I see it if the U.S. was not the Cartels largest customer along with the supply of guns and the BILLIONS of dollars going the other way to the criminals that create the mayhem, Mexico would probably be OK.
Ultimately, it was the $50 BILLION dollar American taxpayer funded disaster called "The War on Drugs" that probably made things even worse.
3
Stop with the nonsense excuse of American money fueling the drug trade. We know that addiction is now a disease and and the cartels are exploiting it for all its worth. They take advantage and are directly responsible for the deaths of countless Americans who have no control over their genetics or face a downturn in luck. We need to create a miltary buffer zone on the southern border about 50-60 miles in denying the vast swath of wilderness and cleansing the Mexican border cities of the drug springboard mechanisms. Let the Mexican Military deal with the western pacific reaches and souther border with Central American. We need to treat drug dealers like the killers they are with all the advancement in addiction science. Mexico beyond drug Cartels was still bordering on a failed state but we have to start somewhere.
1
It is shocking that it took this incident to focus on the violence in Mexico when the cartels have been engaged in violence that could be considered "ISIS on steroids". Large parts of Mexico are "No Go" locations but as long as people can vacation around Cancun no one seems to care.
While much of the world was being shocked by videos of ISIS be-headings no one paid attention when truck loads of human heads were dumped on the streets in Mexico. Violence includes kidnapping, torture, assaults, rape and women trafficking. 90% of violent crimes go unpunished and large graves of bodies are frequently found.
One should not be lulled into thinking this is just about drugs as the average Mexican citizen can face extortion and threats of violence. Gangs are so entrenched in intertwined with most government officials that they often act with impunity. Why would a politician seriously work hard to fight the cartels when their choice is large payoffs or face their families being murdered?
A good example of this is the State of Veracruz where even up to a decade ago it was safe to walk the streets of most towns but now walking around can be life threatening. A Governor was voted in that let the cartels take over which started extorting and threatened many business with violence that had nothing to do with the drug trade.
Mexico is already a failed state. We need to focus more on the countries to our south instead of the failed states in the Middle East.
1
LEGALIZE THE DRUGS. Create a regime of reasonable regulations and taxation. Once its just a regular, legal product, the revenue stream for the gangs will dry up and they'll have to make their livings as criminals the hard, retail ways, like the Mafia here after prohibition. MUCH less problematic.
2
Mexico will never welcome another US military incursion across the border, they remember what has happened before.
The real problem starts right here in the desires of our country's populous. Without massive demand there would be no War on Drugs. The solution is to legalize drugs and provide them at low cost to whoever wants them at a pharmacy. No money incentive equals curtains for the cartel. Some might say that it would be immoral to destroy lives by allowing them access to these drugs. But we are already hooked and getting hookeder. It will be a better safer world.
2
Mexico is not its beautiful scenery, nor its normally warm but stoic people. It is the institutions of society that are failing, and they have been for some time. In the era of recreational drug use, it is the flood of money and firearms from the North that are fracturing those institutions. The amounts of money that are available for bribery are beyond human experience in any country. You cooperate and you are rich, you resist and you are dead. The infection of bribery and impunity has thoroughly permeated all the lower levels of government.
I am disappointed in Obrador. He had many constructive ideas for Mexico, but he is manifestly wrong that a soft approach will work against the narco gangs. It will just reduce the casualties among the police. What is needed is overwhelming force from a military that has not been corrupted and does not ask permission from anyone. In that way, alone, will the tipoffs stop and the law enforcers have the element of surprise and a stationary target. Once the gangs are taken down and their funds expropriated, the bribery will stop, and the institutions of Mexico can heal.
We, here in the USA, need another Teddy Roosevelt.
In the book Why Nations Fail, the author list corruption as one of the top three indicators of a nation failing. I live in Mexico part of the year, and, see daily layer upon layer of monies distributed based on who you know, what you want, and how much will it take. Ironically, Mexico legal system actually is quite comprehensive, in that, there is a law/rule for everything---which, in turn, are always open to negotiation. Sadly, this is a country with a wealth of resources, talent, and an unparalleled work ethic--a combination which should equate into thriving nation. Should add, America's thirst for drugs and love of guns has added gasoline to the structural problems in Mexico.
The equation has always been drugs -> North; money & guns -> South. Billions of dollars; hundreds of thousands of deaths; a failed war on drugs that started, what, 50 years ago; an entire industry privately and publicly funded to accomplish nothing but the generation of revenue to lots of bad actors, and a few good guys. What could the US really do to assist? Get a handle on drug abuse a lot less cynical than "just don't."
BTW: Judging from any news from the Middle East, "the surge really worked out well, eh?
2
This is the first column by Stephens I have ever agreed with.
Here in the state of Michoacán we feel safe. I know of no civilians who have been targeted by the cartels.
But Lopez Obrador is weak. His progressive campaign was promising, and many of the poor voted for him. But his current stance is suspicious. "Hugs"? Really?
Every government here has been corrupt. His may be no exception.
1
@Jerry Engelbach
Jerry, people I know say that towns and villages in Michoacan are taking the situation into their own hands and using vigilante methods to drive out the drug cartels--with some success. I'd be interested in your perspective on how extensive this is and what you think of it.
1
Mexico is right. The drug problem is ours. The cartels operate to satisfy American demand.
If they continue, we will have a failed state on our long southern border. That won't be tolerable.
1
The drug war is over. Drugs won. Mexico's problem is entirely because of our astonishingly failed 'war on drugs'. Portugal's legalization of all drugs is an unqualified success. What's keeping us from doing the same in the US? Sigh. Voters over 60 and the many law enforcement agencies whose iron rice bowl is Prohibition. Our DEA is incredibly corrupt. Even our military is now in on the swag. Legalize it - and Mexico will lose a huge porportion of its cartels. Will we do it? I believe we will.
2
The absurd arguments advanced by Mr. Stephens speaks to the formulaic analysis - Mexico is too far from God and too close to the United States.
3
The violence in Mexico is because of the immense drug market here in the USA. Without the incentive to provide illegal drugs here, the reason for the cartels in Mexico (and throughout Latin America) would not exist. Making drugs illegal and increasing punishments here in the USA has been shown to be thoroughly ineffective. I hate to say it, but we should consider making drugs legal here, control their manufacture, regulate their distribution and have a robust treatment program for drug users who want to quit. Then the cartels would have no reason to exist.
1
Much of Mexico was a failed state long before the drug gangs went wild. An extremely wealth country in resources, Mexico has had big problems with environmental destruction, poverty, corruption, slavery, and violence for centuries. Consider the devastation of forests, rivers, seas; poverty so extreme that people will die trying to escape it--consider the countless bodies lying in our southern deserts; the use of forced labor especially on farms, and even now how wealthy people buy Indian children to use as domestic servants; recall pre-Columbian mass human sacrifice, skull racks, recorded violence by Spaniards and Indians against Indians, and in its recent insanely cruel, bloody rebellions/revolutions/dope wars. Add to that mix some long traditions of crooked politicians, cops and military people on the take, and shudder at what they have on the other side of our beautiful wall. However, my visits to Mexico over the last fifty years have been wonderful with great scenery, food, culture, and people--except for the crooked border officials and cops extorting me while I was driving. Now though, I'd be afraid to go even though I know people who drive there and live there say it's fine, while others tell me they are afraid to go out at night, that narcos tell them what to grow on their farms, that kidnappers are snatching people for ransom. The Mexican government is a failed one.
1
These cartels would not exist if they did not have ready customers here in the US.
Legalize manage, and tax these drugs; Offer help to addicts who want and desperately need it.
2
I do not understand Mr. B.L: Stephens. He "speaks with a former intelligence official"- american I suppose- to know what to do with the situation in Mexico? Otherwise Mexico will be like Iraq before the surge? As if they were similar countries. They are not of course. And as if the surge had work in Iraq.
Aside for trump's ignorance the US is a culture of violence, we have more guns than anywhere else in the world. We have so many mass shootings we are a bit numb to gun violence and our customary response from our leaders is "our prayers are with the victims families". So there does not seem to be any sense of urgency to assist our neighbors to the south since we are unwilling to deal with our own gun violence. As many others have pointed out, we need to legalize drugs, have them dispensed by pharmacies under the direction of a physician to drug users/abusers and the Mexican cartels would dry up financially.
3
@Steve The cartels are a one stop shop for crime. They are the Mafia on steroids. The Mafia didn't disappear after Prohibition ended. The Cartels don't just sell drugs in the US. They sell worldwide.
If drugs were legalized in the US the Cartels would still be doing well in extortion, kidnapping, gun dealing, prostitution and human trafficking, money laundering, murder for hire, loan sharking, gambling, and several other "businesses" that are the bread and butter of any significant organized crime group.
Whenever an acquaintance talks about illicit drug use I remind them that they are responsible for the human misery associated with drug demand around the world. Like Trump they haven’t given it much thought but perhaps, unlike Trump, they may change their point of view.
Fiddling while the Constitution burns again? Which will be declared a failed state first, Bret? Mexico or the GOP-led USA?
3
Wait a minute. Not one mention of what I presume - and correctly me if I'm wrong - is fueling all this violence: money. Money from illicit drugs. Heroin. Meth. Mota (mostly illicit, but also smartly legalized in places in the U.S.). Fentynal. You name it. And who is consuming all these drugs? Americans. Americans with their bottomless appetite for this junk. Pity my Mexican neighbors who just want to live and work peacefully.
1
"Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States."
--Porforio Diaz
Most of Mexico's problems have been caused by the United States. The sad story goes back to President James K. Polk, who ordered American troops to invade Mexico and forced its government to cede a huge area of the country that later became the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California. The next villain was President Woodrow Wilson, who intervened and supported corrupt leaders, especially Venustanio Carranza. Then came the racist bureaucrat, Harry J. Anslinger,who became head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and made drugs like marijuana illegal, thus forcing up the price of these drugs and creating a lucrative market for gangsters.
There have been great leaders of Mexico including Emiliano Zapata and Lazaro Cardenas. Lopez-Obrador is turning out to be a fine and honest president.
To help Mexico, the U.S. should get rid of its tariffs, make addictive drugs legal and thus unprofitable, and create a Marshall Plan for Mexico.
2
This Writer never has never met a “Military Action” he wouldn’t support. Please, Sir, tell us ALL about your own experiences as a Soldier, Sailor or Airman. I’m dying to hear ALL the details.
Sad.
Mexico is and has always been a faux state going back to Hernan Cortés' colonization of the Aztec Empire.
A law, promulgated in 2003, requires the state to offer all of its services to its indigenous citizens in their mother tongues, but in practice this is not yet the case. Note that, as defined by mutual intelligibility, the number of spoken languages in Mexico is much greater than the 63 national languages, because National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI) counts distinct ethnic groups for the purposes of political classification.
For instance, the Mixtec are a single ethnicity and therefore count as a single language for governmental an legal purposes, but there are a dozen distinct Mixtec dialect regions, each of which includes at least one variety that is not mutually intelligible with those of the other dialect regions.
Ethnologue counts 52 varieties of Mixtec that require separate literature.
Ethnologue currently counts 282 indigenous languages currently spoken in Mexico, plus a number of immigrant languages
It’s all about the $$$ the cartels can make off the huge market we have created in the US for their products, e.g., heroin, meth, cocaine, and cannabis. The one irony is that there are still a large number of states that haven’t legalized cannabis which just keeps them in the game on that front.
2
Imagine that the US somehow manages to seal off all drug trafficking from South and Central America into the US. Without having access to the US, the cartels will be left with very few customers. They will immediately start going after each other, in order to capture more of a small, shrinking, market.
The cartels are actively operating in the United States; the world's biggest drug market. If the US is in fact interested in complete destruction of the cartels, it can and it should start the "war" against them on its own territory.
Once the cartels are defeated in the US and their market is taken away from them, they will become extremely weak. Then Mexico will have no problem finishing them off.
The deep complicity of the U.S. in our own drug use and availability of guns only compounds the utterly wretched contempt of the Trump government for its serious economic problems. These facts are not addressed in Mr. Stephens' pharisaical contempt for a nation that is, in fact, mired in some of the outrages he exposes here. One question that lingers in my mind is the question why the family evidently targetted in the recent outrage belongs to a religious group whose leaders in the U.S. have expressed their own contempt for Mr. Trump.
I also think that nibbling at the cartel problem by ever so slowly voting out a corrupt government isn't leading to peace and civil order in Mexico. This is also true in the Northern Triangle of Central America. As civilian death rates soar, our easily sawed through border wall isn't going to stem the guaranteed mass exodus from the south.
I agree an Iraq-style surge could make inroads toward dismantling the cartels, but I don't expect a failing, corrupt Mexican system to take on the quest soon, if ever.
Trump is willing to dispatch our troops to protect "our interests" (aka money) in Syrian oil fields. But, he, or the next President, needs to understand protecting "our interests" via border security needs interception far from the actual wall.
In fact, it may require superseding ineffectual governments via cartel-busting American military action. Such action may have to forced on countries who decline such help, or as you say, "Iraq-style".
Yes, it would be a giant "Imperialist" move, contrary to the Isolationist agenda being touted currently. American lives may be lost, but this is finally a war worth waging, as the spiraling civilian disorder in Mexico, Honduras, etc. poses an existential threat to the USA.
Spending billions to harden an easily breached wall is wasteful and ineffective, but waiting behind the wall for the problem to arrive is an even worse strategy.
1
Who buys the drugs ?
2
I don't see legalizing all drugs in the US as a realistic option, but I wonder what would happen if Mexico legalized drugs. It surely would not help us, but it might help Mexico: One--they could generate tax revenue. Two--the drug trade could come out of the shadows and be more closely regulated. Three--The illegal drug trade would lose revenue while mainstream Mexican businesses would profit. Four--it would make the jobs of the Mexican police forces and military cheaper, safer, and easier.
It's worth a thought. For them anyway.
2
I take it that "the impunity rate" and "the clearance rate" are the same thing. Too many people "looking the other way." That's not what we need here in America where our "clearance rate" is over 60%.
One cannot force courage on another country/culture. However, we can close the door. Emphatically! In the early days of our nascent country we were faced with the crisis of the British and their allies descending from Canada and burning and pillaging. Public sentiment quickly turned against the British. The Americans united.
So, if anyone is wondering how the GOP can still win elections with such abysmal leaders and rock bottom poll numbers, the answer is: immigration. The public being polled is too polite to admit it.
4
Lets talk about guns. The state does not have a monopoly on force, and the distribution of lethal guns ensures that armed thugs hold the state and municipalities hostage.
Where is the theoretical "freedom" and "liberty" that an armed citizenry protects? Guns just protect those who operate through chaos and oppose strengthening the rule of law.
What is the U.S. role in arming Mexican cartels? What is the role of our dubious 2nd Amendment in ensuring a steady supply?
Perhaps it is time to give meaning to the amendment's restraining introductory clause: " A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ..."
3
A lot of comments saying legalization is the answer. Maybe but probably not. The cartels are addicted to their power and money. If drug trafficking becomes unprofitable they will replace it with extortion and human trafficking. And we cannot legalize humans.
2
@Steve Elliott
Legalization is a good first step.
There are a number of ways to use disincentives to discourage young men from joining the cartels.
2
Why are their drug cartels and gang wars?
Our insatiable demand for from drugs - from
Latin America via Mexico
and China via Mexico
Meth from Mexico, precursors from China
Take the profits out of dealing drugs.
Take the money we spend on interdiction, drug agents and police, courts, attorneys and prisons and spend it on treating addiction.
Not all of Mexico's problems go away but a huge dislocation is taken out of society.
The only way to end this conflict is to legalize drugs. If there is demand— and there will always be demand— supply will follow.
5
If the demand for drugs is removed, the cartels will find another profit center - most likely extortion and human trafficking.
1
And most importantly, the hundreds of American companies that for many decades have been exploiting Mexican workers, hand in hand with the Mexican wealthy, need to be compelled (since clearly they will not do it voluntarily) to pay Mexican workers a much higher, living, wage. That would go a very long way to upending the control the cartels have on Mexico. AMLO has a finger on a better approach, but even he has not roused the people to challenge the American companies to raise their wages.
2
Legalizing drugs (all of them) would cut out the economic base of the cartels.
Since the repeal of Prohibition we haven't had bootlegging gangs or much organized crime in the US.
3
Surely there is irony when a conservative laments a failed state given that conservatism has been mostly about weakening government and faith in it.
8
Just like the United States, Mexico obviously needs stricter gun laws that limit the use and ownership of assault-style weapons, smaller magazines, and licensure/insurance for all gun owners. That would work, right?
3
My last duty station was at Ft Bliss in El Paso, Tx. The sister city, Ciudad de Juarez, is so dangerous that its rumored that the drug cartel leadership lives on the El Paso side of the border. We could spend a trillion dollars on a wall, border agents, and technology still not make a dent on the drug and human trafficking that flows from Mexico. The wall is a nice bumper sticker campaign pledge to put on the back of your truck. But doesn't address underlying long term issues that won't be solved with a campaign rally chant of, 'Build a Wall!' The cartels act as a shadow government where the locals look to for their solutions rather than local city government. The sheer amount of money from this lucrative criminal enterprise has the ability to bend law enforcement and politicians alike on both sides of the border. Like the author alluded to...Trump cares about staying in power and using any group or country to achieve that goal.
6
It is amazing the read the comments excusing murder of Mexicans as 'normal and acceptable'. Even worse, is the blame on Trump, as if the killing of innocent people in Mexico started in January 2017. When NYC's murder count exceeded 2500/year the residents voted for a candidate who promised to change that. Less than 30 years later that has clearly occurred. When will the Mexican government decide their people have suffered enough and also make tough decisions to confront criminals, and clean up their country?
7
The only way the drug cartels will be defeated is from within through a Mexican Crime Stoppers that offers a very hefty rewards to people who give information about drug smuggling routes, location of drug tunnels, where drugs are warehoused or drug shipments crossing the border.
A reward of up to $100,000 or more would be given based on what the information nets.
Rewards of $1 million or more are given for arrests of drug cartel leaders.
An 800-type number in Mexico would make this Crime Stoppers Program accessible in Mexico where Mexican workers like mechanic or restaurant employees can call and give information. In doing so, they are assigned a secret ten-digit number and a code name.
Callers give the code name, case number, and details about the information when contacting Crime Stoppers.
The Crime Stoppers telephone operators is housed in secret locations on U.S. military bases.
If the reward is paid, there would be different places where DEA agents would only go to Juarez, Matamoras, or Tijuana to take the reward money to the informant. The person receiving the money would be given a phony name and told to wear a specific piece of clothing to the location for identification. Mexican locations can change within hours to avoid detection.
This will increase drug seizures, intelligence, and arrests, and at the very least, create paranoia/suspicion within the cartels.
In a poor country, there will be a lot of tips and drug intelligence generated.
1
I won't be spending my winter in Baja this year. My time or my money. Even in Americanized Todos Santos there have been more murders and an increase of thefts. We are targets there in our Canadian cars and white skin. We look wealthy to the locals even when camping. There are other warm countries to visit and enjoy. Countries where violence is not a way of life and the citizens are not so angry and frustrated.
6
This perspective is very naive and uninformed. For starters, if you want to understand Mexico you would be best avoiding "elder statesmen" as they are the ones who learned to live and thrive within this system. You won't get good information from them.
I lived in Mexico from 2006 to 2016. Whether Mexico is a failed state or not depends entirely on definitions. If "failed state" to you means that it's institutions are dysfunctional, it has been at some level a failed state for a long time, and ironically the cartels are a response to its failures as much as its cause. If "failed state" to you means an unstable government, it is not a failed state at all, it is probably more stable than the US. That doesn't mean it's good, it just means that it can continue like this for a long time.
You can't approach Mexico with a black hat/white hat mentality where there are good guys and bad guys. The percentage of people who are able to become politically successful without involving themselves in any way with criminal activity is shockingly low. Part of the problem is that Mexican's don't like people who are squeaky clean... culturally they tend to admire people who are crafty and have figured out how to come out on top, period.
I don't have the solution to the awful cartel situation, but I can tell you more violence is not going to fix it, and any government operations will typically be for show. This will end when the people stand up, and we are not there yet.
2
I find it hard to believe that Mexican security forces were "outnumbered" and "outgunned" when they tried to arrest El Chapo's son. The Mexicans need a security force that is unchallenged anywhere in Mexico. They must control there territory. If that requires substantial military assistance from the United States that must be given.
The prisons and the courts also must be secured. There is no other option for Mexico. If the Mexicans need to hire Cuban security experts they should do that.
1
During alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. Young men died every day on inner-city streets while battling over turf. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have gone on treatment. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally the economy collapsed. Sound familiar?
Should the safety and freedom of the rest of us be compromised because of the few who cannot control themselves?
4
Stephens partakes in the idea of neo-liberal hegemony. We can beat back illiberal forces in the world through more power projection - in the case of Mexico, a ramped up counter-insurgency campaign that would exceed the modest limits of the Bush and Obama era Merida Initiative funding. But none of this addresses the economic marginalization that is a root cause of the criminality in Mexico. And that economic marginalization stems from the prioritization of transnational economic interests with respect to agriculture, mining, tourism, manufacturing, real estate development and finance. Expansion of transnational economic activities takes place through violent displacement of the poor. And, actually, organized crime helps with this by driving the poor from valued economic spaces. They are often the shock troops of neo-liberalism. But Stephens is blind to all of this. He just communicates with a narrow circle of elite interests in Mexico and the provides, as a result, a misdiagnosis of Mexico's woes.
5
Finally, someone at the NYT is taking notice. In just 11 months the Chavez-like president has brought the Mexican economy to a full stop, taken over the Supreme Court, fired top bureaucrats, ordered the army to not respond to cartel violence, and so many more disastrous actions that will ultimately affect the social well being of North America.
Certainly, someone in Washington is very pleased to see such explosive erosion of governance as this will serve him well in 2020 ."I told you so, it's the wall."
Bret Stephens is right. "Donald Trump might not care about Mexico, but you should. Even if we build a wall, no crisis will ever respect a border."
3
Go on the internet and compare the crime rate in the U.S. v. Mexico and the statistics will shock. Mexico and the U.S. are about the same. I guess the U.S. is also about to become a failed state, also. Not surprising, given all the guns everywhere. In Mexico gun ownership is against the law.
2
After reading Mr. Stephens' articles for many years, I know what to expect. If the subject is international politics, there are countries that they never do anything wrong and then there are countries that everything they do is wrong.
When an issue involves the US and another country, Mr. Stephens immediately points finger at the other country, but never at the US. That may be patriotism, but is it journalism?
The activities and atrocities of US-Mexican drug-cartels is a case in point. One has to wonder:
1. If Mr. Stephens has ever noticed that the drug cartels operate on both sides of the US-Mexico border and there are as many US citizens involved in their operations as there are Mexicans (there are in fact more Americans involved than Mexicans, if one includes drug users)?
2. If Mr. Stephens has ever compared the number of drug-related killings in the US with those in Mexico?
Lord forbid, if he ever does such a thing, he may arrive at a rather troubling conclusion: "The US is on the Fast Track Toward Becoming a Failed State."
