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Challenges to the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis Series: America strikes again – Thoughts on Biden’s first military airstrike in Syria

May 28, 2021 by Francisco Lobo

A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer flies over northern Iraq after conducting air strikes in Syria against ISIL targets. Photo Credit: US Department of Defense, Public Domain.

This article is part of our series on Challenges to the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis. Read the series introduction at this link.

America is back in business, and a significant part of its stock in trade is the use of military force. Syria knows as much after being hit by two consecutive administrations in the past four years. Whatever differences Donald Trump and Joe Biden may have in style, demeanour, rhetoric, and politics, when it comes to the use of force their international record so far looks very similar.

Although the US is not formally engaged in an international armed conflict with the state of Syria, over the last years it has deployed military personnel on Syrian territory to stave off the threat of ISIS, and reportedly also to provide a geopolitical counterweight against Russian presence in the region. Moreover, the US has carried out military airstrikes on Syrian territory, most notably in 2017, again in 2018 alongside European allies, and recently on 25 February 2021. Ironically, Trump’s strikes against the Syrian government in 2017 and 2018 were prompted by an ostensible humanitarian rhetoric that is absent in Biden’s justification for his recent decision to strike Iran-backed non-governmental militias operating in Syria.

Indeed, among other grounds such as self-defence and an alleged mandate by the international community, four years ago Trump famously invoked humanitarian concerns in light of the shock produced by the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against its own population. Conversely, no chemical weapons were involved this time, and Biden steered clear of such humanitarian rhetoric and stuck to the traditional right of self-defence under the UN Charter to address attacks against US and its allies in Iraq.

This recent strike has been met with immediate condemnation by international law experts, mainly on the grounds that the right of self-defence must be exercised – always in a necessary and proportionate manner – against an armed attack that has occurred, or that is imminent. Since Biden’s strike was carried out ten days after the events motivating it, this US extraterritorial response seems to be too late to qualify as self-defence against an ongoing or imminent threat. Rather, it has been decried as an act of armed reprisal, which is illegal under international law.

Many questions remain to be answered or at least discussed from an international law perspective, bearing on the proverbial who, when and what. These include the legality of the use of force by one single state with no mandate in lieu of the collective security system represented by the UN Security Council; the deterrence of future threats instead of responding to current or past attacks; and the possibility of considering a series of discrete but coherent actions, in this case by non-governmental actors, as a single armed attack under the ‘accumulation of events’ doctrine.

Alongside international law, legal experts have also reflected on the justification for this recent attack under US domestic law, especially considering that this time the battered Authorization for the Use of Military Force or ‘AUMF’ – passed by the US Congress in 2002, its use spanning over two decades of strikes against Iraq, ISIS, and Iranian official Qasem Soleimani – was left on the shelf. Instead, Biden claimed to have direct authority under the US Constitution to conduct the attack.

Thus, the picture legal experts have painted when analysing Biden’s debutant strike is one of plausible justification under domestic law, and of highly dubious lawfulness under international law.

But even if all lawyers agreed that the attack was illegal under both domestic and international law, is the legal rationale the only one we need to take into account to assess Biden’s first use of military force? Is there something else we might say from a moral perspective? Even notorious legal positivists admit there is always room for moral scrutiny beyond the law. This becomes particularly relevant when legal discourse is quickly exhausted, as it is often the case with the scant provisions of international law bearing on the use of force. What will we do when we label an act as illegal, and yet global powers continue to commit it? Will we surrender to the cynicism of realpolitik, or will we fall back to a broader normative language to keep our moral judgments on the ball?

In the case of the use of force between nations, the articulation of such moral enquiries has taken over the centuries the form of the ‘Just War’ tradition, which unfolds into two separate lines of inquiry: when is it justified to resort to armed force (jus ad bellum)? And, what is permitted and prohibited in the conduction of hostilities once the war has begun (jus in bello)? In recent years the discussion has branched out into new avenues, including jus post bellum and jus ad vim (from the Latin vim or ‘force’). The latter was first suggested by Michael Walzer in the preface to the 2006 fourth edition of his canonical Just and Unjust Wars. Reflecting on the controversial invasion of Iraq a few years before, Walzer wrote:

“the Iraqi case invites us to think about the use of force-short-of-war; the containment regime of 1991-2003 that the UN endorsed and the United States enforced is only one possible example of this use. (…) force-short-of-war obviously comes before war itself. The argument about jus ad bellum needs to be extended, therefore, to jus ad vim. We urgently need a theory of just and unjust uses of force. This shouldn’t be an overly tolerant or permissive theory, but it will certainly be more permissive than the theory of just and unjust war.” (p. xv)

And we may add, certainly more permissive than international law, which clearly prohibits any ‘use of force’ by states under article 2(4) of the UN Charter, with very few exceptions (i.e. self-defence and Security Council authorization). But as we saw, the law is not the only framework to analyse instances of the use of force, and some scholars have taken up Walzer’s challenge, laying the groundwork for a new theory of jus ad vim. Among such theorists we find Daniel Brunstetter and Megan Braun, who in 2013 published their influential article titled “From Jus ad Bellum to Jus ad Vim: Recalibrating Our Understanding of the Moral Use of Force.”

According to these authors under jus ad vim a just cause for using force is aggression, whether by states or non-state actors, warranting recourse to the right of self-defence. The use of force must be also proportional, a last resort, authorized by a legitimate authority, and carried out with the right intent (all traditional jus ad bellum criteria). The thrust of their argument is that the use of force must always reduce the probability of escalation. In other words, vim resulting in bellum evidences a failure in the application of the characteristically de-escalatory rationale underlying jus ad vim. As to international law, Brunstetter and Braun argue that jus ad vim should ideally be anchored in that normative regime, but if international law proves to be too narrow to respond to the needs of states, then it will have to evolve through customary law to mirror the evolution of our shared ethical judgments.

Based on the foregoing, can we say that the recent US airstrike in Syria satisfies jus ad vim? There might be some room to argue that US forces and allies were attacked in Iraq and, therefore, that the use of force-short-of-war in self-defence was warranted. And even if we were extremely generous as to concede that the other criteria of last resort, legitimate authority, and right intent were met, a considerable problem from the perspective of jus ad vim remains: however localized and discriminate, such attacks risked escalating hostilities in an already hot and unstable environment. And considering the heavy involvement of Russia in the Syrian quandary, the risk of escalation of the armed conflict to turn into a Cold War-style proxy war between the US (and its allies) and Russia (and its allies) must be an ever-present consideration in every policy decision made by the US, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

America is back in business, but for many it just feels like business as usual. Yet, this does not mean that the use of force can continue simply unchecked or that we should surrender to pure realism, for there is a full normative framework in place to assess the legality and morality of such acts under the principles of international law, jus ad bellum and jus ad vim. By using the legal view as a departure point for further moral discussion, the interplay between all these standards offers the potential to strengthen our convictions and hone our judgments about the use of force and war.

Arm the Coast Guard with More Drones in the Caribbean

May 15, 2021 by Walker D. Mills

A crewmember from the US Coast Guard Cutter Stratton launches a Scan Eagle UAS during testing. Source: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

In February, a P-3 ‘Orion’ maritime surveillance aircraft identified and tracked a suspicious vessel suspected of trafficking cocaine and vectored in a US Coast Guard cutter to make the interdiction. The Coast Guard seized the vessel and found more than 3,300 pounds of cocaine aboard. US Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, operates P-3s and other aircraft from Naval Air Stations in Corpus Christi, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida. From these bases they help provide domain awareness over the maritime approaches to the United States in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Operations, like the one in February, are often lauded as interagency triumphs – with multiple agencies working together to secure America’s borders. However, they also highlight the lack of maritime surveillance assets within the US Coast Guard itself, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Caribbean where the Coast Guard is forced to rely on interagency cooperation for aerial maritime surveillance. The Coast Guard urgently needs to invest in its own family of unmanned systems that can provide it with the maritime domain awareness that it relies on other agencies for.

The US Coast Guard is responsible for law enforcement and policing in the territorial waters and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the United States, this encompasses eleven specific missions. The Coast Guard also routinely deploys forces globally in support of the Department of Defense and other national priorities like ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises, including to the Strait of Taiwan or its long-standing patrol force in the Persian Gulf. But within the Western Hemisphere alone, the Coast Guard is responsible for policing over 4.2 million square miles of water and nearly a hundred-thousand miles of coastline. In this vast expanse, by far the most vulnerable points are the Caribbean and East Pacific approaches to the United States. The US government’s Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that as much as 80% of the cocaine leaving the Andean region in South America travels by maritime means, with approximately 90% of it eventually landing in Central America before crossing over the US-Mexico border on its way to US consumers. Illicit narcotics, however, are not the only issue the Coast Guard needs to address, US partners in the region are increasingly concerned about illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing. This has lead the Coast Guard to deploy cutters to support operations across Latin America from Ecuador to Argentina, to deal with the threat. Of all the regions where it operates, the Coast Guard is perhaps most important in the Caribbean where it works with dozens of smaller partners to address trans-national issues like narcotics trafficking, providing the maritime capacity that oftentimes smaller nations lack.

