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The Case Against Mexico Joining NATO

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By Raúl Zepeda-Gil

Artwork: “Esquadron 201,” The 201st Mexican Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force Artist: Ginny Sherwood

Mexico has no benefit in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In a pragmatic sense, the relation with the United States constrains how Mexico employs its foreign policy. Adding a new layer of complexity, coming from an international organisation that has an overwhelming leadership from the U.S., would futher hinder Mexico’s foreign policy by reducing its freedom degrees of action by excesing a neutralilty instance in international security matters.

Historically, Mexico has diverged from the U.S. foreign policy and acted in a semi-neutral basis for the rest of the world. After the recurrent invasions from the U.S. and France during the 19th Century, Mexico adopted constitutional principles enshirend in article 89, fraction X: self-determination, peaceful conflict resolution, follow international law, and the proscription to threat to use force against other State. 

Mario Ojeda, one the most relevant experts on Mexico’s foreign policy, described the paradox of a relatively weak country neighbouring through a long border with the United States: it has independence in foreign policy in exchange for cooperation in everyday matters. Mexico does not engage in international security affairs of the U.S., but has intensive cooperation in other maters: border protection, migration issues, having a Free Trade Agreement, and Plan Merida for anti-drug initiatives. 

In 2019, Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO, in response to the integration of Colombia as a partner of the alliance, mentioned that other Latin American countries could integrate in the same way. This appeal happened in a particular geopolitical moment: Brazil had requested to join NATO to help Donald Trump pressure the rest of the member states internally. 

2021 has changed the scenario: Trump is now out of office. And Joe Biden will reinforce the U.S. presence in NATO. However, before these junctures, two members of the Atlantic Council have made their case for Mexico in NATO. Skaluba and Doyle argued: 

“Mexico could serve as a gateway for an intensified NATO presence in Latin America where the alliance is absent outside of a formal partnership with Colombia. Given Russia’s criticality in propping up Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and China’s growing influence throughout the Global South, an augmented NATO role in Latin America could further democracy promotion while providing a timely deterrent effect, including on Russia’s solicitation of Mexico to increase bilateral trade and security agreements.”

This idea has been widely debated. In 2012, Christopher Sands, of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkin’s University, said:

President Obama and Prime Minister Harper should consider Mexico when they meet with other NATO leaders in Chicago. NATO with Mexico as a member could also confirm the alliance’s role as a guarantor of security and mutual cooperation against transnational security threats that contributes to the prosperity of the west, in Europe and North America equally.

Both pieces, plus the Stoltenberg declaration, do not mention why or how Mexico would benefit from a NATO membership beyond the current benefits from the bilateral relationship with the U.S. or the integration within the free trade agreement government Canada. Both quotes show that having Mexico’s main interest in NATO is to be functional to the NATO agenda. Nonetheless, history has shown that Mexico’s geographical closeness to the U.S. automatically requires Mexico to be auxiliary to the Atlantic agenda. Mexico is so entwined with the U.S. that it will choose to be with the U.S. on a global scale conflict. 

Nonetheless, beyond a real common threat to Mexico and the U.S., such as the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, Mexico does not need to enter into the agenda of international conflicts of the U.S. The advantage of Mexico’s independent foreign policy is that Mexico exchanges cooperation of its own agenda without the need to be involved in issues that are not geopolitically relevant to Mexico. For example, the George W. Bush administration pressured Mexico to enter the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq in 2002. Nonetheless, México denied joining that endevour initially because it was not supported in the UN Security Council. Afterwards, with the negative vote of Mexico in the UN Security Council in 2003, the Iraq War was not athorised, therefore, giving Mexico the main reason to deny any future involvement: it was against the Mexican constitutional principle of following the international law. Indeed, diplomatic tensions arose, but the bilateral agenda continued as usual, and Mexico did not embark in a conflict; it not needed be involved. 

For a country so dependent on the U.S. economy, joining to NATO would mean relinquishing degrees of freedom in foreign policy. Mexico is in line with North America’s defence by cooperating with the U.S. Northern Command and follows constitutional principles of peaceful resolutions of conflict and democratic values. However, joining with NATO would mean that Mexico could be pressured to integrate to conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya, Bosnia, or Yemen, contentious by themselves in other multilateral forums. 

As stated before, Mexico usually disagrees with NATO countries in the UN on international security matters. For example, Mexico has never supported Responsibility to Protect as a policy, instead prefers diplomatic mediation. And has never supported military responses for international security matters, rather than just peacekeeping operations.

The previously mentioned authors argued that Mexico would benefit from the Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework that NATO implemented in Eastern Europe. Is it necessary that Mexico join NATO to ask for bilateral or multilateral cooperation in implementing SSR framework? The authors were not aware that bilateral cooperation with the U.S. in anti-narcotics agenda has involved some SSR programs under the Merida Initiative signed during the George W. Bush administration. Nowadays, UN peacekeeping is a more effective way to engage in SSR reform in the defence sector than NATO initaitives. Mexico has established a new peacekeeping educational centre for its recent engagement in UN peacekeeping since 2014, after a long absence from any peacekeeping since the late 1950s. Therefore, there are no apparent benefits in cooperating with NATO.

