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US-Mexico Relations

High Now

Mexican military purchases from the US means relations are high now and are sustainable


Partlow 15— The Post’s bureau chief in Mexico (Joshua, “What’s behind Mexico’s military buying binge?,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/06/15/whats-behind-mexicos-military-buying-binge/). WM

MEXICO CITY--It started with 27 rail cars full of ammunition rolling down the tracks into Mexico.



That load of 30 million bullets was soon followed by fleets of Black Hawk helicopters and thousands of Humvees: in all more than $1 billion of American military equipment sold to Mexico within the past two years. In a security relationship between Mexico and the United States often described as standoffish, foreign military sales have lately become a big exception. Admiral William E. Gortney, the commander of Northern Command, the U.S. military headquarters that deals with Mexico, testified to Congress earlier this year that Mexico’s buying binge represented a “100-fold increase from prior years.” What explains the shopping spree? Americans and Mexicans familiar with the foreign military sales program said that the change in part reflects a revived security partnership between the two countries. It also shows Mexico's aggressive push to modernize its military in the face of powerful drug cartel adversaries. U.S. officials have hailed the sales in part because they're so rare. Gortney, the Northcom commander, described Mexico's decision to approach the Defense Department about buying military equipment as "unprecedented" and that it marked a "historical milestone" in relations between the two countries. Mexico's long been suspicious of gringo motives (at least since it lost about half a million square miles of its territory to the U.S. in the 19th century) and has tended to not be a big U.S. military buyer, relying more on European equipment or private commercial agreements. At the start of President Enrique Peña Nieto's term more than two years ago, his administration felt the United States had wormed its way too deeply into the drug war, and Mexico halted many security programs. "We knew that the President came in really wanting to focus on things other than security," said a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "He found out he really needed to pay a lot of attention to security." In late 2013, Mexico asked the United States if it could fill a large order of 5.56 mm ammunition, and the embassy helped deliver the trainloads of $6 million worth of bullets within 100 days, the official said. "That case really kind of broke the ice," he said. "They saw the responsiveness of what we could do as a partner in foreign military sales. And they liked it." That sale paved the way for even larger purchases: orders for more than two dozen UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters for the Air Force and Navy, and more than 2,200 Humvees. Since Peña Nieto came to office in late 2012, Mexico has purchased about $1.5 billion in equipment through the government's military sales program, plus $2 billion more through U.S. companies, said Inigo Guevara Moyano, a Mexican defense consultant based in Washington. "All of these buys have been to replace existing systems that averaged 30 to 40 years old and drained budgets through high maintenance costs and poor availability," he said. He noted that defense spending also rose sharply under Peña Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon, and that it reflects the "maturing military-to-military relationship at the institutional level, regardless of who is in power." The buying also is a sign of the intensity of the war against the drug cartels. The Mexican military has aggressive operations ongoing in several states such as Tamaulipas, on the Texas border, and Jalisco, against the ascendant New Generation drug cartel. These operations have driven a rapid increase in defense spending over much of the past decade. Since 2006, spending has tripled, from $2.6 billion to $7.9 billion this year. Despite the growth, Mexico spends less than many other countries in the hemisphere, just .51 percent of gross domestic product, compared to a Latin American average of 1.31 percent, Guevara said. In addition to tactical raids and statewide operations against drug cartels, the Mexican military is involved in all sorts of other missions, from vaccination programs, to reforestation, to securing voting booths in volatile parts of the country, as it did last week. The lavishly funded drug cartels it fights are sometimes better armed and equipped than the security forces. Cartel gunmen recently shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Obama initiative and joint government programs prove Mexican relations are only getting better


Villarreal 15— (M. Angeles, “U.S.-Mexico Economic Relations: Trends, Issues, and Implications,” Congressional Research Service, April 20, 2015, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32934.pdf). WM

Bilateral Economic Cooperation The Obama Administration has engaged in bilateral efforts with Mexico, and also with Canada, to address issues related to the U.S.-Mexico border, enhance economic competitiveness, increase regulatory cooperation, and pursue energy integration. High Level Economic Dialogue (HLED) On September 20, 2013, the United States and Mexico launched the High Economic Dialogue (HLED), co-chaired by the U.S. Department of State, Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, and their Mexican counterparts. 13 The purpose of the initiative is to advance U.S.-Mexico economic and commercial priorities that are central to promoting mutual economic growth, job creation, and global competitiveness. The HLED is organized around three broad pillars, including: 1) promoting competitiveness and connectivity; 2) fostering economic growth, productivity, and innovation; and 3) partnering for regional and global leadership. The HLED’s major goals are to promote competitiveness in specific sectors such as transportation, telecommunications, and energy; to explore ways to promote entrepreneurship and encourage the development of human capital; and to facilitate greater alignment on issues of shared concern in both regional and international initiatives, especially in trade negotiation. Some of the initial steps toward accomplishing such goals have included: continuing the work of the Mexico-U.S. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Council; collaborating on organizing an information and communications technology road show, regulatory workshop series, and broadband innovation information exchanges; developing an agenda for cooperation on intelligent transportation and freight systems; making more efficient use of the North American Development Bank and the Border Environment Cooperation Commission; and pursue joint investment initiatives.14 Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s approach to combating Mexican drug cartels has been a much-discussed topic since well before he was elected. Indeed, in June 2011 — more than a year before the July 2012 Mexican presidential election — I wrote an analysis discussing rumors that, if elected, Pena Nieto was going to attempt to reach some sort of accommodation with Mexico’s drug cartels in order to bring down the level of violence. Such rumors were certainly understandable, given the arrangement that had existed for many years between some senior members of Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party and some powerful cartel figures during the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s long reign in Mexico prior to the election of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party in 2000. However, as we argued in 2011 and repeated in March 2013, much has changed in Mexico since 2000, and the new reality in Mexico means that it would be impossible for the Pena Nieto administration to reach any sort of deal with the cartels even if it made an attempt. But the rumors of the Pena Nieto government reaching an accommodation with some cartel figures such as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera have persisted, even as the Mexican government arrests key operatives in Guzman’s network, such as Ines Coronel Barreras, Guzman’s father-in-law, who was arrested May 1 in Agua Prieta, Mexico. Indeed, on April 27, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest published a detailed article outlining how U.S. authorities were fearful that the Mexican government was restructuring its security relationship with the U.S. government so that it could more easily reach an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. Yet four days later, Coronel — a significant cartel figure — was arrested in a joint operation between the Mexicans and Americans.

Pena-Nieto Administration prioritization of decreasing violence cements US-Mexico relations


Stewart 13— Vice President of Analysis at Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm (Scott, “U.S.-Mexico Cooperation Against Cartels Remains Strong,” Forbes, 5/16/2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/05/16/u-s-mexico-cooperation-against-cartels-remains-strong/). WM

Opportunities and Challenges



Despite the violence that has wracked Mexico over the past decade, the Mexican economy is booming. Arguably, the economy would be doing even better if potential investors were not concerned about cartel violence and street crime — and if such criminal activity did not have such a significant impact on businesses operating in Mexico. Because of this, the Pena Nieto administration believes that it is critical to reduce the overall level of violence in the country. Essentially it wants to transform the cartel issue into a law enforcement problem, something handled by the Interior Ministry and the national police, rather than a national security problem handled by the Mexican military and the Center for Research and National Security (Mexico’s national-level intelligence agency). In many ways the Pena Nieto administration wants to follow the model of the government of Colombia, which has never been able to stop trafficking in its territory but was able to defeat the powerful Medellin and Cali cartels and relegate their successor organizations to a law enforcement problem. The Mexicans also believe that if they can attenuate cartel violence, they will be able to free up law enforcement forces to tackle common crime instead of focusing nearly all their resources on containing the cartel wars. Although the cartels have not yet been taken down to the point of being a law enforcement problem, the Pena Nieto administration wants to continue to signal this shift in approach by moving the focus of its efforts against the cartels to the Interior Ministry. Unlike former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who was seen leading the charge against the cartels during his administration, Pena Nieto wants to maintain some distance from the struggle against the cartels (at least publicly). Pena Nieto seeks to portray the cartels as a secondary issue that does not demand his personal leadership and attention. He can then publicly focus his efforts on issues he deems critically important to Mexico’s future, like education reform, banking reform, energy reform and fostering the Mexican economy. This is the most significant difference between the Calderon and Pena Nieto administrations. Of course it is one thing to say that the cartels have become a secondary issue, and it is quite another to make it happen. The Mexican government still faces some real challenges in reducing the threat posed by the cartels. However, it is becoming clear that the Pena Nieto administration seeks to implement a holistic approach in an attempt to address the problems at the root of the violence that in some ways is quite reminiscent of counterinsurgency policy. The Mexicans view these underlying economic, cultural and sociological problems as issues that cannot be solved with force alone. Mexican officials in the current government say that the approach the Calderon administration took to fighting the cartels was wrong in that it sought to solve the problem of cartel violence by simply killing or arresting cartel figures. They claim that Calderon’s approach did nothing to treat the underlying causes of the violence and that the cartels were able to recruit gunmen faster than the government could kill or capture them. (In some ways this is parallel to the U.S. government’s approach in Yemen, where increases in missile strikes from unmanned aerial vehicles have increased, rather than reduced, the number of jihadists there.) In Mexico, when the cartels experienced trouble in recruiting enough gunmen, they were able to readily import them from Central America. However — and this is very significant — this holistic approach does not mean that the Pena Nieto administration wants to totally abandon kinetic operations against the cartels. An important pillar of any counterinsurgency campaign is providing security for the population. But rather than provoke random firefights with cartel gunmen by sending military patrols into cartel hot spots, the Pena Nieto team wants to be more targeted and intentional in its application of force. It seeks to take out the networks that hire and supply the gunmen, not just the gunmen themselves, and this will require all the tools in its counternarcotics portfolio — not only force, but also things like intelligence, financial action (to target cartel finances), public health, institution building and anti-corruption efforts. The theory is that by providing security, stability and economic opportunity the government can undercut the cartels’ ability to recruit youth who currently see little other options in life but to join the cartels. To truly succeed, especially in the most lawless areas, the Mexican government is going to have to begin to build institutions — and public trust in those institutions — from the ground up. The officials we have talked to hold Juarez up as an example they hope to follow in other locations, though they say they learned a lot of lessons in Juarez that will allow them to streamline their efforts elsewhere. Obviously, before they can begin building, they recognize that they will have to seize, consolidate and hold territory, and this is the role they envision for the newly created gendarmerie, or paramilitary police. The gendarmerie is important to this rebuilding effort because the military is incapable of serving in an investigative law enforcement role. They are deployed to pursue active shooters and target members of the cartels, but much of the crime affecting Mexico’s citizens and companies falls outside the military’s purview. The military also has a tendency to be heavy-handed, and reports of human rights abuses are quite common. Transforming from a national security to a law enforcement approach requires the formation of an effective police force that is able to conduct community policing while pursuing car thieves, extortionists, kidnappers and street gangs in addition to cartel gunmen. Certainly the U.S. government was very involved in the Calderon administration’s kinetic approach to the cartel problem, as shown by the very heavy collaboration between the two governments. The collaboration was so heavy, in fact, that some incoming Pena Nieto administration figures were shocked by how integrated the Americans had become. The U.S. officials who told Dana Priest they were uncomfortable with the new Mexican government’s approach to cartel violence were undoubtedly among those deeply involved in this process — perhaps so deeply involved that they could not recognize that in the big picture, their approach was failing to reduce the violence in Mexico. Indeed, from the Mexican perspective, the U.S. efforts have been focused on reducing the flow of narcotics into the United States regardless of the impact of those efforts on Mexico’s security environment. However, as seen by the May 1 arrest of Coronel, which a Mexican official described as a classic joint operation involving the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican Federal Police, the Mexican authorities do intend to continue to work very closely with their American counterparts. But that cooperation must occur within the new framework established for the anti-cartel efforts. That means that plans for cooperation must be presented through the Mexican Interior Ministry so that the efforts can be centrally coordinated. Much of the current peer-to-peer cooperation can continue, but within that structure.


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