Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The military part of the state

Given experience in the USA, it's often easy to forget how big a part of the state the military is. In the US Congress, there are the yearly arguments about the huge military budget, but usually only peripheral, specific projects take the heat. In Mexico, the military has become a vital arm of the government within the country. And it's not a sparkling success. The government and the regime are threatened by the failures.

Mexico army's failures hamper drug war

Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation…

The army's shortcomings have complicated the government's struggle against the narcotics cartels…

The military has delivered important victories to the government by killing or capturing several senior cartel figures and confiscating large drug shipments. And the decision to put retired and active army officers in charge of police departments around the country has helped bring relative quiet to some violence-plagued cities, such as Tijuana.

But in places such as Ciudad Juarez, where Calderon has staked his political reputation, the death toll... skyrocketed [in 2010]. Seven of every 10 stores have been forced to shut down… and nearly a quarter of a million people have fled the city in the last two years…

"Mexicans are paying a high price … for a strategy that does not seem to have much impact," said Roderic Ai Camp, an expert on the Mexican military at Claremont McKenna College. "It is not reducing drug consumption in the U.S., it is not reducing drug-related income for the trafficking organizations, nor is it reducing their influence in other activities," such as kidnapping and people-smuggling...

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Labels: capacity, legitimacy, Mexico, state