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August 14, 2009
Exclusive: Alternatives for the U.S. Should Mexico Face the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ (Part Five of Five)
Historical Precedence for Military Intervention
In October 1993, at the request of Congress, the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress published a report titled “Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993.” The report contains a list, and brief explanation, of 234 situations that occurred between those years when American armed forces were used in situations of conflict or potential conflict, or for other than normal peacetime purposes.
Most relevant are those incidents in which American armed forces were deployed on foreign soil not pursuant to treaties made between the two countries, but rather to suppress banditry, piracy and the slave trade, or to protect American lives, property and diplomatic missions, or in retaliation for depredations on American citizens and American interests. Such grounds for intervention are covered by the peremptory norms of customary law.
Peremptory norms have not been specifically enumerated and catalogued by any authoritative body, but they include the protection of a country’s citizens abroad, its property and agents when there is no government able to perform its functions, as well as suppressing such universally condemned violations as piracy and slavery. In the case of the failure of the Mexican state to maintain law and order in its territory, to the point where those norms are violated, the United States has the right to intervene militarily under established international law backed by precedence. The United States has already has the right to intervene militarily in Mexico under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter in response to the numerous deliberate incursions by units of the Mexican army and police into the United States. If conditions should worsen, that record of violations would bolster an already sound case for a U.S. military response.
Worst Case Scenarios
The Joint Forces Command’s report expresses the fear of a possible “rapid and sudden collapse” of the Mexican state. This is a worst case scenario indeed. However, it need not go that far before presenting the United States with situations in which some “deed may be anticipated” in which cross border military action under the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense would be warranted. For example, Mexico City’s control in the north might become so tenuous that “ungoverned spaces” might appear “right next door,” in which “terrorist mafias” or powerful drug cartels might represent the only power in the zone, or if the local government was infiltrated, or even taken over by non-governmental forces. If under such conditions facilities that, analogous to maquiladoras, were established that took advantage of conditions in Mexico and proximity to U.S. markets, or U.S. targets, then the United States could invoke anticipatory self defense and move militarily to eliminate those facilities. The latest case of American attacks across a border, and that of an allied state, is the use of predator air strikes by both the Bush and Obama administrations from American bases in the United States against terrorist bases in the tribal area of Pakistan.
The protection of human rights is another reason for possible military intervention. Humanitarian Intervention does not yet carry the same weight as peremptory norms, but is fast joining the ranks of that category. Many think that humanitarian intervention is of recent vintage. Yet it has precedence going back to the nineteenth century when states militarily intervened in other countries in the name of “liberty and civilization”, “humanity rights” and eventually “humanitarian rights.” In 1989, the United States under George Bush 41 invaded Panama and seized its de facto head of state Manuel Noriega for trafficking in drugs. That invasion was justified on the grounds of safeguarding and protecting American citizens in Panama and to stop harmful illegal activity. In addition to those traditional justifications, the United States further justified its action on the grounds of protecting democracy and human rights.
The development of human rights as a justification for intervention was strengthened in the 1990s with American multilateral involvement in the Balkans and with President Clinton’s unilateral invasion of Haiti in 1994. Humanitarian intervention in such cases was tacked onto other grounds thereby building precedence for the emergence of a new peremptory norm. A major advance in establishing this justification came in the Clinton-led NATO invasion of Serbia in the case of Kosovo. That action was taken not as a counter move against an enemy as in the Cold War, like the 1983 American invasion of Grenada. Nor was the attack against Serbia intended to defend NATO citizens, property or interest, or to stop piracy or banditry in an ungoverned space. Instead, the campaign against Serbia was carried out in the name of human rights. In this regard the Kosovo action, with its bombing of cities and resultant civilian casualties, was precedence-setting, moving the idea of human rights towards further acceptance as a peremptory norm.
This justification was eventually formulated as a doctrine labeled Responsibility to Protect or R2P and designed to establish a legal and ethical basis for humanitarian intervention. It first appeared in December 2001 in a document prepared by the Internal Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) organized by the Canada government. The ICISS argued that the international community had a responsibility to protect the population of a state if that state engaged in action against its own people, or if that state was unable or unwilling to prevent such abuse. The ICISS broke R2P down into three responsibilities; the responsibilities to prevent, react and to rebuild. This doctrine entails what has come to be known as “extraterritoriality” and “universal jurisdiction.”
