Mexico Musings

While American foreign policy under the Obama administration continues to focus its attention on supporting the reconstruction of Iraq and halting the deconstruction of Afghanistan, the security threat at our southern doorstep deteriorates by the day. During the first six months of this year, Mexico has experienced an estimated 2,954 drug-related homicides, up from 2,030 during the same period last year. Despite President Felipe Calderon’s deployment of more than 75,000 regular army troops to fight the country’s drug war and to patrol the streets of its most dangerous cities—or, some would argue, because of it—Mexico now stands in danger of losing its de facto civil war against the cartels.

If this sounds alarmist, consider the statistics. So far this year, there have been more police officers assassinated in Mexico than there have been U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2008, Mexico saw a total of approximately 6,300 drug-related killings—more than the total U.S. death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan combined since the onset of those campaigns (March 2003 and January 2001, respectively). Disturbingly, traffickers are turning to increasing degrees of torture and mutilation to maximize the intimidation factor of these killings. So far this year, more than 300 murder victims have been found bearing signs of torture, and more than 100 have been decapitated.

In addition to the raw numbers, the strategies, tactics and weaponry used by both cartel members and government forces all more closely resemble low-intensity military conflict than law enforcement. In the past two years, Mexican officials have seized more than 34,000 firearms and approximately 4.5 million rounds of ammunition. Since the beginning of last year, they’ve seized more than 2,600 fragmentation grenades. Plastic explosives and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have also been seized. Tactically, the cartels, unlike U.S.-based organized crime groups, are one the offensive.

The one great distinction between Mexico’s war with the cartels and traditional, declared warfare is that the conflict is entirely the construct of one of the warring parties. For all of its complexities, the fundamental basis of the war is simple: the prohibition of substances for which there exists substantial consumer demand. Prohibition is the sine qua non of every beheading, every murdered soldier, every grenade attack, every lifeless body dissolved in a drum of acid. Mexico’s cartels have no ideology; if the central government can be said to have one, it is only to fight beyond any reasonable expectation of victory.