Whack-a-mole: If Mexico Is at War, Does America Have to Win It?

Another security analyst weighs in on U.S. strategy for Mexico. The debate certainly is heating up as the current Merida Initiative legislation comes to an end and the Obama administration considers next steps. 

If Mexico Is at War, Does America Have to Win It? - By Robert Haddick | Foreign Policy: Most significantly, a strengthening Mexican insurgency would very likely affect America's role in the rest of the world. An increasingly chaotic American side of the border, marked by bloody cartel wars, corrupted government and media, and a breakdown in security, would likely cause many in the United States to question the importance of military and foreign policy ventures elsewhere in the world.

Should the southern border become a U.S. president's primary national security concern, nervous allies and opportunistic adversaries elsewhere in the world would no doubt adjust to a distracted and inward-looking America, with potentially disruptive arms races the result. Secretary Clinton has looked south and now sees an insurgency. Let's hope that the United States can apply what it has recently learned about insurgencies to stop this one from getting out of control. Sept. 10, 2010, Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal.