MexicoBlog Editorial: The Emerging Debate over U.S. Strategy in the Mexican Drug War

This week the news reported through the MexicoBlog has been dominated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton´s comparison of the drug-related violence in Mexico to the narco-insurgency in Columbia twenty years ago. We have posted several articles in which everyone from President Obama to various political analysts have weighed in on whether Mexico "is/is not" becoming "another Columbia."

Whether it "is" or "isn't" is not the issue. As the Wall Street Journal reported today, this public debate is simply a manifestation of an internal debate going on within the Obama administration over what to do about the violence in Mexico and the "national security threat" it presents to the United States. Facing the expiration of the current Merida Initiative legislaton at the end of the year, the administration has to make a decision, "What do we do now?"

This is a tremendously important question and a critical debate. The decisions of the administration and of Congress will have serious consequences for the fate of our nation and the fate of Mexico. It is frightening - and we fear it will be tragic - that this debate is framed as one over "national security. This means that the only options being considered are whether to conclude that "Mexico is Columbia" and needs a Columbian-like "Plan Mexico," or whether some other military-police-intelligence combination short of such a Plan will be acceptable to Mexico - and the U.S. electorate.

Framing the problem as one of "national security" limits the options strictly to further militarization. Despite the Obama administration professing that it "will consider all options," the option of legalization - although recently put on la mesa in Mexico by President Calderon himself - is "not on the table" within our government. Thus, the U.S government continues to avoid seeing the drug war as based on U.S. laws which prohibit the legal, regulated sale of these drugs and seeing the "drug problem" as one of public health, to be addressed by education and treatment, not the instruments of war.

As we said, we fear that the outcome of this administration debate - regardless of whether it decides Mexico "is or is not" another Columbia - will be tragic for both Mexico and the U.S. It behooves all of us to pay close attention to how this policy debate plays out.

See also the article by Americas Program director, Laura Carlsen, "A Plan Columbia for Mexico"