The Big Picture: Mexico's Drug War

This is the main result of the US and Mexican governments' war on drugs (click image to enlarge):



Go to the Big Picture section on the Boston Globe's site for the whole photo slide show.

Drug Prohibition's Role In Mexico's Violence

From the Cato Institute:



Check out Cato's YouTube channel for more videos like this one.

CNN: Mexican Drug Violence Likened To "Civil War"

The most mainstream of mainstream media outlets reports:

A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.

...

Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, is undergoing a horrifying wave of violence that some are likening to a civil war. Drug traffickers battle fiercely with each other and Mexican authorities. The homicide rate reached a record level in 2008 and indications are that the carnage could be exceeded this year.

It's great to see CNN using such strong (and honest!) language. Of course, I've been harping on this issue for some time, writing posts such as "Rampant Drug Violence As A Good Sign? Seriously?" and "Mexico: The Canary In The Coal Mine?". But, regardless of how many times I've already said it, I still feel compelled to say it again: To end the violence, end the drug war. Legalize. Regulate. Tax. Now, now, now.

I don't care what the conventional wisdom is. If we don't change the status quo, the situation in Mexico may soon get far worse. And we really don't want a failed state sharing a nearly 2,000-mile border with us. It's difficult to overstate how bad that would be.

Rampant Drug Violence As A Good Sign? Seriously?

Andrew Sullivan points to an absurd paragraph from the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. law-enforcement officials—as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico—say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing “If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

The Cato Institute offers a sane response to the government's tired propaganda:

While U.S. leaders have focused on actual or illusory security threats in distant regions, there is a troubling security problem brewing much closer to home. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and shows signs of becoming even worse. That violence involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations as they seek to control access to the lucrative U.S. market. To an increasing extent, the violence also entails fighting between drug traffickers and Mexican military and police forces.

The carnage has already reached the point that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans traveling in Mexico. U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico’s border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even more troubling, the violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.

Continue reading.

And John Robb goes even further with his quite literal warnings about the barbarians gathering at our gates.

The best way to protect America's national security is to legalize, regulate, and tax most currently illegal drugs. Doing so is the most feasible strategy for bankrupting the dangerous global guerrillas who are becoming ever more aggressive in asserting themselves in Mexico and the United States. And if we don't undercut their power base, they will undercut ours.

Mexico: The Canary In The Coal Mine?

Continuing with the line of thinking from my earlier post "Re: Was Ayn Rand Right All Along?"...

The global economic/political/social situation looks increasingly bleak.

The Washington Post reports:

The world economy is deteriorating more quickly than leading economists predicted only weeks ago, with Britain yesterday becoming the latest nation to surprise analysts with the depth of its economic pain.

Britain posted its worst quarterly contraction since 1980 on the heels of sharper than expected slowdowns reported from Germany to China to South Korea. The grim data, analysts said, underscores how the burst of the biggest credit bubble in history is seeping into the real economies around the world, silencing construction cranes, bankrupting businesses and throwing millions of people out of work.

Continue reading.

And Joel Kurtzman writes for the Wall Street Journal (via Thomas Barnett):

Mexico is now in the midst of a vicious drug war. Police officers are being bribed and, especially near the United States border, gunned down. Kidnappings and extortion are common place. And, most alarming of all, a new Pentagon study concludes that Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state. Defense planners liken the situation to that of Pakistan, where wholesale collapse of civil government is possible.

One center of the violence is Tijuana, where last year more than 600 people were killed in drug violence. Many were shot with assault rifles in the streets and left there to die. Some were killed in dance clubs in front of witnesses too scared to talk.

Continue reading.

Barnett comments:

The danger that Latin America once again becomes an active arena for U.S. military involvement (we are always somewhat involved, I'm talking about where the public's sense of intervention is activated by events and magnitude) looms for two reasons: the global downturn eventually reaches there (despite the political bravado down there) and the drug violence is distinctly heating up.

Point being: the auto-pilot quality of the past decade isn't likely to work. Neither subject (pushing more economic inclusiveness with trade agreements and figuring out an alternative path to the dysfunctional (certainly for Mexico) drug war) are ones Obama would gladly tackle in the near-term, and yet, events may force him to do so.

John Robb brings up the highly problematic situation in Mexico in two recent posts that are both highly instructive and disturbing.

Regarding how Mexico's unraveling relates to the problems most other nation states are having, Robb writes:

Diving into military theory (again).

A core dynamic behind the emergence of the nation-state was it's ability to run a successful protection business (aka racket). A system that has been growing since the treaties of Westphalia in the 1600s. The protection business is relatively simple:

1. It is a monopoly. It has exclusive ownership over the use of violence. As a monopoly, it must crush all internal competitors.
2. It defends its monopoly from outside interests -- as in warfare with nation-state and non-state competitors.
3. It charges the customers (individuals and businesses) within its geographical areas of control for this service. This isn't optional. Customers presumably benefit from this protection.

...

The protection formula broke down in the latter half of the 20th Century as the nation-state became more complex. Key elements of this breakdown include...

Continue reading.

So what should you take away from all this?

First, in the short-term we need to end the drug war ASAP unless we're okay with the strong possibility of having to deal with a failed stated on our southern border within the next several years--to a certain extent we already are, but things could easily get much worse. Second, we need to brace ourselves for a long and wild ride. The world seems set to change radically over the coming decades. We all need to start thinking about what we can do to help ourselves through these difficult times as opposed to just standing around hoping our failing nation-states will save us. Because they won't.