Strategy to Counter Drug Operations

Strategy for Military Counter Drug Operations by Robert Culp

Article Key Points:The Mexican government’s approach to curtailing the criminal-insurgency must be comprehensive and populace centered.  While targeting both supply and key personalities are part of the effort, those activities are only a stop-gap tool to disrupt criminal momentum.  Subverting the criminal insurgency involves penetrating the movement, and disrupting the movement from the inside out.  The key terrain, the center of gravity for the all the chaos we see in Mexico is tied to effective governance meeting the needs of the people. And, if Mexico does not meet the needs of the people, the people will ally themselves with entities that will.  Those entities, drug trafficking organizations, have their eyes and hands on expanding their activities in the US. Comment regarding the article:  The US economy appears to be getting worse, not better.  People are going to look at other means to survive; providing active and/or tacit support to various criminal activities is one of them.  Add the immigration factor, most of them reportedly coming from Latin America, each of the potential of being recruited or extorted to support narco-operations on US soil.  If we lose neighborhoods, we lose towns; if we lose towns we lose counties; and if we lose counties, we lose states.  How governments effectively meet the needs of its people will often determine who the people will ally with.