Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Strategizing

The Post has an article about demands for a change of strategy in Calderón's security policy today. Boz has the following response: 
Here's the essential problem. Nobody doubts Calderon has the resolve to fight a war against the cartels. But nobody is sure Calderon has a plan to win that war.

Calderon has been so caught up in the day-to-day fight that he's never answered the questions "What does victory look like?" or "What is the 5-10 year plan?" or "What is Mexico trying to accomplish?" Calderon began his fight against cartels without a plan for victory. He just started fighting because he saw a threat and violence. Throughout the past two years, instead of pro-actively implementing a plan, Calderon has tended to react to violence, sending thousands more troops to Juarez, Michoacan and elsewhere following surges in violence from the cartels.
Absolutely correct. But I'd also add that the same critique could be directed to his critics (and to US drug warriors, for that matter), who often write thousands of words about abstract flaws like the lack of a social compact without getting at a single strategic question. The quote in the Post piece from Gómez Mont gets at both the government's and its adversaries' lack of a broad vision:
"No one has told us what alternative we have," said Interior Minister Fernando Gómez Mont, gently slapping his palm on a table during an interview. "We are committed to enduring this wave of violence. We are strengthening our ability to protect the innocent victims of this process, which is the most important thing. We will not look the other way."
As far as what victory looks like, I'd say it is a Mexico in which organized crime is an isolated nuisance rather than a serious threat to democratic institutions, a marginalized subculture rather than an organic part of the society, and a dangerous, dead-end way to make a buck rather than a vital pillar of the economy. 

I think getting there starts with the realization that Mexico will have a significant drug-trafficking presence for as long as the US has a drug habit, which is to say, for the indefinite future. Operating with that understanding, Mexico's security agencies should aim to eliminate the threat that drug traffickers present to the government. Obviously, said threat is hard to define narrowly, but I'd start with the bribing and killing of police officers, judges, and other justice officials, which, aside from making it harder to put drug runners behind bars, contribute to the broader climate of impunity in Mexico. 

After that, I'd move on to isolating drug money, reducing Mexico's economic reliance on it, and establishing a formula for keeping organized crime out of legitimate business enterprises. Here, a broader socioeconomic approach like that advocated by Calderón's critics could be of huge help in Michoacán, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa, where drugs represent what cars are to Detroit. And officials could move on from there.

In fact, I think Calderón is doing a lot of the above, but more as a matter of common sense rather than as part of a broad, coherent strategy, because, as Boz points out, such a strategy doesn't exist. Mexican officials have never tried to agree upon a broad outline like the one I started to sketch out above, despite the fact that such an agreement would likely transcend party lines. Instead they bicker over tactics.

2 comments:

Noel Maurer said...

It seems there might be an American problem here.

Victory is when organized crime south of the border looks like organized crime north of it.

But that's kind of hard to say to the American congresspeople voting on aid money. They want to hear much stronger stuff, and they don't want to hear the implicit criticism.

I think. That could be completely wrong.

pc said...

"Victory is when organized crime south of the border looks like organized crime north of it."

I might be showing a lack of creativity, but I think that's a fair assessment for a best-case scenario in Mexico, at least in the near term. As long as Mexicans are doing more drugs and the US remains the largest market in the world, there's going to be organized crime in some form. The key from a healthy-society standpoint would seem to be the threat to governmental institutions (keeping drug money out of campaigns, doing a better job of rooting out and punishing corruption) and to regular people (i.e. trying to eliminate kidnapping and extortion from organized crime groups).

I think as long as the criticism is implicit, you could get away with phrasing it like that in Congress without starting a firestorm. After all, every drug debate is filled to the brim with contradictions and implicit criticisms. But of course stronger stuff makes a better sound bite.