# How much farther do we let Mexico slide toward being a defacto narco state before we step in? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 4, 2010, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248 "2010-05-04T03:47:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/1 "2010-05-04T03:47:32Z")
Looking at news reports a[nd the overall situation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War) it appears the Mexican government is almost helpless against the drug cartels that rule the roost in the border areas. Can we afford to share a 2000 mile border with a narco state? Do we have to step in and cross the border into the Mexican border territories and restore order at some point just for our own national interest? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/2 "2010-05-04T03:51:06Z")
:dubious: This is a whoosh, right? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/3 "2010-05-04T04:12:32Z")
We can’t afford to share a border with a “narco state”, but we can afford to take over a country with 111M people who will fight us tooth and nail? Why don’t you tell us what the cost of the two alternatives is, and then we’ll see which we can afford. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/4 "2010-05-04T04:16:11Z")
Well, I’m sure most of the Mexicans will greet us liberators who have come to save them from their failed narco state. And then we can use the revenues from Mexico’s oil exports to pay for the cost of our involvement. I can’t picture anything going wrong with this plan. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/5 "2010-05-04T04:32:22Z")
Before invading another country AGAIN, why not take a look at why your people, who fuel the market, are using drugs and address that? Legalize the damned stuff and allow people to do what they want with their lives and bodies. Spend the money currently being spent on enforcement on treatment instead. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/6 "2010-05-04T04:52:28Z")
Mexico indeed has some pretty big problems right now. Beyond the drug wars, and beyond being a historically fractured country, they’ve had 2 presidents in a row who have gotten significantly less than half the vote, with the incumbent getting less than 36% IIRC. Not exactly a mandate to rule. Polls in Mexico show that the only institutions the people trust are the church and the army, and neither are particularly trustworthy IMO. You’re going to get a lot of people in this thread saying they know what to do, it’s simple, other dumb things. Truth is, it’s a very complicated and delicate situation. I think Uzi is on to a portion of it, but there’s more. I’m ultimately optimistic for Mexico, but there are dark times between now and then, I’m afraid. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/7 "2010-05-04T05:27:14Z")
Short of just legalizing drugs, I can imagine American military advisers working with proven-honest members of the Mexican military, supplying observer- and predator-drones, helicopters… basically high-tech stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/8 "2010-05-04T05:32:07Z")
But then you are killing other people’s citizens because you can’t control your own. It doesn’t seem to be a strong moral position to me. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/9 "2010-05-04T05:35:43Z")
What does morality have to do with it? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/10 "2010-05-04T07:37:18Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What does morality have to do with it? What does morality not have to do with it? Morality matters all the time, not just every alternate Wednesday. And before you say anything like “realpolitik”, let me point out that a book on American history could be reasonably subtitled “why not caring about doing the right thing in politics is a stupid idea”. We’ve been a living example of why morality matters from the beginning, when tolerating the enslavement of blacks so the slave states would join the Union resulted in the Civil War and social problems that exist to this day. And American foreign policy largely seems to consist of dealing with the consequences of such “screw morality” politics. I’m quite sure that a policy that amounts to “Who cares about morality? It’s easier to kill Mexicans than deal with our own problems” would - again - backblast onto us. That’s how it always works. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/11 "2010-05-04T07:53:24Z")
Well, it’s not how it _always_ works. What I’m suggesting would be giving the Mexican army better tools and firepower to even things up a bit. If the Americans are going to fund the narcos by buying the drugs, why not fund the Federales, too? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/12 "2010-05-04T08:03:08Z")
What could we even do? We can’t even contain the situation in Iraq. Either way, during the 1980s the city of Los Angeles had roughly 1,000 murders a year for a city with a population of about 7 million. Mexico has about 7,000 drug related murders a year in a nation with 111 million. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/13 "2010-05-04T08:05:28Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Either way, during the 1980s the city of Los Angeles had roughly 1,000 murders a year for a city with a population of about 7 million. Mexico has about 7,000 drug related murders a year in a nation with 111 million. You’re counting all murders for Los Angeles but only drug-related murders for Mexico? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/14 "2010-05-04T08:08:17Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > What I’m suggesting would be giving the Mexican army better tools and firepower to even things up a bit. If the Americans are going to fund the narcos by buying the drugs, why not fund the Federales, too? Um, how’s that been working out for us in [Colombia](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/latin_america/colombia/trade.html)? Paying another country’s “criminals”\* for illegal goods on the black market and simultaneously paying that country’s military in official aid to go after the criminals is a strategy that doesn’t seem to have a very good track record. - “Criminals” in scare quotes not because Colombian coca farmers and laborers aren’t in fact breaking the law, but because many of them are basically just impoverished cogs in an illegal machine rather than antisocial denizens of the underworld. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/15 "2010-05-04T08:13:41Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > You’re counting all murders for Los Angeles but only drug-related murders for Mexico? AFAICT it doesn’t make all that difference: the 7000 drug-related murders [make up more than half of all murders annually in Mexico](http://www.nationmaster.com/country/mx-mexico/cri-crime), so 1980’s LA would still be way ahead on the per capita murder rate. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/16 "2010-05-04T08:32:45Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Um, how’s that been working out for us in [Colombia](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/latin_america/colombia/trade.html)? > > Paying another country’s “criminals”\* for illegal goods on the black market and simultaneously paying that country’s military in official aid to go after the criminals is a strategy that doesn’t seem to have a very good track record. I’d like it noted that legalizing drugs was my _first_ solution, with bringing advanced military hardware to bear as a second choice. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/17 "2010-05-04T08:50:18Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Looking at news reports a[nd the overall situation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War) it appears the Mexican government is almost helpless against the drug cartels that rule the roost in the border areas. Can we afford to share a 2000 mile border with a narco state? Do we have to step in and cross the border into the Mexican border territories and restore order at some point just for our own national interest? What pray tell leads you to think that crossing the border is in your national interest? Rather seems to me, although sitting across the Big Pond this is a bit distant, that invading other countries to solve your domestic problems has not really worked very well. How adding mixing yourself up in a war with / in Mexico and giving the drug cartels the added sexy political imprimatur of being Resistance to the Gringo Invasion would help entirely escapes… ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/18 "2010-05-04T09:21:47Z")
It does seem that this is largely a problem of the U.S.s own making. Providing a massive black market for narcotics while at the same time allowing the free trade of firearms is a pretty bad combination for an impoverished border country like Mexico. Really I feel sorry for the Mexicans, they’re the ones paying the price for the United State’s idiotic ideologically driven policies. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/19 "2010-05-04T09:42:54Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > What could we even do? We can’t even contain the situation in Iraq. Iraq is on the other side of the planet, Mexico is right next door. I also suspect the number of Spanish speakers in the military is enormously larger than the number of Arabic speakers. As for the why, well, that’s a little murkier. It could be profitable to some influential groups, but we couldn’t do it for awhile yet even if we really wanted. And besides, if we wanted to solve the problem of bleeding over violence into the US we could just increase the size of the state security apparatus even more. That’s the entire point of the drug war anyway. ---
**Author:** ![CBEscapee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@CBEscapee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBEscapee)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2010, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248/20 "2010-05-04T12:55:13Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, it’s not how it _always_ works. What I’m suggesting would be giving the Mexican army better tools and firepower to even things up a bit. If the Americans are going to fund the narcos by buying the drugs, why not fund the Federales, too? This is something that is too prevalent on these boards. When it comes to México, most posters really dont know much of anything. Now could you kindly explain excatly who the “federales” are? Without using Google, por favor. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-farther-do-we-let-mexico-slide-toward-being-a-defacto-narco-state-before-we-step-in/538248.md?page=2)