US Law enforcement agencies have long identified the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, often referred to as the “transit zone,” as ideal for interdicting illegal shipments, whether the cargo is drugs, weapons or trafficked humans. Maritime narcotics shipments are almost always made in bulk, and the further they travel from their point of origin, the more valuable they become, making seizure in the transit zone much more costly to traffickers than seizures in South America. Additionally, ocean interception represents a low-risk area for interdiction – that is to say that once assets are detailed for interdiction traffickers are not likely to resist capture. But before shipments can be interdicted in the transit zone they need to be found – and searching for go-fast boats and semi-submersibles with surface vessels is nearly impossible, primarily because the vessels are difficult to see. Radars mounted on law enforcement vessels are limited to the horizon by the curvature of the earth. Also critical is loiter time – manned platforms are limited by fuel constraints and eventually by the limits of human endurance. If you want to monitor large areas of the ocean you need to be up in the sky or using a fleet of networked sensors.

Analysts often lament how poorly resourced the US Coast Guard is compared to the other military services. Though considered an ‘armed service’ the Coast Guard is not part of the military, instead, since reforms following 9/11 it has resided in the Department of Homeland Security. It has just over 40,000 active-duty guardsman and a fleet of cutters and aircraft. In part because of this small size the Coast Guard relies on surveillance and detection from other agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) aircraft, a barrage of high-altitude balloons or US military assets including high-end weapon systems like B-1 ‘Lancer’ bombers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. While certainly effective, these platforms were designed to fight the Soviet Union and are far more expensive than what is required to track smugglers, the B-1 costs over $60,000 an hour to operate and the destroyers cost nearly a billion dollars per vessel. CBP operates a fleet of maritime patrol aircraft and large unmanned platforms that are much more cost effective. However, these assets are all based in the continental United States and the Coast Guard operates globally. The Coast Guard needs in-house assets that are effective at maritime surveillance and detection, and that can operate wherever the Coast Guard is deployed.

Thankfully, putting unmanned aerial assets on every medium and large cutter is a goal of the current Commandant, Admiral Karl Schultz, and investing in unmanned systems is a part of the service’s strategic plan. Such a move will significantly improve the maritime domain awareness of Coast Guard units at sea and help mitigate their dependence on assets and support loaned from the military and other agencies. But the current Coast Guard program for ship-based UAS is contractor owned and operated while the Coast Guard looks for a permanent solution and experimentation is ongoing. Two new types of UAS look particularly promising for the Coast Guard – vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS, and unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Both of these technologies were successfully demonstrated last year, VTOL UAS was operated from a cutter during a deployment as were two different unmanned surface vessels, each with a mission endurance as long as 30 days.

Ultimately, what is needed is a family of systems that can provide the Coast Guard with an organic and layered maritime surveillance network. Realizing this for the Coast Guard will free up CBP and military assets for other missions more in line with their respective institutional priorities and further empower the Coast Guard. These platforms are desperately needed in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific where the Coast Guard is the lead agency in intercepting illicit narcotics traffickers but also in the fighting against IUU fishing and maritime crime. In setting acquisition priorities for the Coast Guard it would be wise to remember Roger Barnett’s assertion in his book Navy Strategic Culture that “…the most difficult problem in naval warfare is finding the adversary.” Investments in unmanned systems will help support Coast Guard missions not just in counter narcotics but across their 11 statutory missions around the globe, it all starts with domain awareness.

U.S. governmental incentives on semiconductors are central to Great Power Competition

May 6, 2021 by Martina Bernardini

Microchips, also called semiconductors or integrated circuits, can be thinner than a human hair and smaller than a postage stamp, but their power can be immeasurable. They play a significant role in the advancement of the consumer technologies sector and, most importantly, in the development of more sophisticated branches of technology with potentially significant implications for national security, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. Therefore, although domestic and foreign policy might not always be connected, in the case of the U.S. semiconductor industry, domestic decisions are vital both for U.S. national security and for the evolution of great power relations in general, and U.S.-China relations in particular.

