The Mexican government should able to ignore the United Nations (UN) and press on with its mission. Mexico needs to continue to bring up the pressure against the cartels and their supporters. Increasing the tempo of military operations and temporarily limiting press reporting of cartel activities that enhances their psychological influence over the population is a needed start. Effective governance, financial and infrastructural development is still needed to steal the population away from the cartels influence. The government lacks credibility here.
One thing the UN may also want to take into account is the possibility of them being used as a "useful idiot", as useful idiots typically offer an entity blind support without thoroughly investigating the circumstances of an incident. In the case of Mexico, it may be true that people DRESSED like soldiers may be killing innocent people. Someone may need to prove that they ARE soldiers as cartels often pose as authorities to conceal their actions. This works to their benefit as it gives the cartel a two-for-one deal...they liquidate their target, and the break down popular support for the government.
The UN has absolutely no credibility when it comes to counterinsurgency or actual tangible threat mitigation. Unless the UN offers tangible forms of assistance to the people of Mexico that will measurably mitigate the influence and pervasiveness of the drug cartel activities, it should be ignored.
Of note, the UN is only effective at addressing nation-state actors, the UN is totally ineffective at addressing the dominant threats today...non-state actors e.g. terrorist groups like al Qaeda and international organized criminal elements. The UN only controls those who allow themselves to be controlled.
Innocents are likely being killed or made to disappear by both sides...it's a tragedy. However the Mexican government cannot afford to let up pressure if it wishes to survive as a state. The best the government will likely be able to do at this time is remove families from the environment so they can prosecute the fight by isolating their targets.
The situation appears so bad in Mexico right now that an increase in military/paramilitary organizational agility, targeted kinetic efforts and penetration of cartel organizations is needed. The goal is to get cartel members not to trust each other; to also sow distrust amongst its support elements; to limit cartel access to information that allows them to gauge their success and terminate them. In the aftermath, the government needs to shape other elements conducive for effective governance as soon as possible.
The measure of success Mexico needs to achieve is to bring down the level of violence to a point where people can either ignore the problem and continue their lives, and/or seize opportunities to fight against them in their own local manner without outside support....this is a respectable measure of success.
The total elimination of drug or criminal activity is not a realistic goal. However, by creating conditions where local towns can handle the problems at their own level without assistance/direct intervention of national level forces is a realistic goal.
No comments:
Post a Comment