5
@Eddie B. “There are as many citizens...”. I suppose you have data to support this? Before you compare drug related killings, why don’t you try comparing number of citizens?
Experience teaches that the masses must be given for all difficult and complicated processes, a simple, easily grasped explanation."
-Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon.
The problem is drugs, and America is the biggest user of drugs. Legalize, legalize,legalize. It is the only solution. There is no other.
5
Drugs and avocados.
What this article is forgetting is the part where THE CARTELS are threatening the president. Just look at his facial expressions as he turns down the help of the president of the U.S. He knows that the moment he actually accepts the help. The cartels are going after him and his family because they have nothing to lose. Just look at how involved the the drug lords are with the presidents and how they are the ones that pay for the political campaigns. Yes, Corruption is the main reason why Mexico is not able to go back to the amazing state it used to be. I honestly do wish the United States would go and start a war in Mexico vs the Cartels. The police officers and government are on the cartels payroll.
4
The GDP of Mexico in the last quarter was 0.1%-- think about it. If the GDP in the USA is less than 1.0 % it is considered an emergency. US lawmakers need to get the NAFTA (or what ever they need to call it) approved and functioning. The prosperity in Mexico over the last decades has given rise to a genuine middle class, provided opportunity and reversed the flow of migrants. More Mexicans were coming home than leaving. The incompetence of the Trump administration is on squalid display and there are real victims in the US and in the rest of the world. The LeBarón Mormons, in response to Trump's "How can we help" comment , was to stop the flow of heavy weapons into Mexico from the USA and reduce demand for the cartel narcotics.
Maybe we need the wall to protect Mexico from corrosive influence of the USA?
4
Maybe we should clean up US corruption before judging other countries.
Our Supreme Court vacated the criminal charges against a corrupt governor because it ruled that politicians accepting “gifts” from someone and then arranging meetings that benefitted the donor are normal, acceptable parts of governance.
Our oligarchs have near total control over the political system, mainly via a system of legalized bribery which we call campaign finance.
And this just scratches the surface of corruption in the US that is not considered corruption by the people involved in the corruption and their media supporters.
2
It IS Trump's fault. Between rallying for more hate & guns and walling-in THEIR "infestation" which, of course, has absolutely nothing with the exclusivity of OUR "perfect" love, tiki-torch/carrying bullies unduly survive over more peace-effective Darwinian efforts to tolerantly adapt to change.
The framers of our Constitution NEVER meant for "a well regulated militia" to spearhead the manufacturing of 70% of the guns used in Mexican drug cartels. And until our border becomes a destination unto itself -- a linear resort city from Gulf to Baja -- rendering neither side better than the other, the loathsome war-monger Bret will, I bet, continue to fret.
(The linear resort can be, for example, a Lenten retort on memorializing "Stations of the [border] Cross." A bible/dystopia of game-theorized win/wins on perpetuating humanity's "Last Judgment" before it fatally counts.)
The thought of legalizing drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth is wrong-headed, preposterous. Pushing back against disribution of drugs like these may well be a sisyphean task but to abandon the effort wholesale is akin to throwing great swaths of humanity in the bin.
The idea that trading drug cartels for corporate drug pushers would be an improvement is shockingly mistaken. I hope we never see that come to pass. I'm sure the dead-eyed analysts, corporate interests and venture cap would relish the chance to squeeze out a whole new industry faster than you can imagine...a Purdue Pharma on every block. They would partner with these murderous cartels, legitimize operations and grow more. No.
We need a collaborative relationship with Mexico to curb violence and drugs, but Trump is not capable of executing such a scenario. The corruption in Mexico seems to have grown during his tenure and speaks to his failure to acknowledge and act to protect our mutual interests because of the idealogical biases of his base. The idea of Mexico failing as a state should concern us much more than immigration.
It may be that being a colonial arm of Spain set Mexico on a path of political corruption as a cultural feature. We experienced a similar condition with organized crime here and met it with resistance, continue to through policy and law, and we can support Mexico's internal efforts, not militarily but economically and culturally. Nothing nudges culture and ideology more than prosperity.
4
@Name
I don't agree with everything you say, but agree 100% that legalization is not the solution. Maybe legalization works in places that are not the US, but that does not mean they will work here. We have a culture of excess, and when drugs become more plentiful, we as a society tend to use them more with very damaging effects.
@Name
Legalizing drugs would be done the same way as with marijuana: with regulation and taxation.
It would undermine the power of the cartels, which would benefit Mexico, not least by removing some of the incentive for refugees to flee to the US.
It would benefit the US by slowing illegal immigration, drastically cut drug-related crime, and put drug abuse on the track of treatment instead of criminality.
Maintaining the illegality of drugs makes one wonder: who profits from it? Cartels and politicians.
Who is harmed by illegality? Ordinary people.
You can't compare heroin, cocaine, meth, fentanyl etc. to marijuana when it comes to legalization. That you lead with that says everything.
We have the ability to elevate treatment over criminality without resorting to commodifying dangerous substances and making the cartel our business partner. Look at what legal opioids have done here and you want to add heroin, crack, coke to the all-you-can-eat $5 buffet?
We have the capacity to expand treatment now. We can expand judicial diversion programs where treatment is the goal and the sentence for many, if not most. We can reform our judicial treatment of addicts and are seeing this develop. You want force the issue and burden that system with a deluge of new addicts for a process that struggles for it's successes already?
I would rather fight to keep this garbage out of the lives of ordinary people (you know, our children, spouses, grandchildren) and know it's a never ending effort than give up on those people. Cartel violence will still never hold a candle to the loss of life and well-being directly attributable to drugs. We already let millions die of legal drugs (tobacco, alcohol, rx) to keep the mafiosa out and call it corporate interest, and you would open the floodgate on all of it?
I guess there're cynics and go-getters who want to make this poison accessible, turn a business opportunity and doubly extract the blood from the stone (I mean people) with weak regulations and taxes. Win, Win!
What an appalling idea.
Mexico is not a failed state. Is is a state that is inflicted and on the verge of destruction because of the USA's incompetence in stopping the drug trade. We in the US are destroying Mexico. But then we've been on that path for decades.
2
Dear NYT readers,
A Mexican here, writing from Mexico City. I've read with interest your comments. And I was happy to find in most of them a true preoccupation with the well-being of Mexico and its people (which well being has important consequences in the US, particularly in the border states), as well as well thought ideas about the ways in which the US contributes to the crisis in Mexico.
I am saddened to recognize that most of what is portrayed in the US media is correct. Mexico is going through a terrible public security crisis. I am worried about the safety of my family on a daily basis. Although the new government has not created this crisis (it stems from decades of corruption and incompetence), I am afraid the new president is not only incompetent, but he is also helplessly stubborn to recognize that his strategy is not working.
The best way I can think now for the US to assist Mexico is to control the flow of high power guns to Mexico. It is whit US guns that Mexicans are being slaughtered every single day (including the LeBarón family). Please request your politicians to take measures to stop the traffic of firearms into Mexico.
Thank you for your solidarity and support. Be assured that there are many in Mexico that love our country, respect and appreciate the friendship of America (notwithstanding all of our problems) and are willing to work hard and compromise our own safety to create a better country and world for our children. Please stand by us!
22
I guess Stephens gets credit from not going where the "Iraq-style 'surge'" had me thinking he was going...
But do we want to talk about how the failed War on Drugs plays into this? Maybe we need to change our own strategy of treating drug use/addiction as criminal? Maybe most recreational drugs should be legal? Maybe it should be harder for these cartels to arm up on our side of the border?
This column is long on gripes and short on solutions. I somewhat doubt that doubling down on the "more military" strategy will get us anywhere. Focus on the demand.
2
Mr. Stephens points out to two different incidents just as President Trump would, that is, without digging at all for information about them. Sure, the drug cartels are a lethal cancer for the country, but in the incident in Culiacan the army was not surpassed in firepower and manpower, but instead, the criminals of the cartel threatened to blow up scores of innocent people, including the families of the military elements that were part of the operation. Furthermore, the LeBaron family in Sonora and Chihuahua had been accused for years of stealing the water from neighboring communities, and these incidents had already turned violent. Of course, nothing justifies killing children, which is why US republicans, caring so much for children, offered military aid to Mexico... oh wait... somehow the name of Sandy Hook Elementary School came to mind...
1
If one mass murder (coincidentally of members of a religious sect with dual citizenship) now makes Mexico a failed state, what are we in the U.S. with our record of gun violence just as bad? Just because it’s not cartels shooting people here doesn’t make it any better.
3
Let's not forget to credit America with providing the weapons necessary for cartels to murder innocents. A large portion of our assault weapons have somehow found their way into the hands of large criminal enterprises that provide the great drug flow to our citizens.
1
A better version of Calderon's strategy will not work.
Organized crime is simply too strong and has penetrated all levels of government.
It's time to consider complete legalization of all currently illegal drugs (perhaps excluding Fentanyl) in the U.S., Canada and EU, in order to take away the gang's lucrative markets.
At the same time, Mexico will need an amnesty and reconciliation program—something like South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission or Colombia's peace deal with FARC—to incentivize organized crime soldiers and capos to take up legal careers.
This should be accompanied by heightened efforts by the U.S. to support Mexico's legal economic development. This article disparages Trump's USMCA (NAFTA 2.0), but one important feature of that agreement is that it would raise wages dramatically for Mexicans who work in the automotive supply chain.
Drug legalization alone would simply push Mexican gang members to do more of their other illegal activities: kidnapping, extortion, sex trafficking, etc.
These policy prescriptions are morally repugnant, giving the stamp of legitimacy to dangerous drugs and violent criminals. But everything else has been tried. It's time to hold our collective noses and devise a strategy that could really work.
1
Cuidado gringos, you are not the vigilantes of the world. Just because the victims happened to be American citizens doesn't give the US any right to intervene in our country. We are working to legalize weed, and start treating the root of the problem, not create even more conflicts. More "war on drugs" is not the answer, and all these years of increasing violence is proof that such an approach has failed!
3
The US should buy Mexico.
Appoint the drug lords to the highest positions in the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Why not?
trump would like it.
(I was joking.)
Seriously, it is time to look in the mirror.
Who is buying the drugs?
US citizens.
The US needs to help prevent people from getting hooked on drugs, treat the people who are hooked, and cut the rug out from under the Mexican cartels by drying up their market.
1
Little argument with this one. Just an observation or two.
First, the drug cartels succeed because someone buys their drugs and most are not purchased by Mexicans. They move north.
Second, as a Times columnist pointed out the other day, the cartels' advanced weaponry comes across their norther border. We supply it. ( An interesting equivalence: Think of all the faux power big guns can instantly confer on their possessors as another handy way to get high...so if we were to step back and look at the big picture, it might show us trading guns for drugs.)
In short, the line on the map that Mr. Trump would like to reinforce with steel and concrete is a pathetic attempt to deny the reality that most human problems (in which I would include both human-caused environomental degradation and the normalization of corruption) are international in scope and therefore require international cooperation to solve.
Unfortunately much of the world (led by our own failing state?) wants to build walls, hunker down in their comfortable ethnically-purified blankets and hope that all those problems will just go away.
History tells us they won't.
2
Even just for the purely selfish argument of trade and national strategic interest, the US should force the Mexican government to apply a joint-force with the best military and intelligence available. The USA doesn´t want to end up having a Syria-like neighbor in a few years time!
The US consumer demand for drugs finances the Mexican drug cartels, and the US sales of military-style weapons arm them.
Brett, it seems that both Mexico and the US are doomed by institutional crises and leadership deficits!
2
Excuse me but let me point out that Irak is not saved. Arguably, they were better off being led by a brutal dictator before the war with America than after being 'saved.' Mexico has a lot of problems, that is undeniable, and the hugs not bullets policy clearly doesn't work. But advocating for the militarization of all security forces is too extreme. It is frankly a Machiavellian scheme for dealing with the problem: maybe it would end the cartels but it would mean death, instability and horror for the Mexican population. I think they should go after the money, first and foremost. And then the weapons. Disarm them and make them broke and they lose all power.
2
This article is so iill-informed, it boggles the mind. I'm not surprised that a former essayist for the Wall Street Journal, which has over the decades betrayed a profound ignorance about Mexico, would come to the perverse conclusions he has on his "working visit" (whatever that can mean) to that amazing country from which my wife was born and raised. President Lopez Obrador has been in office less than a year and he is somehow expected in that abbreviated timeframe to repair all the horrendous damage done by his predecessors (Calderon should at minimum be hung by his thumbs for his abominable approach -- the man has blood on his hands for the tens of thousands of innocent lives lost by his stupidly aggressive approach with no real strategy; and Pena Nieto was a poster child for endemic corruption). Moreover, anyone who knows what's what knows that the situation with the LaBaron clan and drug cartels is far, far more complex than what is depicted here and what has been portrayed by mainstream media. What is needed is a "surge" of common sense, which 'AMLO' is displaying against all external pressures and all attempts to make a caricature-ish buffoon of him. And if you really want to attenuate the cartels, get them where it really hurts -- legalize drugs. It won't eliminate the cartels, but it will make them a shell of what they once were.
3
I feel terrible for the people of Mexico and agree with many comments here that the war on drugs in the U.S. is a major contributing factor. However, on a selfish note, my main concern is that the U.S. is on a fast track towards a failed state. "Rule of Law, Rule of Law, and Rule of Law" are becoming major challenges here. Where are you, Republican Senators? Things are getting scary here.
1
Mexico's problem is money, not pesos but good old fashioned greenbacks. Politicians are paid off in U.S. dollars. Where do these dollars come from? The U.S. is paying for the destruction of peaceful life in Mexico by buying illegal drugs. Arms dealers are selling guns to the cartels for dollars, banks are laundering money for cartels for a cut of the profits. Mexico has a big problem with corruption of politicians the police and even the military. The U.S.A. is the primary enabler.
Here is a deal for Donald Trump: Mexico will pay for the wall, will even build it themselves, beautiful and all, if it/US can stop all the drug money and guns flowing south. No drug money and military grade guns, no Cartels overwhelming power, and Mexico rule of law can breathe and have a chance.
Of course, given fake Trump deal prowess and total lack of understanding responsibilities, it will never happen.
It all goes back to trafficking in illegal drugs on both sides of the Mexican and US border. Feeding America’s drug habit is at the root of gang violence in both Mexico and the US. Education, better jobs, available healthcare, mental health services and rehabilitation for addition in the US are the solutions. First, however, must come the election of local, state and national governments that put the health and welfare of citizens above political considerations. The US sending troops to round up Mexican criminals armed with high powered weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US represents the height of fool hardy US public policy.
1
With a spineless president, widespread corruption throughout it's justice system and an army that is easily defeated by the narcos things in Mexico look grim. Mexico has become a narco state and it is incapable of protecting it's population from violence and extortion. In a nation with so many human and natural resources, corruption and weak leaders are destroying a great nation.
Widespread inequality and corruption are the main causes of Mexico's woes. But these cannot be attacked until the narcos are brought to heal. Mexico's President has to put as stop to the lawlessness even as he works to deal with the inequalities.
@Ferniez
Regardless of what Lopez Obrador does, the only way to begin to undermine the cartels is to legalize drugs in both countries.
Depriving the cartels of their major source of income will also curtail their ability to bribe members of the government and military.
Then, social programs in Mexico (which already has many) as well as job opportunities must be increased to make cartel membership less attractive to poor young men.
It sure is easy for Iraq invasion cheerleaders to forget the consequences of the actions they demand in foreign lands.
Perhaps Mr. Stephens needs a reminder of what happened after the Great Surge saved Iraq.. the Neo-con project that is, in the minds of cable TV viewers with 5 minute attention spans.
How about a first-class flight to Mosul? Or perhaps Ramadi?
What Mr. Stephens and his brave anonymous Official are advocating is a Mexican Augosto Pinochet. What they will get - and one suspects they know this perfectly well -is a North American Afghanistan.
question: why is the connection NEVER publicly made between doing (name illegal drug of choice) and the mayhem that supports that choice?
Why don't users GET IT???
2
It is really quite disgusting to see President Trump implicated in an issue that has long preceded him. Also Mexico has been a failed state for decades. Trump's immigration policies aren't new either. Just stop with the anti trump stuff.
1
From a distance, and this is from an American, not a Mexican resident, it looks like the Governments, Federal and State, and local, don't have enough power. I don't know what it would take, but Mexico has to take charge of its country. The difficulty is that the underfunded government has to go against criminal networks funded by my dumb fellow Americans flooding their bank accounts with money. How about we all stop taking dangerous drugs? That would probably help.
Thanks for this, Bret.
Wise words. Good council. Generous intent, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, I'm sure.
Any ideas for the failing state just north of your subject here?
1
It already is a failed state.
1
Americans were killed in Mexico. The US government can go there and arrest the killers,whether it is a cartel or a few dozen.They need military intervention by US forces and we need to have US military on the border,both sides if necessary. Our government does this in every country around the world ,Mexico is no different.
3
There has been none, or very little, rule of law in Mexico for decades.
The federales and the cartels run everything, and even as an “upscale” tourist they can throw you in prison just to give you a “mordida” ( the bite, make you pay the federales to let you go).
I stopped visiting when I drove down with friends from l.a. and after a beautiful sunset meal, the youngest in the group (16) went missing. I went to the federales and threw a New Yorker fit, they still tried to shake me down for money, but the New Yorker in me was in full control. Once they realized they had a “problem person” that would not listen to reason, would not negotiate a ransom price, they brought out the 16 year old California surfer. He was worse for wear, but alive.
I never returned to Mexico. They are a failed state, and I am lucky my New Yorker attitude did not get my friends and I killed by the federales.
1
Stephens quotes a Mexican official as saying one of Mexico’s biggest concerns is “Rule of law. Rule of law. And rule of law.” This is something the US should be most concerned with as we descend into lawlessness with the Trump administration lying and defying Congressional subpoenas, court orders and election results when Republicans lose. And that’s not even mentioning Trump’s extortion of Ukraine in order to help his re-election campaign. And who knows what else Trump is doing that is illegal that we do even know about. Oh yeah, Trump’s violations of the emoluments laws! I’ve never been so afraid of the viability of our country and democracy!
There is an epidemic of drugs flowing up from South and Central America into the US and guns flowing in the opposite direction.
The second amendment enthusiasts have made the jobs of policemen extremely risky not just in the US but in South and central America as well.
Does the pleasure of duck shooting or deer hunting justify putting the lives of so many people at risk?
Let us assume for a moment that the military surge proposed by Mr Stephens removes all the guns from the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
How long will it take before the gusher of guns in the US market replenishes it back to current levels? Under existing US gun laws, it is not possible to stop law abiding citizens from selling their automatic weapons to cartel middlemen at a small profit.
2
Bret--
The much touted "surge" did not eliminate Iraq's criminal militias, nor did it end brutal violence. On a scale of 1 - 4, where 1 is safe and 4 is do not go, Iraq today is a 4 according to the US State Department whereas Mexico is a level 2:
Travel Advisory for Iraq - Level 4 - Do Not Travel:
"Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, and armed conflict. U.S. citizens in Iraq are at high risk for violence and kidnapping. Numerous terrorist and insurgent groups are active in Iraq and regularly attack both Iraqi security forces and civilians. Anti-U.S. sectarian militias may also threaten U.S. citizens and Western companies throughout Iraq. Attacks by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) occur in many areas of the country, including Baghdad."
Travel Advisory for Mexico - Level 2 - Exercise Increased Caution:
"Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory.
"Violent crime, such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery, is widespread.
The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in many areas of Mexico as travel by U.S. government employees to these areas is prohibited or significantly restricted."
I don't understand why you think that more violence on the ground from the Mexican military is going to solve problems when our boots on the ground in the Middle East haven't halted Middle Eastern violence.
"On a working visit here, I have dinner with one of the country’s elder statesmen and listen to him describe its greatest challenges. He names three: 'Rule of law. Rule of law. And rule of law.' "
Reading this paragraph, one might think Brett Stephens had sat down for a dinner with one of the US elder statesmen (dislosure: I do not mean Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush) in DC.
It then becomes clear that he means Mexico. And that he advocates for "a surge". Iraq shows how that "surge" strategy fails. So let's not force such failure upon Mexico, which, as others among my fellow commenters note, is not the "failed state" some on the US-side of the border believe it is.
There is plenty of failure here, right in front of our door steps, in our Republic, of which I am not so sure whether its people will keep it come November 2020...
We Americans caused many of these problems for Mexico. We have always blamed the other country, just look at trump. I may be an American, but not a proud one.
2
Trump (for profit), Republicans (for power and profit), and the 40% (easily stirred) are gleefully leading us to the same failed state.
2
Now that a handful of Mormons (Republican voters in the US) have been killed, it is suddenly an issue. This piece is wrong on so many levels. Equating AMLO and Trump is cheap and facile, and idiotic. Mentioning Calderon and Nieto without discussing their complicity and corruption, and the corruption on every level is, to be generous, naive. The guns and the money (for drugs) come from the US. There are solutions on the north side of the border. Meanwhile we here in Mexico are "so far from God and so near to the USA."
6
America is the one with drug problem and Mexico is the "failed state." What a joke.
4
Send 25000 armed troops to the border. And militarize it.
1
The cartels will take complete control of Mexico. There are no Mexicans intelligent or courageous enough to stop them.
1
Mexico is on it’s way to legalizing marijuana federally while our federal government stalls in the face of violence and anguish over prohibition.. but somehow the violence is all Mexico’s fault?
1
Wow! What a great idea! Look how well that surge has worked in Iraq! Here's another idea: A military draft, with journalists who promote the idea of invading Mexico, and over 45 year-old, white men earning above $80,000 a year, automatically classified 1-A!
3
Great idea, Bret! Let's use a US presence to militarize a Latin American country! We have an entire century of evidence to show this works! And absolutely does not destabilize country and lead to literal death squads! And how should we sell it? With a comparison to the famously successful US intervention in Iraq? Wow! I sure am glad you get paid six times my salary to write essays!
3
Some things never change: these guys on the hard right never met a situation that could not be "solved" with a war. Everything is war; all war, all of the time. At best, it smacks of terrible management. At worst, it is the typical "change the subject" combined with the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) factor that the hard right needs to pivot the country away from the fact that they cannot manage their way out of a wet paper bag.
Zombie ideas (those that never seem to die) like this are one reason that the Republican Party is the zombie organization that it has become. I honestly cannot believe that anybody takes this stuff seriously.
The stuff that is happening in Mexico is happening through non-state actors. It is elemental that you simply cannot defeat a non-state actor with conventional means. Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Why? the non-state actors just wait you out.
Eisenhower knew this, which is why he threw money at Vietnam (underwriting the French), rather than sending in troops. But nobody learned their lesson, so we had the Vietnam War. And now Iraq and Afghanistan. Enough with the surge/regime change business. We need to get our own house in order. Meanwhile, let's try a little diplomacy - for once.
Lightweight piece....A little more context would have helped...The victims were American colonists killed by American guns wielded by American drug market enabled criminals & thugs in the era of a feckless American President who "doesn't care" about Mexico.
