Nava on Drugs (As in the War on Drugs, Not in the Sense that He Consumed Them Before the Interview)

Interesting stuff in a Poder interview with César Nava:

Do you believe that the war against drug traffickers is being won? Is it possible to win a war against drug traffickers with this strategy?
One of the complexities of this war is to agree on the indicators to determine who is winning. There are those who have suggested as an indicator the number of deaths from violence unleashed by the war. There are those who have suggested the international price of drugs, particularly in the United States, to measure the impact on supply. I think that the correct measurement, the correct measurement to verify if we are winning the war or not is the territorial measurement. Because precisely the logic of [our] operations is territorial. Recover for the Mexican state the total control of the portions of territory that have been left in the hands of organized crime.

This is an important observation. Mexico's success in the war on drugs cannot be measured simply by the number of deaths, any more than we were winning Vietnam based on the number of NVA dead. Furthermore, as far as the threat presented to the state by drug traffickers, territory probably is more important than the number of those killed, at least long as the murder rate remains relatively low. But then Nava takes the argument a little to far:

If we use this criteria we are winning the war. Wherever the police and the army are working in concert, the Mexican state has recovered for itself the complete territorial control and the consequence is the cockroach effect. The cartels are shifting territorially. We see that is clearly the case in Nuevo León, how they have returned to Tamaulipas. We see it in Sinaloa, how they have retrenched themselves toward Baja California. And we'll see it again in Baja California once the operation there ripens. It seems to me, on the other hand, that the increase in violence and the cruelty of the violent demonstration will continue as the territory in control of the narco continues dropping. This is absolutely logical. With less territory in dispute, more violence in the war between the cartels.

If we unpack that, he's saying that an increase in violence in and of itself means that the government is winning. It's one thing to say that increases in violence aren't necessarily signs that the government is being overwhelmed, quite another to essentially argue that record numbers of drug deaths are a positive sign. That certainly wasn't the argument the government was pushing when it was bragging up the drops in violence in Juárez, Culiacán, and Tijuana. According to the Excélsior tally, Mexico's on pace for a slightly lower number of deaths in 2009 than in 2008. Does that mean that the government has gone backwards in its fight for territory?