91–100 of 110 posts
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There was at least a token attempt to crack down on Cocaine though, and that’s about as WASP a drug as is humanly possible.
Aren’t hippies majority WASPs too?
So depends on how you define it.
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> Why does the war on drugs cause Mexico to fall apart and not Canada? Does Canada produce Marijuana and Cocaine ? Mexico is an agricultural producing country > I don't think Mexico's problems would be solved if drugs disappeared tomorrow. Mexico was already in trouble before the drug trade kicked off Low education, low productivity, limited opportunities How many Canadians jump the wall to wash dishes in the US ?
> Does Canada produce (farmed narcotics) But why don't they produce world-leading levels of illegal synthetic narcotics, purely in search of profit on the American illicit market? If farming isnt viable and drugs are massively profitable, why does Canada not suffer from the allure of American dollars? > Mexico was already in trouble I agree, but does that mean Mexico cannot solve its problems without an American Savi…
No
But it’s a shared problem as most of the drugs trade targets the US
Mexico has a much more limited budget to deal with interdiction efforts
A weed or powder suddenly being very valuable creates a lot of problems in a poor country
In the 80s Rafael Caro Quintero offered to pay off Mexico’s foreign debt from drug proceeds
Mexico attacked drug producers and in turn they responded by arming themselves
Drug money buys a lot of guns, guns buy power, rinse repeat
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> Hidden bases that would have to be retaken, This is such a dumb take It's the Chinese government that actually has secret police stations all over the US right NOW
Why not both the confirmed Chinese policing bases, and hypothetical but strategically advantageous cartel bases in the US?
Cartels have no nation-state level power
I see reports like these and think that Mexico is a failed narco state. And yet you see reports of NAFTA trade and the fact that Mexico is now America’s largest trading partner. Hard to reconcile the two. A state without law and order is also a leading trading partner with tons of complex, large scale manufacturing. What gives?
OTOH Europeans read reports that the US has an average of more than two mass shootings per day and think that the US is a failed state
What are Europe’s shortcomings?
borderland beat covered this and it was a combination of the students stealing a cartel bus used for smuggling and the corrupt local government asking for favors of the cartels they work for to teach a lesson. Btw there is many more terrible things surfacing from mexico these days like everyday plebs having to post identifiers on their vehicles to indicate tax was paid to some cartel then rivals posting videos of kil…
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This is a direct consequence of US government policy: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-d... I picked a story from 2016, so you can read with the benefit of hindsight, but it’s been the same story since the 1970’s (and arguably since the tail end of the prohibition days, when the US made the Mexican government choose between destabilizing itself or not having anesthesia for its hospitals). Si…
> This is a direct consequence of US government policy Which policy do you mean? Not legalizing drugs? Because the US is no exception in that regard.
The result is shadow economies, then corruption and finally narco states. This profits corrupt actors in the US government, so they perpetuate the cycle.
There are basically two sides in the war on drugs: almost everyone (non-users, users, small-time producers), and para-military syndicates that control distribution, enforcement agencies, and government policies.
If you read the article I linked, and also the one this thread is about, it is clear that the US decided to back one of the cartels with military aid and support in the local election. That caused a transfer of power that left 100,000’s dead, including the 43 students that were murdered by US-backed Mexican government officials.
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See the fictional riff at the beginning: > “El Coyote” Head of the New Jaurez Joint Cartel, was the man who ordered the attack on the Cactus Lounge and similar massacres on US soil, he would be killed in a US airstrike in 2032. But his Lieutenant and successor, Cartel Boss, Mexican Nationalist Front commander, and Future Mexican President, Jaun Herrera would reveal in his 2054 memoirs Smuggling to Freedom: From Narco…
> Hidden bases that would have to be retaken, This is such a dumb take It's the Chinese government that actually has secret police stations all over the US right NOW
No, its not.
> It's the Chinese government that actually has secret police stations all over the US right NOW
Yes, but that's a complete non-sequitur.
If the US decides to change the “War on Drugs” from a metaphorical war to an actual war with the US military invading Mexico, there will both be actual direct consequences of the type described on the US side of the border, and use of the conflict and those actual consequences as pretexts against civil liberties in the US.
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Why not both the confirmed Chinese policing bases, and hypothetical but strategically advantageous cartel bases in the US?
Because one is confirmed and the other one is fantasy Cartels have no nation-state level power
One is a reasonable prediction of what would happen if there was no longer a marginal threat of US escalation constraining it because the US decided to escalate fully without it, the other is a non-sequitur in this discussion.
> Cartels have no nation-state level power
Nation-state isn't a power level, and if it was, well, the Mexican cartels do have power which rivals nation-states, and in any case international criminal organization don't require the power of a nation-state to do any of the things described, as history has repeatedly shown.
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See the fictional riff at the beginning: > “El Coyote” Head of the New Jaurez Joint Cartel, was the man who ordered the attack on the Cactus Lounge and similar massacres on US soil, he would be killed in a US airstrike in 2032. But his Lieutenant and successor, Cartel Boss, Mexican Nationalist Front commander, and Future Mexican President, Jaun Herrera would reveal in his 2054 memoirs Smuggling to Freedom: From Narco…
They are assuming that the US would let it get to the point of cartel operating in the States with impunity kidnapping and murdering their way into effectively owning the government. This seems to be predicated by the understanding that the US has met abject failure in its campaign to hold, reform, and dominate perceptively weaker countries. It's true we couldn't dominate Mexico any more than we could dominate Iraq.…
No, they aren't.
They are explicitly describing that the US might be forced to take extreme action domestically to avoid the “with impunity” part, because the cartels have the resources and US penetration already to act, if they were no longer constrained by the threat of what the US might do if they did, which they cease to be when the US goes to war anyway.
> We could trivially and in short order destroy Mexicos ability to function as a modern nation by destroying power generation, water, farming, roads, bridges, shipping, trains, airplanes.
What happens to conditions in neighboring countries when the US has done that elsewhwere?
Now, where is Mexico?
> There wouldn't be a drug business there any more than there would be any other kind of business once all the engines that enable commerce are silent.
We destroyed Afghanistan that way.
It didn't destroy the drug business there, quite the opposite. Well, until the Taliban takeover, but I’m not sure that's the win you want to look for in Mexico.
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> There wouldn't be a drug business there any more than there would be any other kind of business once all the engines that enable commerce are silent. This would conflict with US goal of reshoring manufacturing from Asia to NAFTA/USMCA.
The would be less important than legislators not having their children kidnapped by cartel henchmen and dismembered.