The Geopolitics of Dope (Mexico: The US Does Not Need a Gaza Strip On Its Southern Border...)

Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted practice. The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader, geopolitical context.

SNIP...current efforts by the Mexican government might impede the various gangs, but they won’t break the cartel system. The supply chain along the border is simply too diffuse and too plastic. It shifts too easily under pressure. The border can’t be sealed, and the level of economic activity shields smuggling too well. Farmers in Mexico can’t be persuaded to stop growing illegal drugs for the same reason that Bolivians and Afghans can’t. Market demand is too high and alternatives too bleak. The Mexican supply chain is too robust — and too profitable — to break easily.
The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product — drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo.
It will also destabilize the U.S. Southwest while grandpa makes his pile. As is frequently the case, it is a problem for which there are no good solutions, or for which the solution is one without real support.

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The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader, geopolitical context.

Yeah, too much money involved in:

1) Drugs,
2) Remittances by illegal immigrants to their homeland,
3) Cheap labor.

Between those three reasons, common sense border security solutions get thrown out of the window. Those are also the reasons why simple enforcement on our side of the border isn't feasible. The solution must be abroad (in Mexico) as well as on our side of the border in order for it to be effective. In short, we probably have to invade Mexico if we want to solve their problems that are causing us so many problems.

“Sure there’s lots of ways to stop it.

1) Start giving druggies harsh prison sentences.”

We already do that compared to most western countries. It doesn’t really do much good. We have more people locked up than any other country in the world as well as the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate. We set new records in this regard every year. Our prisons are bursting at the seams and it’s costing us a fortune maintaining all these facilities and building new ones we’ll just pack full in no time so we’ll have to add even more beds. We couldn’t go a whole lot harder on druggies even if it would be a good idea to do so.

“2) Build the @#^%&$ fence already.”

That will reduce the number of illegals coming here for work, but it wouldn’t really do much to the drug trade. The demand is too high and there is too much money to be made. The drugs will find their way in. Shoot, drugs find their way into prisons. We aren’t going to stop drugs from coming in or being produced here.

“3) Massive deportations.”

Okay, but that’s not going to keep the drugs from flowing. It might change some of the players, but the game will go on.

4) Serious fines and prison sentences for employers, landlords, and mayor’s of sanctuary cities.

That may help with the illegal alien problem, but it wouldn’t make a hill of beans in the drug problem.

“5) Stop all government freebies.”

Maybe that might make some people think twice about wasting their lives with drugs, but it certainly wouldn’t do anything to stop the flow of drugs.

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