The Cauterization of a Wounded Mexico
A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. Failed states are characterized by an inability to provide basic services, an erosion of the state's authority, and a rise of power blocks that break the state's monopoly on the use of legitimate force.
The failed state of today's discussion is Mexico, the surly downstairs neighbor of the United States. A nation of 126 million people. It'd be more, but there are 36 million Mexicans living in the United States. Torn apart internally by drug traffickers, gangs, and corrupt police all fighting each other, the situation in Mexico has gone from bad to worse. In 2016 the State Department reported 75 American homicides in Mexico, more than every other country in the world combined. A White House official estimated back in 2017 that the cartels were smuggling as much as sixty four billion dollars worth of drugs into the US. To give some perspective, that's almost three times the GDP of Iceland.
The cartels have fully embraced the technology boom. They buy or build submarines to run the borders, have kidnapped engineers to construct their own cellphone networks that can't easily be tapped into. They manufacture and distribute their own propaganda to the populace, selling themselves as the legitimate authority in Mexico. They've infiltrated the government at all levels and rule their fiefdoms as unquestioned tyrants, fighting brutal running battles with neighboring gangs.
Don't think this chaos doesn't affect the US. Child traffickers are renting children to border jumpers because they know that the US courts will take it easier on families than individuals. Drug tunnels have been discovered, and the new wall being put up by the US has already been compromised in several locations. Murder rates keep increasing for cities near the border. Reported today were the deaths of at least nine Americans driving on their way to a wedding. Early investigations have led to this tragic mass killing being called a case of mistaken identity. The local cartel is at war with it's neighbors, and the reasoning is going that the multiple cars the family were taking resembled a convoy of vehicles, presumably from the neighboring crime syndicate.
A nation cannot survive like this. Mexico, long sick from the blight of corruption, is now terminally diseased. The citizens have started creating vigilante groups, which have rapidly escalated to the same sorts of violence committed by the cartels. There is no help from the government, as the apparatus of the state has been compromised. A solution, it seems, will be unlikely to come from inside Mexico as the nation spirals further down it's death slide.
Enter Donald Trump.
The President of the United States, in his typical abrupt manner, has extended a life raft to Andrés Obrador, the President of Mexico. Trump has offered American military assistance to 'wage war' on the cartels and re-establish the rule of law in Mexico.
Frankly, I'm amazed Trump's waiting on word from Obrador. Billions of dollars of drugs, millions of people driven from their homes, children being trafficked across the border. It's not only a humanitarian crisis, it's one on America's doorstop. One that affects us. Mexico is one of the United States' closest allies. We should not stand by and let the innocent people of Mexico suffer, let the festering rot of the cartels poison everything around them.
Say we invade. Call it intervention, call it a humanitarian mission. Let's be accurate. It will be an invasion. We will be using our military to enter another country and kill it's citizens. Say we do this. Mexico must be entered with a clear goal and an exit strategy. Best case scenario? The cartels are crushed and the American military backs up the Mexican one in reestablishing peace and order. Starbucks opens on every corner, money rains from the skies.
More likely? As soon as we leave new cartels set up shop using the preexisting infrastructure constructed by the old. The money is too good, the temptation too strong. We can set up bases in Mexico, but this only projects US force, it doesn't help Mexico's independence as a nation. It will become like the Middle East, locals surviving in a ruined nation while avoiding the military patrols. How many failed states must we leave behind us to realize this isn't the method to pursue?
What we need is a multi-level attack on all aspects of the cartel's existence. Want to hit them the hardest? Decriminalize marijuana. Marijuana is still the most profitable drug for the cartels. It'd be a popular move on Trump's part, would remove a huge criminal element in the US, and starve the cartels of the funding they require to keep waging these guerilla wars against each other. Then, we should obliterate the stronghold cartels. I'm talking full shock-and-awe. Artillery, air strikes, missiles. Leave nothing but ash, for the situation is too precarious to pick and choose.
After this happens, we have a choice to make. Mexico has a history of corruption, revolution, and then more corruption. There are powerful monied interests that would like to see that state remain. Do we let Mexico potentially backslide once again, or do we step in, this time in a more permanent manner?
What I'm talking about is the annexation or conquering of Mexico by the United States and the institution of US law. This is a terrible, brutal thing to think about in the modern age. We've grown accustomed to thinking of nations as eternal things, that anyone who acts to destroy them is the worst sort of person. But nations come and go. It wasn't even 40 years ago that the strongest power bloc in the existence of the world apart from the United States collapsed.
This isn't something I suggest lightly. It's too easy for self-styled 'liberating' invaders to become the worst sort of petty tyrant, and even easier for unchecked atrocity to run rampant. However I cannot with an honest heart say that I think a different path will be successful. The disease is too far progressed and the symptoms are out of control.
It is time for fire.