By Ricardo Lezama South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is barking up the wrong tree. Unsurprisingly, in this electoral cycle, yet another irrelevant politician is attempting to make waves in the US-Mexico relationship which has historically tended to benefit the United States more.
Senator Graham is simply cooing to his political base with a biannual call to bomb Mexico which stems from an American obsession with total regional control. For context, here’s 2018’s typical news cycle and pressure from a Republican administration towards Mexico:
Senator Graham feels free to state reckless talking points about invading Mexico despite America’s ignored gun problem leading to regional gangs receiving easy access to unpoliced gun shipments from the United States. A failure to control gun exports is tantamount to enabling those same fentanyl shipments from being policed adequately in Mexico. Literally, Mexico’s police are outgunned thanks to US gun negligence.
Most understand that US military intervention in Mexico has ended at best with undue influence for the United States and at worst with the unjust annexation of California, Nevada, Arizona, Nuevo Mexico, Tejas and Colorado. Any implied or explicit military intervention should be shunned by all political circles. Mexico, as a government and people, maintain a peaceful posture for an undeserving neighbour.
Systematic Bias Against Mexicans In Drug War Media Coverage
Keep in mind, that Lindsey Graham is a South Carolina based person, a region that does not properly figure in the broader picture of drug consumption or even economic trade with Mexico. This is the reason why we note that his comments are solely for electoral consequences that benefit him and his party, not the American or Mexican people.
Where Does Fentanyl Actually Come From?
The answer regarding supply of Fentanyl cannot pinned to a single country in terms of supply. In truth, narcotics involves a union of smart and syndicated criminals who operate outside of national jurisdictions (obviously). The precursor chemicals of Fentanyl is manufactured in China by state owned Chinese chemical companies and shipped by Chinese government managed shipping companies, but exported and abused outside of its territorial borders. Liability is somewhat removed since the harm is not happening directly in the receiving country of Mexico, but in a third party.
The US and China enjoyed a brief period of cooperation on the topic of Fentanyl exports. However, Trump tariffs in 2019 led to a disruption in intelligence sharing between the US and China, two fully functioning governments with a robust security apparatus. Mexico’s domestic intelligence agencies are nowhere near as capable as either country’s law enforcement.We can all admit that Mexico’s police agencies are beleaguered, out of pocket and short staffed.
Ultimately, the lack of intelligent enforcement has led to the spike in supply. Fentanyl is now cheaper and more accessible amongst the United States’ growing homeless population and youth addicted to drugs generally.
Mexico Is Just An Easy Corridor
The United States is the worlds largest economy thanks in large part to the vast amount of lands and resources it stole from Mexico in the 19th century. As such, the country of Mexico was left with a large economic and spiritual gap in its development with history favouring the corrupt in various episodes of its history. This scenario of economic and moral destitution lends itself to another issue: proximity to the worlds largest consumer of every illicit drug available.
Virtually every illicit drug must pass through Mexico. For most, Mexico is the corridor, not the producer, of significant amounts of heroin, synthetic opioids and cocaine along with precursor chemicals for meth and different grades of marijuana for states where the sale of illicit marijuana is still profitable.
No Terrorism – Just Branding
Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations, like Los Aztecas or Familia Michoacana, commit heinous acts against rivals and business associates masquerading as civilians. At times, the reckless attitude towards live spills over. Innocents are maimed, hurt and shoved into a position of terror in a figurative and literal sense depending on what region and the intensity of a conflict. However, the brutal callousness is born from a need to brand their organisation as “not weak” or “very powerful”.
In short, the same pragmatic thinking that governs non-Mexican gangs is typical in Mexico. They are aggressive, but the level of lawlessness is attributable to local government lack of enforcement, personnel and compensation for an inherently risky job of policing a Mexican municipality. If the US and Mexico were truly concerned with violence, then they would simply conduct intelligence based operations against the most violent elements without regard as to what the success of any given cartel’s success rate is in the importation of drugs. The king pin strategy long discredited by analysts, like Sanho Tree, instead of enabling emerging organisations by fragmenting large players, like the Sinaloa cartel, who by all accounts were prone to being discrete and pragmatic in their day to day dealing.
Ultimately, even the claim that drug trafficking organisations are terrorist organisations is absurd. While a persistent anti-oligarchy message can be seen in various narco corridos, the truth is that most of Mexico has a deep sense of class based solidarity. These DTO’s are not in any way shape or form politicised groups. They will respond to logical market dynamics only. If dog food is made illegal, they will traffic it into a country with a better ROI per unit sold.
Whose Dead Matter More?
Imposing another degree of warfare on Mexico is unfair to Mexicans. Already, since 2006, Mexico has abided by radical US led initiatives to police cartels in the most violent and ineffective way possible: chasing king pins. This has led to whole enclaves being developed all for law enforcement to enjoy the capture of certain trophy criminals.
Demand is easy enough to signal as a peculiar US fascination.
At the municipal level, very few efforts are made to enforce substance abuse rehabilitation, but full commitments are made for heavy handed enforcement. Senator Lindsey Graham is referencing a 100,000 dead figure that has circulated since 2020. If the US is facing an alleged 100,000 deaths, then I don’t understand why this figure does not move up or down.
At first glance, the figure appears dubious since most federal counts rely on municipal level county authorities. County level coroner offices are often opaque with how they tabulate fentanyl related deaths or how they determined a cause of death since Fentanyl attribution logically requires a toxicology report and not just an officer’s word of mouth. At the granular level, homeless individuals who are often abusing alcohol get lumped into the the Fentanyl for political posturing in places like San Bernardino county. It’s tough to imagine this not being the case in other counties.
According to the United Nations, Mexico has suffered at least 360,000 dead over the US’s fanatical supply side, law enforcement, guns blazing approach.
It seems that to some uneducated observers, the US’ miscounted fentanyl user deaths matter more than Mexico’s well documented suffering. Unfortunately, for all affected, the current debate will only obfuscate a real solution and prolong everyone’s suffering all to bolster Senator Lindsey Graham’s selfish electoral aims.