2
God lord. What - a 2,000 word screed on Mexico and its failings without one mention of the raison d'etre for drug cartels - AMERICAN DRUG USERS.....
Drug cartels in my adopted country live to serve the greed and need of drug addicted Americans. And since it's very difficult to buy weapons in Mexico, guess who provides the thousands and thousands of guns used to fight for their share of drug-addicted Americans - America, that's who provides the guns.
So Stephens before you smug and smirk at Mexico and its failures with a nod toward your odious, lying president, how about you go take a look in the mirror to see which country is at the root of this problem.
I live in Jalisco, which is home to Next Generation, a vicious, murderous cartel. Clean up your own house, so my home can be safer.....
2
In reality, Mexico lost its way when it built its economy on the kindness of strangers. Unlike China, where ownership is distributed among its people, Mexico is simply a labor force for multinationals who aren't partners and are there to get cheap labor and proximity to a market north and south.
The Mexican people may be led by feckless leaders but they are ruled by foreign economic forces - which includes the drug lords too. In function and agenda both business models are eerily similar. Mexico's decision not to launch an indigenously owned economy is the intractible source of its problem.
91
@ijarvis
European predators of the 15th and 16th century just got a faster start slaughtering, enslaving, and dispossessing the land of the New World's inhabitants. The USA has always had more going for it in natural wealth and organization than Mexico, although much of its most productive assets are to be found on top of a smoldering volcanic field that will give way sooner or later. Yes, I agree that one of Mexico's chief problems (among many) has been a failure to "launch an indigenously owned economy." Perhaps easier said than done. The forces of nature so often work in historically predeterminate unstoppable ways.
6
Wow! This comment is important to understanding all the issues goading Mexico.
4
@ijarvis
“ownership is distributed among its people”
Hillaryious!
6
Bret Stephens - the King of Chutzpah. How else does an unrepentant cheerleader for the disastrous Iraq War (and now active cheerleader for an even more disastrous war with Iran) actually bring up Iraq in the context of the terrible drug cartel violence and Mexican government (multiple governments) ineffectiveness in dealing with the drug cartels and the violence?
Also, the demand for drugs in the US and the supply of money (from selling drugs) and unlimited supply of guns from US fuels the growing death toll and violence in Mexico. Maybe Chutzpah Stephens is right with Iraq War analogy. We messed up Iraq - Saddam was our man in decade long Iran Iraq War that left million dead, Saddam used US supplied chemical weapons to kill Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, we launched an unnecessary (yes, Saddam was always a monster, but was contained after Gulf War) and disastrous war cheerled by Neocons like Stephens, Netanyahu and Saudi royal family, with false intelligence, Neocon theories about spreading democracy via war, empowered Iran, brought in Al Qaeda to Iraq where there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before 2003 (Saddam killed or jailed the jihadists), created ISIS, hell of earth in Iraq for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, millions wounded, millions made refugees, thousands of American and allied soldiers killed, tens of thousands of American soldiers physically and mentally destroyed - suicides growing to this day. Maybe we can mess up Mexico just as badly.
2
All more or less true, and so what? How does shrieking at everybody about the stupidity of the Iraq War yet again address Mexico in any way, shape or form?
this could get ugly fast. Since Mexico supplies American gangs with streets drugs all it will take is for them to start putting poison in the drugs and you will wipe out thousands of Americans very quickly. Can America please wake up?
1
They wouldn’t have to poison them, only add a percentage more fentanyl to the existing shipments and that will do it. But what motive would the cartels have to poison their customers?
3
Any country or culture with men with too much ego, machismo in the case of Mexico and Latin America, is bound to be violent, fascist, autocratic, oppressive, poor, unequal and/or corrupt. The men and their brainwashed women are the problems.
Stephens fails to mention the easiest, most obvious solution...stop feeding the Mexican cartels American guns, bullets and murder weapons.
The police chief of Tijuana, Mexico’s most violent city, has said that “nearly all” of the more than 2,000 weapons seized in the city since 2016 were American-made: AK-47s, AR-15s, Glocks, etc.
“We know those weapons come from the US because in Mexico there’s no way for people to buy them,” Marco Antonio Sotomayor said. “They buy them in places like Arizona, Nevada, because of the weak gun laws, and at gun shows. And they come through California and cross the border into Tijuana.”
Mexico has only one gun store. ONE.
It’s controlled by the army in Mexico City. The gun laws for civilians are strict, with six-month background checks and a federal registry keeping track of every weapon. Person to person firearm sales is prohibited. Calibers are restricted to .380 or less. Tijuana’s police chief said Tijuana’s proximity to the US makes it easy for smugglers to saturate the city with American guns.
“It’s very hard to buy a gun in Mexico,” Sotomayor said. “We have a very intense process before you can buy one. If you guys had that, it would be really helpful.”
Trump also withdrew the US from the UN Arms Trade Treaty, which regulates the cross-border flow of weapons to reduce global violence. Trump spoke at an NRA meeting about defending “God-given (gun) rights.”
America's deadly Guns Over People policy is killing people in many countries.
104
@Socrates
Guns are available from many other places and are not that hard to make. Criminals with huge wealth will get guns if they need them. Vehicles, bombs and knives are also perfectly lethal in a civilian context.
It is fine to try to cut off the supply of American guns, but pretending that treating this symptom will solve the problem only takes away from efforts that address root causes.
2
@Socrates
If the transfers of weapons from U.S. territory to Mexico were to end tomorrow, the cartels could utilize the ports at Veracruz, Tampico, Acapulco, and Lazaro Cardenas to import the weapons erroneously identified in your comments as manufactured in the U.S. The Glock is imported from Austria and the AK-47 is made in several former Soviet bloc nations.
@Socrates 99.9999% of the guns in MX where I have resided 15 years and I do work with good cops are from the NRA narco connection.
1
The cartels either pay and kill government overseers ... Methods for solution may be only exactly the same actions
2
Justice in Mexico goes to the highest bidder. Without a strong, reliable justice system that is not corrupt, nothing will change. So probably it will be business/slaughter as usual until another drug king pin emerges that can shut down the competing cartels and put a lid on the violence. Check out the two following books for insight into Mexico's violence - "The Cartel" by Don Winslow - fiction but closely follows fact and "God's Middle Finger" by Richard Grant - non fiction about northern Mexico. Both easy but riveting reads. My condolences to the LeBaron family - how sad.
2
Trump doesn't care about Mexico. He benefits from the country being unstable and violent. We need to build a wall to keep all that out of here. If the problem is addressed, Trump no longer has rapists and murderers to feed to his paranoid base. So better to have instability on the border. And to round up, terrorize, and separate from their children all the people trying to get away from that. Better to have them stay where they are and get burned alive in their cars. Perhaps living in cages at the southern border isn't so bad after all.
A good first step might be to stop the gun running from the US into Mexico.
8
Didn't Obrador's predecessor take a $100 million payoff from "El Chapi" Guzman? Why doesn't Obrador sieze it? That kind of money could hire enough fire power to make Mexican government forces at least competive against maybe one cartel at a time. Or, is Obrador in line for a payoff, too, given the recent stand down his army took re: "El Chapo's" son? If so, the NY TIMES may be slow in this article, which points emphatically to Mexico's current failed state status. This likelihood swells the flooding of the perfect storm pushing Trump and all his ignorance towards the unclogging, bottomless drain of inevitable impeachment.
3
American hypocrisy knows no bounds. How do you guys keep a straight face when suggesting military interventions when you know that your own citizens are responsible for these problems due to their drug addiction? Why not do your own laundry first before attacking other countries?
5
If all 3 legs of the stool are broken as you claim, and I suspect you are correct, this scenario needs to be treated as if it were war, which is exactly what it is.
The Mexican authorities, in general, are about as corrupt as you can get. Why on earth would you release the name of the man involved with El Chapo's son arrest? Utter stupidity obviously sold at a price.
Mexico is unable to fix this problem. Reality is you need to go to war with these people and kill them, kill as many as possible in order to clean things up. Prior to doing that however, is to build the appropriate infrastructure to ensure law and order takes place in an appropriate manner once the killing is done.
I'm not involved with the legal system. The 3 requirements you mention (in effect, the stool) sound appropriate. But you cannot have these bad guys running loose all over your country. It will take time to build the proper stool; you don't want the stool getting destroyed all the time because these animals are running loose within the country.
Once the ever present threat is brought to a reasonable level, I can't believe I'm using the word reasonable, you can go about rebuilding your society.
1
Without U.S. demand for illegal drugs, there would be no drug gangs in Mexico. Every American snorting coke has blood on his hands, But American consumers of drugs will not be deterred. The only solution is to legalize drugs in America. Then this shameful export of violence from America to Mexico will stop.
5
Legalisation of drugs in the USA along with treatment will cut the Mexican cartels. As a 15 year worker/permanent resident of Mexico there is virtually no hard drug use among the populace here and no gun ownership other than cartels who are backed by NRA weapons.
Bret stick with topics you know something about.
6
I’ve pondered the legalization aspect as well but I’m not convinced that will solve anything. The #1 drug getting smuggled right now are “Mexican Oxy’s” - fentanyl laced pills that mimic oxycodone. Forget about heroin, that hardly exists anymore. It’s all pills.
Do you support legalizing oxycodone? If so, tell me what part of legalizing it here would stop cartels from making it and selling it at lower costs than it could be obtained here?
Sorry but if you think 9 deaths are worth a Iraq style "surge" you need to find a different vocation.
5
A very “white people” view from Bret.
I would suggest the world is more complex than he thinks.
4
The jingoisitc arrogance of this article is overwhelming. Discussion of a failed state should begin right here. The US has a president who a majority of the people voted against, ongoing attempts to steal an election (Ky), irrational polices that benefit only billionaires and large corporations, executive attempts to violate and ignore laws, thwart the will of the people, failure to address critical problems that threaten it's citizens, etc. etc. Keep in mind that the US and Mexico have almost identical rates of gun violence. In Mexico it's driven by illegal sales by US businessmen and the American desire for drugs. The only reason these murders make the news is that the victims were Mormon.
5
How can you post this without discussing legalization of drugs in the US? The corruption is fueled by American dollars and drugs, yet our pundits, especially on the Right, see the problem as Mexican. Likewise, the poverty in our country is the fault of the poor, and rather than take steps to help, the Right chooses to blame the victims and punish them. The problem in Mexico is our idiotic drug laws.
1
Al Capone thrived on prohibition. When they locked up Al, other thugs replaced him because it was easy money selling something illegal. You want a surge, surge Capitol Hill, end the War on Drugs and put Al's thugly descendants out of business.
Case closed.
2
This was interesting and informative. Thanks.
Wow. This is way hyperbolic and over the top.
2
Mexico achieved failed state status with the installation of the U.S. backed Carlos Salinas Gotari.
As for turning Mexico into another Iraq success story.... that proposition represents a failed state of mind.
2
Blame Trump? Blame Mexico's efforts to secure its southern border? As if Mexican drug violence had not been a problem before Trump took office. Your in depth, non-artisan analysis has enlightened my morning.
1
Hey Bret, how'd that surge go in Iraq and Afghanistan? Are those what you want to turn Mexico into?
1
Bret went to school on Shakespeare...He told a story about America by writing a story about Mexico. Shakespeare told the story of the English Court by writing plays about other courts in another time. He didn't want to be beheaded. Had a Mexican journalist written this article, they might have fear for their life. Maybe Bret was just practicing for his future with this article. Maybe he was just writing an article about Mexico. Maybe there is a little Shakespeare hidden behind that stoic façade.
17000 gun deaths in Mexico, 33000 gun deaths here at home every year. Just where do you think the weapons down there come from? Good idea Trump, send in our military to clean up Chihuahua and Sonora. Our record elsewhere, on that score, is very poor. Ai Chihuahua! It's a place where bad things happen, as we would soon find out.
2
Mexico is cursed by it's proximity to white European American Judeo- Christian majority illegal drug addicted, loving worship of money immoral and macho gun fetish America.and Americans
The biggest drug makers, marketers and sellers in America are white Judeo-Christian Europeans. But American prisons are 40% full of black Africans. With 5% of humanity America has 25% of the world's prisoners.
Black Africans are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences. Only 13% of Americans are black. Prison is the carefully carved colored exception to the 13th Amendment abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
3
The idea of Rule of Law to Trump is the same as Mexico's idea of a fairly run judicial system. There are virtually no trials by jury that exist in Mexico. This puts law into the hands of the Mexican federal government and appointed judges (like Mitch McConnell is successfully doing). But Trump is way too self absorbed to ever recognize much how he shares NO RULE OF LAW with Mexico.
Trump has identified Mexico as a safe haven for refugees who really want to enter America. This is an obvious fraud. Mexico is, in fact, very dangerous.
But at least Trump is consistent. He's made the same designation for Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, countries from which the refugees are fleeing.
Since stopping US drug addiction is not an option, the US must look at Mexico as a failed state, that harbors terrorists.
Fighting the cartels, no longer works. For every leader killed, more cartels spring up.
The US must begin policies, that are used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Because the Mexican government has been corrupt for so long, it no longer functions for the people. The US must continue to remove the cartels, but only in conjunction with restoring the Mexican government and their people’s faith in the political system.
Like fighting ISIS this could take a generation, but must be done.
1
Corruption breeds corruption which, in turn, breeds more. By many measures, Mexico is to some degree a failed state now because it has been corrupted internally and institutionally for decades. The eruptions of violence are but the outgrowth of more fundamental and more widespread corruption of the state, the police forces and the ordinary ways of doing business where bribery and payoffs are the common currency of everyday life.
Trump might have been speaking for most of America when he said he did not care about Mexico. We, as citizens and beneficiaries of living in a powerful and vastly wealthy nation, don't really care about anywhere else until it impinges on our comforts, until we are forced to take notice. We fight wars in desperate places around the world and then quickly forget about them, moving on to the next crisis or substitute fluffy celebrity news to fill our heads.
About 1.5 million American expatriates call Mexico home for all or a major part of each year. They love the culture, the friendliness of every day encounters and the far lower cost of living. Most report they really appreciate the kindness and helpfulness of the Mexican people.
We can't escape Mexico and it can't escape us. We, along with Canada, share a continent and hundreds of years of intermingled history. The long term solution to the problems has to come from Mexico but it is clear that U.S. guns and the demand of illegal drugs here contributes a great deal to the violent eruptions.
2
I think saying Mexico is failed state on par with what we've seen in Iraq or Afghanistan over the years is hyperbole. That said, Mexico has had cartel issues for decades, and it seems like one group falls another rises to take it's place. They are violent, and the local and national governments seem to struggle to finding ways to turn the tide for good. Colombia found a way over time, and I would like to see the US and Canada find ways to help them beyond the typical militaristic ideas. Sadly though I have no idea how to curb corruption issues, and for me that is the first problem that has to be resolved before things start moving in the right direction.
Mr. Stephens piece is accurate.
But skirts around some fundamental issues that are the root causes of Mexico’s crisis.
Mexico is ruled and financially managed and controlled by Oligarchical families of European bloodlines. An elitist trans generational few
Have and control the banking system, oil production,communications, manufacturing and agribusiness. The vast majority of the population, those of mestizo ( mixed ) or the very bottom class, pure Indian blood lines, face some of the worst racism in the world and as such rarely benefit from conventional efforts at financial security. This leaves many two options . Migrate to the United States or become part of a mutated Revolution, the cartels.
Mexico needs an actual revolution.
Until that happens it’s business and murder as usual.
Well we made a shambles of Iraq. We supported freedom in Libya with catastrophic results. Out forces have been fighting for freedom in Afghanistan for 19 years with no end in sight. I hear that the Afghans are producing more opium of better quality than ever.
I thought that Iran was next on the list for liberation but Bret thinks we should skip on down to Mexico.
Our government can't win the drug war in this country, what would make us think that we can go to Mexico and win the drug war there.
One thing we need to do, which out political leaders will never do, is face the reality of drug use and the drug trade. We are not winning the drug war anywhere. A new fact-based approach is needed.
2
We could prevent these cartels from buying all their weapons (much of their heavy armaments are bought legally in this country), but that would involve sensible gun control legislation. Too bad Brett doesn’t consider this option.
2
As Bret Stephens is not a regular writer on Mexico, known for his knowledge of the country, its people and its history, and has not bothered for this piece to interview and cite a single Mexican national, I must read this as neither informative nor helpful with respect to Mexico and its cartel problem, but as merely a gratuitously opened window into Bret Stephens' conservative mind. Here is a man who, all other things being equally shrouded in his relative ignorance, believes the solution to a Latin country's problems is the effective establishment of a military junta, complete with omnipresent secret police. There's sadly a long history of the United States advancing that kind of solution to turmoil in Latin America, and so no surprise that Stephens found support for that view, as "what has always been required," among those historically tasked with pursuing it: a "former senior U.S. intelligence official." That's not to say, Bret Stephens is wrong that, contra Trump, Mexico's problems are our problems, both in their causes and in their solutions, but that Stephens' is exactly the kind of man we should not attend in seeking to address them. And this piece should give us pause whenever we hear Stephens holding forth on addressing our own problems, for this, at bottom, before knowledge, is how he thinks about dealing with others.
5
I struggle to find a reason why the US should intervene with Mexico militarily.
America is tired of war. Everything is corrupt in Mexico, to the police force that will pester you on your way from Arizona to Rocky Point, to HSBC, which Eric Holder egregiously overruled the recommendation to prosecute when they were laundering billions of drug cartel money. The entire country is in on it.
America has its own problems. I don't care to take up Mexico's.
1
@Scott I agree.
I thought that we were going to "liberate" Iran next.
Best wishes.
1
So we should enter a foreign country to clean up their act? My heart goes out to those killed.
At the same time these families lived in Mexico to escape American law and practices but now demand it.
1
First order of business to provide assistance in helping Mexico is, get rid of Trump. Nothing can happen unil he is gone.
2
Trump said, “I don’t care about Mexico, honestly. I really don’t care about Mexico.”
Mexico, please don't take offense. Trump doesn't care about the United States either.
7
Isn't it perfectly clear by now that Mexico's political leaders are the real owner/operators of the cartels?
This editorial could have been done in 3 words.
Build That Wall!
1
How about a big, beautiful Wall: to protect Mexico from “Americans “ and their GUNS ?
Seriously.
2
Toward a "failed state", Mr. Stephens, where have you been?
We need an "Iraq style surge" on the republican party of we are going to save the Unites States!
1
US troops in Mexico is a prescription for disaster. The first time an innocent man, woman or child is killed, Mexican support would evaporate. And it's all downhill from there.
2
Root cause is America's insatiable drug habit.
5
Americans need a reality check. What a fine mess America is and yet Americans believe they have all the answers.
1
What would really help is if Americans stopped consuming drugs and exporting assault weapons to Mexico.
3
You are not kidding.Narcotrafficking is a dead spiral for Mexico; as it is for the U.S. as well, counting the deaths in the thousands from drug use. But, it shall not abate while these United States provide the guns to make the drug gangs so powerful. And, for as long as there is the demand, the supply will follow. Given that we were successful in banning cigarettes from our midst (mostly), and saving countless lives to disease and premature death, we must use our imagination, and creativity, and the resources for it, to ban the illegal use of deadly compounds (i.e. Fentanyl-laced Heroine, Cocaine, and myriad others, in this suicidal armamentarium of ours). Unless we give up our talents and allow idiocy to rein.
Stephens always seems to leave important facts out of his opinions. He spent no time reading Ioan Grillo's article in yesterday's paper about the same subject.
If you were "armed" that it is the United States who is building, maintaining and selling firearms to Mexico.....wouldn't that make it into your own opinion piece?
Not if you're a conservative.
If Mexico is on a "fast track to a failed state", we are helping them get there.
The topic of corruption is in many of the comments. Mexican corruption is one thing. But take a look at the level of corruption currently in the United States government. A government that allows children to be put in cages separated from their parents. A government with a Kingpin at the top who lies daily about everything from his taxes to cooperation with foreign enemies and calls our nearest Neighbors seeking amnesty vile names. Trump has forced an unrealistic approach to immigration on Mexico and Guatemala. He fails to address the drug import at ports of entry and the mental health issue in our own communities. And with all of this he has tacit support from the Republican party that aligns with his corruption.
2
As I look at my children's schoolmates it is obvious that the demographic shift in the US has already occurred. The majority of children are Mexican or Central American. The proportion of white and black children shrink with every lower grade. As they grow up and the baby boomers die the US will demographically approximate Mexico. Surveys (e.g. Pew) show that the vast majority of Mexicans would come to the US if the border were open. This is voting with their feet. The Mexican government could be presented with a demand that a referendum be held in Mexico with UN to determine if the Mexicans want to joint the US in a political and economic union, in other words, become part of the United States. The answer should be obvious since beneficiaries of the border are Mexican oligarchs who can sell in the US and not pay US taxes, and employers in the US who can take advantage of third world wages. If the Mexican government refuses to do that the US has a cudgel. The US can send all Mexicans here illegally back to Mexico and the Mexican government can deal with the revolution. What is not fair is to ask the US taxpayer to support Mexico through transfer payments and an open border without the benefit of the resources. With US law and order, the prosperity that would follow for both countries would be astounding. Many millions of Mexicans have already concluded that the part of Mexico called California is a better place under Anglo Saxon law than Spanish colonial law.
5
But of course Iraq *is* a failed state, and the success of the so-called "surge" was a media fraud perpetrated by interests in the U.S. looking to excuse the idiocy of the invasion they promoted. If anyone doesn't believe it, just look at Iraq today.
What's lacking in Mexico is justice -- at all levels. Including economic. You know, like, sharing the wealth, which is something Bret doesn't care to hear.
1
If Mexico was free of corruption and operated by a rule of law, this discussion would never happen. Mexicans say that it is a poor legislator that remains poor. The problem can not be solved while the country leaders are on the cartel payroll.
3
"Poor Mexico. So far from God. And so close to the United States."
We're not only the market for drug transported thru Mexico. We're also the source of most of the weapons used by the cartels. So proud that our 2nd amendment supports murder across the border in Mexico, so close to the United States.
Trace the guns!
1
“They had stood up to the drug cartels and they did have certain frictions either with the cartels or with neighboring communities over water rights,” said Castañeda, who left office in 2003.'' NY Post 11/06.
They drilled several hundred illegal water wells and were backed by the Mexican police in a standoff against 500 villagers.
Wells that would render shallower wells worthless.
All of the coming wars are going to be about water rights.
Asia, Africa, the Middle East.
Would you please look at the water rights angle?
If you are a peasant growing both food and drugs and your well runs dry who do you turn to?
2
Mexico has problems, to be sure, But there were nearly 16,000 murders in the U.S. in 2018. And our President here appears to have installed a puppet at the head of Justice Department. Kids are dying in school and for profit contract outfits are locking up others in cages. Are we a failed state too?
Please Brett also write articles as to how Trump has been leading us down a path to dictatorship.
