More Failed State Stuff

A not-too-surprising aspect of the failed-state debate playing out in the American media: the likelihood of an analyst to say that Mexico is failing is inversely proportional to the said analyst's experience the analyst has in Mexico. That should tell us something. Here's Jorge Castañeda, no pollyanna in assessing the country whose foreign policy he once led, offering perhaps the most succinct put-down of the theory that Mexico is failing:

The government represents the nation abroad, exercises a quasi monopoly on the use of force within its borders, collects taxes and ensures the integrity of its citizens against perils from within and without. By these measures— indeed by any standard definition of a failed state—Mexico is clearly acquitted, and the Calderón government's response to the charges, an insistence that Mexico is not a failed state, is accurate and well justified.