Land Pirates

David J. Danelo at the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a new piece up entitled "Time for a New Approach to Mexico." His recommendations are actually kind of conventional -- "sustained investment of trust and resources from both countries" -- but he had an interesting take on the drug cartels (emphasis is mine):

Although the violence in Mexico has certain similarities with the troubles Colombia has confronted, the structural and geopolitical differences suggest that an identical approach to Plan Colombia is neither possible nor wise. Unlike the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Mexico's drug cartels have no desire to reshape their country in accordance with Marxist ideology. In their behavior and strategy, Mexico's narcotics groups seem to have more in common with Somali pirates than Colombian rebels: both groups seek to create anarchy so they can exploit the defenseless and dominate local markets.

Like Somali pirates in East Africa's coastal villages, Los Zetas and their ilk have thrived in power voids, stealing money from merchants and becoming minor celebrities within their respective regions. While Colombia faced a political insurgency, Mexico confronts something like land piracy. The drug kingpins are bandits, shameless and powerful, sailing untouched through the mountains, marauding wantonly in their fleets of pickup trucks and SUVs. But the absence of politics does not make Mexico's problems any less virulent. Analysts should pause before dismissing the drug violence as "only a criminal problem" simply because the Sinaloa Cartel lacks a political ideology.

In other words, the cartels are something in between the FARC and the Corleone family, and thus need to be addressed differently. I would add to his analogy to pirates that the cartel leaders are something like warlords, a phenomenon other weak states have experienced, like China in the 1920s or many African countries more recently. I don't know how that's supposed to shape our response, but it is clearly a different kind of challenge from ideological zealotry, on the one hand, and common criminality, on the other.

Mark Krikorian

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/255372/land-pirates-mark-krikorian

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