Bret’s argument is all over the place. First, the notion that the Mexico situation is Trump’s fault is ridiculous. When Trump took over, the US was already losing 60,000 American lives a year to overdoses on drugs mostly coming from Mexico, and the press collectively gasped when he dared to point out, albeit undiplomatically, the rather obvious fact that we need to secure our southern border. Note that during the Trump administration, overdoses dropped for the first time in decades, mostly through use of narcan, but we’ll take less loss of American life where we can get it. Second, the resistance to building a wall is misguided. As a sovereign nation we have a right and a responsibility to decide who and what comes into our country. Yes, we need to bolster security at points of entrance, but a wall clearly makes it more difficult to transport people and contraband across a given line since, among other things, even if the wall can be penetrated or circumvented, it funnels people into smaller areas that are easier to patrol. Third, clearly we need to address demand with greater investment in treatment, but part of the demand is caused by too much supply. Look at what happened when drugs got more pure and plentiful in the last several years. Addiction and overdoses went up substantially. Not really hard to see why: it’s a lot harder to develop an addiction when you have to search far and wide for a given drug. By contrast, when its available everywhere it is quite easy.
2
Oh what a pity Mexico doesn’t have more oil so we could go to war to effect regime change. I bet if we looked hard enough we could find weapons of mass destruction, and hey, if not we could just blame our drug problem on them and invade anyway.
2
Stephens fails to provide a complete and meaningful analysis.
The drug war has been waged for more than 40 years. Its sole focus has been on eradicating supply and destroying drug mafias and arresting kingpins.
Colombia's Pablo Escobar and Fabio Ochoa were taken down and their empires dismantled. Victory was declared.
Yet today, Colombian coca production is at record highs.
At least 60,000 Mexicans have been killed as the result of drug violence.
And yet, the drugs flow into the U.S. largely unimpeded.
Why have American anti-drug cops been unable to prevent the drugs from entering and being distributed all over the U.S.?
Stephens would have us believe that Mexico is on track to become a failed state. That would mean that Mexico would exist in name only. Its government would cease to function. Mexico has a major crime and public security crisis, but the nation is not even close to being on a path to failed state status. That's crazy talk.
The only real solution is for Americans to cease being voracious consumers of drugs. Would they do so, the drug war would end. Oh, and let's put a stop to Americans selling guns to Mexican gangsters.
But it's lots easier to take pot shots at Mexico for not having more of its people slaughtered in the name of fighting an unwinnable war.
5
A major problem is that Americans - lots and LOTS of Americans - pay the drug cartels to do exactly what they do.
Think of it! So many Americans buying drugs that infuse tremendous American dollars to support those cartels and their programs of lawlessness, murder and corruption!
So what is Mexico supposed to do here? Go to war against the US for supporting the drug cartels? Does that sound mixed up?
Get rid of the existing drug cartels, and new ones will take their place: always have, always will. Until the source of the American dollars dries up. Maybe this is a better clue of how to deal with this problem. And maybe it isn't really on Mexico to solve the problem, not alone.
4
The destination of the drug cartels' business is the U.S.
The U.S. must get intimately involved in this problem.
4
Nine killed by gunfire? Just an average afternoon in this country, but somehow indicative of a lawless country elsewhere? Perspective Mr. Stephens, perspective.
3
The Mexican drug cartels aren't supplying local demand for drugs; they're supplying the demand for drugs in the United States. In the words of Pogo: "I have seen the enemy and he is us."
1
Bret Stephens is one of the many people who believe that the way to fix a country is by destroying it.
Referencing a failed invasion as a template for success is especially remarkable, however.
Nonetheless- this is how nations creep into fascism.
The one event that would get the attention of both the rulers of Mexico and those in the U.S. is the emergence of an armed force of Mexican vigilantes devoted to rooting out and killing the cancer of the drug gangs. This, in fact. seems long overdue by now.
1
Trump may not care, but this is very much the United States' problem, since the US is the number one consumer of Mexico's drugs and the number one provider of its weapons.
3
This multiple murder is a message to America and Mexico and the targets were carefully chosen. 'We Can Kill Anyone. Even Innocent White American Women and Babies.' Mexico has been in a Narco Civil War for 25 years and like any insurgency, the Cartels will advantage any weakness. The Mexican Government has allowed the existence of the Cartels while the money flowed into the pockets of the powerful and political. Add that this insurgency is fueled by America's addiction and "I really don't care about Mexico..." attitude as long as cheap labor and drugs flowed North. The attack dog now hunts and feeds itself and is now running the junkyard. This insurgency is fueled by both sides of that permeable wall and if our "Stable Genius" could, he would profit by it. Our Stable Genius has now created a market which makes the demand for labor and drugs more valuable and created a more lucrative Black Market. The cartels are now stronger and can murder and incinerate innocent American Women and Babies at will. Nice Job!
The writer seems to somehow suggest that the US is responsible for Mexico's extreme corruption. Trump has been president for only three years, the drug cartels have controlled Mexico the past 30 years. The only way good people in Mexico can live a decent life is to escape to the US. This works in favor of the corrupt Mexican government.
3
If we sold drugs legally in this country instead of perpetrating this failed War on Drugs, the cartels would have no market. How long are we going to allow the cartels to destroy Mexico to prevent Americans from buying drugs. Selling drugs legally would also get rid of the “hidden fentanyl” problem. How long are we going to do the same failed thing over and over?
3
The Mexican drug cartels get their money and guns from the United States. Americans are being murdered by the cartels. A violent failed state is forming or has been formed along our southern border. Like it or not, America is involved in the problem. Trump's solution would be to build a wall and forget about it. Trump should be working with the Mexican government to attack the source of the problem. They are obviously unable to do it alone.
My wife is Mexican and we have this argument all the time: she says the problem in Mexico is US drug demand. My reply is always "Canada." She gets very mad at me.
File fentanyl under "the law of unintended consequences." The Chinese make it, Mexicans smuggle it into the country -- and US pharma companies created the market!. Both China and Mexico are highly incented to keep the trade flourishing in retaliation for Trump's invective and stupidity. Now cocaine use is way up again and increasing numbers of cocaine-related deaths (40 percent) involve fentanyl. This means people are doing speedballs, or a combination of the two drugs, which is 100 times more intoxicating than either drug seperately. You start doing that stuff, you do not last very long. Much of the meth in the US is likewise cut with fentanyl.
The problem in Mexico today is what the problem has always been: they do not have a justice system. An "impunity rate" of 99 percent? This basically means that being a narco is a completely acceptable way to make a living, and more lucrative than anything except politics and being head of Pemex. To fix it, Mexico will have to literally clean out -- fire precipitously -- every branch of law enforcement and the judiciary and start from the beginning, while carefully vetting every candidate for every job.
That is not going to happen, and it probably wouldn't work anyway. It will be a long dark night in Mexico for a long time.
5
Sounds like Mexico has only one solution: Legalize all the drugs.
It may carry consequences, but it should shut down the cartels.
2
With all due respect this is an actual war they are fighting. And a war means that you either kill or be killed. Cannot think of the cartel as if they have the same rights as the rest of your citizens and you cannot be trying to arrest and convict them. Ultimately the only thing that will truly slow them down is to wipe them out.
1
Right. A surge in Mexico is what we need. And look how well that turned out for the Iraqis.
1
I see some commenters in here suggesting that the solution is to legalize all drugs, but that seems to entirely miss the nature of the problem at this point.
The various cartels are now paramilitary organizations, private armies. They already engage in extortion of the poor. It’s only a matter of time before this leads to something like civil war with the country fragmenting into rival zones.
Trump is a fool who thinks it will have no impact on America to have a failed state directly on the southern border. And to those who say Mexico is already a failed state, no. For an accurate comparison you have to look elsewhere. Maybe Iraq or Sudan at particular points in time.
Leave Trump out of it. Mexico has been a failed state long before he showed up.
3
If you use cocaine, heroin or illegal marijuana, you are enriching the cartels and bear partial but material responsibility for the death of innocents. Simple as that.
3
Bret Stephens:
And you also write "In the U. S. all the legs of the stools are broken, as they 1) import tons and tons of marihuana and cocine through the borders in 18 wheelers "and nobody se. 2) there is nationwide drug distribution in the U. S. and DEA and police only capture small fish 3) the exports of weapons to Mexico "is in good health"...
If you do not close the doors effectively to this big market, your dug addicts will be producing failed states in other places. You guys have been in Afghanistan and can not stop production and export of opium, and want to go and resolve the problems in other countries. Hilarious.
2
The nation I worry about rapidly becoming a failed state is the USA
3
We have our own drug cartels killing people. We call it "Pharmaceuticals"
Bret, Mexico has been a failed state for the longest time under feudal lords profiting from being the abettors of the imperialists next door. Vicente Fox was even the Coca Cola Kid for real before he became president.
If you are discovering that Mexico is “on its way” to become a failed state under a progressive president just now, please forgive me if I laugh a little.
3
Shut down US weapons manufacturing, especially Remington, and stop exporting violence.
Mr Stephens were you inspired by the Whiteness and religiosity of these particular and equally innocent victims? Mr Stephens does your vision of a counterinsurgency require pre-emptive endless bombing of Mexico as happened before both Iraq invasions? Would you destroy Mexico as completely as Syria, in order to establish absolute authority over "gangs"? How many $billions$ in explosives should be dumped to gain the necessary civic order?
Well. There's the big problem the White House has in common with Mexico: Rule of law.
There were no cartels until prohibitionists in the US meddled with the laws,
Prohibitionists corrupted laws here, and in countries around the world. They created the El Chapo's, the Al Capone's, overflowed prison systems, ruined countless lives, spread corruption, and enabled poisoned counterfeit products to kill.
Having lost their power to harm the many who enjoy Cannabis, prohibitionists have found a replacement plant to begin demonizing. Their goal,.. keep their prisons full for private investors in incarceration, and for cheap prison labor. Not to mention full employment for secret prohibition police (The Narc)
Not satisfied with the carnage they already cause, Prohibitionists are on a fast track to declare the healthy "Kratom" plant illegal.
You have seen how Reefer Madness propaganda was used to declare cannabis illegal, despite the many doctors decrying the loss of a wonderful healing plant.
Using their playbook that creates cartels, black markets, overdoses, obscene prison sentences and despair, prohibitionists are itching to replace cannabis with another healing plant that they can forbid Americans. The miracle plant "Kratom."
http://www.americankratom.org
If only Bret Stephans would have devoted as much time, effort and money to our true border Crisis with Mexico as he did supporting the false premise Iraq and Libya wars that cost us wasted trillions in dollars and untold blood of our sons and daughters.
2
Because Iraq is a model of successful US foreign policy.
1
To see America's future, just look south of the border. With the presidents total disrespect for the "Rule of Law" and a heavily armed population, America is well on its way to being a failed state as well.
1
American drug users are to blame. Maybe instead of tolerating open air/public square heroin shooting, we should start sweeping addicts off the street and incarcerating them- for a long-ish period of time.
You think people here in Philly are not getting tired of the fiasco in Kensington?
2
The present President of Mexico campaigned on a platform of anti-corruption and anti-cartels. We have seen no progress on either front. He has been a "yes man" to Trump repeatedly but with no teeth.
I regret that the only viable route to prevent this drug war and overwhelming corruption in our proximal southern neighbor is to put boots on the ground - OUR BOOTS!
If we really want to protect our country from a failing State on our border, we have to take action. A "wall" will not solve this problem. People freely fly, take boats, drive across the border, have narco submarines, etc. THE PROBLEM MUST BE AMPUTATED AT THE SOURCE.
I am not a violent man, but I am old enough to see this clearly. We invade other countries for their oil but not for freedom. We waste American lives for non-existent WMDs. WHY DO WE NOT DEAL WITH AN EXISTENTIAL PROBLEM ON OUR BORDER?
Were I President of this nation, I would "negotiate" an arrangement with Mexico in which they stop this cold or we will, as a National Security measure; a REAL NS measure, Trump's first. Trump will not do this because he is a feckless coward and as far from a "negotiator" as one can get. He huffs and puffs, but he is a coward and could not care less about YOU.
1
Wait! Whoat?
Which side of the border is Mr Stevens writing about?
"Either the country is going to get a grip on its crisis of institutions and its deficits in leadership or it is going to increasingly resemble Iraq before the surge, albeit with drug money taking the place of religious fanaticism."
I actually like Mr. Stevens' commentary because it is such a perfect reflection of neo-liberal (ie Reaganomic) thought. Additionally, not to be mean, but expresses "white" supremacist ideology in it's most banal, if not evil, form. The framework always from a sense of American superiority rather than responsibility.
News flash, "The Alamo" was a conflict between one State where slavery was illegal and another fighting to preserve it. Go ahead and make a guess.
1
It's kinda obvious: a recession in Mexico will lead to a massive increase in illegal immigration to the U.S. Even a kindergartner would understand. Trump doesn't.
The "surge" is here, Mr. Stephens: a surge in weapons purchased in the U.S., which are then shipped to Mexican drug cartels. And a surge in U.S. consumption of drugs, which finances cartel operations.
As a Mexican proverb says: "La ropa sucia se lava en casa." In other words, we need to clean our own dirty laundry first.
2
Smuggling at the Mexico/US border goes both ways. Guess who buys the drugs that make the cartel criminals rich. We do. Guess who arms these Narco-terrorsts? We do, through our non-existing control of the manufacture and sale of assault weapons, which are bought here and shipped across the border. Tens of thousands have been murdered and large parts of that nation are lawless due to our drug and weapons policies. Our so-called 'Drug War" is less than a skirmish compared to our real war against civil rule in the nations south of Texas and now some are talking of going to actual war to splve the problem?.
Military Solutions will not work
"narcocorridos do a lot more than just talk about who fought who and who controls what drug route. They provide the vicarious pleasure of listening to the exploits of poor men made rich in a country where social mobility is difficult, poverty is crippling and government corruption is rampant."
Address that
https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2015/07/16/423198482/narco-ballads-praising-el-chapo-or-portraying-the-corrupt-truth
With the sheer amount of failed governance in the US, I would say we aren't far behind. And, as is most common, people ask why they should follow the law when those at the top don't - in plain sight.
2
To blame the long standing decline of Mexcio, within the first paragraph, on Trump, really is worrisome. Who do we have writing these articles that people read? The amount of money and guns that have given this power to the cartels was full blast since the late 70's. Is this lack of historical perspective on everything a problem, of our schools? We think every problem in the world started after the 2016 election,
6
Mexico is an example of the consequences of weak institutions. At home, we are witness to the undermining of our own institutions--the judiciary, the electoral system, our foreign policy apparatus and more. Not to compare apples and oranges, but there is danger in throwing stones when your own house looks more and more fragile.
7
I fear that we are on the same destructive road as Mexico, although we're farther back in their rear mirror. Lawlessness, disregard for the truth, disregard for civic institutions, amorality, and deep seated corruption are taking root in this country, thanks to the current presidential administration and the Republicans in Congress.
6
The surge that is the best solution for the US and MEXICO is a surge IN the United States that stops our weapons and ammunition from going south, more practical and holistic drug prevention and rehabilitation efforts for our citizens that work - not punish, and better observation and guidance in banking transactions that are "complex", confounding, and questionable. Mexico's violence and corruption is home grown, but we had a large role in it. The possibility that our neighbor is spiraling towards being a failed state is why the Western World cannot cower and hide refusing it's responsible and decent role to be part of the solution there and here.
3
Wouldn't it be a novel idea if we Americans stop buying their drugs? We have a habit of telling other countries how to solve their ills while we ignore ours.These cartels would not exist if not for our love of what they are selling.How about not selling the cartels American made weapons?Always remember when you point one finger you have three pointing back at yourself.
5
Where's the market for Mexican drug cartels product? – the good old USA (probably including the CIA which uses drug money to fund their secret ops when they can't get it from Congress. And this on top of screwing the Mexican agricultural economy by flooding them with our cheap corn putting dirt poor farmers out of business. Where do they turn? – gangs and drug lords.
4
I have been working and living in Mexico for over four years now. There is an inherent problem in taking anecdotal evidence and turning it into a conclusion. The Culiacán incident is in no way more indicative of an accelerating debilitation of Mexican society than was Cardinal Ocampo's assassination in 1993 or that of then-presidential candidate Luis Colosio in 1994.
In terms of education, access to healthcare, unemployment and overall political stability, Mexico is and remains one of the most stable countries in LATAM.
Now, in terms of how to tackle organized crime overall, it seems that a combination of:
1. a wall (I am horrified I have to resort to saying that but it proved efficient in Israel) to gain better control over what and who traverse that border
2. more intelligent policies in the way we deal with drugs and drug users, not necessarily complete legalization but at least partial decriminalization of marijuana and US-based production
3. massive US-sponsored investment in Mexican SMEs to create jobs for those who end up criminals because they lack better opportunities,
4. some level of gun control, particularly for military grade firearms,
5. a push towards a cashless economy so as to minimize the flow of unchecked drug money making its way back to LATAM in big bags of $100 bills.
There is no miracle solution to a problem 50 years in the making. But an approach that is not implemented in tandem between the US and Mexico will most certainly fail.
6
Mexico is not quite a failed state. And it is not inexorably headed to become such. Mexico is an altered state, a virtual but not absolutely dichotomous state. The ‘rule of law’ realm with petty corruption which has always festered and thrived as if it were an off-the-books market. It self sustains and self polices. For well over 100 million citizens, life goes on normally. Family, education, commerce etc. Then there is the pervading narco-gangster state which has its parallel universe of economics and vendettas including its tentacles in the government from Los Pinos to most City Halls from Tapachula to Tijuana and between. The gangster state usually does not aim to cross over into the main streams of society. It will silence critics and I am afraid the massacre was a message because other Mormons had called to the local traffickers before. Same goes for journalists and crusading cops. Mexico has all the trappings and trimmings of a first world nation with a Mexican flair and panache. It is more tumultuous than the US but it is not comparable to Iraq or Congo or even Ukraine in terms of breaking down.
109
@Suburban Cowboy ... whew, thanks for the reassurance.
6
@Suburban Cowboy
It may not be a failed state but it is certainly a failure.
Tell the families of the thousands of people who are brutally murdered every year and the many communities that are cowed that they live in a country of two parallel but almost separate worlds...
17
@Suburban Cowboy
How do you explain the statistics on killing? How was it literally safer to be in Iraq at the peak of a war fought with tanks, helicopters and IEDs than it is in Mexico in 2019?
I'm inclined to agree with your assessment (generally even the worst places are often filled with good people), but the numbers in Mexico are bad.
19
Bret "the sky is falling" Stephens strikes again and of course his solution is more force (a surge). Mexico is struggling but progress has been made. Rather than kvetching about it why not talk about the immediate and concrete things the United States could do to assist. 1) Instead of building a stupid wall which anybody with a $100 reciprocating saw can defeat, lets invest in the border crossing and border monitoring upgrades that the Border Patrol has been seeking for years. 2) Stop piling our refugee problem in Mexico where they become ready victims and 3) stop the free flow of guns south! Mexico has ONE gun shop but is awash in guns, legally sourced in the U.S. We cannot even track the deadly epidemic of guns in our own country while we are contributing to the failure of another.
199
@Chris And 4) find a way to stop Americans from providing such an enthusiastic market for Mexican cartel drugs.
As long as there is such robust demand, there will be supply to fill it.
9
@Chris
People want the wall because they know what a train wreck Mexico has become and worry about violence crossing the border, along with an economically unsustainable flood of refugees produced by Central America's homegrown corrupt and violent societies.
The sky may not be completely falling yet, but it's getting close. I would wager within 20 years that the Border Patrol becomes the land version of the Coast Guard, and armed alike, with armored vehicles such as tanks and other armored fighting vehicles.
40-50 years from now it it will be more like the Gaza Strip border with Israel, with American troops regularly using deadly force to defend it.
6
@Lucy That is covered in point 1, better interdiction. Beyond that, America's drug habit is a much bigger issue; one not limited to Mexican Drug Cartels. Yes, our "War on Drugs" has failed miserably and it is time to treat drug addiction as a disease and not a crime. Progress is being made but it will be a long hard shift.
Money is the root of all of this, and money, the cartels’ money, will be the solution, just as it was for reducing mob influence in the US. While the money may come in as piles of cash from dope deals north of the border, it doesn’t stay that way. Mexico could and should enact and enforce something similar to our RICO act, and we should all work to do away with offshore banking enterprises that serve only one purpose, to hide and launder money. Without money there is no ‘plato’ to plug into ‘plato o plomo’. Billions for investment in ‘legitimate’ businesses don’t materialize out of thin air, cartel bosses can’t live like kings without leaving a trail, and they can’t pay the growers for the drugs they pass along unless they have capital. Easier said than done, but it’s the only way this will ever work.
From our side we can make it much more difficult to move money south or sideways into other ventures, and we can very easily stop the large-scale sale and shipment of weapons and ammunition, most of which are purchased easily here. That is, if we are serious.
4
First, Mr. Stephens, why should I care about one "elder statesman's " opinion. Was he a member of the other political party and what did they do stop corruption in Mexico. One mass murder does not lead to a failed state, if it does the USA is far ahead of Mexico on the road to failure. Mass murders are nearly monthly here.
5
How can one have this conversation without addressing America's insatiable appetite for drugs, or the pipeline of cash and guns going south. Treating symptoms won't change anything in the long term.
18
I don't claim to know the solution in Mexico. But I am skeptical that they can shoot and arrest their way out of the problem. Where has that worked? In the Philippines? In Brazil? What about the consequences to the poor and otherwise non-privileged, who are forced to live in an armed police state that tends to sweep up innocent people in its dragnet?
5
This reads like a prelude to the US sending troops to Mexico to control the violence there. Sound like other reasoning that whips the US public up for yet another international police action on our part? This time the war will be in our hemisphere (much easier to get to than Syria), just as we conveniently ceded the war in Syria to Russian control. Hmmm. Are the big powers dividing up land for their conquest (I am talking Russia and the US)?
6
Wow, I had no idea trump caused the drug cartels in Mexico. He must be doing a lot of drugs.
We and the Catholic Church caused the drug cartels. Americans for being the biggest drug users on the planet, which enriches the private armies that run the country and constantly fight over drug turf. The Catholic Church for encouraging huge families, which has seen mexicos population go from ~30 million in 1950 to 120 million now. This explosion has created a country that cannot educate or employ or let's face it, control this many people. So just like in our inner cities where there is nothing to do and a huge number of young men and drug money available, they do what they do everywhere. It's also why Mexico (and the rest of Central America) has encouraged its excess people to go north. This relieves the pressure of far too many people on their scant resources and they send money back to help prop up the corrupt regime and keep the country going a little longer. Trump isn't going to fix anything. He doesn't get it.
If you want to help Mexico, make free family planning available, educate the young girls and stop using drugs (or legalize them) would be a good start.
16
Too many Americans think that "failed states" only happen in countries like Mexico. To remedy this failure, Mr. Stephens quotes a Mexican elder statesman as prescribing "Rule of law. Rule of law. And rule of law."
