Re: Mexico
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2023 2:12 pm
THE US THREAT TO MEXICO AND THE LIMITS OF INTEGRATION
william serafino
Mar 14, 2023 , 11:41 a.m.
Politicians from Washington, DC, threatened Mexico to invade it militarily (Photo: Henry Romero / Reuters)
The recent counterpoint between Mexico City and Washington, product of the murder of two US citizens kidnapped in the border town of Matamoros, has meant such a serious impasse that a military intervention by the United States in Mexican territory has even been considered.
A haze of confusion surrounds the fact. The five alleged implicated in the kidnapping and the deaths were handed over by the Gulf Cartel with their hands covered and their faces covered in a gesture aimed at distancing themselves from the accusations. In addition, they left an apology letter in the vehicle where the people were found.
It is also not entirely clear what the Americans were doing in Matamoros, if they had any connection to drug trafficking—three of them had criminal records—or if the kidnapping was caused more by a mix-up with rival organizations.
But, already at this point, for US political sectors, the speculations around the event are accessory. For the official discourse, reality ends with the fact that two Americans were murdered by Mexican drug cartels, without mediating important nuances, such as the fact that more than 200,000 weapons manufactured in the United States cross the border every year to strengthen the power of fire from drug traffickers, as published by journalist Ioan Grillo in his book Blood Gun Money: How America arms gangs and cartel.
On the Republican side, the hawk Lindsey Graham, a member of the party's interventionist hard wing, captured attention with a press conference in which he claimed to be working on a bill that would allow the designation of Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, in addition to seeking an authorization for the US army to enter Mexican territory in order to combat the cartels.
Graham's bill is joined by Republican Senator John Kennedy. However, it is not the only one that arises. Sens. Rick Scott and Roger Marshall, fellow Republicans, introduced one with a similar profile . The two projects seek to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, although they differ in the scope of the entities to include in said list.
Graham's delirious warmongering speech resonated across the border and provoked an immediate response from its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The Mexican president asserted : "We are not going to allow any foreign government to intervene, much less the armed forces of a foreign government to intervene in our territory."
Putting on the table a US military intervention in Mexico not only removes the long historical saga of war, territorial expropriation and economic plunder carried out by the United States since the 19th century, but also constitutes a highly dangerous rhetorical escalation for the region, given that the question of drug trafficking arises as a transnational phenomenon.
It is true that the jingoism of Republican hawks, electoral calculus to weaken Biden's re-election prospects, and the logic of political theater deeply ingrained in American media culture had a lot to do with the discursive hysteria of Graham and other hawks.
However, the obsession with military intervention in the region is not an issue of exclusive reference to Mexico as a result of the event in Matamoros. It is part of a US geopolitical strategy that found in this fact a promotion mechanism and also a way to update its axes of incursion.
A couple of immediate and synthesisable examples help to understand why it is not only about Mexico.
For example, drug trafficking related to "terrorism" is the backbone of the Southern Command's operational framework, in which it is interpreted as one of the main "threats" to be contained. Even in 2020, Admiral Craig Faller, in command of said institution at that time, stated that said "threats" came from Venezuela, which paved the justifications for military action.
Since 2021, Cuba has been included in the list of states "sponsors of terrorism" of the United States, a provision recently reaffirmed by the Joe Biden government, which continues to derail the thesis that the Democratic administration would treat the aggressive approach differently. of Trump to the island.
The hysteria over drug trafficking and terrorism, which has become an official discourse not only of the State Department but also of the Southern Command, has as its principle of reality what the current head of the institution, Laura Richardson, confessed at the beginning of the year: The urgency for controlling strategic natural resources such as lithium, oil, among others.
By way of national data, the fact that a matter of weeks ago the AMLO government nationalized lithium stands out .
Regardless of the intricate institutional paths that Graham's proposal will have to travel from now on, the proposal of a military intervention in itself is already a sign of seriousness for the security of Mexico, regional peace and, in a general sense, for the basic notion of respect and equality between States.
The discursive escalation of the Republican hawks also expresses that they feel safe to threaten third countries with the use of military force because they know that they will not suffer any diplomatic or geopolitical consequences.
Deep down, in the mentality of a Graham lives the idea that Latin America and the Caribbean is a weak continent, subject to humiliation and incapable of responding as a bloc to such expressions of gravity.
The threat of intervention against Mexico has also exposed the limitations of the so-called new "progressive cycle" and the relaunch of regional integration.
It is precisely in these moments of high tension that the region must show itself united, articulate and determined to respond as a geopolitical bloc, from community platforms with CELAC-type weight and influence, and even from bilateral meetings.
A unified statement from the region has been needed to show that the promotion of integration is a serious, credible effort and a common consensus, and not a merely institutional framework to comply with periodic meetings subject to bureaucratic lapses and final declarations with little support.
The situation of confrontation and impasse between Mexico and the United States allows us to imagine how the commitment to integration could be landed, taking advantage of the continental ideological shift of recent years, in which different leftist tendencies have obtained a quantitative majority on the hemispheric map.
One of the steps in this sense could be to expedite the procedures for calling extraordinary summits or emergency meetings of CELAC whose objective would be, in addition to addressing the issue and the publication of pronouncements in defense of peace and security in the region, inject dynamism into the organization and increase its own capacities for coordination and exchange of concerns between Member States.
This principle would be equally valid for other regional integration mechanisms and political and diplomatic forums, following the strategic projection of a common position on peace and security that allows for the inclusion of as many actors as possible.
The recomposition of the regional integration that has been sold with security and firmness, in the case of the threat against Mexico, has been shown to be far below what is expected. Without a unified bloc that rejects displays of humiliation and commands respect, hawks like Graham will continue to see opportunities for advancement.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... ntegracion
Google Translator
william serafino
Mar 14, 2023 , 11:41 a.m.
