A post of mine last week (“America First” Was the Polite Request; “America Only” Is the Less-Polite Follow-up Offer) generated many comments and emails about the seemingly forgotten concept of “America’s national interests” as we engage (or don’t engage) with the rest of the world.
In that post I stated my belief that the Israel-Hamas conflict affects the long-term security of the United States, unlike Ukraine-Russia. Today I’d like to discuss the other country that concerns me the most as to how it affects our long-term national security – Mexico.
First, I’ll confess that I do have an affinity for Mexico, its people, and its culture, especially the northern Mexican border states that share an overlapping culture with South Texas. But forgetting my personal affection, the United States shares a 2,000 mile border with our southern neighbor, and governance of northern Mexico has effectively been conquered by organized crime cartels which are trafficking drugs and people, with a corresponding humanitarian crisis having broken out along the entirety of the border.
It's bad. But it can still get much worse.
As awful as the situation is, Mexico is not Cuba or Venezuela. At least not yet. The slow-motion civil war in Mexico between the official government and the ruling crime syndicates has not fully played out, but the crime syndicates are already effectively allied with China in the fentanyl crisis, and they are engaged in unconventional warfare against the United States.
Law enforcement in Texas have arrested two Mexican nationals with cartel ties who were seen coming across the U.S. southern border armed with rifles and armor-piercing rounds.
The United States-Mexico border has become the scene of violence normally associated with countries such as Iraq and Syria. The Mexican military has recovered no fewer than 10 improvised explosive devices at the international frontier this week, according to Fox Business.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is urging Border Patrol agents to be wary in the area in light of the use of IEDs.
Mexican drug cartel operatives continue to engage in violent acts along the southern border of Texas near the Rio Grande, as new video shows them throwing explosives as an intimidation tactic, authorities say.
How is it not considered treason that Joe Biden and his Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are committed to leaving the border unsecured so that those weapons and IEDs can be brought to American cities by hostile foreign crime syndicates?
But the greatest act of war being engaged against the US is not with weapons, instead it’s with drugs. According to some studies, fentanyl is the leading cause of death for adult Americans under the age of 45. Strangely enough, while the US (and Canada) are dealing with a fentanyl crisis, Europe is virtually untouched by it.
“Why has Europe been spared Canada's fentanyl disaster?” [Douglas Todd – Vancouver Sun – 12/11/2023]
Last year, 70,000 Americans died of overdoses from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin. The toll in Canada is comparable, at about 7,000 a year. In B.C., fentanyl-related deaths run at about 2,000, which is among the worst rates per capita on the continent.
What is the death count due to fentanyl in Europe? No more than 200 a year.
Police and addiction experts are trying to figure out the huge disparity. And they’re desperate to stop fentanyl from crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
It was a couple of years ago that I learned of China’s role in the US fentanyl crisis, and that was only because I was reading Scott Adams, who writes about it often. The legacy media was either uninterested or suppressing the story, but the role of China in supplying the fentanyl flowing into the US is finally being openly discussed.
While opioid-production patterns vary by region, police now believe a great deal of North America’s fentanyl supply streams in from a combination of Mexican drug cartels mostly using chemicals from China.
So why is China engaging in mass murder against the US and Canada, while sparing Europe?
David Asher of the Hudson Institute explains that the Chinese Communist Party is deliberately committing narco-warfare against the US as a means of undermining our society, using Mexican cartels as their irregular army.
Our analysis in the Pompeo State Department was that the CCP saw narco warfare with the US and Canada as a means of undermining society and state in the US and Canada. The cartel leaders agreed to be part given the profits were ridiculous and a CCP coordinated money laundering network would take care that they all got paid for what constitutes mass murder (not normally a good cartel business strategy). Bottom line: Europe so far has been more compliant with China politically and has been spared as a result. This could change, of course…
Even if the Mexican government could somehow defeat the cartels, Mexico is prone to electing anti-American leftists. (My affinity for Mexico does not extend to its politicians or its voting habits.) As Venezuela showed us, a modern Latin American country need only vote for communism once, then it will get communism and poverty in perpetuity.
Would a Chavista Mexico invite Chinese warships to dock in Tijuana and Matamoros?
Whatever political direction it takes, what if Mexico decides to join the BRICS confederation, and if some years down the road BRICS decides to provide for each others’ mutual defense? Why wouldn’t Mexico welcome Iranian BRICS troops to a base on the Rio Grande, just like Finland is welcoming NATO troops to its border with Russia.
If, God forbid, some border skirmishes broke out along the Mexican border between the US and whichever Mexican actors, China could arm our foes just as we are arming Russia’s foes. Proxy wars happen, and we are not immune from being the target of a global power using Mexico as its proxy.
I don’t have a solution for Mexico, but I do know that hostile actors control the border, and it is a dereliction of our leaders that we have surrendered the border to the drug cartels. My concern about Mexico is one reason I am not “America Only,” but my concern about the situation there is part of my “America First” mindset. For our national security, I want Mexico to have a stable, friendly, non-communist government. I want Mexicans to have economic opportunity in their own country, and I want the cartels out of power. I also want armed American troops stopping the violation of our border.
Realpolitik may not make everything I want possible, but we can’t neglect a possible nightmare situation on our southern border just because our ruling class is terminally obsessed with NATO vs Russia.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]