lequebecfume
02-27-2010, 12:35 PM
Is Mexico’s drugs war worth it?
February 26, 2010 1:32pm
There has been further terrible violence in the Mexican drugs war this week - thirteen people killed by masked gunmen (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8535750.stm) in Oaxaca state, which isn’t even one of the areas that is normally regarded as in the frontline. The more this kind of thing happens, the more people will begin to ask whether President Calderon actually made a mistake in unleashing the “war on drugs” in 2006.
Perhaps the most articulate Mexican critic of the drugs war is Jorge Castaneda, the former foreign minister, who makes several telling criticisms of the whole effort, in this article for Foreign Policy. (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/whats_spanish_for_quagmire?page=0,0) I sympathise with some of what Castaneda has to say. But it’s not clear to me what his proposed alternative is? Is he just suggesting that Mexico should have tolerated organised crime. That is certainly implied by his sentence - “Mexico is not Norway and it never was.”
Castaneda believes that the cartels’ penetration of local government, the police and the army was no worse in 2006 than it had been for the past thirty years. His argument is essentially that Mexico should have left not-so-well alone, rather than unleashing a war that has now cost over 15,000 lives. When I met him in Mexico City, a couple of weeks ago, he said that it was senseless to say that Mexico should “pay any price” to eradicate the drugs cartels. Sometimes, he argued, the price is too high.
I have some sympathy with the argument. But, on the other hand, if Mexico truly aspires to be regarded as a modern, first-world nation, at some stage it had to try and clean up the government and the administration. What was President Calderon meant to do, when he realised how deeply penetrated the Mexican government was by drugs money? Shrug - and look away?
More important, it’s not clear to me that the situation was stable. The power of organised crime does seem to have been growing in recent years. It is now about a lot more than drugs. One expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, told me that the United Nations classifies twenty three different types of activity that organised criminals around the world specialise - the Mexican cartels are involved in twenty two of them. The only one they’ve missed, apparently, is trafficking in nuclear material.
These are big organisations that make billions of dollars. The people the cartels can’t buy, they can often kill. It’s a horrible situation - and I’m not sure how you fix it. But I can’t believe that giving up is the answer.
http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2010/02/is-mexicos-drugs-war-worth-it/
February 26, 2010 1:32pm
There has been further terrible violence in the Mexican drugs war this week - thirteen people killed by masked gunmen (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8535750.stm) in Oaxaca state, which isn’t even one of the areas that is normally regarded as in the frontline. The more this kind of thing happens, the more people will begin to ask whether President Calderon actually made a mistake in unleashing the “war on drugs” in 2006.
Perhaps the most articulate Mexican critic of the drugs war is Jorge Castaneda, the former foreign minister, who makes several telling criticisms of the whole effort, in this article for Foreign Policy. (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/whats_spanish_for_quagmire?page=0,0) I sympathise with some of what Castaneda has to say. But it’s not clear to me what his proposed alternative is? Is he just suggesting that Mexico should have tolerated organised crime. That is certainly implied by his sentence - “Mexico is not Norway and it never was.”
Castaneda believes that the cartels’ penetration of local government, the police and the army was no worse in 2006 than it had been for the past thirty years. His argument is essentially that Mexico should have left not-so-well alone, rather than unleashing a war that has now cost over 15,000 lives. When I met him in Mexico City, a couple of weeks ago, he said that it was senseless to say that Mexico should “pay any price” to eradicate the drugs cartels. Sometimes, he argued, the price is too high.
I have some sympathy with the argument. But, on the other hand, if Mexico truly aspires to be regarded as a modern, first-world nation, at some stage it had to try and clean up the government and the administration. What was President Calderon meant to do, when he realised how deeply penetrated the Mexican government was by drugs money? Shrug - and look away?
More important, it’s not clear to me that the situation was stable. The power of organised crime does seem to have been growing in recent years. It is now about a lot more than drugs. One expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, told me that the United Nations classifies twenty three different types of activity that organised criminals around the world specialise - the Mexican cartels are involved in twenty two of them. The only one they’ve missed, apparently, is trafficking in nuclear material.
These are big organisations that make billions of dollars. The people the cartels can’t buy, they can often kill. It’s a horrible situation - and I’m not sure how you fix it. But I can’t believe that giving up is the answer.
http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2010/02/is-mexicos-drugs-war-worth-it/