Could a Sudden Collapse of Mexico Be Obama's Surprise Foreign Policy Challenge?

[babylonsister]

Could a Sudden Collapse of Mexico Be Obama's Surprise Foreign Policy Challenge?

By Bill Weinberg, AlterNet. Posted February 19, 2009.

Free-trade politics and the drug war created a social crisis in Mexico, and a militarized response to it may push events to an explosion.


A year-end report by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command names two countries as likely candidates for a "rapid and sudden collapse" -- Pakistan and Mexico.

The report, named "JOE 2008" (for Joint Operating Environment), states:

"In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force, and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."

Mexican officials were quick to deny the ominous claim. Exterior Secretary Patricia Espinosa told reporters that the fast-escalating violence mostly affects the narco gangs themselves, and "Mexico is not a failed state."

snip//

In Juarez (and elsewhere across Mexico), severed heads are left outside police stations in chilling numbers; mutilated, decapitated corpses left outside schools and shopping centers -- or hanging from overpasses as a warning to the populace.

A man recently arrested in Tijuana -- charmingly nicknamed the "Stew-maker" -- confessed to disposing of hundreds of bodies by dissolving them in chemicals, for which he was paid $600 a week. A barrel with partially dissolved human remains was left outside a popular seafood restaurant.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/audits/127850/could_a_sudden_collapse_of_mexico_be_obama%27s_surprise_foreign_policy_challenge/?page=entire

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. The 2006 "election" probably isn't helping matters much.

[davepc]

2. Another success of the War on Drugs!

[rucky]

3. More fearmongering from the Pentagon to fund their war on drugs racket.

Cartel violence is nothing new.

[babylonsister]

4. It has gotten a lot worse though and it's branching out into

the US, like Arizona.

Read this yesterday:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4684

State of War

[fuggbush21]

6. Have you paid any attention to the news?

Drug Cartels in Mexico are starting to take over. Their taking control of the police, and it is not unreasonable to assume they have their eyes set on running the entire country. A total collapse of the Mexican government into a violent narco state on our border will be a huge foreign policy issue. This is not "pentagon fearmongering". This is a likely scenario that we need to prepare for. Because if you just sit there with your head in the sand, people are going to come up to you and kick you in the rear all day long.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Why would this be a surprise? Mexico's been...

sliding downward for years and it's not like all this just started happening yesterday. They're losing their industries to China as fast as we are, farms are going belly up in a drought, Chiapas is not going away, and oil revenues are shrinking-- all fairly old stories and with an outlandish wealth distibution that makes ours look positively communistic.

Police chiefs quitting at the demand of drug cartels so they stop killing local cops is just the latest new low, learned from Colombia no doubt.

I suspect that nobody's talking about it because we have very few alternatives and they range from bad to horrible. Besides, the drug cartels are making all their money supplying the US market, which does put a certain amount of the blame on us.

[Double T]

7. All the more reason to complete the Mexican border fence from Pacific Ocean to......

the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of American jobs would be created to secure our Southern Border.