Politicians from Washington, DC, threatened Mexico to invade it militarily (Photo: Henry Romero / Reuters)
The recent counterpoint between Mexico City and Washington, product of the murder of two US citizens kidnapped in the border town of Matamoros, has meant such a serious impasse that a military intervention by the United States in Mexican territory has even been considered.
A haze of confusion surrounds the fact. The five alleged implicated in the kidnapping and the deaths were handed over by the Gulf Cartel with their hands covered and their faces covered in a gesture aimed at distancing themselves from the accusations. In addition, they left an apology letter in the vehicle where the people were found.
It is also not entirely clear what the Americans were doing in Matamoros, if they had any connection to drug trafficking—three of them had criminal records—or if the kidnapping was caused more by a mix-up with rival organizations.
But, already at this point, for US political sectors, the speculations around the event are accessory. For the official discourse, reality ends with the fact that two Americans were murdered by Mexican drug cartels, without mediating important nuances, such as the fact that more than 200,000 weapons manufactured in the United States cross the border every year to strengthen the power of fire from drug traffickers, as published by journalist Ioan Grillo in his book Blood Gun Money: How America arms gangs and cartel.
On the Republican side, the hawk Lindsey Graham, a member of the party's interventionist hard wing, captured attention with a press conference in which he claimed to be working on a bill that would allow the designation of Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, in addition to seeking an authorization for the US army to enter Mexican territory in order to combat the cartels.
Graham's bill is joined by Republican Senator John Kennedy. However, it is not the only one that arises. Sens. Rick Scott and Roger Marshall, fellow Republicans, introduced one with a similar profile . The two projects seek to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, although they differ in the scope of the entities to include in said list.
Graham's delirious warmongering speech resonated across the border and provoked an immediate response from its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The Mexican president asserted : "We are not going to allow any foreign government to intervene, much less the armed forces of a foreign government to intervene in our territory."
Putting on the table a US military intervention in Mexico not only removes the long historical saga of war, territorial expropriation and economic plunder carried out by the United States since the 19th century, but also constitutes a highly dangerous rhetorical escalation for the region, given that the question of drug trafficking arises as a transnational phenomenon.
It is true that the jingoism of Republican hawks, electoral calculus to weaken Biden's re-election prospects, and the logic of political theater deeply ingrained in American media culture had a lot to do with the discursive hysteria of Graham and other hawks.
However, the obsession with military intervention in the region is not an issue of exclusive reference to Mexico as a result of the event in Matamoros. It is part of a US geopolitical strategy that found in this fact a promotion mechanism and also a way to update its axes of incursion.
A couple of immediate and synthesisable examples help to understand why it is not only about Mexico.
For example, drug trafficking related to "terrorism" is the backbone of the Southern Command's operational framework, in which it is interpreted as one of the main "threats" to be contained. Even in 2020, Admiral Craig Faller, in command of said institution at that time, stated that said "threats" came from Venezuela, which paved the justifications for military action.
Since 2021, Cuba has been included in the list of states "sponsors of terrorism" of the United States, a provision recently reaffirmed by the Joe Biden government, which continues to derail the thesis that the Democratic administration would treat the aggressive approach differently. of Trump to the island.
The hysteria over drug trafficking and terrorism, which has become an official discourse not only of the State Department but also of the Southern Command, has as its principle of reality what the current head of the institution, Laura Richardson, confessed at the beginning of the year: The urgency for controlling strategic natural resources such as lithium, oil, among others.
By way of national data, the fact that a matter of weeks ago the AMLO government nationalized lithium stands out .
Regardless of the intricate institutional paths that Graham's proposal will have to travel from now on, the proposal of a military intervention in itself is already a sign of seriousness for the security of Mexico, regional peace and, in a general sense, for the basic notion of respect and equality between States.
The discursive escalation of the Republican hawks also expresses that they feel safe to threaten third countries with the use of military force because they know that they will not suffer any diplomatic or geopolitical consequences.
Deep down, in the mentality of a Graham lives the idea that Latin America and the Caribbean is a weak continent, subject to humiliation and incapable of responding as a bloc to such expressions of gravity.
The threat of intervention against Mexico has also exposed the limitations of the so-called new "progressive cycle" and the relaunch of regional integration.
It is precisely in these moments of high tension that the region must show itself united, articulate and determined to respond as a geopolitical bloc, from community platforms with CELAC-type weight and influence, and even from bilateral meetings.
A unified statement from the region has been needed to show that the promotion of integration is a serious, credible effort and a common consensus, and not a merely institutional framework to comply with periodic meetings subject to bureaucratic lapses and final declarations with little support.
The situation of confrontation and impasse between Mexico and the United States allows us to imagine how the commitment to integration could be landed, taking advantage of the continental ideological shift of recent years, in which different leftist tendencies have obtained a quantitative majority on the hemispheric map.
One of the steps in this sense could be to expedite the procedures for calling extraordinary summits or emergency meetings of CELAC whose objective would be, in addition to addressing the issue and the publication of pronouncements in defense of peace and security in the region, inject dynamism into the organization and increase its own capacities for coordination and exchange of concerns between Member States.
This principle would be equally valid for other regional integration mechanisms and political and diplomatic forums, following the strategic projection of a common position on peace and security that allows for the inclusion of as many actors as possible.
The recomposition of the regional integration that has been sold with security and firmness, in the case of the threat against Mexico, has been shown to be far below what is expected. Without a unified bloc that rejects displays of humiliation and commands respect, hawks like Graham will continue to see opportunities for advancement.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... ntegracion
Google Translator