This monograph provides a starting point to address the importance of strategic guidance as it relates to operational planning for synchronized tactical actions. Analyzing Mexico’s drug-war offers an interesting case study to help understand the current situation surrounding non-traditional forms of war, such as a drug related war, and how Mexico’s internal conflict impacts their regional neighbors as well as the international community. The ultimate aim is to achieve a competent level of understanding in order to establish a unified regional approach that will disrupt the Mexican drug trafficking organizations and reduce violence to an acceptable and controllable level. Accomplishing this requires the unified efforts of all elements of national power from the U.S., Mexican, and regional governments by designing an operational approach that focuses efforts and unifies goals. The current U.S. and Mexican strategies work to contain drug trafficking organizations on a limited basis, but fail to fix the problem for the long-term because of their limited approach. At the conclusion, this study reveals how the employment of unified governmental approach can enhance the United States and Mexico’s current security strategy by disrupting the actions of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
Social scientists and political scholars often see the U.S.-Mexican border as a critical vulnerability for the United States because it provides a point of entry opportunity into the country for virtually anyone.1 As the flow of illegal immigration continues into the U.S., a more fundamental question exists as to what motivates Mexicans to come to the United States. Opportunity and hope are among the reasons for illegally crossing the Mexican-U.S. border; however, one of the major contributing a factor is survival. More than 47,000 Mexican citizens lost their lives due to warring drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) from 2006-11 throughout Mexico.2 Furthermore, between 2006 and 2011, DTOs assassinated twenty-seven mayors, thirteen state gubernatorial candidates (in 2010 alone), and more than five hundred Mexican government officials.3 This escalation in violence has created an unstable environment. Indeed, the lack of confidence in the Mexican government’s security capability contributes greatly to the flight by the local population north to the U.S. or south to Central America in order to escape the life threatening danger. While it is easy to focus blame on the United States’ lack of involvement and the combined efforts of both the U.S. and Mexico governments’ inability to employ resources appropriately, the real problem stems from misunderstanding the current situation along the border. The events in Mexico “have raised concerns about the stability of a strategic partner and neighbor” among individual members of the 112th Congress.4 They have conducted several hearings to discuss the DTO violence and its subsequent spillover onto U.S. soil, as well as “the efforts by the government of President Felipe Calderón to address the situation, and implications of the violence for the United States,” in order to achieve a better understanding of the current situation.5 Despite these efforts, the priorities for protection of the American people, the nation, and its vital interests still reside in the Pacific as well as the Middle East. For example, prior to the terrorist events of 9/11, the tensions in the Middle East and with Islamic fundamentalist organizations were under watchful eye, but little was done to because Middle Eastern based terrorist organizations perceived as having a low threat against U.S. national interests in that region.6 Hence, the United States’ historical behavior was historically reactionary rather than prioritizing preventive action higher in order to pre-emptively countering potential violent situation before the spillover to the U.S. Once perceived as a real threat, the responsibility for clearly defining a solution or providing goals falls onto the strategic leaders of nations involved, which includes the U.S., Mexico, as well as the international community. The next step, which is one that leaders often struggle the most with, centers on how to visualize and describe what the environment should look like in five, ten, or twenty years into the future. However, challenge emerges when trying to design and implement a plan that bridges the gap between the current situation and the desired goal or aim. The United States Army’s doctrine defines this process as the operational approach, which assists commanders and their staffs with their planning process in order to successfully inform ground-level actions or tactics with the strategic aims.7 As the world remains focused on the Middle East and the Asian Pacific regions, it behooves policy makers, intergovernmental organizations, and the citizenry, at large, to re-evaluate their approach and ask themselves if the international community (IC) and, more specifically, the U.S. is correctly addressing the Mexican drug war issue and the subsequent spillover effects. Army doctrine outlines an evaluation process that can be applied at the strategic level in order to synchronize efforts that maximize limited resources against a growing threat within Mexico. This suggests that strategic leaders reevaluate current policy and consider altering tactics to facilitate efforts aimed at accomplishing the U.S. strategic goals of “stability and security in Mexico.”8
The security of the U.S.-Mexican border is a growing concern for both countries, especially since their economic relationship has grown more interdependent over recent years. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), manufacturing plants, and labor ties between the U.S. and Mexico have strengthened their economic interdependency over the last several decades. Mexican DTOs have taken advantage of established U.S.-Mexican policy protected trade routes created by those same economic opportunities, allowing them to feed off of American illegal drug users. Competition over the illegal narcotics market has resulted in increased violence in society, intimidation of the citizenry, and extensive coercion throughout the Mexican governance and law enforcement agencies. The Mexican government’s inability to subdue drug trafficking cartels has destabilized Mexico, thus creating spillover effects into the U.S.
