Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Chabat on State Failure

Jorge Chabat makes a logical point regarding the failed-state debates:
The drug traffickers have had a great presence in the country since at least the middle of the 90s and the country has been plagued by corruption since its creation.

In other words, the power of the drug traffickers isn't more than it was a decade ago, but it's more evident. The decomposition that drug trafficking generates has been hidden for years beneath the rug and Calderón simply uncovered it.

[Break]

[T]he climate of violence through the country is living is simply a consequence of applying the law against drug traffickers, something the American government has demanded for years. So that generates chaos? Well, yes. But then, what do we do? Return to the policies of pretending to apply the law as in the past? Perhaps with that the governmental circles in the US would be calmer.
All this makes you wonder, why now? It's a bit like Iraq way back when in that it seems like a manufactured drumbeat to stir up concern about a problem which has existed for years. I am not suggesting any nefarious invasion plans, but it just feels kind of similar to the comments being made about Iraq around October of 2002.

The next question: how could the failed-state hypothesis change American policy? If it is indeed a failed state (and it's not, I repeat), what is the remedy? I don't think, as Chabat suggests, that government officials would be happy with a significant relaxation of drug enforcement in Mexico. So what do the Mexico hawks want? More money in the Mérida Initiative? Greater military interaction? More troops on the border? How does any of that make more than a marginal impact on Mexican security? It's a head-scratcher.

I'm going to dig deep into my bag of silly metaphors to explain this one: the failed-state theorists are like a quack doctor who is diagnosing a cancer that's never been seen before and that is not in fact a cancer, but is neither fatal nor necessarily permanent nor treatable by any known medicine.

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