How bitterly ironic then that President Trump and his Republican supporters show nothing but contempt for our own rule of law, and are leading America straight toward being a kind of failed state. No, we're not likely to have drug cartels here the way Mexico does. We'll just lose our democracy and become another kind of authoritarian oligarchy like Russia, Hungary, or Turkey.
Why should Mexico listen to anything America has to say when it's American guns arming their cartels, American buyers who purchase their drugs, and an American President who not only shows contempt and distain for their country, but who couldn't care less about the rule of law?
13
Sorry Bret, but this is about El Norte. We have a drug problem in this country. Legalizing drugs in America would drain the cartels of money. Studies across the world show that legalization and harm reduction, such as in Portugal, result in less addicts and no money for mafias.
5
@David Good comment, but would you recommend some studies which show that, I.e. a correlation between drug legalization and the good results you mention.
1
So a "former senior U.S. intelligence figure" thinks a "integrated civil-military campaign, where ‘military’ includes all security services , similar to a counterinsurgency campaign such as the one pursued in the surge in Iraq” will work in Mexico! Sure, it would work . . . if the police and the military, the entire judiciary, and most of all, most of the political parties and officials from local mayors to state governors to national senators and up to El Presidente himself (although the current one may not be as corrupt as his predecessors) were not absolutely corrupt and in the pocket of there cartels. It would work just fine! I hope Mr Stephens isn't fantasizing about U.S. military involvement in such a "surge." This would be there biggest disaster of all. Let the Mexicans come to some sort of arrangement to tamp down the violence. They will . . . eventually. The Mexican state may be shot through with corruption, but it is far from "failed."
6
The main problem Mexico faces is us. We had a big problem with criminality under Prohibition ourselves, and we were a rich country that did it to ourselves. With drugs we have exported the problem to Mexico, that can’t possibly deal with the money to be made selling drugs in the US.
We have a responsibility to do more than point fingers. As it is, we’re even arming the bad guys.
8
I was kidnapped while in Mexico City for a wedding. I have many close family members who grew up and still live in Mexico. I feel I have a unique view of Mexican security issues.
Throughout Mexico bribery is accepted and even institutionalized among power brokers, and trickles down to the smallest levels of society. I have a close friend who, on a whim, tried getting his drivers licence without giving a bribe- can't be done. Another who was pulled over by a cop for speeding on his way home from the gym, and contrary to his Mother's admonitions about always having cash available for bribes, had no cash on him. The cop settled for "soda money", (the change in his ashtray), and let him go rather than taking the time to write out a ticket.
Most corrupt third world countries stay in the third world because of bribery. Most "modern" western countries (for the most part) look at bribery as backward, and is a prosecutable offence that is, in general, looked down upon.
In my opinion, this generation of Mexican politicians and Police officers are lost forever in this culture of acceptance of bribery as routine and expected. The only way to turn the Mexico's security issues around is to change this "wink,wink" attitude that the best way to run a country by passing cash under the table.
7
@megachulo I have thought about this as well. When I travelled in Cuba, one had to pay the police officer who stopped you for alleged speeding ( US $, all under the table); in Argentina, my friends spoke constantly of the entrenched and accepted " off the books" ways of doing business - from the very highest levels, down to small town transactions. I remember travelling w/ my family for a couple of months, camping, in Mexico as a child in the 1960s - 2 things strike me about that: 1.Absolutely no way we could have done that safely if things were as they are now. 2. It was a family joke that we had to pay bribes everywhere for everything - as a young child, I remember the shakedowns by police on the highways. Drug cartels were unknown to us ( early 1960s) - the police were the problem. With bribery, dishonesty, "wink,wink" attitudes toward all of this for centuries ( is it tied up in the Spanish Patron culture?) I do not see a change either. I honestly have no idea what would work.....
6
@coloradofarmer
TY- I agree wholeheartedly, I dont know either.
A culture of graft corrupts society, and really has very little to do with drugs, arms, and which direction they are flowing. Arms and drugs are the result, not the cause. Bribery corrodes society from within, no matter what the felony-de-jour is.
3
@megachulo Yours is a great comment. The single greatest problem facing developing countries, whether in Africa or Latin America, is corruption.
3
We have known for more than half a century that the “war on drugs” is a no-win disaster. Decriminalize now-illicit drugs, let the states take over distribution and treatment, and shut down the world’s drug cartels as the market value of drugs drops to near zero.
5
Here is the real solution: Legalize drugs. Then the Cartels wont be able to sell drugs. No illegal drugs no money, no money, no cartel. Everybody gets a normal job, becomes a good citizen...problem solved. The war on drugs leads down the path of corruption, death and destruction, the only path the war on drugs will never lead is victory.
2
Dear america,
such a bad column,
no real understanding of the countries struggles.
The failed state is a reality for many years in mexico and corruption has been the political rule if the country and from most of the past senior goverment officials this article pretends to be based on.
The arms are in at least 80% directly imported from the us, citing Colombia is very interesting, because the violence has been directly moved to central america, mexico and the caraibs.
Mexico is a country with big social gaps, and taking care of those seems quiet essencial to bring a country to peace. Frame it like that why are people attracted to crime, because there is no educational and economical ways to move up to a lower middle class. the minimum income is at 4 dollars, maybe enough to cover food costs. And you dare to critizise those policies. Free market from the 95 nafta has been destroying farming with cheap american mais flour. generating millions of rural migrants towards the us...its too complex to picture it as failed after one year of government inheriting a destroyed country from presidents which nearly have been proven beneficiaries of the drug money...
6
@cyrille Thank you. Great comment. The Times would do readers and American politicians a great service by examining the implications of NAFTA on Mexican farmers.
2
Mexico is already very much a failed state. It has a level of corruption from the top down, that even trump must admire. I no longer feel safe visiting Mexico. I suspect I'm not alone in this and it must be taking away the tourist dollar. I feel that as the country that buys most of their drugs and sells them most of their weapons, we have a huge responsibility here. That said, I don't see much happening, any time soon; certainly not under the current administration.
5
It is pretty obvious that the so-called war on drug is a failure. The wall is also a failure and the drug is still poring from Mexico to the USA. The problem is that there is three ways to produce and sell drugs. The State do it, the private entreprise do it or the mob do it. By declaring drug illegal, we are just taking the worst option, the mob is doing it with all the consequences we are seeing. May be the solution is to legalized all type of drugs. After all addiction is a medical problem and should be deal accordantly. Remember prohibition in the USA from 1919 to 1933. And who took control of the alcohol business during those years? The mob.
6
@Wilbray Thiffault
correct ...that's when crime became " Organized"
1
The fight against the drug cartels south of our border is one that I think U.S. military intervention could help. The cartels have threatened and extorted the local authorities enough that they have little power or incentive to go after the criminals. The good guys fear for their lives and their family's. What if the U.S., with the permission of the Mexican government, cleaned out, on the Mexican side, and held the territory all along the border where the cartels battle for control? Draw them in and wipe them out. The U.S. can cut off the supply of American made weapons to the cartels and starve the buyers in the U.S. Trump's focus on the poor, desperate, people trying to flee the murderous cartels & gangs and separating thousands of children from their families is madness and unproductive.
3
Several areas of Mexico are often mentioned as great, low cost places for retirees from the US to move to. Apparently it all depends on where you are in Mexico.
6
@John Bowman
Same thing here. Gated communities in LA are probably nice. The homeless, drug and gang infested part-not so much.
We have an out of control opioid crusts in the US. Other drugs too. Mexico has an out of control drug distribution problem. But Trump is wrong to secure the border. Anyone else see the lunacy of an open borders policy?
3
This has been a problem that has been brewing for a very long time. However, I am more concerned about the corruption in our country that seems to be growing like a cancer.
3
This is a no-brainer.
1) The War on Drugs in the US is a lethal joke. It's succeeded only in sending one more new group of people to prison.
2) The Mexican cartels exist because US prohibition has driven the price of drugs so high that narcotrafficantes can earn enough to maintain private armies, bribe courts and politicos, and be able to destroy any smaller competitors.
3) Gee. If we legalize drugs in the US, we can stop playing at repression and figure out what we should do, if anything. And we can go back to financing universities instead of prisons.
Most important, the price of dope will plummet to its cost of production, so that the narcotrafficantes' golden eggs will turn to lead.
No more percentage in gunning down the opposition, archbishops, and mothers and kids who are driving in the outback.
No more bribes.
The end of the war.
4
An "Iraq style surge?" Good idea; Iraq is certainly a shining beacon of freedom and good government these days.
3
"...Mexico’s most violent year in decades, with about 17,000 killings between January and June. In sheer numbers, that’s a figure that exceeds the civilian death toll in Iraq at the height of war in 2006."
60,000 to 70,000 dead American opioid users per year exceeds the 17,000 as well. Failed states on both sides of the border have we?
Mexico needs a beefed up security state to fix everything. Of course, we see how well the beefed up security state in the US curbed the opioid death wave, don't we?
The answer is always more cops and weapons.
3
Our tremendous appetite for their illicit drugs doesn’t help either, containing the cartel violence will require effort by both countries , right now, zero chance of that.
The cartels are a gargantuan problem. Yes. But they’re a symptom of an even bigger one than addiction in the US: the neglect and abuse of Mexico’s working poor on all sides. Imagine if all corruption was removed from Mexico tomorrow. Cocaine production ceased; no one was being killed over Avocados (crazy right? Cartels aren’t just for drugs, look it up), What would put bread on the table for those without legit manufacturing, farming or trades jobs then? Give the people a way to fight back. Government sponsored industry to return legitimate jobs, schools and social programs to people across Mexico, to improve living conditions and give people hope, could make an actual difference.
10
Mexico's deficiencies in enforcing the rule of law are widespread here in the United States. Our President doesn't respect it, not does our law enforcement complex, except when it comes to the poor, it is flouted by drug companies, stock punts like our Treasurer, the GOP and too many Democrats, white nationalists, etc., etc. The warning of Mexico's failings to the U.S. is clear but we prefer to look down on them.
1
It breaks my heart to see such a beautiful country with an incredible culture be rendered a violent mess. Canada and the US should be doing everything it can to help it’s neighbor break from the violence. Like Stephens says, this is our problem whether we like it or not and it’s going to get way worse.
It’s terrifying to think Mexico will turn into a war state with refugees fleeing to our country. Will we let them?
1
To me it seems like this problem cannot be tackled until America tackles its drug problem. The problem in Mexico exists because of the demand in America for the drugs that the cartels are dealing. While the demand for drugs exists there will always be someone willing to satisfy the need. The vast amounts of money involved means that there will always be scope for corruption. Ultimately the problem lies in America (and other countries around the world) where drug misuse is at epidemic levels.
3
Failed state are strong words to describe out neighbor to the south. The drug traffic is caused by US demand. The killings are carried out with US weapons. Have we no part at all in the Mexican plight? Mexico is not so much a failed state as we have failed foreign policy in Mexico and Central America. Colombia showed that narcotics can be replaced with a real economy. Racism is tougher to eradicate.
2
You raise some good points and have some interesting anecdotes. However this totally talks past the elephant in the room. Why are the drug cartels so powerful? US addiction to drugs. Why are cartels so heavily armed? US addiction to guns. Why are the cartels operating with impunity? With fairness this one is more myriad but a significant factor is well documented CIA narco traffic operations along with policies of secret warfare to destabilize Central America. Read Bob Stockwell.
3
Two excellent opinion articles in the NYT today about the drug related violence in Mexico. Sadly neither addresses the ultimate cause of the problem. As long as Americans continue to use hundreds of billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs someone will find a way to get them into the country. The idea of stopping the flow of drugs into the United States by sending troops to Mexico or stopping the sale of guns from here to Mexico is enough to have Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky laughing in their graves.
1
Let's go over it again, what history not me, has taught us re these types of situations.
1-The US should only get involved if these cartels or Mexico is attacking the US or about to attack us.
2-Otherwise stay as far away from this place as possible. Countless interventions in the past like Vietnam, Iraq 2 have proven we can only make it worse.
3-If crimes are being committed, atrocities, starvation, genocide etc. like in this case, get involved in a multi lateral way to bring the criminals before the intl. criminal court or some other forum.
4-Do not use incredible bad judgment and go there on missionary work if the place is a killing zone.
5-Even worse, don't bring children there. The people responsible for letting them go there should be brought up on child abuse charges.
6-In theory if you want to greatly limit this, stop promoting drugs in America in the media, legalize as much as possible and provide programs to help people get off drugs.
4
The drug cartel problem begins with brutal, desperate, abject, and grinding poverty.
These are people who can't feed their kids with the money they make working non-stop the two or three jobs they have to have, none of which pays benefits of any sort. Folks in these circumstances will resort to desperate measures to prevent their children from drowning with them.
This is how the drug cartels sell themselves. They prey on the desperate, who then engage in payback rampage and greed.
Not too different from the predatory loans Big Banks extend to desperately poor countries, who in the end will never be able to pay back the ravages of compounded interest.
Those are loans designed to fail. And when they do fail, we then move in and take new ownership of what those poor people owe us.
So how do we start the long-term solution to the drug cartels that will actually help people desperate for help?
Corporations should pay living wages to the countless millions of people around the world who now work full time and still can't make ends meet.
Preserving the Master-Slave dichotomy will take us to the end of the world.
More war and invasions won't work long term.
The war industry never works to actually help people. The warmongering drive to dominate the world will go on enriching only the people at the top.
Just pay the world a living wage. Then more people will start actually living -- as opposed to barely surviving in desperation.
oz
3
Bret, you have called it out. We need policy with regards to not only Mexico but all of Latin America. Looks at Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Argentina and now Chile. I don’t really expect anything since the US focuses on the EU, Middle East and Asia. Last comment, where are the weapons for these cartels coming from? Mostly the USA. Stopping the flow of guns and ammo would go a long way to help.
Since stopping US drug addiction is not an option, the US must look at Mexico as a failed state, that harbors terrorists.
Fighting the cartels, no longer works. For every leader killed, more cartels spring up.
The US must begin policies, that are used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Because the Mexican government has been corrupt for so long, it no longer functions for the people. The US must continue to remove the cartels, but only in conjunction with restoring the Mexican government and their people’s faith in the political system.
Like fighting ISIS this could take a generation, but must be done.
2
Grow up. We must legalize and reasonably regulate all recreational drugs to de-fund the cartels (and to make dosages safe and the drugs free of contamination).
Mexico is blown apart because the "war lords" of the drug war can corrupt or murder anyone, and are better armed than law enforcement. Legalize recreational drugs to defund them (and to defund the Taliban, and other organized criminals around the world).
Our "immigration crisis" is a "drug war refugee" crisis. Thirty years ago George Schultz's panel, originally established by Reagan, said to legalize and reasonably regulate recreational drugs. That was right then, and it is right now.
3
I'm all in on the guts of the Drug comments. But I'll add vastly improving gun control in the USA, which is where practically all the cartels' weapons are coming from.
1
Yet another article without a single mention of the root of the problem: the US War on Drugs. How can so many commentators and politicians have their heads in the sand? How can such a huge elephant in the room not even rate a nod from Mr Stephens? The solution to this entire problem is the same as it was when violence surged during Prohibition: decriminalize narcotics. Tax their sale and use the money to treat addiction as the disease it is. Unfortunately, that would mean not only cutting off the flow of money to the illegal cartels but also to the US prison industrial complex and arms manufacturers.
2
Stephens lived in Mexico and knows the country well. He confirms what I have always said, first from my life in So. California and since then: Mexico is not a country, it is a criminal conspiracy!
4
It is so awful and offensive to talk about a country as a "failed state". Mr. Stephens, you are sitting pretty in the U.S. As such, at least have the courtesy to treat other, less fortunate countries with the dignity they deserve.
This goes for all other countries that are having a difficult time, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria. No citizen living in such countries would like their country to be referred to as a failed state.
@Todd S.
Carl Jung said you must first name the truth before you can tackle it.
Many countries are failed states. Their gobernatorial systems are not functioning. What people “feel” in facing the truth should not keep us from saying it.
1
@Lily Nevertheless, Mexico is a neighbor to the U.S. One should be nice to one's neighbor. If Stephens was talking about Yemen, it would still be bad form to label it a failed state. With a neighboring country, it's even worse.
" Even if we build a wall, no crisis will ever respect a border." The wall gives us a chance.
1
Mexico was a failed state before the Narcos, but they have certainly made it worse.
Proximity to the US has historically acted as a "safety valve" for the incompetence of Mexico's leaders and the greed of its elites. Rather than staying there to change the system or rise up against it, people have simply crossed the border to achieve their dreams.
Despite statements from Trump and other racists, the U.S. has benefited mightily from this relationship. Mexico, on the other hand, has lost millions of hard-working and law-abiding people who are now wonderful Americans.
3
Yes. Because the surge in Iraq has made the country far safer for its people in the long run and made life in America much much safer for her citizens.
Or perhaps we should focus inwardly on places such as Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Flint etc. You know. Places in America.
You mention the elements required to defeat this insanity. In reality Mexico cannot count on its police or its military as both, particularly the police, are corrupted by the very people you would expect them to pursue. The judiciary cannot be counted on because of both intimidation and corruption. So, how is coordinating their efforts into a surge going to work? This problem seems to call for special forces, you know, like the US Navy Seals. If US citizens become targets, the US may have to deal with this directly. Remember Pancho Villa?
4
As an-Pat living in Mexico for the past four years, I have gained some insight into the terrifying violence problem: the cartels are exactly like the mafia. They come into power as a shadow government and flourish when a "legitimate" (aka "elected") government is weak, dysfunctional and has limited resources to help the people. The source of funds for a legitimate government is taxes; the source of funds for the cartel is drug and extortion money. Now here's the point: cartel profits go back into the communities! How? By creating businesses and other enterprises -gained with the drug revenues via money laundering. A poor, young citizen can expect much more help from the cartels than from legitimate institutions. As a mangy, emaciated village dog knows: you don't bite the hand that feeds you. The cartels exist because the legitimate (elected) government is weak -and poor.
5
@Jack the Ex-Patriot
government is weak -and poor.
no legit tax money
Maybe some countries like socialism. Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil before the coup, and others including Castro's longstanding experiment in Cuba are cases in point. Maybe we need a dose of socialism in America to bring us up to the standards of other developed countries. Socialism is not a bad word, it just means sharing the wealth.
Must we foment uprisings in every country that chooses to share the wealth among its people?
1
The violence in Mexico is directly tied to the US appetite for illegal cocaine and heroin. The cartels are simply supplying product to meet the demand.
We either need to legalize these substances or find a way to reduce / eliminate demand.
My thriller “Camp David Conspiracy “ provides a perspective on how it might be accomplished.
As the preamble reads: “There are times when things need to occur and whose means of occurrence are better left vague. Or not.”
The “War on Drugs”, like the war on alcohol (i.e. Prohibition “) did little more than create well-funded criminal gangs. Think Al Capone. What a pity that legalization and addiction treatment were never seriously considered as solutions.
Now, people want a “War on Drug Gangs.” All this would do is spur hatred for the foreign invaders, and reprisal attacks. Remember the US invasion of Mexico by General Pershing after Pancho Villa’s raid into Texas? That didn’t work out well. Why don’t we look at solutions other than counterproductive ones?
1
Gun deaths/100k people:
Mexico = 7.64
US of A = 12.21
Guns/100k people:
Mexico = 15,000
US of A = 120,500 (Yay, we're #1, globally!)
By your metric, Bret, which country is on a "Fast Track Toward a Failed State"??
1
@Miss Anne Thrope
We're with you Utah!
Some people want to remain blind to the facts in front of them.
The columnist writes:
“In 2015, I asked then-candidate Trump whether he feared that his protectionist policies would hurt Mexico in ways that ultimately would hurt the United States as well.”
I am surprised to read such a statement here.
Why? Because it is an admission that everything is connected in today’s world.
If only Stephens displayed such wisdom in all of his Times work, such as his VERY FIRST column here in which he cast doubt on the issue of anthropogenic climate change.
We don’t need a wall, we need to stop the drugs at the ports of entry. That means every airplane, container, truck gets the X-ray, sniffing treatment. Stop the drugs and stop the money. We can at least do this.
@Deirdre
We've been trying that for decades and fail miserably.
Possibly we can attempt what Bernie Sanders has been advocating for years. Pay people a living wage, break the grip of Wall Street, break the grip of our Oligarchs, take the big donor money out of our politics.
Possibly that will cure the allure of drugs in this country. Make America Liveable Again.
But agree, we don't need a wall. Ridiculous.
1
Before the USA advises Mexico how to deal with the drug cartels, we should look in the mirror and recognize that individually and collectively we bear most of the blame for the problem. It is our insatiable demand for drugs that is the cause of the problem. Some argue that making drugs legal will take the money out of the system and reduce criminal activity. What a Hobson’s choice?
2
Mexicans are inured to corruption and cynical about attempts to confront it. At the same time, they resent the United States and its immense power and our constant admonitions to fix their internal problems. Porfirio Diaz is said to have once sighed, "Poor Mexico. So far from heaven and so close to the United States."
The cultural and economic disparity between two nations who share such a long border and which share more friends and relatives living in the other's country, couldn't be greater.
When I married in 1978 in Mexico City, my prospective father-in-law remarked to me, "We'll always be this way," speaking to the corruption problems of the PRI and then-President Jose Lopez Portillo. Shortly after our marrying, He lost a small fortune after two devaluations of the Mexican peso.
He was right. Mexican has been limping along for a century.
5
@Bob Burns Yes. I don't see much discussion here of how things were in Mexico way before the Narco era. What were the police like? what were the Judges in courts like? How did legitimate corporations transact business? We need some critical thinking, and some basic history of Mexico ( and other Latin American cultures). Getting stuck at The War on Drugs lacks depth of thinking....
3
How can we talk about down south as a failed state when our own country is not much different when it comes to rule of law just look at the GOP and how they act, the laws do not matter to them it would seem there actions say it all power is everything.
2
The 18th amendment to our consitution was a big mistake but we failed to learn from it. Thus our drug wars have brought on the horrible mess in Mexico and here. legalize drugs, provide treatment for addiction and TAKE UP THE GUNS!!
2
So much to this story makes no sense. Why were these women unaccompanied. Where were the men? Especially for Mormons- a very traditional, conservative and family oriented group. Parts of Mexico are dangerous. This is why diplomacy should be used first in every international situation. Caging children from Mexico and target Mexicans for violence and then expecting safe, nonviolence from same Country --makes absolutely no sense at all.
1
The US did this. All of it. Our catastrophic War on Drugs that created obscene levels of profits for trafficking. Our insatiable consumption of said drugs. Our selling and supplying of all the weaponry that fuels the violence. I have been traveling and now living in Mexico for over forty years. None of this existed prior to our meddling and profiteering. Smug Americans like to point to the inherent corruption in Mexico as if the corruption in our own society does not dwarf it by magnitudes. Here is what I always say: What the average American actually knows about Mexico would fill a thimble. What they think they know and is wrong would overflow a gallon bucket.
3
You lost me at "Iraq-style." There are many lessons to be learned from Iraq, but the main one is that we never should have been there in the first place.
3
If WE really, cared, the US would do it's part to help by:
Legalizing drugs in this country.
Controlling gun sales to Mexico as well as, and more importantly, in this country.
Good luck on both...
Oh and getting us a new president would help a lot too.
2
No, Mexico is not on a fast track to becoming a failed state due to "incompetence and ideological inanity from Donald Trump and... Andrés Manuel López Obrador." Mexico is failing as a result of the bottomless appetite for drugs in the US that fuels the cartel-run drug trade. Even if Trump could wipe today's cartels off the face of the map (as he so ridiculously offered), as long as the huge market for drugs continues in the US, other players will simply step in to fill the demand. Rather than playing Whack-a-mole with the drug suppliers, we in the US need to examine our complicity in the root of the problem and work to change the factors that promote drug use in all strata of society.
2
Similarly horrific events have occurred many times before to Mexicans, and to undocumented immigrants under cartels and corrupt law enforcement —that the victims were not white might be behind the fact that these many events did not bubble up to the press’ front pages and prime news.
And of course it should be clear that the gangs and narcos doing these atrocities exist to produce, supply, and transport the enormous illicit US market for drugs. Further, these drug lords have guns because the US makes guns available freely here, to be brought in to Mexico by the truckload. Moreover, these gangs were born and seeded with convicts that were introduced, recruited, and later deported from US prisons.
Lastly, all “surges” into Mexico end up badly for both countries, and that Iraq has been a major failure and is a root of the current decomposition and fury engulfing our country. More military adventure would be most unwise.
1
Bret is on track with the pillars of the rule of law. However, the underlying causes of this violence are systemic issues that have plagued Mexico for centuries. They are extreme inequality and rampant political corruption that pre-date the country's drug cartels.
This is what happens when the wealthy become so privileged that they believe they are above the law. They use their money to skirt, bend and break the laws.
Mexico is a very rich country with many billionaires and the resources and know-how to have a functioning judiciary and prisons. But the engrained habits of paying off judges for this and that and taking care of and bribing their friends' way out of jail started with the country's wealthy elite. The drug cartel are just playing the same game.
The point is that when skirting the law becomes commonplace, all law-breakers will take advantage of it.
Mexico is both microcosm and a warning of what the U.S. is becoming. Like Mexico, we now "enjoy" extreme inequality and have billionaires who build enclaves and walls, mimicking the Mexican aristocracy. Our wealthy break the law to win elections and bribe their kids' way into college. They hire lawyers to sweep white collar crimes and sexual abuse women under the rug.
And we now have a President in the White House who has skirted the law all his life, believes he is completely above the law, and has many political cronies helping him along the way. Just like many Mexican Presidents over the past century.
5
@GM Yes. Thank you for not getting stuck in history at The War on Drugs. When utter disregard for justice and the law by police, elected officials, Judges, extremely wealthy CEOs is deeply entrenched in a culture ( for close to 2 centuries now) this is what one gets. Drug cartels are simply engaging in same ways of doing business as the above-mentioned people.
3
The key take away and the US president's fall back position on Mexico and just about everything except getting himself reelected: "I don’t care about Mexico, honestly. I really don’t care about Mexico.”
It shows.
2
Anyone claiming this has a single culprit, be it Trumps ineptitude, or drug policy in the US, is deluded.
I attended University in Texas 20 years ago, and took climbing trips to Monterrey. My Texan/Mexican friends would look at me with embarrassment as we were pulled over for the third time by local police for a shake down. Until you’ve seen corruption, beginning at that level, it’s difficult to appreciate how sacred it is.
Mexican people, culture, food, etc, is as rich and vibrant as anywhere. It’s heartbreaking to look at the giant mountain that needs climbing in order to allow this country to function properly.
3
I have been to Mexico a few times and enjoyed my stays there. Today, with the lawlessness and the proliferation of the drug business to the extent that they now kill women and children to make a point, there is no way that I would visit Mexico, even the pleasant places where I had formerly felt secure.
It appears that nowadays Mexico is not ruled by its political leaders but by drug cartels.
Let us note that this is the result of drug use in this country. These cartels are fulfilling American demand.
4
What if we were to declare these cartels an international terrorist organization, which I believe they are. Their crime spree spreads from South America through the U.S. and Canada. They are poisoning millions through their actions. They are not much different from other terrorist organizations that international law enforcement can hunt down. I am in shock at what they did to those families. Those little babies. I like the idea of a surge.
1
The headline, calling for an Iraqi like surge, suggests an American invasion of Mexico. Great idea, Mr Stephens. Let's start a nice new war to add to all our others. Maybe we can start by occupying Mexico's oil fields. We certainly can't take measures to reduce the demand at home for drugs from Mexico, and heavens forbid we reduce the flow of guns into Mexico. Whatever would the NRA say!
Cannot solve Mexico's problems for them. They are populating way too fast for anything we do to make a difference. We can draw a line though on American Children and Women being massacred. We know which Cartel was responsible. We have Special Forces and Drones capable of finding them, and bring the fight to them in a real hard way. Doesn't matter if Mexico is a sovereign state. They have chosen hugs, not bullets to fight a war. Makes Germany's broomsticks look formidable.
1
You know, if I were a conservative looking at the state of conservatism in the US, I'd write about Mexico too.
1
@Dan Styer
Nailed it. He's reaching via an explosive current event.
Stephens never mentions that America guns and Republican-NRA Guns Over People lawlessness are fueling Mexican and Central American cartel and gang violence.
A 2013 report by the University of San Diego said the number of guns smuggled from the United States was so significant that nearly half of American gun dealers rely on that business to stay afloat.
On average, an estimated 253,000 firearms each year are purchased in the United States expressly to be sent to Mexico, the report said, the vast majority of the sales originating in the border states of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Once in Mexico, the weapons end up in the hands of drug cartels or get shipped to gangs in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — countries that are dealing with an epidemic of gun violence.
Armed holdups on public transportation are a regular occurrence in Honduras, where nearly half of the unregistered weapons originated in the US, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported.
“If the Trump administration were serious about wanting to stop refugees from fleeing violence in Latin America and Mexico to come north, they would be doing something about the southward gun trafficking that is fueling a lot of that migration,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel with the Giffords Law Center.
https://apnews.com/f06086d8ed88450082ef9b8a403d4637
Many Bret Stephens and the Guns Over People party should open their eyes while cashing their deadly gun checks.
Nice GOPeople.
64
A "surge"? Bret, don't you follow events in Iraq? It's a mess. And will continue to be so for many years. Now you're seriously advocating doing the same thing, right next to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California? Unbelievable.
How about legalizing, regulating, and giving the state control over drugs? Poof. No more money in the hands of drug cartels. They disappear because of lack of function. The state has trillions of new dollars to deal with addiction, law enforcement, and poverty issues.
As a young Mexican adult, I believe that this is a problem with multiple aspects that range from a lack of a real government, extreme poverty, a social crisis (I believe we all are corrupt, to some extent), and being next to one of the biggest drug market in the whole world.
I wholeheartedly believe that only the Mexican people will solve this problem, however Americans are not exactly helping out by consuming outrageous amounts of drugs.
Also, Mexico is indeed a failed state, however I like to think that there can be change.
I do appreciate that the NYTimes is publishing articles that show its international readership how desperate the situation is nowadays.
¡Viva México!
6
No, sorry, this is not the fault of Trump or the U.S. Mexico's problems have been building for years. The drug cartels have been around for decades. To claim otherwise is simply outlandish and, dare I say it, not truthful.
2
I've lost count, is this the 200th time someone writes Mexico will become a failed state? This is a very alarmist and superficial opinion piece on the issues.
Corruption is pervasive in Mexican institutions, that is a fact. But it's also a fact that a huge piece of the puzzle lies with the US. The billions of dollars that Mexican drug lords use to bribe officials and buy weapons, comes from the US. The majority of weapons used by the drug cartels, come from the US.
You want to change your neighbor to the south? Push your congressman/woman to pass better gun control laws. Talk to your kids to stop consuming drugs. In the 80's/90's it was Colombia, today it is Mexico, but as long as you continue to consume drugs and give out weapons freely, next time it will some other country and you will continue to have this problem.
On a different note, if you really care about this issue, then keep talking about it and actually do something about it on your side. Don't just talk about it when American citizens are involved. This issue won't go away when they catch the people that committed this horrible crime.
2
Or, you know, we could rethink the failed drug war policies that are the revenue stream for the cartels that are destroying Mexico.
2
Mexican and American governments are the same in their corruption and in their abuse and insolence toward their people. Politicians use their power, their ability to make laws, to undermine and subjugate the very people they’ve sworn to protect. The non-violent solution is to vote corruption politicians out of office over and over again until they begin to listen.
I believe it was Porfirio Diaz, (whose rule over Mexico ended in 1911), once said "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States".
Calderon militarized the drug problem, at the behest of the US. This quadrupled the murder rate and the drug cartels responded by importing ever larger weapons from the US.
If the US truly wants to help, reduce drug consumption, stop laundered money and guns from entering Mexico.
Easy, huh?
4
Trump would insist that we 'keep the coke' as payment for our efforts.
Seems the US could say that the security situation in Mexico is that they don't have control of all the land in their border. Terrorists have filled the void. Like Afghanistan this would give legitimacy to the US sending in special forces into Mexico as Turkey has done into Syria. And we could bring up the issue of Mexico in the United Nations. In El Universal newspaper in Mexico City today columnists were speculating that America might just do that.
1
As always a thoughtful column.
Mexico is on track to becoming a failed state.
The slaughter of the young Mormon family is just the latest atrocity. The article doesn’t even mention the kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students in Iguala in 2014. And the official murder rate only includes reported murders—not the multitude of “disappearances” where the body is never found. So the truth is much worse than the numbers show.
But, unlike Yemen or Sudan or Pakistan, Mexico is a middle class country, with per capita income of US$9,000 (over $17k equivalent at purchasing power parity). It is the 15th largest economy in the world (11th at PPP per the World Bank).
It is easy to criticize AMLO as a soft headed socialist, but he seems to be running from a fight that he judges he cannot win.
But there is hope. Colombia was a “narco-State” only a few decades ago, effectively ruled by ruthless drug cartels. And yet Colombia, with US help, remade itself into a thriving and safe country. How did they do it? Is their experience replicable?
3
In 2019 there were 35,964 murders in Mexico at the current rate they will exceed that number for 2019. These number exclude people kidnapped, missing etc.
Now 9 Americans get killed and we are all in a tizzy about it. guess who is buying the drugs and selling the guns.
This is like blowing your leaves into your neighbors yard and then complaining that they do not keep it clean.
1
It all comes down to drug use in the Western world. This is what fuels it.
1
"Research shows that a majority of guns in Mexico can be traced to the U.S. A report from the U.S Government Accountability Office showed that 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico by Mexican authorities and submitted for tracing have a U.S. origin. "
Guess which country has the largest amount of guns in the world circulating freely and prone to be smuggled across its borders.
2
US dug appetite and failed drug policy is an oversimplified scapegoat for the current situation in Mexico. Blame weak institutions, poor leadership, and the failure of the pueblo to rise up and say enough. If the US demand for drugs collapsed tomorrow the cartels would pivot, as many have already done, and wreak more havoc on Mexican society.
The U.S. has been “fighting” the longest war in history and has lost. Until our country doubles down to actually win the war on drugs, we will continue to be accessories to more cartel murders in Mexico, and to more drug overdoses right here in the USA.
1
Is America willing to send troops into another Vietnam? An easier win would be just telling your citizens to stop using and would have about the same chance of success.
2
Innocent children getting murdered or maimed because of adult evil. Going on since the beginning of time, but this exemplifies the horror, still in the here and now.
And no, Donald, your border wall will not cure this.
1
A those note for those calling for the use of Mexican Army Troops against the cartels? An integrated civilian-military campaign sounds nice doesn't it? Until you realize the Zeta's one of the most feared and violent cartels in Mexico originated from elite Mexican Troops trained in counter insurgency & counter Narcotics techniques at Fort Bragg. Do we really want to create more Zeta's?
2) Blaming Trump for Mexico's problem's? That is disingenuous at best. He may not have helped the situation. But Mexico's inability to deal with cartels predates Trump being in office by over 3 decades. Which makes blaming Trump for Mexico's incurably corrupt and dysfunctional Government a bit of stretch at best. As for Trump not caring about Mexico? Let's face it caring about Mexico isn't Trump's job (not that he's good at his job) It's AMLO's job to care for Mexico. By Blaming the renegotiation of NAFTA for cartel violence? All I can say is hunh?
1
There has been no "fast track" here. You have not been paying attention Mr. Stephens which of course calls into question your entire piece.
Seriously? AN "Iraq-style surge?"
Democrats in our own country deny there is a war on drugs. Legalizing marijuana will make it all go away, right?
Open the borders completely to these people...there is no real problem. Walls won't do anything...all they really want is Warren health care.
I find it truly remarkable that Bret Stephens can write an entire column about the on-the-cusp-of-being-a-failed-state situation in Mexico, without a single mention of two unfortunate facts:
- The target / market for the efforts and the products of the cartels are very much American drug addicts.
- The weaponry of said cartels is very much procured in the USA, often through American fronts.
It is disingenuous in the extreme to paint this as a Mexican Problem. Add to this the American politicization of the border-and-migration situation, and you have the makings of a perfect storm.
I hope you're aware that if Mexico implodes, you'll pay the price, too.
13
@Rudy Flameng
Weaponry comes from South and Central American failed states. They are using fully automatic weapons. The bulk of them come from other Central and South American Countries.
2
México is a beautiful country with a rich cultural heritage. Its hard working, law abiding citizens deserve so much more from its political leaders, who seem utterly incapable of - or unwilling to - take on the drug cartels and the root causes that gave rise to them in the first place.
77
@Julio By root cause do we mean demand for the drugs in the United States of America?
7
To be fair, Mexico was in such state for quite a long time. Remember, the bus with 40 students who disappeared in the middle of the day never to be found? Wasn't It that a sign of the failed state? But is the surge the real answer? How many people were killed during for surge and for what? For Iraq to become a playground for ISIS? But even now Iraq is a hardly a success that Mexico should follow.
6
A failed state along our border is far more dangerous than a failed Iraqi state. Removing Trump's indifference is a first step. Some solutions, as comments point out, are multi-generational -- including drug demand in the US. Respect for law in Mexico cannot change culturally without first making judges feel safe, and paying them and policemen adequately. The corruption culture must begin with prosecuting corruption. Finally, Mexico has good reason to distrust our offer of intervention. The US, on the other hand, has good reason to believe that aide would not be diverted to the pockets of corrupt officials in the national and state governments of Mexico. I had a client who had to flee Mexico with his family because, as a policeman, he got himself on the list of cartels because he was honest. He feared the state police as much as narcos. Recognizing his and circumstances like his would be the beginning of an humane policy at our border.
7
Missing here is the "c" word which is corruption. I love Mexico and have been from Oaxaca to the "safe" Central Highlands and in between. Mexico City is fascinating, but at what cost? Pickpockets, taxis that steal from you, water, in a lot of areas you can't drink and more.
It is going to take a sea change to get the cartels under control, corruption erased and safety extended to the entire country. Sadly, for now, I'm not going back.
84
@JWMathews I will be back as long as I live
corruption? how about the corrupt American politicians here and the corporation that bribe them ?
just look at Rick Scott a frauster that was stealing from the Federal government and almost went to jail where is he now ? in the biggest crooked institution the US Senate
Mexico should build a wall to intercept the guns.
A culture of corruption is the root of the problem. Let’s not forget that many “authorities” in Mexico benefit or are compromised. The cartel would not function if the police actually wanted to stop them. I bet the Chilean Carabineros would take care of this, just like they repress their own civilians.
6
@Daniel B
In October the police captured a son of 'El Chapo' in the city of Culiacan.. Hundreds of heavily armed cartel members took to the streets and started shooting up & burning the city.. the police were outmanned & outgunned, and they had to release Chapo's son..in order to save the city
--So it is ignorant to say "the cartel would not function if the police actually wanted to stop them."
1
Mexico is being ruined by the misguided policies of the US -- amplified to an incoherent screech by Trump.
The War of Drugs is a chief culprit.
Mexico needs to follow the example of Bolivia's Morales, expel the DEA and legalize drug production, and tax it. Rehabilitate drug dealers and "lords" who have not committed mass murder.
Let the US interdict drugs at the border, rather than children.
If the US didn't offer a giant market opportunity for drugs, there would be no suppliers.
155
@arvay
When government taxes something - gambling, alcohol, marijuana- it becomes a partner in the industry and puts its reputation in the hands of that industry and the regulators assigned to it. Incentives get reset in very risky ways.
This can go quite poorly soon enough even if it has the veneer of success initially. It seems much better to simply decriminalize such things than to get the state into socially destructive businesses.
6
@arvay Totally agree. It is dereliction of journalistic duty to discuss Mexican criminality without contextualizing it with the disastrous War on Drugs. Portugal proved long ago that decriminalization of drugs doesn't flood the streets with addicts, it reduces the power of criminal elements and allows states to reallocate resources in more productive ways. The Mexican and US governments should both try a "brains, not bullets" approach.
12
@Alan
Hello, the problem could be solved almost over night if narcotics were decriminalized in the US.
Please look at Portugal's example. The war on drugs has been going on since the 1920s; drugs have only gotten more pure and plentiful. It is not too difficult to recognize that our current position on narcotics is wrong. Instead of criminal treatment it should be looked at as a medical problem like alcoholism. Until this is accomplished things will only worsen.
Prohibition doesn't work and never will.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
18
Legalize drugs. Plow savings into treatment and education. Problem solved.
10
If Trump thinks the situation on the border is bad now...if Mexico does actually collapse due to the cartels, it will be 1000x worse. The flow of people will increase 10x-50x, the Border Patrol is not equipped to handle the current flow, and will be quickly overwhelmed. The US Army isn't trained to do law enforcement, and the situation will go from it's current bad to unimaginable.
The root of much of this is our puritan anti-drug prohibition policies. With so much money to be made, nothing we do on the border will stop this. Instead of trying to fix that root problem, we are actively making it worse! We're now contemplating outlawing ejuice, and are planning on turning a billion dollar industry into a black market by years end.
12
Agree. Astounding this columnist does not address legalizing drugs.
We know how to combat insurgents as evidenced by our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a bold idea: what if the US invited Mexico to join our country and work towards full citizenship and become new states of our republic? Then we could combat the insurgency of cartels. Also, since we essentially have an economic union via NAFTA and millions of Mexican citizens already live in the US, we would gain the ability to live and work in Mexico, and vice versa, essentially eliminating the border issues.
5
@Ski bum
Right. Might as well include all of Central America and South America while we're at it. Then the Canadians can militarize their border with us to keep the millions out. Taking on the corrupt, over populated mess that is Mexico and CA is not the solution. Helping them fix their problems there and here might.
1
The role of the USA in this problem is mostly mentioned as an afterthought, but when you combine a 150 billion dollar illicit drug market together with how easy the cartels can buy assault style weapons at the border, it is a recipe for this kind of violence.
17
Bret the problem is much deeper and more cultural than you relate. A friends father was murdered for owning a prosperous little grocery store. He wasn't murdered by a cartel, but rather jealous neighbors. In a poor country where daily survival is a struggle, Mexico and it's problems don't begin to be addressed by what you suggest. Legalizing drugs is one approach, strict gun control, depriving cartels of access is another and programs that help local economies. You can't blast this problem away.
9
For years, I have heard complaints about Mexico that it is on the way to becoming a failed state. To be sure, for a whole host of reasons, political culture is fundamentally different than it is in the United States. Also, to be sure, violence is worse today than it was even a few years ago. But it has been and continues to be isolated to a few areas, mostly as a result of the routes that drugs now take through Mexico.
Drugs are not new in Mexico but what has changed since the 1990s is role that Mexico has played in moving and producing drugs for the US market. Actions taken during the Clinton administration forced routes passing through the Caribbean to be diverted through Mexico. New contacts between Colombian and Mexican cartels changed the production and trafficking of drugs.
If the author of the column reads this comments, please learn as much as you can about Mexico, the US Mexican Border Region and drug trafficking. If you are unable to read and speak Spanish, find a colleague who can can help you access information available in Mexico. You have a huge audience. Your readers deserve more than superficiality.
11
@Babs And what would suggest to read, in English, preferably, but also in Spanish.
Against all odds, Mexico is trying to overcome decades of institutionalized corruption at every level of government. AMLO is the first to really attempt this, his challenges are not an indication of failure, just an acknowledgement of how bad things had become. The presence of heavily militarized drug cartels complicate this transition. The best thing the US could do is stop sending guns to the cartels, our poorly regulated and lax gun policies have essentially armed Mexico to the teeth. American guns killed that Mormon family - anyone talking about that? Of course - if we actually funded real drug treatment in this country to reduced the demand for illegal drugs that would help too - but that will never happen when there's a profit to made here as well.
8
Two other domestic US factors that contribute to this crisis:
1. Demand for illegal narcotics.
2. Easy access to firearms.
We in the US need to stop treating drug use as a criminal problem and start treating it as a medical one.
Every day illegal drugs head north across the border from Mexico while firearms that are legally purchased in the US are smuggled southwards.
It is estimated that 200,000 firearms are illegally smuggled across the border into Mexico each year.
4
@DazedAndAmazed
Who's legally purchasing the machine guns and grenade launchers these guys use and sending them south? I can't buy them and neither can you. Part of this narrative doesn't make sense.
1
@DazedAndAmazed
Still confused. I get that they buy guns at gun shops here and sneak them back into Mexico, which does supply some serious stuff. What I don't get is the really heavy duty stuff. Machine guns, grenades etc. I don't think that stuff is available at your neighborhood gun emporium. Your article had a guy a picture of a guy with an AK. If it's a full auto it's not available here. Where are they getting the other stuff?
1
We used to go to Cancun regularly. Those visits halted about 15 years ago when we observed an increased military and police presence there on a daily basis, in order to combat an exploding crime rate and drug trade. One afternoon we witnessed a full scale military raid on a major hotel, complete with armor clad commandos, assault weapons, and 50 caliber machine gun equipped SUV's. When a major tourist center like Cancun succumbs to crime and drugs, you have to know that Mexico is in deep, deep trouble. That is why a wall and a secure no-man's land on our southern border is not only needed, it is a no-brainer.
10
@paul We don't have the capability of building an effective border area like you want, without spending over a trillion dollars. The Romans and Chinese didn't just build a wall; they also manned said wall. We would need to deploy thousands of full-time people, every 50 miles or so. In the middle of a desert, that has zero infrastructure, no water, no power, no connectivity. Even if we fully funded Trump's vision, it would take a decade or more to actually build the proper defenses that can't just be cut through with a battery-powered tool. The real solution is to address the issues driving the problem: prohibitionist drug policies, and the cut-off of aid to programs inside affected southern countries that WAS actually helping to stem the tide of refugees.
3
@paul
What does a wall have to do with the problems you discuss which involve things happening in Mexico? Why not use the billions for a wall for something meaningful?
@paul
Just went to a wedding there last summer. People couldn't have been nicer. Never felt unsafe at any moment.