The UN had been completely bypassed by the Clinton invasion of Kosovo. In 2004 UN General-Secretary Kofi Anan, attempting to insert the United Nations into the evolving norm, took up the case of R2P. In 2004, he established the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, a body that published in the same year a report titled A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. In this document R2P was referred to as an “emerging norm” and was fully supported by the panel. The document says in part, "... there is a growing acceptance that while sovereign Governments have the primary responsibility to protect their own citizens from such catastrophes, when they are unable or unwilling to do so that responsibility should be taken up by the wider international community with it spanning a continuum involving prevention, response to violence, if necessary, and rebuilding shattered societies.”
In September 2005, the 60th session of the UN General Assembly with 191 heads of state and government representatives unanimously passed a Resolution that supported the doctrine. The World Summit of the General Assembly further endorsed the idea in 2005 as did UN Resolution 1674 in 2006 and again in Resolution 1706 in 2009 in reference to peacekeeping in Darfur. Thus the United Nations is fully behind what has been called a new global moral compact between states and the populations of the earth. Under this “emerging norm” the old principle of sovereignty is furthereroded, providing a moral and legal justification, backed by precedence, for possible intervention in a Mexico weakened by internal strife and marred by civilian casualties. Mexico, therefore, is faced not only with a challenge from non-state powers within its territory, but also by the possibility of intervention by state powers from abroad sanctioned and supported in principle by other countries and international bodies.
For example, if Mexico were to experience a serious crisis, large numbers of Mexicans would naturally seek refuge status in the United States, as refugees from the northwest frontier region are now seeking sanctuary in the Pakistani interior. This is what happened during the Mexican Revolution. With today’s large population along the border and with a more integrated border, the numbers entering the United States would be even greater. What would the United States do in such a case? One immediate solution would be to handle refugees on American soil the way people dislocated by natural disasters are handled, but in an unprecedented manner since those under U.S. protect and receiving American aid would not be American citizens.
Another possibility is to cross the border and create safe-havens for the refugees in their own country, requiring an American military presence on Mexican soil in the name of humanitarian intervention. This kind of intervention, if it should come, would not look at all like the American pursuit of Pancho Villa in 1916 when General Pershing marched into Chihuahua in pursuit of the caudillo who had killed eighteen Americans and burned the town of Columbus, New Mexico in a predawn raid. In the spirit of R2P, to “prevent, react and rebuild,” the American military in Mexico would be accompanied by civilian contingents to care for the displaced population.
The core of a combined civilian-military mission of this kind is already in place for a different part of the world. Africom, with its present base at Djibouti, is half civilian and half military, including representatives from the Departments of State, Treasury and Health and Human Services. If the American military were to be deployed against the Somali pirates and if Africom were to be sent to that country, the FBI would also be included in the mission. There is precedence for this kind of joint military-law enforcement effort in campaigns to combat drug cartels in South and Central America. The mechanisms are known, tried and proven. The only difference in the case of a failed Mexican state would be the location.
Intervention is a drastic move and if the United States were ever to resort to such measures the provocation, or the threat to the United States, would have to be dire indeed. Yet if the need should arise, the United States has ample right to intervene militarily under the law of nations and its many precedents. The challenge at this point, however, is to help the Mexican government regain control of its territory so that such situations do not occur. There is precedence here as well.
The Colombian Example
The massive transnational trafficking of drugs is like any other industry. It has its points of production, its transportation routes, its networks of distribution and its costs of doing business. One such cost is neutralizing governments that obstruct its operations. In the case of cocaine and heroin the point of production is the Andean Highlands, most importantly the Republic of Colombia.
Throughout the 1990s, the Colombian government found itself in a desperate struggle against its own drug producing cartels and against a powerful, well-armed Marxist guerilla force, FARC, funded in part by narco-trafficking. Complicating the situation were paramilitary units established by the government to augment the Colombian army but which in some cases became brutal forces of their own, taking over the drug trade in some places and alienating the population through its brutality as much as did the criminal and the Marxist groups that it opposed.
