| | |  Editorials | Opinions | September 2009 
Border Czar Shows Misguided US Understanding of Mexico
 Patrick Corcoran - mexidata.info
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September 23, 2009
| | U.S. border czar Alan Bersin calls drug smuggling "a national security issue." | |
In a recent interview for The New Republic's website, U.S. border czar Alan Bersin spoke about American counter-narcotics policies. Such interviews with drug warriors are relatively rare, and this one provided a valuable window into the outlook of one of the government's most prominent anti-drug officials.
Let us parse: Not surprisingly, Bersin categorically rejected the arguments to legalize marijuana. He said that he wouldn’t support a “strategy of throw up your hands and give up.” According to Bersin, what are needed are long-term education efforts, and the patience to let “the organizations responsible for [drug enforcement] win their purpose”. He tossed out a decline in cocaine use over the past 30 years as a piece of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of education measures.
This is mildly disingenuous and monumentally misguided.
It’s disingenuous because the issue is legalizing marijuana, not cocaine. (Imagine using nuclear weapons as a central argument for stricter handgun controls.) Furthermore, it would be folly to attribute a decline in cocaine usage to education and interdiction, and the drops have been largely offset by exponential leaps in the use of meth and ecstasy during the same time period.
Beyond the above logical flaws, Bersin’s comments are irrevocably wrongheaded because he equates changing course to surrender. Public policy isn’t about the government winning; it’s about obtaining the best circumstances for society. Viewed under Bersin’s lens, any change in policy, from the legalization of alcohol in 1933 to the establishment of Medicare in 1965, could be viewed as giving up (on prohibition and a strictly free-market approach to health care, respectively).
But that, of course, is silly.
When a policy has been demonstrated as ineffective over the course of four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars, any honest assessment of said policy requires you to consider a change of course without resorting to simplistic win-lose notions of policy.
Bersin also spoke at length about the Mérida Initiative, justifying its focus on hardware more so than the development of Mexico’s security agencies (which accounts for less than 20 percent of the spending): “Over time, yes, providing capacity for Mexico's armed forces and for the federal police forces to successfully combat organized crime has to be accompanied by the resources that it will take to create the conditions for a long-term evolution for honest and reliable law enforcement. How you balance those in a $1.2 billion program I think is less important frankly in the short-term than recognizing that this is a sequential process, that you have to create the conditions of stability and security so that … these institutions can take root … It doesn't make sense to be investing in lots of long-term capacity when you don't have the short-term conditions to support it.”
First, as a service to readers, allow me to translate that into regular English: We’ll be more interested in the honesty of Mexico’s security agencies once the country is safer.
Moving on: Bersin’s response is an updated take on a perennial nation-building conundrum – there can’t be security until there’s development, and there can’t be development until there’s security – but it’s a poor fit here. The violence isn’t so bad in Mexico (almost half a dozen Latin American nations have murder rates that are twice as high as Mexico's) as to preclude immediate institutional reform, nor is it directed overwhelmingly at cops (only about six percent of the victims of drug murders in 2008 were law enforcement, and the majority of them were presumed to be dirty).
Furthermore, if reducing insecurity now is your goal, improving Mexico’s police would be a much more direct step toward that than a few extra helicopters. If you asked a hundred Mexico experts whether the country would be safer if the nation’s police agencies were all outfitted like U.S. Army Special Forces, or if in those same agencies every traitor was replaced by an honest official, I don’t imagine a single one would choose the former option.
Mexico’s most pressing problem is a climate of corruption fed by greed and a lack of effective controls over police officials. Addressing that requires a greater emphasis on monitoring police through internal investigations, asset checks, frequent and random polygraph and drug testing, higher salaries for officers, and an institutionalized system of accountability. The U.S. and Mexico may not be able to pull all of that off with one aid package, but it’d be nice to know that they were focusing on the right goals.
Patrick Corcoran (corcoran25(at)hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He blogs at Gancho (ganchoblog.blogspot.com/). |
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