I agree with the article in many respects. We need a drastic solution as soon as possible. There is one thing the author forgot that is not only affecting Mexico but the whole Latino America. As drug dealers introduce drugs into our country, a great portion of that money is used to buy powerful weapons in the United States in our extremely easy marked that have been successfully created by NRA. These extremely powerful weapons are used effectively by the drug dealers, gangs that have become more numerous and for the guerrilla warfare in some countries. We are totally responsible, without that powerful weapons, the situation will be completely different.
6
The situation would be a lot different if Americans stop taking illicit drugs. As simple as that; stop blaming Latin America for an North American problem.
1
The Washington Post article about the breaching of the newest border wall makes it clear that, if there's enough financial incentive, smugglers will figure out a way to keep doing business. Including intimidation and murder.
And they have the billions to bribe Mexican authorities, too. It's hard to see how partnering with Mexican law enforcement will change things when corruption is a big part of the problem.And exactly how long would this surge go on for? We've been trying this in Afghanistan for almost two decades.
Decriminalizing drugs and funneling that billions we spend in interdiction into treatment is the only way to stop this. To those who say it won't work, I ask: if the war on drugs hasn't worked for decades, why do you think it will magically start now? Can we at least try a different approach?
10
@Elizabeth A
I agree. We have wasted billions on the war on drugs. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world because of drugs. That has cost billions. The American appetite for drugs has corrupted Mexico, Columbia, El Salvador and probably other countries. That corruption and violence has led to the so-called immigration problem and the expenditure of more billions. These are effects; what is the cause?
Like it or not, Americans across the board are going to use and/or abuse illegal drugs. Nothing is going to stop that usage--nothing.
If we legalized drug use, taxed it, made it safe and accessible, we would not only save billions, we would generate billions so that we could not only decrease the deficit, we could have affordable medical and prescription coverage. We could spend on the crumbling infrastructure.
As well, we would put the Mexican cartels out of the drug business. Whether they continued as local war lords/mafia is uncertain, but at least we would have stopped their main business.
It's baffling to me how Stephens can posit any cogent analysis without mentioning the demand for illegal drugs in America.
A recent RAND study estimates that Americans spend 150 billion dollars a year on illegal drugs. Unless policymakers face this reality, perhaps the failing state is us?
37
And once policy makers face this reality what should they do? How exactly do we reduce the demand for drugs? A new war on drugs? The glib blame America first response is meaningless unless you have some actual ideas on what should be done.
1
Mexico's difficulties have historical roots. We can look at NAFTA and the decimation of rural livelihoods as major factors promoting instability. Or, more recently, we can look at the militarization of the country with the declaration of the war on Narcotraffickers in 2006. A surge won't result in peace. What will is a serious look at inequality and strengthening rural livelihoods.
Oh, and the US needs to end the war on drugs, stop the sale of arms to organized crime, end an exploitative labor regime.
5
I wonder if Mr. Stephens has ever interacted with any Mexican who was not extremely wealthy. I worked there years ago and the weakness and corruption of the government was pretty obvious. I agree the big deal is "Rule of Law", and there is only a veneer of it, and that was over 20 years ago. The society is obviously stratified, rich and poor, and inequality is the center of their problems. It really affects their "Rule of Law", because people who don't have food do not care much about the law.
15
@gratis , you are correct and there is no better example of Polanco with expensive stores, big cars and armed guards all over the place while the outlying barrios have little or nothing for the vast majority. A middle class keeps a country stable. Ours or Mexico's.
11
@JWMathews We will fall to the same fate if the rich keep getting richer and poverty grows in our country. It is time to tax the rich as was done in the Republican Eisenhower's era. Can you imagine how much better our education and social services would be if rich people were taxed fairly?
1
Thank you! More attention needs to be put on this issue.
Walls won't do anything. We need smart leaders and smart policies that reach across the border, working together.
If Mexico fails it will be much more difficult for the USA to be successful.
6
As someone who lives in Mexico, and is increasingly troubled by the rise in violence, I reluctantly agree with Mr. Stephens.
I think the Mexicans I know would welcome a decades-long program to eradicate the organized crime that has infected much of the country.
Legalization of drugs in Mexico, hard enforcement of crimes like extortion, and sustained educational opportunities for young men are all part of the short term answer.
But institutional reform must continue. Organized crime is a separate problem that must have its own laws, police, and courts. And these need to be well funded and determined.
6
Absent from the analysis is demand, which comes from the United States. And if the drug war continues it is because the demand is there.
The fundamental issue is that cocaine is not the only way to consume the coca leaf. What we need is to study the plant and determine which forms of it could be integrated into responsible use (cocaine is only 0.5% of coca). Certainly coca never did any damage to Inca civilization, and to the contrary, was one of its mainstays.
The countries that inherited coca -- Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil --should become pioneers in studying the plant and its uses, and conducting scientific research, development and testing.
Cocaine is a drug of war, coca leaf was always a drug of clarity and endurance. Why did contemporary civilization choose cocaine over coca? Good question.
12
I applaud the author's use of the phrase "criminal insurgency". Hopefully it will be applied in other contexts, perhaps including the latest version of the Republican party.
The author continues:
"His strategy has been to increase spending on social programs while urging gangsters to think of their mothers. He has claimed, preposterously, that crime is under control."
Without the context of the rest of the article, it is hard to tell if the author is discussing what has happened south or north of the border.
11
@Alan
I, and many others no doubt, share your disdain for some of the antics we are seeing in this country. But seriously, there is no comparison between the state of our two nations, and the grave peril the citizens of Mexico find themselves in. It is a disservice to both countries to just trivialize the criminal horrors going on in Mexico for purposes of cheap domestic political shots.
2
The US has an extraordinarily huge stake in Mexico’s success, safety, growth, and stability. That understanding was the rationale for the dramatic surge in bilateral
cooperation in decade and a half up to 2017.
By pulling the rug out from under that relationship and disavowing a US stake in Mexico’s success, Trump has here again dealt a big blow to Americans’ interests.
Strong, productive and friendly relationships with its contiguous neighbors afforded the US strategic advantage that competitors like China and Russia could only dream of having (but never will).
What’s happening in Mexico, and what Trump has done to facilitate it, is part of a rapidly growing list of long term strategic harm he has inflicted on our interests. Our adversaries must be delighted.
39
First, media (including Mr. Stephens) and our strategy wonks ought to stop finding excuses to send our military to someone else’s backyard.
Second, as important as it is to our interests,Mexico deserves more like a Marshal Plan type approach not more gun toting people chasing other gun toting people. Hopefully, there will be incentives Expatriates on this side of the border to return to their homeland as businessmen and technocrats. The make believe Nafta is a sorry excuse for engagement.
Third, the cartels exist because of demand on our side and we have to solve that problem on our end.
25
For once, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, the fault is not Trump’s. This really does go back a long way and it is internal to Mexico.
But I will agree with the proposition that Trump and the GOP have no real solution. They themselves are pretty shaky on the rule of law. Unless you’re poor of course. Then they are all for it. Sort of like Mexico.
14
I am very much pro-legalization/regulation, and in the long term I believe that, combined with economic initiatives, will be the only lasting solution for Latam drug violence. In the short term, however, Obregon has essentially ceded territory to these criminal groups. I saw it in Colombia in the late 90's/2000's when the government gave a territory the size of Switzerland to the FARC (it didn't go well). Although it is not official policy in Mexico the state has created a vacuum in certain territories that allow these "cartels", basically paramilitary armies at this point, to be the law and further consolidate their power. Like in Colombia, a serious military intervention may be necessary to at least take back some control. Then the more structural solutions like legalization/poverty initiatives can be effective.
11
Taking out Mexico's ultra-violent drug cartels is a never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole. There is simply too much profit in producing and selling narcotics to America for the enterprising to choose “hugs, not drugs”.
One answer – and the third rail of politics – is for the US to legalize all recreational narcotics under the same standards as alcohol. Sales licenses are costly and difficult to obtain, no purchasers under 21 and no driving under the influence.
Yes, there will initially be overdoses, but not the huge numbers of accidental overdoses we're seeing today. The drugs will be manufactured by approved pharmaceutical firms and accurately labeled for ingredients and potency. Drug-related crime will be reduced, as addicts no longer have to rob and steal to afford outrageously overpriced products of dubious origin. Street sales will be a thing of the past.
Naloxone could be included at no cost with each opioid purchase and available over the counter at pharmacies.
But the drug cartels aren't the only ones who would suffer from legalization. Drug rehab clinics would have to produce positive results instead of “revolving door” patients. Private prisons' profitable workforces would decrease. Law enforcement would spend more time investigating violent crime.
It's working in Portugal. It can work in America.
37
The answer to America’s drug problem is not more drugs. As is seen in states like mine that have legalized marijuana, drug use is normalized and overall consumption rises. Our country needs an intervention. We need to rid ourselves of the idea of a taking drug for every emotion- pharmaceutical and recreational.
4
Isn’t that the attitude that got us into the “drug wars” in the first place? It quite simply has not worked.
5
@Julie I don't necessarily disagree with your underlying premise - the "brain chemistry" theory of emotion is likely a harmful oversimplification that has, indeed, led to overreliance on medication (prescribed or not) to deal with the normal range of emotional experience. That said, interventions are for individuals, not societies. The incredible harm that's been inflicted by the decades-long war on drugs, here and abroad, is orders of magnitude greater than what we'd see with a legalized, regulated recreational drugs market.
7
I sincerely hope that this won’t happen, but if the violence and lawlessness in northern Mexico steadily increase over the next few years, and then begin to spill over into the southwestern US in various, frightening ways, I think US troops will be sent into northern Mexico to try and restore order. And this will be a much worse nightmare than even our horrible misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
5
Isn't part of the problem -a big one, I suspect- American drug consumption? With that out of the equation, it seems logical to assume the cartels will lose momentum and wither. What do you have to say about that?
28
Yes, a surge. That helped make Iraq the stable, safe nation-state it is today.
I have a slightly different idea: we legalize all drugs. Tomorrow. Like Portugal, which has reportedly seen much success from that. And then we create far more fair trade deals with Mexico; we invest far more (mostly by relaxing the centuries-long demand that Our Backyard bow to US elite economic interests, but also directly); and we stop this fake "crisis" on the border, one created mostly by us, not Mexico (or other southern nation-states), if anyone is at all interested in root-cause analysis, as opposed to nationalistic preening.
How about we try something along those lines?
71
@Doug Tarnopol
Drugs are still illegal in Portugal. They are decriminalized, which helps drug users, but still creates drug dealers and cartels.
Decriminalization is a half measure. We need 100%legalization.
17
@Doug Tarnopol U.S./Mexico fair trade deals? You mean shipping all our manufacturing and distribution network to Mexico at the expense of vast swathes of our population losing their jobs to 'free trade' to Mexico? I'm all for legalizing drugs but Mexico needs to stand on its own feet without depending on us to spoon feed them economic development and job creation. Mexico has been corrupt since its inception and shipping more jobs to Mexico and turning a blind eyes to undocumented economic migrants is not a sustainable solution.
4
"Alcohol affects the brain's neurons in several ways. It alters their membranes as well as their ion channels, enzymes, and receptors. Alcohol also binds directly to the receptors for acetylcholine, serotonin, GABA, and the NMDA receptors for glutamate."
Many legal pharmaceuticals as well as illegal drugs operate on the same receptors in mildly different ways.
The prohibition did not work.
Many illegal drug users sufferer from varying degrees of mental illness, or incident related stress.
The solution is healthcare on this side of the border.
If we stop the drugs entering from Mexico, they will find a way in from other parts of the world. It's already happening. Appears to be easier and more profitable than winning the lottery.
24
Watching Mexico become a failed state will, in the long run, cost far more in blood and money that being proactive about it now. That things got this bad this fast for Mexico speaks to a much deeper, systemic and cultural problem. There is probably no foreign citizenry that understands America better than that of Mexico. Untold numbers have worked and lived in America side by side by with American citizens. They know how American institutions work, how the rule of law works, etc. Yet, for reasons that elude, this country of vast resources cannot --- and never has been able to ---- establish respected institutions impervious to graft and corruption. It is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Mexico was dry kindling before the cartels came to town. It is corrupt to its core. This is a problem that only Mexico can fix. They must take a long, hard look in the mirror and decide what kind of country they want to be. The government, the judiciary, and law enforcement all must work hand in hand to create trust. It's the only way.
23
Your last sentence applies to American decline as well. Corruption at the top will make corruption throughout inevitable and acceptable.
1
@Spiral Architect Well said. Trump is not to blame for Mexicans who were corrupt long before he became President. Only Mexicans can fix Mexico.
3
It's amazing how many people think legalizing drugs is the answer. Drugs have been essentially legalized in a number of US cities.
The results? Just look at San Francisco. Hundreds of thousands of needles swept up and people shooting up in public.
Homeless camps where supposedly 80% have a substance abuse problem and no wish to abandon that way of life.
The number of countries colonized by Spain with outsized corruption is astonishing. Certainly there is plenty of corruption in other places as well. But I've begun thinking it's part of the culture. Look at the number of people from below our Southern border who essentially ignore our laws.
26
@Talbot It's so ironic to me that there are people advocating the legalization of drugs during our present opioid crisis. The prescription drug pipeline is just legalization lite. It's the canary if the coal mine. This is what happens when people are given almost unfettered access to officially sanctioned drugs that cannot be taken responsibly in a recreational fashion. Meth, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl --- these are substances that humans simply cannot handle without massive adverse consequences. People that advocate for the legalization of drugs are the same people that would be horrified if Oxycontin, Quaaludes, Aderall, Xanax, Ambien, etc., were available on grocery store shelves to anyone that wanted them. Yet they're in favor of legalizing drugs that they perceive are beneath them --- "street" drugs taken by people on the other side of town. The War on Drugs is like the war on bugs. Sure you'll never get rid of all the bugs in your house......but that doesn't mean you just stop trying. Abatement is a real thing. We can argue about how to wage the war, but the illegality and stigma of street drugs is precisely why people a lot of people don't use them.
12
The real issue is control. The problem with criminalization of drugs is that it is the illusion of control. You’re not really controlling underground markets. Supply still rises to meet demand at a given price.
3
@Talbot -- Dear Talbot: We then engage in case-by-case prohibition (instead of general prohibition) as we do with alcohol. 90% of all heroin users are successfully recreational (they still keep their jobs, pay their bills, etc.) First, end prohibition, and then second, address the secondary harms of the incompetent users.
It is better to have our current alcohol problems than to have the Mafia running alcohol, shooting people, and corrupting cops.
2
Bret Stephens' observations about the ineptitude of Mexico's government are more graphically detailed in Don Winslow's great "Cartel" trilogy of novels. However, he should also have mentioned the fundamental reason for the existence of those cartels: the insatiable appetite for heroin, cocaine and other banned addictive substances on the part of Mexico's neighbor to the north. Not to trivialize this human disaster, but Pogo nailed it when he said, "Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us."
41
@Charles Michener Your point is valid to a degree, but short-changes Mexico's role in this debacle. It is a country almost devoid of a middle class. It is ruled by an elite class contemptuous of the rule of law. It is corrupt from top to bottom. That a disaster of this magnitude could happen in Mexico in the first place says more about Mexico than it does for America's drug appetite. Mexico is a complete mess and always has been.
3
I hope this reaches the author. I'm upset that he got me to click on his piece. I've generally done a good job of ignoring his click-bait. His arguments have generally low validity.
When you make comparisons, you use the same context to account for as many variables. Here are some examples. Gun deaths in a country should not be compared to gun deaths in a modern war. There are more people in the line of fire every day in general even in the US compared to war. What about the US? What's the point other encouraging than low level thinking.
Also Big claims really need big evidence. like climate change and evolution . . . Mr. Stephens? There was no real support for the failed state of mexico. The actions of two presidents don't necessarily cause the things you are mentioning. I know this is an opinion piece, but I will read one more article of yours. Don't let me down with your reasoning. Once someone actually does the analysis, maybe you're right. Being careful with claims is not beneficial to the opinion section, but it's out of hand here. I hope Mr. Stephen's readership is going down (competition to encourage better work).
As much as we want problems to be simple, they are sometimes and not other times. And a very valid consideration is the source of power for these cartels. Not one mention here. Why would readers actually think that this was a good opinion piece?
10
Or we could just legalize all drugs and spend the billions in savings on education, treatment, and social supports.
Faster, cheaper, safer, more certain and humane, and better for the economy.
31
@Matt
I imagine you have a ton of experience, there in Arkansas.
But I must point out research and experience show that full legalization saves tons of money, gets users off the streets and into treatment, instantly crashes rates of crime, and puts cartels in extremely uncomfortable positions.
So...
Sorry your town is such a mess, though.
Try to have a little more confidence in your fellow citizens; even the liberal ones, if you can.
Maybe direct your anger where it belongs: big pharma and the legal system.
Yes, so much in the world, and next door to us, that needs our well-considered attention. Instead, for example, the US Navy hopes to have some 48 Virginia Class Nuclear Subs by 2050 at 2.5 billion apiece now and 5 billion apiece later. To what end--so we can be the world's "peacemaker?" No, so that we can continue to feed the major military contractors, who feed our politician's campaigns, etc. If Mexico is a failed state, there will be an acceleration of bloodshed and refugees, and the same for several Central and South American countries. Our governmental system has not been able to keep up with the events in our own hemisphere. Time to make failing states an offer they can't refuse. I really don't think there could be much more drug use and abuse and death in the US than there already is: anyone who wants cocaine or heroin or meth or fentanyl can apparently get it. So we need to take radical steps to greatly reduce demand. Ironically, that will take decriminalizing drugs and funding long-term outpatient, medically assisted treatment. And a Marshall Plan for our Southern neighbors, including powerful incentives for cooperating with strategies that address the drug production, gov't corruption, gang violence, and poverty/educational issues. The money we spend on oil might as well go to these purposes--Venezuela has the reserves to be developed in the short term. Let other nations buy Middle Eastern oil. Ah, well, global warming will destroy everything anyway, right?
16
Plan Colombia was a bi-partisan civil-military domestic and international effort started by George HW Bush and continued through successive administrations. Bush did not want a narco-State “three hours by plane from Miami.” While not an unqualified success, it has been effective at resolving many of the problems that made Colombia a dangerous place during the time of Pablo Escobar. At the very least, it’s returned a sense of civic normalcy to many parts of the country. There’s a lot to work out politically, and Colombian farmers grow as much coca as they ever did. Some say the cartels’ business and distribution was pushed out of Colombia to take up residence in Mexico. Maybe.
Plan Mexico, or plan Latin America seems like a pretty good idea. But George HW is gone, as is the responsible Republican Party of which he was a part.
19
@Stevie Plan Colombia was initiated by Clinton. It involved grotesque violations of human rights. And there is still plenty of coca production in Colombia--which suggests it is the war for control over the market that causes much of the problem. Colombia has coca production but no current major conflict among drug cartels.
I don't think we can put links in these comments but you can look anywhere--Foreign Policy, google scholar, etc. and verify Plan Colombia did not stop coca production and it is not regarded as a success by experts.
Colombia's economic rebirth is not due to Plan Colombia. Colombia has a much more educated workforce than Mexico. It had activist politicians rescuing urban areras, and developing them. Some of the profits from coca production were also invested.
Correlation is not causation.
6
@McQueen
indeed there is no substitute for the resolve and generational commitment of the leadership and people of a country for addressing problems such as self-destructive lawlessness and fanaticism. Then again few cultures have been able to do this. Most seem to spiral into some form of civil war, dissolution, environmental destruction, and exhaustion. It'd hard to imagine the countries of the 'fertile cresent' today and imagine the birth of civilization.
1
@Stevie
I was all in until "... responsible Republican Party".
Nope.
Military solutions produce failed military states. I could literally open a History book to any random page, to prove my point.
The Romans, for example, militaried themselves right out of an empire.
The issue, plain and simple, is the vast amounts of money that make banks and governments look the other way. Iran-Contra, for example, was nothing more than a fundraising scheme approved by Ronald Reagan. And nothing has changed since then.
So while I understand your premise, you’re being naive.
27
@Captain Nemo
LOL, it did not die of "decadence." That is an oversimplistic, third grade Sunday school analysis of the complexities that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Also, genius, it was not the Huns, but the Goths who sacked Rome.
The Roman army was fighting numerous *military* campaigns in other places and was spread too thin to protect the capital when the Goths invaded. So perhaps you should invest more time in reading actual history books instead of offering simplistic, bite-sized analyses of European "weakness."
There are two steps that would curtail the systemic murderous insanity in Mexico:
1. Legalize drugs
2. Restrict arms manufacture/trade
The economics of drug prohibition lays the foundation for cartel formation and nourishes their extra-legal operation. The rampant, unchecked gun industry in the US grants them the tools to maintain their industry.
Of course, conservatives are on the wrong side of both of these obvious, effective solutions. *sigh*
125
@Erik completely agree. Drugs are horrible but that doesn’t stop people from using/the demand. Make it legal, and maybe even give it out for free, and the numbers of users will decrease, the number of people incarcerated in our country will greatly decrease and the cartel is just plain finished. Excellent plan outlined above.
12
@Erik
Sigh. Authorities seized over 10,000 hand grenades from Mexican cartels over the past few years. Along with military grade (selective fire connoting that it was manufactured as an automatic weapon) machine guns.
Mexican cartels buy their weapons wholesale from arms dealers (perhaps some from the Mexican military).
These are not Walmart items.
18
Although the cartels have some military-grade weapons, the vast majority are legal guns from the USA, often modified to become fully automatic. Yes, the kind "you can buy in Walmart." Well, some Walmarts. These weapons flow down as the drugs flow up.
Rather astonishing that Brett completely ignores US gun laws, or lack of, in this piece.
15
How do the cartels get money? American drug users. How do they get weapons? American gun manufacturing. How do you, Bret Stephens, propose to stop them? By sending more American weapons and military technology into the region to kill more people. . . NAFTA gutted much of rural Mexico and our drug money filled the void. Until this core problem is addressed, no comprehensive policy will succeed. What you proposed, and what has been on the menu since 2006, is nothing less than a complete take over of the political, military, and security apparatuses of a foreign country.
89
We supply the Mexican cartels with money (for their drugs) and with guns (for the money they get for selling us the drugs).
Step one - admit we lost the war on drugs, decriminalize, and treat it as a medical problem.
Step two - prohibit the sale, transfer, or other export of guns and ammunition (except as part of a military aid program) to any foreign country (no Second Amendment issue here).
Step three - a foreign aid program to Mexico that both funds the justice system and increases their economic base. And immigration reform here that will take the pressure off them to control our border.
61
Robert Kaplan in “The Revenge of Geography” observed that the US made its biggest geopolitical mistake after WW2 by not creating a Marshall Plan for Latin America that would have helped build schools, roads, hospitals, telecom, small businesses, and other civic institutions. We spent billions of dollars and too much time in Vietnam and later Afghanistan and Iraq.
198
A Marshall Plan or a Douglas MacArthur or both is needed. It must be clear not just money suffices. To have effect such as thus vis a vis Germany and Japan in 1945, war trials, new political constitutions and investment inserted by the conquering over the vanquished are needed.
