I just want to put an idea out there that has recurred to me frequently in recent years. It resurfaced today with Rich Lowry writing on the “intolerable alliance” between the cartels and the current Mexican government, and Joshua Treviño writing on the same.

My thesis here is simple: Our neighbors matter to us greatly. The Mexican government is in a bad place with respect to its penetration by drug cartels. Despite these conditions, Mexico is a top-15 nation when ranked economically. Mexico’s core of rich families has found a way to ride through chaos and revolution throughout centuries. But they could achieve so much more.

Law and order in Mexico, and the consequent economic growth it would produce, would have almost incalculable benefits to the United States. Instead of Americans treating only a handful of heavily guarded resort areas as potential destinations for visitors, Mexico could be for us what Spain and Portugal are to many Europeans: a frequent vacation destination, a place of second homes, and even a location for occasionally comfy retirements. Mexican industry could be a power unto itself. This isn’t a vision of a globalist union, with a North American currency and full integration economically or culturally. But, law and order in Mexico is probably one of the greatest economic and humanitarian goods that policymakers could reasonably achieve with vision and effort.