It’s Unlikely That The US & Mexico Will Ever Meaningfully Cooperate Against The Cartels

The present state of bilateral ties is mutually disadvantageous for the vast majority of their populations and each country’s objective national interests. Failing to decisively deal with the interconnected crime and drug epidemics ravaging the US will lead to more lives lost in that country as well as more relative lawlessness in Mexico. While cynics might claim that one can obtain a comparative advantage over the other through these Hybrid War means, it would be better for both if these problems didn’t exist.

The recent kidnapping of four US tourists in Mexico and subsequent killing of two of them provoked indignation among lawmakers, who responded by reintroducing legislation for designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and allowing the use of military force against them if need be. Powerful Republican Senator Lindsey Graham explicitly called for unleashing his country’s “fury and might” against Mexico in a thunderous threat interpreted by some as hinting at potentially forthcoming action.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador condemned what he described as these “irresponsible calls” and even responded with a threat of his country’s own by warning that it might soon wage an “information campaign” to turn US-based Hispanics against the Republicans if they don’t calm down. Rhetoric between these two parties, Mexico and the Republicans respectively, remains high in spite of the cartel responsible for the recent incident issuing an apology and turning over the culprits involved.

Candidly speaking, each party has legitimate interests at play. From the US side, it’s delusional to deny that Mexican-based cartels directly contribute to their northern neighbor’s interconnected crime and drug epidemics, while the Mexican side has a valid point in regarding the Republicans’ threat of military action as implying the intent to violate their country’s sovereignty. Both sides are reluctant to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s interests, though.

There are two more shadowy factors involved that each side references in an attempt to delegitimize the other. The US isn’t wrong in worrying about the extent to which the cartels have infiltrated the Mexican state and, in some cases, arguably control it or at the very least drastically handicap its ability to substantively fight against these same groups. On the other hand, Mexico isn’t wrong either in pointing out that some elements of the US security services collude with the cartels.

Furthermore, their societies and states also bear some responsibility for these problems. The Mexican government hasn’t done enough to improve the lives of its less fortunate and thus deter them from participating in the drug trade, while some social influencers there glamorize breaking the law. Similarly, US social influencers also glamorize the same and thus corrupt those who fall under their sway, while the US government hasn’t done enough to deter drug crimes and deal with their effects on society.

The present state of bilateral ties is mutually disadvantageous for the vast majority of their populations and each country’s objective national interests. Failing to decisively deal with the interconnected crime and drug epidemics ravaging the US will lead to more lives lost in that country as well as more relative lawlessness in Mexico. While cynics might claim that one can obtain a comparative advantage over the other through these Hybrid War means, it would be better for both if these problems didn’t exist.

Regrettably, it’s unrealistic to expect them to seriously cooperate towards resolving these issues anytime soon. There’s no political will in the US under the ruling Democrats to crack down on crime and drugs just like there’s little equivalent will in Mexico to do the same. The first is due to the influence of the liberal-globalist ideology on decisionmakers while the second can be attributed to the cartels’ influence over the Mexican state.

Even in the extremely unlikely event that both pernicious influences over these states were successfully counteracted in order for them to finally obtain the political will required to jointly crack down on crime and drugs, the comparatively much weaker Mexican state would probably need US security assistance. The cartels are simply too deeply embedded in all levels of the government and have grown much too powerful over the decades for Mexico to be able to deal with these armed groups on its own.

Apart from corruption, the other primary reason why not much of significance has ever really been done to root out this indisputable national security threat from its territory is that the state’s opponents have been known to assassinate everyone who’s against them, including their family members. All that it takes is one individual in any anti-cartel campaign to sell out their comrades in order to neutralize the entire effort, which speaks to the importance of operational security, which can’t be ensured in Mexico.

A reliable outside force is therefore much more capable of helping that country liberate itself from de facto occupation by the cartels, but therein lies the problem, namely that the US can’t be trusted not to exploit that request for security assistance. It should be assumed that Washington would take maximum advantage of this to exert its unipolar hegemony over Mexico more effectively than at any time in recent memory, thus strangling its sovereignty at this crucial juncture in International Relations.

Moreover, Mexicans are fiercely patriotic and some might literally rebel – whether through peaceful or perhaps even violent means – in the event that their government invited US security forces to conduct operations on their territory. Refusing to react with the utmost seriousness to any drone or other cross-border strikes that could take place, even amidst Mexico pulling from the Pakistani playbook by lying that it didn’t authorize such in order to retain “plausible deniability”, could provoke the same outcome.

The worst-case scenario would be for the cartels to reinvent themselves as “freedom fighters” leading a “national liberation movement” against the US and/or a seemingly US-controlled Mexican puppet state, generate massive popular support, and ultimately overthrow the government. The last-mentioned possibility is practically impossible since it could be taken for granted that the US would utilize all means at its disposal to prevent this, but even so, that sequence of events would be incredibly destabilizing.

Considering the contradictory interests between these two countries and the sensitive context within which any theoretical joint security cooperation could take place, which would have to be preceded by first having the political will to do the aforesaid, observers shouldn’t expect much to change for the better anytime soon. The US and Mexico, both their societies and states as a whole, will continue to be afflicted by the interconnected crime and drug epidemics to the detriment of their objective interests.