7
@Steve
Kaplan never seems to have heard of the Alliance for Progress, or to know of Nelson Rockefeller’s work on Latin America during FDR’s administration. The fact is that the decline in international trade during the Second World War made import substitution viable in Latin America at the time. Middle classes grew. It needed no “Marshall Plan” in 1945.
7
@Steve
I agree. After WW2 the US had the wealth, the know-how, and the personnel to give every village on the planet clean drinking water and separated sewage systems. A still-extant need in many communities worldwide.
A huge missed opportunity that would have cost way less than all the wars and given us soft power all over the globe.
3
The Rule of Law ... should be applied to financial institutions who are in any way knowingly or negligently complicit in organized crime.
Make individuals within financial institutions which trade in criminal money accountable under the law. Deem them as an extension of the organized crime entity.
33
@mic Great point. There is huge international collaboration among financial institutions and the US DEA to enable drug distribution - from LatAm and Asia and the mideast to users primarily in the US and W Europe.
2
@mic wrote:
"Make individuals within financial institutions which trade in criminal money accountable under the law. Deem them as an extension of the organized crime entity".
Yes, including the current POTUS and his family members who has been making money laundering the money of criminal oligarchs of the former Soviet Union.
2
@mic The Cartels know how to launder their cash.
Haven't you ever watched Breaking Bad?
Breaking this apart would require a very tight cooperation between Mexican and American investigators...all of whom would need to be protected from being identified.
Plus..the new Mexican President sees himself wanting to partner with the cartels and give them safe space to operate beyond his police/military forces...to end the violence.
Good luck with that. Ever try to plead with a criminal intent on stealing your wallet...and explain to him that his poor upbringing isn't his fault and you're going to give him your wallet because he's been oppressed his whole life?
Yeah...that doesn't work. You're not only going to get robbed..you're likely to get pistol whipped.
The "surge" is a piece of old failed war on drugs thinking, which would Vietnamize the conflict and produce no real results, except another war and the deaths of innocents. We supply the cartel's weapons and ammunition. We provide the outsized demand for their product which they smuggle across our borders with amazing ease and volume. And, we provide the cash, billions, which fund their operations and their infiltration of every branch of government. Until the supply of weapons, demand and money is addressed, they will continue to feed, and the surge will be just another failed campaign.
45
When does a surge accomplish ? An electrical surge or a tidal surge come to mind. Both are disturbances which disrupt the flow and status quo but recede, fade and leave no permanent change.
9
Mexico could start at the bottom and give local police a living wage so that they did not have to take petty bribes to subsist.
The local judges are told by the cartels do you want lead or silver. They have no security. And at the top there is corruption on a grand scale. The last president of Mexico was a perfect example.
Then there is the insatiable demand in the US for the drugs Mexico produces. And the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico.
Stephens again reminds us of the persistent falsehoods spoken day after day by those who promoted the invasion of Iraq. The "surge" there was a temporary band aid on the large wound we inflicted on Iraq and the Middle East.
The next lie is things would have been just fine if Obama had not removed so many troops from Iraq. That conveniently ignores a treaty that W Bush signed with Iraq that gave Iraq the choice to tell us when to leave.
They told us to leave and we did.
So I do not want to read about a "surge" again as a success story.
The problem in Mexico is far too severe for a surge to solve.
44
@Edward B. Blau You could pay a cop $100,000 a year in Mexico and the cartels would pay them $150,000 a year to be corrupt.
The Federali's are the one's who have to break this up...but you have to understand what you're up against.
Rudy Giuliani and the prosecutors on his team in the SDNY were able to take down the Italian Mafai because we have a rule of law.
Stephens is right. We take it for granted we have the rule of law here, but I have to tell you..I've gotten out of 3 speeding tickets the past year by telling the officer I'm using the Hillary Clinton No Intent excuse. I crack a small smile and they all fall over laughing..knowing she's guilty as sin...
Turns out our members of law & order are law & order types who also have a sense of humor...and my going 69 in a 55 zone isn't nearly as dangerous to national security as a Secretary of State using a email server stored in her bathroom while sending emails to her Admin's laptop in Brooklyn being used by that Admin's pedo husband to solicit 16 year old girls online.
3
@Erica Smythe
Very Funny. Ha, Ha. However, the joke is on us. What we got for laughing at Trump's trumped up nonsensical charge against HRC was an attempt to high jack our presidential election by the liar in chief.
And I didn't hear of Evanka getting any criticism when she used a private server. Did you? So, I'm saying ha, ha again but this time the joke isn't so funny.
Mexico a failed state because of drug cartels?
I feel for the Mexicans just as I feel for Americans. In fact I feel for the whole world because millions of people in numberless places have to hear the empty, never explained phrase or its equivalent of The Jobs Are Not Coming Back. Entire ways of life whether they were actually good or bad or successful or not in first place are constantly overthrown everywhere in the name of Progress, a term signifying an always changing and improving system of morality, law, business, political/economic order which however seems to always include the warning of The Jobs Are Not Coming Back to the millions left behind, and the fact of millions left behind is predictable when progress always seems to be bound up with life, work, becoming more circumscribed, complex, atomized, on need to know basis, and divorced from any possibility of any person comprehending the whole of their own society.
In Mexico you have millions who had their Native American lives wiped out, and at the bottom of society it's a scrabble for any type of business, and in Mexico's neighbor, America, it's daily a ritual to adapt, to update, to retrain because The Jobs Are Not Coming Back (and why exactly was it so necessary for them to go in the first place?), so it's understandable Mexico would find drugs good business and the constant stress and despair in America good demand.
Ah, the life of It's Never Coming Back. And the Progress toward The Never Clearly Explained.
22
@Daniel12 Wow...and this coming from someone who works for the US Government.
Amazing..and such a defeatist attitude.
Look...we have education systems in place so people can learn..and learn how to learn. Once you learn how to learn..companies find it worthwhile to employ you at a wage commiserate with your education and experience.
Not everyone can get a government job that pays well without having the education or experience to make a difference.
You're right though..those whip and buggy manufacturing jobs aren't coming back.
Those telegraph office jobs aren't coming back.
Those stenography jobs aren't coming back.
You adapt..or you die.
That's been the way ever since homo sapiens learned to walk on two legs.
Bret's point (which you seem to miss) is that if you don't have law & order...the temptations to work in the black market economy is huge.
It's not just Mexico. In Venezuela today..there is a growing black market economy that requires non Venezuelan money to buy things. People are taking risk by bringing in goods bought with their own money. Because law & order isn't such a hot thing right now in this Democratic Socialist country...yet people still need to eat and use toilet paper..they'll find a way or they'll die....black markets thrive.
Doesn't matter if it's toilet paper in Caracas or cocaine in Georgetown.
2
President Trump not caring about Mexico is hardly news, he not only doesn't care about them, his actions (I can't say policies, since he has shown none) hurt most Americans; it is obvious he only cares about himself. But I care about Mexico, I care about Myanmar too, but I care more about Mexico because Mexico is closer, and I care even more about Paterson, because Paterson is really close. I don't like military solutions, because history has shown bad things often come from them, but when all else has failed maybe it's time. We have troops in lots of foreign places, we have an almost $800 billion military budget, can't we offer our neighbor, Mexico, some help ?
3
It comes down to corruption and failed leadership. Where is the impetus and ethical leadership for change? Don’t see it, tragically.
5
Mr. Stephens: As a Republican-leaning capitalist you utterly failed to mention one crucial thing – consumer demand. The drug lords are fighting it out over controlling the supply of drugs to fulfill endless consumer demand in the United States. As long as the demand remains the drug lords will find ways to fulfill it. Militarize Mexico and they will move to another Central American state. Drug legalization in the US won't alone solve the problem, but it would surely help.
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Whether I would be for or against Trump, I think it is a far reach to lay this one on his doorstep, even partially, however required it may seem. Previous comments acknowledge American drug use as the cartels' source of revenue but somehow I think drug use, legal or otherwise, will not reshape the "relationship" between cartel and government. The Mexican government has to decide if "rule of law" is critical to Mexican development.
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Trump is no help, but agree that every problem is not his fault. While no one likes violence, any government with less military capability than criminal enterprise will not stand. The numbers say that the government has lost control. Never thought I would hear myself say such a thing, but Mexico needs our help even if they don't want it.
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@Jim . . . every foreign engagement, every error in judgement toward another country is laid at the commander in chief's feet. As well as every success. A part of the president's job is to negotiate agreements that make interaction among nations with us work. The president is supposed to represent our country to the world. This is why foreign policy is so important. For this man to say he doesn't care about Mexico is such folly, there are hardly words to describe it.
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"Mexico is on a fast track toward becoming a failed state."
Mexico has for a long time been on a long, slow slide toward becoming a failed state.
This does not date to Trump. It goes way back.
It is nearly there now. Fixing it at this late date after such a very long slide would require more than one or two good ideas quickly applied.
To be fair, the American Civil War distorted American politics for a very long time. Mexico lives in the turbulence of its own Civil War (and American invasion as part of it) from early in the last century. On that time scale, they are not so very far behind the US, and the US had the advantage of no foreign invasion and vast prosperity during its recovery.
Mexico's recovery is poisoned by the vast money of criminal enterprises that dominate not just whole cities but whole states and regions. It is like the Chicago of Prohibition, but with a lot more money available to distort an economy in much worse shape otherwise.
That vast money flows out of America. It is the backwash of America's failed Drug War. Therefore, Prohibition is a good comparison, just with this being so much bigger in impact.
Mexico probably cannot save itself from all that criminal money flowing out of America. Yet Americans have not even begun serious discussions to stop that.
The comparison of Mexico to Iraq is fair. It may even understate the problem, because Mexico is bigger, closer, and falling apart on its own.
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Good article. We should help Mexico with an Iraq-surge style campaign, and make clear to the cartels that their reign is over. In the U.S. there were times when people said that 'nothing could be done' about organized crime for example (or the crime that was besieging NYC in the 70s) but then relentless campaigns tackled the problems. Mexico is an amazing country and we cannot let it fall to these thugs and animals.
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My husband and our friends living in a resort in Yuma, Arizona were going to do New Year's Eve in Puerto Penasco, Mexico this Dec/Jan. We just canceled our VBRO reservation due to the threat of the cartels when driving down to the house on the beach. Mexico lost our tax revenue and the owner over $4000 for the week were going to spend there. Is are fear exaggerated? Probably. But, we all decided not to take the chance with what we know is taking place in Mexico.
The way I look at it as a layperson with no knowledge of the underpinnings of Mexico and the cartels: provide a system where all people are earning livable wages, fight the cartels with manpower that overwhelms their resources, and build on the idea that joining a cartel will lead to imprisonment or death. When people don't see the cartels as a way out of abject poverty, they will denounce them and instead fight back against the violence.
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Layperson here who has lived south of the Rio Grande. Mexicans do not regard joining the drug trade as an exit strategy from poverty. The relatively few who get involved certainly recognize and accept it as a life choice to get rich or die trying. The prior tales tell it clearly before one enters. It is a hazardous occupation. The fact that most government officials are on the take - not necessarily on the take voluntarily - keeps the system intact. There is no manner yet devised to eliminate the offer they cannot refuse. “Plomo o Plata ?”. Simply translated - Lead or Silver ? Take the cartel’s payoff or take the bullet ridden consequences.
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@Sue Salvesen There is more random violence every day in the United States than takes place in the great majority of Mexican territory which is quite peaceful. And the violence that does take place was all originally exported by us. Look for the mote in your own eye.
@Sue Salvesen . . .I believe it is difficult to "denounce" someone who is pointing a gun at the head of your child, your loved ones or yourself. It is not a choice.
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Mexico’s government fears the cartels so they do not care to confront them. The oligarchs don’t love their country enough to pay to clean it up and the US does not want to get involved in another never ending war. There is no solution as the cartels are too powerful...they are the shadow government.
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Yes there are flaws with AMLO and his policies, and yes the slogan “hugs not bullets” seems preposterous in the face of the normalized militancy of American society, but Mexico is coming off of almost thirty years of nonstop warfare. The Mexican people are simply tired of the constant gun battles moving through their streets in some never ending war on the cartels that the American public has financed for generations.
Will the strategy work? Probably not. As we have seen violence has continued and even gotten worse in some localities. But I can’t blame Mexicans for looking for different ways to address this never ending state of war they’ve found themselves in. A combination of strengthening security forces and address rampant economic inequality may help, but DJT’s incredibly out of touch offer to wage yet another war will not.
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I'd say from my experience in and out of Mexico over the past 50 years that the country achieved "failed state" status not long before the turn of the century; about 1997.
At that time the demise of the Colombian cartels control over Mexican drug trade was obvious and the Mexican cartels took over. Then Mexico's corruption problem (endemic for decades) gave way to political dominance of "drug lords" on numerous locals scenes where it soon became obvious that money alone wasn't the end game. Power and the respect of the people became the goal.
My biggest concern is that this balance of power not entertain external terrorism joined to the cartels' quest to rule American streets. If the bottomline for the cartels is money; then that ought to suffice. But it might well not.
Fuel to the ever smoldering anti-american sentiment in Mexico has been dramaticly increased by DJT and the door has been opened to greater security risks for our country. Wounded Mexican pride translates into war on the streets and murders of ex-pats and tourists. The collateral damage is mushrooming. Mexico's legalization of marijuana is a step in undercutting cartel power.
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I share your thoughts, Mr. Stephens.
We should however, recognize the role of the U.S. in helping to create this crisis through our demand for the drugs that foster their trade. The billions of dollars involved are simply too tempting to those that see the turning of a relatively easy buck (or peso) as too tempting to turn down. This is especially true in a depressed social/economic ambiance.
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@tagger No, factually false. Mexico has no drugs to offer us. We grow the best pot here now, cocaine isn't a product of Mexico, and meth practically originated here in the U.S. Mexico has nothing to offer except middleman status, and who needs it, now?
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@tagger Isn't it interesting that all the world's evils are the fault of the West, yet billions want to immigrate to the West.
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@Tee Jones
Actually Tee, nowhere in the letter does it say that Mexico makes drugs.
We most definitely are part of this problem. Our "war on drugs" created the cartels. Our prohibition on drugs provides them the revenue they need. These cartel wars are no different than the inter-gang fights during Prohibition here. Our open and unfettered access to military grade weaponry along with the "iron pipeline" to Mexico provides them with arms. Of course there were weaknesses in Mexico that enabled this to happen but, like it or not, the single largest contributor to this issue is the United States.
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@AnObserver It was interesting that you brought up organized crime and Prohibition. While Prohibition was the match that started the explosive growth of organized crime, organized crime didn't go away once Prohibition was repealed. I suspect the same thing would happen in Mexico if drug laws were repealed; i.e. the cartels wouldn't go away they would just morph into new/different lines of illegal activities.
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@AnObserver
Yep-How much more could a country ask of its powerful neighbor than to be both the endless market for its drug smuggling and the endless source of its weaponry perpetuate the smuggling and all the horror the goes with it.
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@AnObserver
We can destroy the cartels with the stroke of a pen by legalizing drugs and everyone knows this. But such a perfect remedy violates many other ideological shibboleths that have been built into the majority party's power structure. Doing so would help this problem but it would weaken the Republican party and threaten their tax bonanza for the ultra rich. They have chosen the rich over the rest of us as they always do. And the brainwashed walk around like the zombies they are. It is going to take more than good ideas or talk to get us out of this mess.
Legalize drugs, and this particular problem goes away.
Doing so introduces other problems, of course, which can be managed with treatment, education and consequential punishment for misuse.
No solution is perfect. But it’s past time to move beyond prohibition as a strategy.
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@Jon
You state:
"Legalize drugs, and this particular problem goes away."
It is true that this would lessen the revenues of the cartels, but the underlying problem is cultural.
As P.J. O'Rourke once observed, while the political practices of the rest of North America (U.S. and Canada) can be rife with hypocrisy, they are informed by the idealism of several centuries of anglophones who were truly concerned about democratic governance in a tradition going back to the Magna Carta. Here, the rule of law is universally considered a good thing, even if citizens often have trouble living up to the principle.
By contrast, Mexico's politics were formed by a combination of unending and violent tribal rivalries dating back to pre-Columbian times, and the predations of the Spanish Empire which made no pretensions to democracy or human rights. It was about raw power, wealth and the divine right of kings, nothing more.
Read about the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), really a civil war. and compare the numbers to the Civil War of the United States (1861-1865), the worst moment in its history, or to Canada, with no such comparable event. About ten percent of the Mexican population was killed, in contrast to less than 2 percent in the U.S. Tragedies both, and I am oversimplifying the comparison to fit in this space, but they are illustrative of a difference in the cultural assumptions that permit a populace to tolerate a particular level of violence.
What to do? Truly a conundrum!
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@D I Shaw I find that the tolerance of the US population for daily mass murders, doing nothing substantive to reduce their cause, which is nothing more than the gun industry's obstruction of any restrictions or control on the sale of their deadly products to anyone and everyone regardless of race, creed, religion, IQ, mental health status, membership in hate groups and domestic terrorism, previous criminal record, age, gender, species...
Your assertions of the cultural underpinnings of the US, i.e., founded by "anglophone" rule of law mavens, vs Spanish brigands and indigenous tribes is totally off base. The US became what it is through violent wars between colonial powers, between the triumphant colonial power and their colonists, the violence of the institution of slavery, wars by the triumphant colonists fought to eradicate the indigenous people, followed by civil war between the descendents of the triumphant colonists, followed by terrorism and suppression of the emancipated black slaves and their descendants by the defeated former confederate states from reconstruction to the present day, and over the past 40 years a defacto war on common citizens who can no longer rely on "anglophone" civil conventions to keep them safe from being a victim of either random or targeted gun violence at a level orders of magnitude higher than any other developed anglo/euro culture dominant industrial nation. And now El Jefe Trumpo is driving the whole shebang down the drain.
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@D I Shaw
Yes, but Mexicans have been part of our free trade agreement since the nineties. They clearly understand 'rule of law' at least within an economic environment. The only reason our own country is as wealthy as it is, and invites investment from all over the world, is because of our steadfast 'rule of law.'
So, I simply don't believe tribalism can never be minimized in Mexico simply because they can't point directly to the Magna Carta, that culturally they can be nothing but a tribal society.
They have us, their very large and powerful neighbor to the North. Building a wall between us is one of the biggest mistakes we can ever make regarding Mexico.
I'm very much in agreement with Jon. Take the winds out of the tribalism sails by legalizing drugs. Mexico has institutions that mimic our own, they're just weak. Give them the support they need to enforce rule of law, and tribalism will diminish. The people of Mexico are tolerating 'a particular level of violence' only because they have no choice.
Then, they will be just like us--forever striving to keep tribalism at bay, a situation we are not so far from as you seem to think.
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Thanks for an informative read Mr. Stephens.
Madness ensues in the wake of the rule of law. I believe your analysis of the rise of violence and corruption in Mexico is accurate. It's understandable that folks passing through Mexico or Mexican Citizens would rather be in the United States. If warring cartels isn't a reason for asylum, then I don't know what is (this applies equally to folks from El Salvador and Guatemala, brutal gangs at war against the people).
We could perhaps do something to fight the cartels, appropriately manage the humanitarian crisis on our southern border, and help rebuild the rule of law in Mexico - but not under the current American administration.
Trump and the GOP appear to be on a mission to tear down the rule of law in our own country. The President's personal attorneys argue in court that he is above the law and not subject to any criminal process or prosecution. His GOP defenders argue The House is deploying "Soviet tactics" and running a "coup", despite the fact they are constitutionally obligated to investigate whistleblower accounts of criminality. The emoluments clause goes on ignored, and children seeking asylum are traumatized further and incarcerated, thus violating asylum law.
Rule of law is dead here too, unless you're poor and powerless. Please give this fact equal time in future writing.
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@PJ
"Rule of law is dead here too, unless you're poor and powerless."
Would you please explain this statement?
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@PJ and how soon will our own assault rifle owners be the new corporate mafia protectionist here in the U.S.A. ? perhaps this is why the current POTUS insists on tearing down his own governments rule of law while he envies those authoritarian leaders in such countries like N. Korea, Russian, Philippines, Turkey, Saudi Arabia...
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Very unusual situation - a country that is firmly in the upper-middle income category, with GDP/capita of ~US$9,300 (nominal/market exchange rates), bordered by either oceans, or a stable neighbour to the north, and much smaller country to the south, with this kind of law and order situation.
In some ways and situations, as brutal and unsafe as Pakistan, with a per capita GDP of just $1,500 and very different geographic situation.
It would be puzzling to me except that I read (devoured) Don Winslow's "Power of the Dog" and "The Cartel" not too long ago.
I'm pretty sure that Mexico will not become a failed state - it is too important to two key constituencies: the suppliers and (more important) consumers of drugs.
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What has always amazed me, when it comes to Mexico, is that despite sharing a vast border with one of the most advanced, and well off countries (USA), that they as a country have not really advanced much in the last 150 years. Aside from large metropolitan areas, and some tourist areas, they are mired in a way of life from the 1800's. Bandits have always ruled the hinterlands in Mexico, and nothing, it seems, is going to change it anytime soon.
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You’ve might not have been to Mexico lately or on a longitudinal basis over past 30 years as I have. Mexico had celtels widespread in 1990s before we did here in El Norte. Mexico has all the appliances, infrastructure and virtues of a modern nation. It just choses to cling to its past venal ways much as we cling to ours. It is elitist and unfair in its application of laws, it is a very consumer driven society. It mimics us I’d dare say.
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@Fred Rodgers
You couldn't be more wrong. Have you seen the superhighways, factories, apartment complexes, and shopping malls in cities such as Queretero and Leon?
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@Suburban Cowboy do you hear yourself? Mexican cartels have beheaded their targets. No, we are not like this at all. It isn’t elitist application of the law these are terrorist organization with massive power to threaten anyone that questions them.
The mistake is calling them "Drug Cartels." They are warlords, leaders of fiefdoms, thriving on criminal activity, and thriving on bribery and corruption to maintain power.
You cannot get rid of a warlord with police, and you can't keep an organization from re-organizing with trials and prosecution. But a military police state runs the risk of morphing into the next warlord, the next center of corruption and violence for personal gain.
Fundamentally, the problem is that corruption and violence become the way of life for a region and breaking the cycle close to impossible.
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@Cathy Mexico, a country with great natural beauty and resources plus a hard working population should be financially successful. Yet it is not, primarily because of a series of inept government leaders and rampant corruption. But I see no end to this.
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@Cathy
"Warlords". This makes me recall the early 20th century in China, after the last emperor died, and before 1920 when Sun Yat Sen tried to build a cohesive national government. It failed, because of the various warlords all over the country, often in rural and inaccessible strongholds. So then what happened? Even despite international events, a civil war ensued between Mao and Chang, until the communists won, of course during the Japanese occupation and a world war. Warlords lead to the instability of an entire country, and Mexico might be on the brink of succumbing to them. #45: you don't care about Mexico, but your wall won't make our problems go away.
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