Mexico Drug War - an Assessment: The Challenge of Violent Drug-Trafficking Organizations

This research was done by the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND Corporation's National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unitied Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. It used an expert elicitation exercise; i.e., a group of experts ... completed scorecard assessments of the contemporary Mexican security situation on three dimensions. 


Rand Corporation: "... this monograph offers an assessment of the contemporary security situation in Mexico through the lens of existing RAND research on related issues. Specifically, we considered three strands of existing research: work on urban instability and unrest, the historical study of insurgency, and research on defense-sector reform.

1. The Urban Flashpoints Scorecard Shows That Mexican Border Cities Are Highly Vulnerable to Continued Unrest
2. The Counterinsurgency Scorecard Places Mexico Between Historical Winners and Losers and Reveals That Contemporary Mexico Is Not Unlike the First Phase of Several Historical Insurgencies
3. The Defense Sector Assessment Rating Tool Indicates That the Ability to Control Corruption Is Perceived as Weak, as Are Mexico’s Policing Capabilities. " read more