Decriminalize, Crush, or Appease: You Choose
Last week, Mexico’s Department of Defense estimated that, of the half million Mexicans involved in narco-trafficking in Mexico, at least one third are ex-military officers. While these new figures are shocking, the trend (soldiers deserting the military and joining the cartels) is not new. In the 1990s, the U.S. helped to train an elite force of Mexican soldiers to take on the cartels. Not long afterward, the cartels offered to hike their salaries, and most defected. They became Los Zetas, one of the most formidable mafia organizations in the country.
Violence in Mexico has metastasized, affecting people and places that were once largely immune. For example, the media has increasingly become a target. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, twenty four reporters have been killed in Mexico in the last eight years. Not all journalists attacked by the cartels are squeaky clean. Some are targeted because they are on the cartel payroll, but do not follow their instructions. While it is easy to condemn journalists who are paid off by the cartels, the drug lords often threaten journalists or their families, leaving reporters feeling that they have no choice but to cooperate.
So what is to be done? To be sure, the Mexican government is not standing idly by. The Senate passed a constitutional amendment last week which will allow for improved national coordination in investigating and punishing organized crime. A national registry of cell phones will also be created to help investigate “express kidnappings” carried out by phone. The government recently received the first installment of in-kind support from the U.S. government under the Merida Initiative to upgrade Mexico’s security forces. There is talk of possibly introducing the death penalty in Mexico for certain crimes, although doing so would be very controversial and has been attacked by the country’s top human rights commissioner. Attempts are being made to clean up local police forces and purge corrupt elements.
Will any of this matter? At the margins, each of these things may reduce the level of crime, impunity, or both. But it is hard to believe that they will fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict. It would appear at this point that there are only a handful of realistic options for dealing with Mexico’s cartels, none of which are particularly attractive. The first would be decriminalization. Decriminalizing drug use would transform the nature of the drug trade overnight, but it is sure to meet determined opposition from the United States, and possibly also from Mexico. An alternative would be the complete militarization of Mexican society, including a draft to increase the size of the army, and support from the United States for aggressive military assaults on the cartels. By this, I mean something much bigger than the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, and which would potentially involve American troops on the ground. This option is probably the least attractive of all, as it would likely result in substantial civilian casualties and human rights abuses, and there is no guarantee that it would be successful.
The final option is to negotiate with the cartels, just as the U.S. has considered negotiating with the Taliban. Negotiating a “live and let live” accord with the drug lords would allow the cartels access to what they want (secure drug routes) and reduce the need for violent confrontation. The government would, however, be in the unenviable position of possibly having to defend one cartel from another, and explicitly acknowledging its inability to enforce its own laws.
Making peace with drug lords sounds awful. But the cartels are not going anywhere, and there is no reason to think that American-supported bluster will be any more effective now than it was in the 1990s. The ebb and flow of conflict all around the world with despicable, violent organizations is driven by how accommodating societies are of illegal activity at different points in time. When they are more accommodating, there is less violence. When they get fed up, there is more.
Right now, the Mexican government is trying to play hard ball. If the government cannot defeat the drug lords, however, it will find a convenient moment to strike a private deal, declare victory, and let things return to the status quo ante: an uneasy accommodation. The result will essentially be a less transparent version of what I am suggesting here. However ignoble, it will resemble successful pacts around the world. As Spencer Ackerman notes in a piece about the conflict in Afghanistan, “insurgencies rarely end with complete victory by one or the other side. They end by co-optation, integration and — yes — appeasement. Give your enemy a positive reason to stop fighting you that meets his core needs and you can probably get him to, you know, stop.”
It’s not a pretty picture. But neither is continuing to lose an endless war.