Monday, December 08, 2008
The war south of the border
It is easy to forget that the United States has national security considerations very close to home:
The Mexican state is undergoing the most severe challenges it has faced since the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. Unlike the deep and overlapping complexities that threaten to shatter the first country in our series, Ukraine, Mexico’s problems can be boiled down to illicit drugs. The country’s geography almost dictates that Mexico’s City’s writ will be ignored across wide tracts of the country, and current efforts to bring law and order to the Mexican frontier are threatening the central functionality of the state itself. In 2008 alone, Mexico has already suffered more deaths from drug-related violence than all coalition deaths in Iraq since the war’s beginning in 2003.
The Mexican drug cartels are so powerful in part because of the massive market in the United States. If the drug war is threatening the stability of the Mexican state -- and we eagerly await Stratfor's more specific essay on the subject -- then the illegal immigration problem is almost certainly going to get worse. Put differently, to what degree does American drug policy promote illegal immigration from Mexico, both in connection with the business and as a consequence of instability at home?
10 Comments:
By 
Christopher Chambers, at
Mon Dec 08, 05:08:00 PM:
In our Journalism Dept at Georgetown we are looking at the next phase of our award-winning Daniel Pearl Project seminar. Everyone's humming about Zimbabwe, China, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia. I am the lone voice pointing a thumb south. More journalists have been murdered in our dear neighbor the past five years than in Iran the last 20.
And yes, our immigration "policy" is at the center of this--as Napolitano herself knows.
The dean said I could fly to Juarez to get the lay of the land. Of course I'd have to sign a release. Needless to say, my wife has vetoed this.
By 
, at
Mon Dec 08, 05:10:00 PM:
As a lifelong resident of Southern California, I have not seen a correlation between illegal immigration and drug imports. The overwhelming majority of illegals that i have seen came here for work, not to bring drugs. But those are just my observations as a school teacher who has had many illegals as students. I'm sure some of them bring drugs with them, but most of the drugs I see come over are by citizens of the US.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Mon Dec 08, 05:16:00 PM:
Speaking of Georgetown and Princeton, the Hoya Provost, Joe O'Donnell '74 (Princeton grad, historian) would likely say you have a situation on the border now is weirdly similar to what was going on in the set up to the erosion of the Western Roman Empire (at least insomuch as native Latins were running the city). Harsh barbarians and lawlessness pushing refugees across the frontier looking for stability, new lives. They come, multiply. Find a strange ambivalence among the native population: hating them for being aliens, needing as cheap, exploitable labor. Eventually they take over. That was around 500 AD. So all of you Ron Paul fans out there might want to dust off the fear bullhorns now that the campaign's over. Thanks to these modern Huns...
By , at
Mon Dec 08, 05:17:00 PM:
To me this is another sign of the arrogance of government. Not every immoral thing should be outlawed, especially if government is ineffective at enforcing it.
Without the huge profit margins that result from prohibition, we wouldn't see communities and now neighboring countries laid waste.
We've also undermined our civil rights and states rights to boot.
I accept rational limit to the foregoing. As Don Zaluchi says in Godfather I: "I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia."
Link
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By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Dec 08, 05:40:00 PM:
Mexicans = Goths? Really?
Racist!
"If the drug war is threatening the stability of the Mexican state"
Where would you get this premise? Mexico has suffered unrest, rebellion, and endemic corruption my entire life and since well before. It was offered as a special kind of political basket case in a Comparative politics class I took years ago. (what kind of country has its chief political party named 'The Institutionalized Revolutionary Party,' anyway?) Why would regional lawlessness threaten the stability of the state any more than, say, New Orlean's and Detroit's absurdly high crime rates threaten American stability?
To achieve that, you would need a directed, purposeful campaign of controlled violence designed to undermine the authority of the state, like with Pablo Escobar. (and he ended up dead and his organization dismantled anyway)
By , at
Mon Dec 08, 08:20:00 PM:
I have read that there is the possibility that Mexico could become a failed state.... like Somalia. As bad as things are now, I shudder to think what having a Somalia on our border would be like.
By Andrewdb, at
Mon Dec 08, 08:31:00 PM:
Amongst the several new books out on the end of the Roman Empire are several that seem to point out that it was the unrestricted influx of large groups of Goths into the Eastern Empire that resulted in the fall of Rome within about 100 years - of course the biggest issue was that the Romans were fighting in Mesopatamia and therefore didn't have the troops necessary to make sure that the new immigrants came in not as a single large, cohesive group - in the past the Romans had allowed new groups to enter the empire, but insisted they break up and be assimilated. Nothing like what we are facing today (/sarcasm off)
You don't have to wait for Stratfor, checkout some of the articles in the Military Review from Ft. Levenworth, for example see here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_/ai_n25410261
(Sorry, I can't seem to get the Ft. Levenworth webiste to work right tonight)
By chuckchuck, at
Mon Dec 08, 09:11:00 PM:
Since I live in S.E. Asia I’d like to put in my two cents worth… illegal immigration and drugs are a big problem here. Illegal immigration from here to other S.E. Asia countries such to Malaysia is a problem as people search for work to feed their families back home. In many cases education is a low priority because families can’t afford to send their kids to school and with no jobs or future many turn to crime and drugs. Personally I think one the biggest problem’s is “human trafficking” for young single women and kids. I had no idea what the “Bill of Rights” meant to me until I witnessed the corruption. Plus let’s not forget the NPA!
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Dec 09, 10:41:00 AM:
"Nothing like what we are facing today (/sarcasm off)"
Seriously comparing ancient Rome to modern America is intellectual laziness via over-reliance on crappy analogies. The same ideas were cast around about 10 years ago with much chattering about 'Imperial Overstretch.'
For example, the Goths were a tribe of barbarian warriors united in action under a recognized and legitimate king. Mexicans, not so much.
For another, the population of the United States is absurdly well armed. Roman civilians, not so much.
For another, the Goths were motivated to invade Rome because a new Roman Emperor ordered the slaughter of their civilians. Call me when there is a general massacre of Mexican immigrants.
And so forth.
Also, the Roman Empire was split in half at the time... East and West. The Western Empire had nothing to do with Mesopotamia. That's just a wrongheaded attempt to make the crappy analogy seem like it fits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaric_I
By Andrewdb, at
Tue Dec 09, 11:17:00 AM:
I agree that the an analogy is not exact, and we are not yet facing what the Roman Empire faced, but sadly I think we are beginning along that line (hopefully we won't end up the same place - but it only took the UK one generation to fall).
See Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire; Michael Grant, The Fall of the Roman Empire; and Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: and the End of Civilization. The last one is interesting as it deals a lot with the economics, the "globalization" and economic specialization within the Empire - a lot of similarities to today in that area too.