Authority of the government in Bogota was in practical terms restricted to the high mountain plateau. Guerillas and the cartels divided the rest of the country, isolating regions from one another, blocking farmers from markets and interfering with the tourist trade along the Caribbean coast. Violence was wide-spread and vicious. Eventually the armed forces were able to assert the authority of the state beyond its earlier abilities, disbanding the paramilitary units, driving FARC back into the jungle where it began, and breaking up the large drug enterprises.
Cocaine production, however, continues. Tons are produced and exported every year, but now by smaller more flexible enterprises aided by Colombia’s Marxist neighbors. A top FARC commander was killed in 2008 inside Ecuador in a Colombian cross-border air strike and on Colombia’s eastern border Hugo Chávez, who has stopped co-operating with the drug enforcement effort, is reportedly letting FARC control the routes across the Venezuelan-Colombian border. According to a July 2009 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Venezuelan government provides FARC with “a life-line” of support and refuge in Venezuela.
Venezuela under Hugo Chávez Venezuela is fast becoming the major hub for cocaine trafficking in the Western Hemisphere with more than a fourfold increase of shipments according to the GAO of shipments from 60 metric tons in 2004 to 260 in 2007. The reason, says the report is, “a high level of corruption within the Venezuelan government, military and other law enforcement and security forces [that] contributes to the permissive environment.” Although corruption is found at all levels the report says that the one that “poses the most significant threat” is the Venezuelan National Guard controlled by Chavez and in charge of the countries borders and sea ports and airports.
The countryside is quiet now, the towns safe, kidnappings have nearly disappeared and the economy is improving after a long and very trying ordeal. The United States played a large role in this victory, supporting and strengthened the Colombian army with the help of billions of dollars in American aid in the form of military hardware and training, not all of it, by the way, wisely spent, but ultimately with a positive outcome, for Colombia in the end did not become a narco-state.
Uneasy Neighbor – Reluctant Ally
Mexico may well come out of its present time of trouble in the same way, or hopefully better. There are, however, differences between the two situations. First, the Colombians started with a weaker position than did Mexico. For example, Mexico does not need to rely on paramilitary forces that, as in Colombia, can drift out of control. And although Mexico also has its own Marxist guerillas to content with in the southern part of the country, they are nowhere near the problem that Colombia faced and still faces with FARC.
The Mexican cartels, however, are powerful and sophisticated and may have infiltrated Mexican institutions more than their counterparts did in Colombia. The level of corruption in Mexico may also be higher and thus more corrosive than in Colombia. If so, the Mexican state is more compromised and its more advantageous position, as opposed to Colombia, weakened or even neutralized.
Another difference is the relationship between those two countries and the United States. The United States and Colombia are separated by thousands of miles while the United States and Mexico share a common border and a history of strife which is by no means forgotten among the Mexican elite and by many others in the country. For example, in a Zogby International poll taken in Mexico in 2002, 58 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement “the territory of the United States Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.”
Mexican elites are also unhappy that the United States has not more formally supported their safety valve policy by “regularizing” the emigration from Mexico and by not more aggressively promoting the Mexican policy of a North American EU-like arrangement. In a more recent turn of events, the Mexican government was angered when the Obama administration, under pressure from one of its key constituents, labor, refused to allow Mexican trucks to operate in the United States in accordance with a prior agreement. The Mexican government imposed a tariff to show its disapproval. And then there is the question of how much the United States and Mexico can co-operate with one another to any meaningful degree given the refusal of those who run Mexico to accept any responsibility for their short-comings and failures and for the results of their weak institutions and their chronic corruption.
Despite the urgency, the Mexican government is unwilling to co-operate with the United States on other fronts as well. For example, on March 30, 2009 President Calderón said in a press conference, during a state visit to London, that Mexico would share intelligence with the United States. “We do have to work together”, he admitted, “but that does not imply the joint participation in military operations or even a joint participation of law enforcement agents.” Thus the Mexican president, for whatever reason, has ruled out an effective way of dealing with what the Mexicans themselves claim as the root of the problem, illicit drugs going north and guns going south. If the Mexicans are unwilling to co-operate even there, can we expect much anywhere else?
