“The same forces now making our world more dangerous contain the ingredients we need to make it safer. In every roadside bomb in Tal’Afar, in every death from drug-resistant tuberculosis, in each hiccup of global financial markets, we can see the workings of powerful forces that, once mastered, offer hope at the same time they present new dangers”
Joshua Copper Ramo, The age of the unthinkable, p. 15
In the opinion of the author of this cite, Joshua Copper Ramo, our traditional way of thinking is failing to solve the complex problems that we are now facing. The more we use force against terrorism, Copper Ramo remind us, greater the chances are that terrorism increases. In the opinion of Ramo we need to look at new sources if we want to find new ways of thinking. He looks, as the title of his book suggests, at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas that can make our world more resilient.
This approach has been haunting me over the past weeks. Does Mexico need also to look at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas? Does this approach suggested by Copper Ramo is applicable to the reality of Mexico?
In the particular case of Mexico there’s no question that the traditional concepts, ideas and people that have been dominant in the country in the last half century have failed to improve its overall condition. The ruling class of Mexico liberalized the economy in the 80’s to stimulate growth but since then, most of the time the economy has been stagnated. In that decade, Mexico laid the foundation for having a market economy free of monopolies, but since then the power of monopolies has increased. The examples of solutions implemented and paradoxical outcomes obtained are abundant. One in particular calls my attention: since 2006, the administration of the Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched a war against the drug mafias with the supposed goal of freeing the country of their grip, but once again, as in the other instances, the solution only made the problem more serious. Since 2006, the drug trade has worsened, the drug gangs have multiplied and the resulting violence has increased.
The time has come, as Copper Ramo suggest, to try to find innovative solutions in the “unthinkable”? To what would be equivalent the notion of the unthinkable in the context of Mexico?
Let’s focus our attention in the problem of the drug trafficking, which with all its corrupting capacity is putting at risk the functioning of the Mexican state. What the unthinkable offers to Mexico as a source of a new strategy for fighting the drug mafias? Where Mexico can turn its attention in order to find innovative strategies for confronting this threat?
In the same way as Copper Ramo presents the example of the Israeli Army analyzing in detail the reasons that make Hezbollah resilient, would it be possible for Mexican security officials to see The Zetas (a paramilitary group allied with the Gulf Cartel, formed of former Mexican Army members) as a source for keys to defeat the drug cartels?
Of course, there’s nothing in the Mexican mafias that anyone would want to emulate. There’s nothing in them that can be considered as a model for a new society. But, on the other hand, probably there’s something in their way of operating that contains the keys for fighting them. Would looking at The Zetas, at the La Familia, at the Juarez Cartel, be for Mexico a way of looking at the unthinkable for finding creative solutions for complex problems?
In the Mexico of these years, affected by such a complex array of problems, we will never know why President Calderón decided amid many other priorities to devote his administration to the fight against drugs. Being a country troubled by inequality, poverty and stagnation, why President Calderón decided to start with the fight against drugs? That’s a question for the future analysts of Mexican political decision making. Something seems to me certain: he adopted an approach doomed to fail.
With all the lessons that history offers regarding the failure of large armies, such as the Soviet, the French and the American armies in fighting guerrillas and terrorism movements, it should be clear to the advisers of President Calderón that sending the army to fight the drug cartels would not be the solution for curbing the drugs problem. Based on the experience of the US and Israeli armies in the Middle East, it should be evident for the Mexican security advisers and for President Calderón that once the Mexican government sent the army, the mafias would wave an asymmetrical war against the State. For someone that read history it should be clear that it is almost axiomatic that weak enemies tend to fight powerful enemies using assymetrical tools.
And this is precisely what the drug mafias are doing now: they are fighting the Mexican state with assymetrical tools: hand grenades, kidnappings and terrorizing ways of killing: beheading and killing their victims in acid.
Anywhere is more clear than here that the solution offered by the government made the problem worst: 10, 000 people killed since Calderón took office and, still worst, the drug mafias and cartels have multiplied. The tumor has metastasized, just as in other countries the terrorist cells multiplies when confronted with large armies.
The bad new is that this war started by Calderón can not be pursued without facing further risks nor can be stopped without making the mafia kingpins know that they won. The choices in front of the government are: if it continues the war, the drug mafias will keep reproducing and its capacity to corrupt the State will be increased. On the other hand, if the government stops the war or the next administration does so, that would send the message that the government lost and that in the future it accepts the existence of the drug mafias.
This is a terrible dilemma, because both choices tend to give the victory to the mafias.
Just as the Israeli army is adapting its strategy based on the analysis on how Hezbollah and Hamas operate, my idea would be that the Mexican government revisits its strategy adapting it to the facts that this is not a war of regular armies and that the drug mafias have attained a level of resilience, in the same way as Hezbollah and Hamas, that is worth studying.
In the complex and colorful universe of the Mexican organized crime of these days, any other organization shines as much as The Zetas. This is the most outstanding Mexican criminal gang of our days. Formed of defected special forces group of the Mexican Army, anybody else is recruiting, killing and operating as successfully as the Zetas. The Zetas are the Hezbollah of Mexico, an organization that is attracting poor young people in Northern Mexico (and Southern US) and that is becoming a legend for the cruelty of its methods.
In the Mexican government strategy for fighting drugs, is there something to learn in the resilience of The Zetas? Would it be possible to adapt the strategy based on the analysis of the Zetas?
Following Copper Ramo, my personal invitation for thinking the unthinkable would be: studying the reasons that make the Zetas resilient and departing from here for beating the drug mafias. What would be the translations of this?
If you ask me, the translation of this would be waving a dirty war against the mafias. That would include:
For the most part of Mexico, sending back the army back to their barracks but keeping in the field groups of special forces that perform covert and chirurgical actions; paying special attention to the municipal realities of the country: countering the recruiting operations of these organizations though infiltrating agents in the places where the mafias recruit their young operatives; condemning publicly their atrocities, denouncing their actions and looking for allies in the media, the Church and the academia; geographically encircling the gangs, restricting their movements, etc.
I am not a security expert, but it’s clear to me that instead of sending the bulk of the army it would be more effective to learn from the reasons that are making these organizations resilient and use that knowledge for applying chemotherapy to the tumors.
It may be, as Copper Ramo indicates, that in the unthinkable there are hidden solutions to our problems. Probably the time has come to Mexico to look at it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment