Monday, September 21, 2009
Border Czar Shows Misguided US Understanding of Mexico
By Patrick Corcoran
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.
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Patrick Corcoran (corcoran25@hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He blogs at Gancho (http://www.ganchoblog.blogspot.com/).