One thing the Mexican government will accept is aid in the form of money and military hardware. The United States under the provisions of Plan Merida has offered Mexico $1.4 billion over three years to fight the drug cartels, a package proposed under the Bush administration and designed to supply Mexico with Blackhawk helicopters and other military resources. This aid can be very useful, since the geographic situation in Mexico is different from that in Columbia. In Mexico there is no dense rain forest canopy over hundreds of square miles for insurgents and counter-state forces to operate. The helicopters, therefore, are useful tools in gaining and maintaining control of territory. Given the degree of corruption in Mexico and the possibility that the cartels may have infiltrated Mexican institutions, one must wonder if that aid will be used properly, and even if it might one day be used against the United States. The aid given to Mexico in the future will therefore probably not be of the same quality, quantity and effectiveness as that given to Colombia in its long struggle with powerful, determined and brutal internal forces.
Another factor is the degree of co-operation on the part of U.S. and Mexican law enforcement on a lower, operational and thus more effective level. This is not the kind of thing that can be easily monitored and assessed. One hope is that the effectiveness of such cooperation exceeds what we see on the surface, but we can never tell.
Conclusions
The United States-Mexico border is the only place where a powerful and prosperous First World country shares a land border with a country chronically struggling with endemic Third World problems. Cooperation between the two in dealing with the threats they now face, are already complicated by that proximity and by the nature of their disparity and history, perhaps to the point at which the United States can do little to help Mexico from weakening further, perhaps becoming a failed state or descending to the level of a narco-state, both of which would pose a variety of security threats to the United States that no American government could ignore. If that should happen, the lawful military actions discussed above may eventually be the only options available for reasonable self-defense.
APPENDIX I
Incidents of violence throughout Mexico 2005-2009
In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, 50 policemen were murdered in 2008 and between January 2008 and the first months of 2009 some two thousand drug related murders had been committed in the city, 28 of them in a single week, in April 2009 making Juarez the most dangerous city in the country. In 2008 the cartels threatened to kill one policeman every 48 hours until the police chief resigned. The police force fell apart and Calderón sent in 8,000 soldiers to that secure the city.
In May 2007 in the town of Cananea, 20 miles south of the Arizona border, 23 died in a battle between heavily armed narco-traffickers and Mexican soldiers and police. And in April 2009 in Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, the police, chief retired army Col. Arturo Navarro was murdered on his way home from work only three weeks after having taken the office of municipal police chief. And on June 19, 2009, 12 gunmen were reported killed in a gun battle with soldiers and federal police in a shootout in Guanajuato state in the middle of the country, not known as a drug center, hours after an attempt had been made on the life of a congressional candidate. This incident indicates that gangs are trying to infiltrate politics in that region as they have elsewhere. It goes on and on.
It goes on elsewhere in the interior of Mexico. In 2008 in Guerrero state some 900 miles from the border (where the resort city of Acapulco is located), drug cartels have battled for turf and Mexican soldiers have been killed attempting to gain control of the situation. On June 6, 2009, masked soldiers assaulted a hillside mansion in Acapulco in a firefight in which roughly 3,000 shots were fired and fifty grenades exploded while tourist hid in their hotel rooms. Tourism is the third largest source of legal income for Mexico, after remittances from Mexicans living in the United States and from petroleum. At first tourist areas escaped the violence, but recently the violence has begun to creep into Acapulco and Cancun as well.
In Acapulco in 2008 the bodies of 12 soldiers were found decapitated and displayed with the sign, “For every one of mine you kill, I will kill ten”, a pattern of brutality that has also been found elsewhere in the country. Beheading in Mexico, as in Pakistan, is a favorite device for terrorizing police, soldiers and the public in general. Along with the savagery, criminal organizations show sophistication in psychological warfare using the YouTube and other means to intimidate law enforcement agents. For example, criminals broke into the police band and announced on the radio the names of officers picked for assassination then kill them the next day. Also, Mexican police officials have shown up in the United States seeking asylum, fearing for their lives and the lives of their families. Such requests place the United States government in the embarrassing position of having to deal with asylum cases from officials of a country it considers an ally.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Glynn Custred is professor emeritus at California State University East Bay (formerly Hayward), a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Association of Borderland Studies.
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