Whack-a-mole Drug War: Mexico's criminal organizations: weakness in complexity, strength in evolution

An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the drug cartels and the effects of the government's war against them on their evolution. From another security analysis organization called "Southern Pulse"

Mexico's criminal organizations: weakness in complexity, strength in evolution: "Transnational organized crime exists as a networked system that creates a high degree of resiliency. Government systems laden by a pyramid-shaped bureaucracy and sovereignty have had little effect when attacking networks of organized crime in Latin America. This uneven playing field is easily observed at the strategic level, where non-state threats appear to run circles around slower moving governments. The criminal system rapidly adapts, strengthens and increases in violence, independent of whether independent groups are fighting each other, government forces, or civilian vigilante groups. As a “counter-system,” criminality (or warlord entrepreneurs in the parlance of this volume), is inherently resilient, displacing from one territory to another and across international boundaries, as market conditions or threats to organizational structures present themselves."