Mexico’s DTO issues also have international ripple effects, such as allowing terrorists organizations to piggy back off of money laundering channels and infiltration routes into the U.S. established through the same drug trafficking arteries.9 The U.S. and Mexican governments’ cooperation on this issue has been tentative at best due to political sensitivity surrounding the current U.S. immigration policy and Mexico’s apprehension toward potential U.S. intervention. Thus, while Mexico’s internal conflict increases at exponential rates it continues to pose more of a threat to the United States’ national security. As this threat expands, the risk of degrading fragile international relations between regional neighbors becomes more prevalent because Mexico’s violent situation will be the source of blame if things continue to spillover unto U.S. soil.10
When examining the United States’ approach to the DTO issue, some scholars, like Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, and national leaders, like former Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada, claim that the focus of both countries needs to be the reexamination of their current strategic approach.11 The United States’ focus has drifted away from the border in recent years due to the activity in the Middle East and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the majority of Americans do not directly feel impact of the violence south of its border, the costs in U.S. border cities must be considered. Mexican violence may not make its way to northern Minnesota, but it has a direct and immediate spillover on U.S. soil and to the U.S. citizens in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The expanding conflict within Mexico’s borders has captured the attention of American leaders’ in these states, as well as the nation once again. However, that attention is limited because the current U.S. strategy focuses more on the Pacific and Middle Eastern geographic regions.12 Limited U.S. attention manifest itself in forms like closing down three percent of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and designated off limits areas for military servicemen and women in southern Arizona due to violence and trafficking illustrates the growing concern in that area of the border region.13 As the situation becomes increasingly difficult to contain on both sides of the border, it is obvious to the people and local governments that the U.S. and Mexican security strategies for the region are under resourced and ill- planned to control the violence throughout Mexico.14 Therefore, large criminal organizations as well as the potentiality for international terrorist organizations can and are able to exploit these security deficiencies.15 Years of marginalizing the impact of illegal drug activities in Mexico by the Mexican government facilitated the build-up of DTO resources, funding streams, and recruitment, which is now outpacing local and federal law enforcement in Mexico and threatens the Mexican government’s ability to maintain law and order.16 The violence has reached levels that outpace the U.S. joint and interagency border security capabilities, which are responsible for containing the actions of DTOs south of the U.S.-Mexico border.17
Because of regional outcries for help and assistance, public pressure from southwestern U.S. and Mexican citizens have increased in order to push for the current administrations from both countries to produce a response and a long-term security vision to produce a stable environment. The outpour for better security and more stability continues to grow louder from the population within the borderland region because the ‘balloon effect’ continues to exacerbate “environmental degradation” in new areas.18 Additionally, governmental resources continue to focus on the fight against drugs and the “end users,” rather than the illicit businesses that cartels participate in and the violence that stems from competing DTOs.19
While the allocations of resources have questionable impacts because they continue to focus on cultivation and low-level criminal offenses, the larger perceived threat to the U.S. is the conflict spillover from Mexico’s internal drug war.20 Compelling statistics from a 2011 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) reports that Mexican DTOs are currently operating in more than a thousand U.S. cities.21 The threat does not come from the distribution, sale, or effects of their product, but from the methodology used to establish control in a given area. The Mexican DTOs rely on terror, brutal violence, and corruption to gain access, dominate, and seize control of an area of their choosing.22 This modus operandi (MO), commonly referred to as the plata o plomo (silver or lead) ultimatum, means a person takes either a bribe or a bullet.23 DTOs use these tactics to remove competition and to subdue law enforcement agencies.24 However, even with this persuasive evidence, the U.S. strategy tends segregate its agencies to focus only on the drug problem rather than the cartels and their violent business practices.
The current U.S. strategy is to reduce and, ultimately, prevent the flow of drugs into the U.S. This strategy highlights the usage of international cooperation and interdiction efforts targeted at disrupting the drug trade industry.25 The increase in violence suggests that the implementation of this strategy has done very little to affect drug smuggling into the United States from Mexico. The current strategy does even less to disrupt activities of the DTOs.26
Failing to disrupt the drug business practices of DTOs has greater implications, such as illegal arms smuggling, human trafficking, illegal immigration, and facilitation of international terrorists’ potential infiltration into the U.S. Rather than segregating the governmental counter to illegal activities, the United States in conjunction with the Mexican government, and possibly the international community, needs to design an approach that will synchronize efforts and operations across all elements of national power in order to shock drug trafficking organizations.27 Even though an operational approach is a U.S. military doctrinal term, the essence of the definition is applicable to the joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) domains.28 A unified goal and subsequent supporting efforts and operations can lead to an approach that disrupts the Mexican drug trafficking organizations before Mexico’s fire spreads to its neighbor’s house.29
1 Matthew M. Brown, “Engaging the Borderlands: Options for the Future of U.S. Mexican Operations. Monograph” (master’s monograph, School of Advanced Military Studies, 2010), 1.
2 Ted Galen Carpenter, The Fire Next Door (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2012), 1.
3 Sara Miller Llana, “Mexico Drug War Death Toll Up 60 Percent in 2010, Why?,” The Christian Science Monitor (13 January 2011) (13 January 2011) http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0113/Mexico-drug-war-death-toll-up-60-percent-in-2010-Why (accessed 12 November 2012).
4 June S. Beittel, Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of Rising Violence, Congressional Research Report (Washington, DC: Congress Research Service, 2012), Summary.
5 Ibid.
6 Rex A. Hudson, "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?" A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress (September 1999) http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/frd.html (accessed December 1, 2012).
7 Tactical level is roughly defined as the military level at which the actions of forces on the ground are employed and organized to conduct battles, engagements, and activities “to achieve military objectives assigned to tactical units or task forces.” The strategic level is the planning or implementation of ideas that will employ “the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives.” Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-0: Joint Operations (Washington DC: The United States Joint Chiefs of Staffs, 2011), xi-xii; operational approach, with respect to this paper, is a planning tool that helps commanders and staffs visualize where to go, what the current situation is, and how to get to that desired end state from where their organizations are at that particular time. The elements of operational art not discussed are not valued any less than the seven elements that are utilized in this paper. Department of the Army, Army Doctrine Reference Publication 3-0: Unified Land Operations, (Washington, DC: The Department of the Army, 2012), 4-2.
8 Barack Obama, National Security Strategy. Public Report (Washington, DC: The White House, May 2010), 42-3.
9 John Rollins and Liana Sun Wyler, Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Foreign Policy Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Report (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2012), 13.
10 Carpenter, The Fire Next Door, 2012, xiv. This is the analysis of the former Mexican president, Vicente Fox Quesada.
11 Carpenter, The Fire Next Door, 2012, xiii.
12 Obama, National Security Strategy, 2010, 42-3. The only mention of a security strategy for Mexico is covered in less than a page. Whereas, Asia and Middle East are continuously referenced and offer more refined guidance on the United States’ strategic vision for those particular regions. The 2012 U.S. National Defense Strategy and 2011 U.S. National Military Strategy are proportionally similar in their coverage of U.S.-Mexican international relations strategy.
