0.6 Cooperation  (Page 2/3)

President Barack Obama signed on to the Merida Initiative, viewing the widespread continuation of drug-related violence as a threat to both nations. In April 2009, new Homeland

Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced she would be sending hundreds more federal agents and other personnel to border areas, with a dual goal of helping President Calderón crack down on the cartels and preventing the violence from spilling across the border into the United States. Napolitano, “Mexico under siege,” Los Angeles Times , April 23, 2009.

The combined efforts of U.S. and Mexican forces have had some impressive results: thousands of traffickers arrested, dozens of important crime figures indicted, tens of millions in illegal assets seized, thousands of tons of illicit drugs captured, millions of marijuana plants eradicated in both countries, and numerous clandestine drug labs discovered and dismantled. And yet, though prices and quality levels may vary over the short run, as do levels of use of given drugs, over the long run usage rates remain rather stable and users appear to have little trouble obtaining their drugs. Similarly, President Calderón’s aggressive program has clearly had an effect on the cartels, weakening some and putting all on the defensive, but the cartels have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to adversity, and the level of violence has soared beyond all experience or expectation, with no end in sight. The result, as University of Texas-El Paso professor Tony Payan aptly notes, is that “The border bears the cost of a war that cannot be won.” Payan, Tony, “The Drug War and the U.S.-Mexico Border: The State of Affairs,” South Atlantic Quarterly 105, no. 4 (Fall 2006) 13.

What appear to be victories in the War on Drugs repeatedly create what veteran observers call the Balloon Effect—squeeze it in one place and it bulges up in another. The eradication of marijuana, coca, and opium crops in one region has repeatedly shifted cultivation to other areas, just as success in choking off their Florida and Caribbean supply routes led the Colombia cartels to shift their operations to Mexico. Similarly, recent successes of U.S./Mexican anti-drug efforts appear to have stimulated the marijuana trade across the U.S./Canadian border and to have led the Colombians and the Mexican cartels to pay more attention to a growing drug market in Europe.

Clearly, a key factor in this discouraging process is the truly enormous amount of money that can be made by dealing drugs, especially by those in charge of the dealing. The money enables the cartels to recruit whatever personnel they need, whether it be drivers and pilots, accountants and lawyers, computer and communications experts, or assassins and bodyguards, and to equip them with whatever they need to ply their trade. Of course, it also makes possible the corruption of law enforcement, political, and financial systems on both sides of the border, more extensive in Mexico but also significant in the United States. And some observers assert that this influx of money, much of which is pumped into the legal economy, has caused many Mexicans, especially those living far away from the border states where most of the violence has occurred, to view the cartels as less threatening to their lives than the government’s efforts to eradicate them.