Finally, we remember why NATO was founded: to combat Soviet influence Undeniably, Mexico also was under the influence of Cold War global politics. However, instead of following the US foreign policy agenda, Mexico has followed a foreign policy agenda based on promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts, neutrality in conflicts, and the promotion of de-nuclearisation. Mexico has developed a diverse portfolio of multilateral initiatives in the UN that are possible because it does not follow U.S. foreign policy: migration agreements, small arms trafficking and recently, promoting the global vaccine alliance for developing countries. Close cooperation in real bilateral problems with the U.S. allows Mexico to act with more freedom in global issues. Joining NATO would hinder that freedom.

it is not a problem to argue that a country has a role in the global scenario. But, the problem with the Atlantic Council’s arguments is that they do not consider any of the current foreign policy traditions of Mexico. In simpler terms: they did not even mind asking or thinking in Mexican terms why would it be useful to be in NATO, beyond a random menu or SSR reform, without knowing what is happening in its SSR agenda. In even more practical terms: if there is something that unsettles the U.S. about the Mexico’s bilateral relations with Russia or China, a phone call between the State Department and the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs would be more effective than a long and exhaustiative process in joining NATO. 

 

Raúl Zepeda-Gil is a Mexican PhD Student in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He holds degree in political science by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a master’s degree in political science by El Colegio de Mexico. One of his research topics is Mexican multilateral foreign policy and civil-military relations. You can follow him on Twitter at @zepecaos. 

Cash Crops, Conflict, and Climate Change

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by Eve Gleeson

Mexico’s Avocado police on patrol (Image credit: Katy Watson/BBC)

The cultivation of crops is a steady and promising source of economic gain for developing states, both through internal markets and international trade. However, these powerhouses of economic success may well serve as a double-edged sword. Lacking robust and well-enforced laws and regulations, the economies and populations of many states have become dependent on, or in some cases addicted to, the success of these crops for their livelihoods and security. This success has precipitated destructive practices in subservience to the crop’s lucrative economic benefits, such as informal governance by militias and the decimation of environmental resources such as land and water.

Circumstances in Yemen and Mexico, in particular, point to these hostile relationships surrounding cash crops. In Mexico, militias are operating through kidnappings and killings, forests and ecosystems are being destroyed for land clearings, and local populations are facing health hazards from excessive pesticide use. In Yemen, the market monopolisation of a non-food crop is exacerbating a famine originally created by war and natural resource scarcity. In both of these cases, environmental pressures have preceded or followed from the urgency exerted by a stressed food system, depicting the inseparable relationship between unsustainable agriculture and compromised social, economic, and political stability.

Yemen’s cash crop drug: conflict, famine, and natural resource depletion

The War in Yemen, a conflict between the Houthi rebel movement, government forces, and a coalition of Arabian states, has resulted in a famine that harbours a much darker backstory than blockades stopping the import of food and water to the country. In addition, the famine has been worsened by the growth of khat (or qat), a stimulant drug that features as Yemen’s superstar crop. It has brought such financial gain to its growers that it has taken priority in farming country over other crops, such as wheat or fruits, that could provide sustenance to its people. Khat is so ubiquitous in the country’s political economy that it has become entwined with the interests of warring factions, further spurring conflict, water depletion, and famine on the peninsula.

The crop is the source of a violent dispute between farmers, a currency for bribe-seeking soldiers, and a dominant figure in the country’s markets, detrimentally crowding out crops that could help soften the blow of Yemen’s famine. It provides a source of funding for both the Houthi rebels and the pro-government forces in the war, as ‘qat traders pay a tax on their qat to whichever side controls their region‘. The crop also consumes close to forty per cent of Yemen’s clean water reserves, thereby further overtaxing water resources already weaponised by warring factions that destroy infrastructure, obstruct roadways, and blockade imports.

To make matters worse, the stimulant drug is also challenging Yemen’s dependence on groundwater reserves that are dwindling under drought, heat, and other climatic irregularities. The government lacks the capacity to enforce modern water rights, which have been rejected by wealthy farmers who regularly exploit their poor counterparts by drilling on their land. Now, farmers freely drill wells without government regulation. As a result, they continue to use highly unsustainable groundwater reserves to feed khat production, with no plan for developing renewable water sources for human or agricultural use as droughts persist and temperatures rise.

‘Blood Avocados’ in Mexico’s Michoacán state

Avocados, known to many in the growing industry as ‘green gold’, account for conflict between rival farmers and traders in Mexico. Cartels, violence, and extortion are just some of the troubling factors behind this cash crop; one that has drained resources– land, water, and capital– from the regions in which they are grown. Major importers such as the United States, the EU, and Japan have driven a $2 billion industry rooted thousands of miles away with little conception of the havoc the efforts have inflicted on the region of Michoacán, where production is concentrated.

In the Michoacán state, four principal narcotics cartels extorting avocado farmers have transformed the region into what Mexican online magazine Clarín Mundo has called Mexico’s ‘Capital of Violence’. Failure to pay ‘monthly protection’ fees to the cartels has resulted in kidnappings, killings, and seizures of farmland. In response, state-funded self-defence militias have sprouted from the local community to combat these gangs, whose narcoterrorism is partially financed by the extortion of farmers. Consequently, the region’s capital of Tacitaro has become militarised: ‘The new force is equipped with armored patrol trucks, and each officer wears full combat gear, including bulletproof vests, helmets, and high-power rifles — all provided for by the state police’.

This industry is also guilty of precipitating deforestation and water depletion (avocados require nearly 320 litres of water per unit) as well as stimulating competition for land that has provoked the intentional burning of wildlife ecosystems. This deforestation, performed illegally, points to gaps in environmental governance. Climatic irregularities, such as droughts and floods, have further troubled soil and land health, compromising the fertility of existing farmland. Given that growing a crop at an industrial scale often requires the heavy use of pesticides, these chemicals have contaminated the water supply in avocado-growing regions and sickened local populations.

The bigger picture: the disparate effects of climate change on developing states

This unmistakable relationship between food and conflict is an increasingly global issue that threatens and is likewise threatened by, the pressures of resource and environmental degradation. Though vastly different in nature, the cases of Yemen and Mexico illustrate how unsustainable agricultural practices, themselves propagated by gaps in governance and commodity demands from rich, developed states, can manifest in a conflict where effective protection of farmers and land is absent, particularly in an era when climatic changes are an increasing threat to security. Similar situations are unfolding in places like Iraq, where desertification and salination of water tables resulting from climatic irregularities are intensifying grievances in an already fragile state.

For this reason, the looming threat of climate change is not a ‘first world problem’. Although developed countries have the technological and financial resources (even if they lack the willpower) to transition to renewable energy, sustainable agricultural practices, and lower carbon emissions, the threat is a less immediate one for many. Wealthier developed countries have the resources for more expensive projects, like desalination of saltwater, if groundwater reserves become exhausted or contaminated. For communities that strive day-to-day for economic, political, and social stability and predictability, climate change can mean compromises to essential crop yields, irreplaceable loss of natural resources, increased conflict, and even displacement.

How can the global community ensure that more vulnerable populations stop suffering from food and nutrition insecurity, domestic tensions and war, contaminated and insufficient water resources, or displacement at the hand of climate change? Addressing climate change is at the forefront of this matter: lowering greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the carbon sequestration capacity of land by repairing broken systems. In the short term, we must consider how the demands and interventions of more developed and often opportunistic states impact the ability for less stable states to ensure food, water, and other basic livelihoods. Grassroots organisations like Soil, Food and Healthy Communities in Malawi and Sustainable Harvest International in Central America are making major headway in creating more sustainable and regenerative practices in communities that struggle with food insecurity. But movements in the West must acknowledge the disparate effects of climate change on vulnerable communities and their impact on international security.

Eve Gleeson holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. After briefly working in threat intelligence, she is shifting her focus toward sustainable agriculture and food policy. She can be found on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @evegleeson_. 

Militarization and Accountability on the United States-Mexico Border

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By Carly Greenfield

28 December 2018

A U.S. Border Patrol agent stands near a section of the U.S.- Mexico border fence while on patrol in La Joya, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)

 

On 21 November, a jury in Arizona found Border Patrol Agent Lonnie Swartz not guilty in the involuntary manslaughter of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, a Mexican teenager shot and killed by Swartz in October of 2012. Swartz fired from the United States side of the border in Nogales, Arizona, into Nogales, Mexico, killing 16-year-old Elena Rodríguez. Elena Rodríguez is not the first teenager to be killed by U.S. law enforcement along the border; a similar situation occurred with another Mexican national, 15-year-old Sergio Hernández Guereca. When he was killed in 2010, however, his killing did not result in a lawsuit. Both cases raise questions surrounding authority in border zones.

While the majority of shootings along the border have been by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, the military has also been involved in a similar incident. The killing of 18-year-old U.S. citizen Esequiel Hernández by U.S. marines deployed to the border in 1997, which resulted in no indictments for the marines involved, remains a blight on military involvement along the border. As active-duty troops are set to be deployed through the new year, the decades old case continues to inform military engagement in the region. The Elena Rodríguez case is not isolated, and the lack of clarity over who is responsible to whom in a national and joint-authority international space like the U.S.-Mexico border, now with both law enforcement and military bodies present, should bring considerable disquietude.

The role of the military on the border

In the wake of President Trump’s deployment of over 5,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of October, many pundits and commentators started mulling over the legality of the order in reference to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act is a misunderstood and largely non-enforced doctrine that enshrines, in the minds of many Americans, the separation between military and law-enforcement roles within U.S. territory.[i] The act itself, however, has many exceptions, and a 1981 reform further restricted its application. For starters, the law initially only applied to the Army, as it was created as a means to remove the Army from its role in the post-Reconstruction South.[ii] A 1956 reform brought the Air Force into the act, and a 1992 Department of Defense regulation folded in the Navy and the Marine Corps.[iii] The Posse Comitatus Act still includes allowances for National Guard forces operating under state authority, the role of the Coast Guard in peace time (through which the Navy can play a support role without breaching the Posse Comitatus act) or the Presidential power to use troops pursuant to subduing domestic violence.[iv] All of this to say Posse Comitatus has so many holes, and so few court cases holding up its authority, that it has had little influence on the use of the military in the interior.

The reform in 1981, called the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Officials Act, was in many ways a death knell for the Posse Comitatus Act as it relates to border security.[v] The 1981 act created space for the military to cooperate with law enforcement as it related to the growing ‘War on Drugs.’ This quickly ballooned into aiding enforcement or supplying intelligence as it relates to immigration and customs offenses.[vi]

However, the myth persists that this act keeps the military from taking part in law enforcement roles like border security management and enforcement. A New York Times piece ran last month concluded that ‘[t]he Posse Comitatus Act, a Reconstruction-era law, prevents active-duty troops from engaging in law enforcement activities within the United States.’ This is patently false — or else the 1997 killing of Esequiel Hernández by active-duty marines, sent to patrol the border as part of an anti-narcotics mission, would have raised further consequences past the shooting of an American. The U.S. military has the legal and historical precedent to support law enforcement missions on the U.S.-Mexico border. The larger query is whether or not these deployments are effective; due to the 1997 case, most troops are unarmed and aid in constructing barriers. The purpose of their current deployment on the border, then, remains in question, as they are instructed not to come into contact with migrants or patrol with Border Patrol agents. Journalists have noted that while troops were rapidly deployed prior to the midterm elections in ‘Operation Faithful Patriot,’ the name surreptitiously changed to the much less inflammatory ‘border support’ post-election, reinforcing critics claims of performed militarization and misuse of the military. The politically fraught nature of their presence contributes to a hyper-charged environment along the border, which adds to the misconception of a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. This ‘crisis’ perception makes violence, including fatalities, all the more likely, and easier to justify.

The U.S.-Mexico border as a non-combat zone

Active duty troops currently deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border are not receiving combat pay as they are not taking part in a combat mission. As mentioned, the rules of engagement for the deployed troops have resulted in most soldiers and marines not carrying weapons and instead taking part primarily in constructing additional security barriers. Yet the border continues to be militarized even without armed, active military missions. Of the nearly 20,000 border patrol agents employed in fiscal year 2017, more than 16,000 served on the southern border,[vii] compared to fewer than 5,000 agents in the entire agency in 1992.[viii]  Notwithstanding, CBP is a civilian law enforcement agency, meaning they are meant to be held to account in the U.S. civilian court system, which handles cases involving U.S. agents on U.S. land. This is complicated when dealing with the area between the U.S. and Mexican fences and the distance a bullet can travel — namely, across a border.

The ramifications of an agency accountable to the U.S. government shooting and killing non-nationals on non-U.S. territory, then, remain unclear. In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case of Sergio Hernández Guereca, the Mexican 15-year-old killed on Mexican territory by a border patrol agent,  upholding the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the teenager’s parents did not have a right to pursue the case in U.S. courts.[ix] This contrasts with the decision made in the case of Elena Rodríguez, where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Elena Rodríguez’s mother did have the right to sue. The conflicting decisions create an uneven application of the law at the border, one that recognizes U.S. responsibility in some cases and not others.

Rights of non-Americans on non-American soil

In the oral arguments made in Hernández Guereca’s case before the Supreme Court in February 2017, the petitioners’ lawyer Robert Hilliard claimed that the case was meant to:

‘(…) address the ongoing problem along the southwest border that has resulted in at least ten cross-border shootings and six Mexican national deaths. And every time the Constitution, according to the government, turns off at the border, even though all the conduct happens in the United States.’[x]

The justices, however, were skeptical of extending Constitutional rights to someone shot and killed on non-U.S. soil as it would cloud understanding over who has access to Constitutional protections.[xi] The conversation reached into hypotheticals comparing the space between the U.S. and Mexico border fences to Guantanamo Bay, the piloting of a drone strike from U.S. soil, or whether the case would be distinct if a military officer had shot and killed Hernández Guereca. This reveals the military and foreign policy implications for border shooting decisions, even if CBP is officially a civilian law enforcement agency. Ultimately, with Hernández Guereca’s case dismissed, the uneven application of the law stands.

It should also be noted that the agent involved was charged in Mexico for Hernández Guereca’s death — yet the U.S. government refused to extradite him, even with extradition agreements in place between the U.S. and Mexico.[xii]

So if the Constitution does not apply beyond U.S. international borders, and the U.S. government refuses to extradite border patrol agents charged in Mexico for the shootings, then what options do victims’ families in Mexico have to access a fair day in court? In the current system, very few.

Law enforcement accountability

The implications for allowing a case against border patrol agents into U.S. courts reach past border enforcement and risk granting victims of U.S. military missions abroad access to Constitutional rights in lands far beyond U.S. control. Still, the militarization of the border does not aid in preventing such cases— there continue to be border deaths with little recourse for border patrol agents. Like in other parts of the United States, calls for law enforcement accountability are occurring along the border, too. But since the population in question is primarily non-American and border patrol agents oftentimes work in barren areas with few possible witnesses, change is slow. The route to justice continues to be hazy as appeals drag on and cases are unable to move forward in Mexico.

What develops on the border has significance beyond the border — for military missions, Constitutional rights, and U.S.-Mexico relations. The dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico border raise large questions around how militarization contributes to violence and a lack of accountability for border patrol agents. When President Trump and the government espouse unfounded levels of fear around border work, agents are more likely to respond to incidences lethally and then be protected from prosecution by their government. The current dynamics should remind Americans that the armed forces are not required to militarize a space, and that tragic situations ensue on the border even when media attention is not focused on it. With President Trump escalating the rhetoric and looking to recruit more border patrol agents, the shared U.S.-Mexico border will likely become deadlier and hold less consequence for those who patrol it.

Carly Greenfield is a Dual Degree masters candidate between Sciences Po and the London School of Economics, currently studying international security at Sciences Po. She completed her BA in International Relations at King’s College London and is a former BA Representative for Strife. Her research focuses on securitization, migration, and the conceptualization of borders, particularly in the Americas. You can follow her on Twitter @carlygreenpeel.

Notes:

[i] Lindsey P. Cohn, “Come What May,” Bombshell, Podcast Audio, 20 November 2018: https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/bombshell-come-what-may/.

[ii] Charles Doyle, “The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law,” Congressional Research Service, (1 June 2000).

[iii] Eric V. Larson and John E. Peters, “Appendix D: Overview of the Posse Comitatus Act,” from Preparing the U.S. Army for Homeland Security, (2001): RAND Corporation.

[iv] Nathan Canestaro, “Homeland Defense: Another Nail in the Coffin for Posse Comitatus,” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy Vol. 12, (January 2003).

[v] Paul Jackson Rice, “New Laws and Insights Encircle the Posse Comitatus Act,” Individual Study Project, U.S. Army War College, (26 May 1983).

[vi] Richter H. Moore, “Posse Comitatus revisited: The use of the military in civil law enforcement,” Journal of Criminal Justice Vol. 15, (1987).

[vii] United States Border Patrol “Border Patrol Agent Nationwide Staffing by Fiscal Year,” Customs and Border Protection, (2017).

[viii] Christine Stenglein, “Struggling to hang on to 20K officers, Border Patrol looks to hire 5K more,” Brookings Institution, (7 July 2017): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/07/07/struggling-to-hang-on-to-20k-officers-border-patrol-looks-to-hire-5k-more/.

[ix] U.S. Supreme Court, “582 U. S. Hernandez v. Mesa,” Slip Opinion (2017).

[x] U.S. Supreme Court, “No.15-118 Hernandez v. Mesa,” Oral Arguments (2017).

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] “Extradition Treaty Between the United States of America and the United Mexican States,” (25 January 1980).

Image source: http://www.powerhousebooks.com/books/undocumented-immigration-and-the-militarization-of-the-u-s-mexico-border/

Mexico City: Surveillance Technologies in New Urban Battlespaces

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By Luis Losada Simón-Ricart

4 December 2018

This image shows one of the 21,000 surveillance cameras installed throughout Mexico City in an attempt to combat crime. (Image credit: Luis Losada)

 

Over the past few years, Mexico has significantly increased the number of CCTV systems in its security forces in an attempt to combat crime. This has led to a complicated discussion on the relationship between security and liberty in security studies, and it raises the question of whether Mexico has surrendered too much liberty in the pursuit of security. Mexico is using surveillance technology to create an illusion of security, and this is a norm that is unlikely to change.

Surveillance technologies, including CCTV,  are all based on ‘anticipatory seeing’ or what Bottomley and Moore defined as ‘the military goal of being able to know the enemy even before the enemy is aware of himself as such’[1]. CCTV is considered part of a process of securitization where urban areas, benefited from the liberal economy, are protected from the potential threats represented by the surrounding crowds, the ‘othering’. This process may be less obvious but not less significant and take place dividing the city into secure or non-secure areas, what Nelson Arteaga called ‘security archipelagos’ or ‘islands of order’. [2] As a result, cameras often ‘displace criminal behaviour to neighbouring areas something (…) that at a broader societal level hardly counts as progressive development’.[3] This process was already seen in past centuries when ‘cities were built with the idea of cutting out islands of order from a sea of chaos’. [4]

In Mexico, 80 percent of the population lives in urban areas, a number that is expected to increase to 89 percent by 2050.[5]The gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas takes place in parallel with growing insecurity and violence. In the mid-1990s, a number of aforementioned factors created a time of political and social instability that led the country into a wave of insecurity, resulting in the implementation of new militarised approaches to reduce insecurity. Today, the country and Mexico City are  suffering from growing insecurity as the numbers revealed through the last years. In Mexico, murder statistics show 2017 to be the deadliest year on record, with a murder rate of 20.51 per 100,000 inhabitants — that is 70 homicides a day. In Mexico City, the murder rate increased to 12.31 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, which is the highest rate since 1997. [6]

Homicides in Mexico City from 1990 to October 2018 (Source: Mexico Crime Report)[7]
Homicides in Mexico from 1990 to October 2018 (Source: Mexico Crime Report).[8]
 

The strategy implemented in Mexico City since the mid-1990s until today aims at permeating the police forces with the military-related technologies and tactics. The strategy followed two procedures to address the increased crime. On the one hand, it targeted some sectors from areas of the city where crime rates were higher, establishing checkpoints and control points under the authority of police or military forces.[9] On the other hand, it involved a strategy of securitisation that aimed to establish ‘a logic of monitoring, classification and control of the population´s movements’ dividing the city into quadrantsand establishing a video surveillance program. [10] For Nelson Arteaga, the strategy led to categorisation of ‘the citizens into sources of targets and threats’[11], in a time where ‘only seven percent of crimes committed in the city were solved’.[12]

The strategy received important criticism from some sectors of the population that were affected due to the sometimes-tricky processes to identify ‘potential targets’ affecting the check points or car searches, especially from the inhabitants that considered themselves victims and not threats. Consequently, the CCTVs were introduced to continue with the same securitisation process but through information technologies that are less intrusive. The so-called Surveillance Turn of Mexico City took place under the Lopez Obrador Administration in 2001. For the new government, the deployment of police forces based on military strategies was not proving effective and new approaches were needed. The technological response was seen as the ideal method to allow and ease the detection of criminals. The proposal was based on the rehabilitation of Mexico City downtown, through the installation of surveillance cameras in areas mostly occupied by low-income people and rough sleepers at that time.[13]

Today, 21,000 cameras[14] are installed throughout the city with 15,310 monitoring the highways and streets and approximately 6,000 in the underground with an estimated cost of US$4,000 per camera.[15] Further, during 2018, Mexico City authorities signed agreements with five shopping centres and the American retail company Walmart to connect their surveillance systems to C5, focal control center, and add one thousand new cameras.[16]

Official map showing in blue and red the current location of 21,000 cameras (Source: CDMX Report, 2013).

 

In order to increase the effectiveness of surveillance cameras, a deep reform took place within the police forces’ procedures aiming to improve the police response to different emergencies. The most significant reform was the division of the city into quadrants. The city is divided into 847 quadrants of 1.2 km, each under the authority of one police officer and a patrol.[17] The quadrants are selected based on route access, criminal incidence, population density and orography.[18] According to Victor Hugo Ramos Ortiz, Former Chief of Staff of Mexico City Police, ‘ their priority is to be present in less than three minutes in any reported emergency with more than one patrol’.[19] For the 15,310 cameras installed in the main highways and streets, there are 1,200 police officers’ monitoring 24/7, meaning that each police officer is responsible for monitoring approximately forty cameras.[20] Despite the number of cameras in Mexico City, they are still passive technologies that do not create alerts or patterns automatically.

Surveillance is here to stay having become a popular norm. The widespread use of CCTV is based on the role of cameras in promoting deterrence and detection; however, there is not conclusive evidence that this is effective, apart from the limited domain of car parks[21]. Further, we are part of a society ‘that constantly reminded us to feel afraid, to look fearfully around and take precaution’.[22] Our societies are raised in fear, and Bauman reminds us that ‘fear breeds fear’.[23] Since the end of the Cold War and following 9/11, our obsession with feeling ‘secure’ has grown in size and scope. Mexico City represents an example of how CCTV has permeated the security strategies implemented in urban areas as a technological solution with the intention of being perceived, creating an illusion of security. It must be remembered that there is no single or straightforward process to end criminality, and the only viable solution must be based on a holistic approach where the structural elements behind the growing insecurity and violence are taken into consideration.

Luis Losada is currently working at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Costa Rica and previously completed an MA in International Conflict Studies at King´s College London and a BA in Law and Political Science at Complutense University, Spain. You can follow him on Twitter @Luis_losada_.

Notes:

[1] Stephen Graham, “Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism”, Verso, London and New York, 2011, 66.

[2] Stephen Graham, “Cities Under Siege …”, 149.

[3] Kirstie Ball, Kevin D. Haggerty and David Lyon., “Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies”, Routledge, London and New York, 2014, 241.

[4] Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, “Liquid surveillance: A conversation”, Policy Press (2012), 103.

[5] UN DESA, Country Profile: Mexico, Percentage of population in rural and urban areas”, World Urbanization Prospects 2018, Population Division. Available at https://population.un.org/wup/Country-Profiles/ (Accessed by 26/11/2018).

[6] Observatorio de la Ciudad de Mexico, Reporte Anual 2017: Incidencia de los delitos de alto impacto en México, 2017. Available at http://onc.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Reporte-Incidencia-delictiva-CDMX-2t2018.pdf (Accessed by 29/08/2018).

[7] Mexico Crime Report, Homicides Rate since 1990. Available at https://elcri.men/en/ (Accessed by 26/11/2018).

[8] Idem.

[9] Nelson Arteaga Botello, “Urban Securitization in Mexico City: A New Public Order”, Policing Cities, Urban Securitization and Regulation, Taylor and Francis Group, 231-245 (2013), 241.

[10] Ibid. 242.

[11] Ibid. 231.

[12] Nelson Arteaga Botello, “Urban Securitization in Mexico City”, (2013), 235.

[13] Ibid, 236.

[14] Some of the cameras in the streets are equipped with emergency buttons (10,074) and voice alarms speakers (12,364) [14] that in theory connects directly to a local police officer and aimed to ease the process of crime reporting.

[15] EL UNIVERSAL, “Más de 35 mdd, costo de cámaras de video vigilancia”, El Universal (2013). Available at http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/930851.html (Accessed by 29/07/2018) and Lucia Jasso- Personal Interview, Mexico City (22/05/2018).

[16]MILENIO, “Conectan al C5 Cámaras de cinco plazas en la CDMX”, GRUPO MILENIO 2018. Available at http://www.milenio.com/estados/conectan-al-c5-camaras-de-cinco-plazas-mas-en-la-cdmx (Accessed by 29/07/2018)

[17] Víctor Hugo Ramos Ortiz- Personal Interview, Mexico City (25/05/2018).

[18] Idem.

[19] Idem.

[20] Idem.

[21] Víctor Hugo Ramos Ortiz- Personal Interview, Mexico City (25/05/2018).

[22] Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, “Liquid surveillance”, (2012), 105.

[23] Idem.

Strife Series on Grand Strategy, part V: A Machiavellian approach towards Mexico’s strategic dilemmas

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By: llexis Herrera

French troops under Charles VII entering Florence, 1494. it is the art of dealing with fortuna as the force which directs such events and thus symbolises pure, uncontrolled, and unlegitimated contingency.
French troops under Charles VII entering Florence in 1494, painting by Francesco Granacci

On 31 August 2016, when the President of Mexico announced that he would receive Donald J. Trump that very day to hold a private meeting at the Official Residence of “Los Pinos”, few in Mexico believed what they were witnessing. Their own President had recognised the political stature of a foreign political figure who had consistently used racist and belligerent rhetoric against Mexico and its citizens.

Although a comprehensive rationale for this invitation will probably remain absent in the immediate future —it was affirmed that Mexico’s Finance Minister promoted it in order to appease the then-Republican presidential candidate in a move that sought to neutralise the consequences of a potential Trump administration— the visit was, in itself, the expression of a particular strategic culture (or rather the lack thereof), i.e. the inability to prepare for the long run and the incomprehensible reliance on a set of static assumptions about the nature of the international system that no longer hold true in the complex strategic landscape of the 21st century.

Machiavelli’s Fortuna in Mexican strategy

In his celebrated biographical work about the life and times of Niccolò Machiavelli, Maurizio Viroli presents the great Florentine statesmen as a figure tormented by the foresight of his own political thought. Cognisant of the stories of the great men and the societies of the classical past, Machiavelli anticipates the demise of the Florentine republic due to its inability to understand the nature of fortuna. In the Machiavellian tradition, fortuna represents both the uncertainty of political affairs and the structural forces that shape the options of statesmen and soldiers alike. Polities are subject to the negative influence of fortuna, when they are incapable of anticipating the nature of the structural forces that determine the evolution of political affairs.

Significantly, when Machiavelli speaks about fortuna, he concedes that “she is the arbiter of half of our actions, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.”[1]  The counterpart of fortuna is virtù, an expression of political leadership that opposes human agency against the limitations imposed by the emergent trends of a specific strategic landscape. Like the currents of a river that needs to be funnelled by the action of farsighted men, fortuna can be tamed by the initiative of statesmen willing to commit their resources towards the art of political innovation.

During the early days of the 16th century, in the context of a period of internal political turmoil and external systemic changes, the rulers of Florence failed in this supreme political test because they passively watched the evolution of a strategic environment that drastically reduced their political options. Unable to adapt their political behaviour to the new political realities of the early days of the modern world, they succumbed to the blind forces of fortuna and were left at the mercy of the monarchical enterprises of the princes of France and Spain.

In the 21st century, fortuna is still relevant for those interested in grand-strategic matters. Central to the practice of grand strategy is states’ aspirations to assess the ever-changing nature of the international environment and the role of the unexpected in an opportune fashion. For those at the highest echelons of decision-making in any political community, this assessment is vital. It allows them to understand the tensions between the vital interests of their polity and the social, economic, and political trends that have the potential to limit or expand its options on the global stage.

The barbarian crosses the border: Trump visits Mexico

Like the Florentine citizens who witnessed the impetuous march of Charles VIII in the streets of Florence during the autumn of 1494, for many Mexicans, the presence of Trump in Mexico city signified genuine political indignation. A noted Mexican intellectual pointed out that the visit was a mistake of historical proportions saying: “You confront tyrants. You don’t appease them.” After Trump’s electoral victory, when some made an attempt to justify the decision of the Mexican government, another noted political analyst stated,  “No…[President] Peña Nieto was not a visionary, he was a collaborationist.” However, prior to the elections, nobody in Mexico deemed Trump’s victory as a realistic possibility. Once the electoral results were known by the Mexican public, some believed, not without reason, that the country was now at the mercy of fortuna.

The road not taken: Mexico’s democratic transition as a lost opportunity 

Confronted (for the first time in decades) with the adversarial logic of international politics, Mexico’s political leadership has hitherto demonstrated that it is unable to articulate a consistent response. Commentators, political analysts, and relevant political figures still insist on the inevitability of the North American integration process, and in the strength of the commercial ties established through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Their political imaginations refuse to deal with the paradigm shifts in the aftermath of the grand recession of 2008, the global power shifts from West to East, and the apparent erosion of the Pax Americana. At any rate, such thinking lacks strategic initiative and certainly is not grand-strategic.

This is particularly surprising if one considers that Mexico has achieved in the last decades the (questionable) condition of a middle power with sufficient resources to play a more active role in the promotion of its own interests in the global arena.

Two circumstances seem to explain this reluctance. On the one hand, a historical experience marked by the intervention of other powers in the internal affairs of Mexico oriented Mexico’s authoritarian political system towards a foreign policy defined by a genuine reliance on international law and multilateral institutions. On the other hand, Mexico’s reluctance is related to a more sombre aspect of the country’s recent history: the absence of a profound restructuring of its defence and security structures in the context of a fragile democratic consolidation process. Since Mexico’s security apparatus has historically been used to ensure domestic governance, the country’s defence and security institutions have evolved without any effective ties with their foreign policy counterparts.

These two aspects of Mexico’s recent historical experience have generated a political setting in which the absence of a strategic vocabulary has hindered the ability of the country to navigate through the turbulent waters of today’s global realities. Amidst increasing levels of violence and social unrest, Mexico’s transition to democracy at the beginning of this century constituted an opportunity that has now been lost.

Waiting for a Machiavellian moment: the road ahead

Since 2006, the Mexican government has waged a “war” against organized crime with increasing political and humanitarian costs. To determine whether the armed violence witnessed in the country during the previous years is the expression of an internal armed conflict is, most surely, the matter of an additional debate. However, some scholars point that Mexico’s security landscape is now the expression of a security failure that has hindered the legitimacy of the country’s political system. It is aggravated by the corrupt practices of political actors who are as problematic and damaging to Mexico’s civic life as organized crime.

In this context, Mexico has been ill-prepared to confront the challenges of paradigm shifts in the international landscape. Constantly preoccupied with the need to address domestic governance challenges and an eroding civic life, its decision-makers have paid little attention to the transformations of the international landscape. Ironically, Trump’s electoral victory has generated the space for a rare Machiavellian moment – an increasing realisation that Mexico’s governance and security challenges are deeply connected with an evolving domestic political reality that needs to be contested, and previous assumptions about the country’s own role in the world need to be questioned and reinvented. In doing so, the art of political innovation will be needed. Only by doing so effectively will Mexico put an end to the rule of fortuna over its own affairs.

Alexis Herrera (@alexis_herreram) hails from Mexico and is a PhD candidate in the War Studies Department at King’s College London. He holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

Notes:

[1] Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 98

Image credit: Wiki Commons, available at http://bit.ly/2h1NrAY