13 Robert Haddick, "This Week at War: If Mexico is at War, Does America Have to Win It?," Foriegn Policy (September-October 2010), http://www.foriegnpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/10/this_week_at_war_if_mexico_is_at_war_does _america_have_to_win_it?page=0,0 (accessed October 15, 2012); United States Fish and Wildlife Service, "Media Advisory: Border Refuge Not Closed," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Public Affairs Office (June 2010) http://www.fws.gov/southwest/docs/mediaadvisory.borderrefugeopen.62010.pdf (accessed March 17, 2013); The reference to military restriction is based on first-hand knowledge while attending the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School Military Freefall Jumpmaster Course from May-June 2008.
14 Carpenter, The Fire Next Door, 2012, 17.
15 As of August 2011, “anecdotal reports have long appeared to connect Hezbollah global operations with drug trafficking, money laundering, and other illicit activity, several recent cases in 2011 have highlighted the potential transnational reach of Hezbollah’s illicit finance activities.” Additionally, “terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaad…based in Mexico are turning to criminal activities such as kidnapping for ransom to generate funding to continue their operations.” Indicating that international terrorist organizations are present in Mexico, but their intent is still to be determined. Rollins and Wyler, Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Foreign Policy Issues for Congress, 2012, 13, 27; Contarily, no hard evidence has been produced to indicate that any known international terrorist organizations were sponsoring terrorist activities from Mexican soil with an attempt to target U.S. related interests or territory. Beittel, Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of Rising Violence, 2012, 37.
16 Carpenter, The Fire Next Door, 2012, 12-4, 137-8.
17 17Brown, “Engaging the Borderlands: Options for the Future of U.S. - Mexican Operations. Monograph,” 2010, 2.
18 “Balloon effect” occurs when members of society are arrested for use of illegal drugs. In turn, those individuals are “stigmatized and marginalized.” In theory, their prior criminal records perpetuate a system that “reinforces[s] drug use because people can’t get jobs and are left on the outside of society.” Ellen Ratner, “50-Year War on Drugs Has Failed” (18 March 2012) http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/50-year-war-on-drugs-has-failed/ (accessed 11 October 2012); The term “borderland” derives from Rachel St. John’s book, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. It indicates a historical depiction of how the once translucent border between the U.S. and Mexico from El Paso to the Pacific Ocean became solidified over time with wired fencing, electronic monitoring, and armed patrols. The cities, villages, and towns that once occupied south and north of this border region are now divided by physical line in the sand that created “national signficance and contested power.” Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 1-7.
19 St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border, 2011, 1-7; Ratner, “50-Year War on Drugs Has Failed,” 2012.
20 Drug Enforcement Administration, Statement of Joseph M. Arabit, Special Agent in Charge, El Paso Division, Regarding “Violence Along the Southwest Border” Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (24 March 2009) http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/speeches/s032409.pdf (accessed 12 November 2012); Spillover violence is violence that entails deliberate, planned attacks by the cartels on U.S. assets, including civilian, military, or law enforcement officials, innocent U.S. citizens, or physical institutions such as government buildings, consulates, or businesses. This definition does not include trafficker on trafficker violence, whether perpetrated in Mexico or the U.S. Congressional Research Service Report, “Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence: R41075 (25 August 2011), 12; This narrowed definition makes the likelihood that the United States will experience this form of spillover violence relatively small.
21 United States Department of Justice (DOJ): National Drug Intelligence Center , “National Drug Threat Assessment 2011” http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs44/44849/44849p.pdf (accessed 30 November 2012), 8; Congressional Research Service Report, “Southwest Border Violence…,” 16.
22 Beittel, Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of Rising Violence, 2012, 5-16.
23 Carpenter, The Fire Next Door, 2012, 1-2.
24 Texas Department of Public Safety, “Texas External Assessment” (2010): 44-5. This report also claims that 230 U.S. citizens lost their lives from 2003-09 in Mexico.
25 Liana Sun Wyler, “International Drug Control Policy,” GAO Report RL34543“”