The largest chipmaker in China, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), was added to the U.S. Entity List by the Trump administration in late December 2020 as a final move of the toughest measures taken towards Beijing, fearful that the Biden administration would soften the policy towards China. Biden, however, has not only dismantled such tough decision on the technology front, but his administration is also working on domestic measures around the semiconductor industry that will be central to U.S.-China technological competition.

In September 2020, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) came into law, authorising investments in both domestic chips manufacturing incentives and in advanced microelectronics research and development. Soon after Biden took office, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) followed up by stressing the need for the new U.S. administration to prioritise funding to such provisions. This came in light of the sharp decline in the U.S. share of the global chip manufacturing, which can affect the U.S. ability to produce newly advanced technologies vital to strengthen both U.S. military capabilities and its great power status overall. In fact, although the United States is the currently the global leader in semiconductors, owning around 47% of the global chips market share, U.S. chips manufacturing has been decreasing, and this might affect the American leadership in the sector already in the medium run. According to SIA, while in 1990 the United States accounted for the 37% of the global chip manufacturing, in 2020 this share has fallen to 12%. By contrast, China’s share has increased from 2% to 15% between 1990 and 2020, and it is expected to grow up to 24% in 2030, surpassing both South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In the same period, the American allotment in global chip manufacturing is expected to decline to 9% if governmental intervention will not be put in place.

This shift is the result of both lower incentives for the U.S. semiconductor sector and tougher measures towards China undertaken under Trump. The Covid-19 pandemic has further aggravated the situation, eventually bringing chips under the spotlight in U.S. government. The high increase in demand for consumer technologies – mainly laptops and smartphones – during the pandemic has led to a critical chips supply shortage in the U.S., leading Biden to sign an executive order that received bipartisan support in Congress in late February. The order authorised the use of $37 billion to foster the American manufacturing of semiconductors, and has furthermore launched a 100-day review on the status of supply chains in four areas that are essential to American competitiveness: semiconductors; key minerals and materials extracted from rare earths; pharmaceuticals; and advanced batteries. The order was signed the day after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared to have directed lawmakers to draft a package of an additional $100 billion as part of a bipartisan bill to implement the NDAA by fostering research and investment in U.S. manufacturing in key high tech areas – not only semiconductors but also Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing – in order “to out-compete China and create new American jobs”.

The crucial passage to rebalance the geopolitics of semiconductors and strengthen American technological competitiveness face to China, thus, lies in American domestic politics. The review launched with Biden’s signature of the executive order is aimed at diversifying and fortifying supply chains, and the SIA insisted particularly upon increasing American chips manufacturing through the mobilisation of federal incentives. About 44% of U.S.- headquartered firms are located in the United States, but the cost to build and operate a front-end fabrication facility (fab) in the U.S. is 25% – 50% more expensive than in other alternative locations. Singapore, for instance, which hosts the majority of U.S. chips fabs based abroad (17%), has introduced hiring credits and a reduced tax rate in the semiconductors manufacturing sector, while American incentives of this kind are almost non-existent. For this reason, the measures announced by Biden and Congress play a very important role in increasing U.S.-made chips and thus fortifying American leadership in the sector by avoiding a shortfall of the U.S. share in the global chip manufacturing at a time when China’s will surely increase as a result of the plan to reach the self-sufficiency in semiconductors outlined in China’s 14th Five Year Plan.

This turn in the American semiconductor policy, however, should not be analysed through a ‘new Cold War’ lens, as China is not only the biggest U.S. competitor in chips manufacturing, but it is also a top costumer of the U.S. semiconductor industry. According to a report from the Boston Consulting Group, prohibiting U.S. chips sales to China could cause the loss of around $80 billion to the U.S. semiconductor industry, compromising the U.S. long-standing leadership position with a loss of about 18% in the American global market share of microchips. For the U.S., the solution to face the challenges posed by China on the high-tech side is found not only in a tougher policy towards Beijing, but in the U.S. semiconductor policy, which will in turn have important side effects on U.S.-China policy. As the Biden administration is likely to adopt a tough but multilateral approach to China – not only on technology but also on a variety of transnational challenges – the oculate application of the resources recently announced by the U.S. government on chips manufacturing can be pivotal both to the maintenance of the U.S. power status and to the re-definition of great power competition.

The Old World of Arms Control is Dying

March 24, 2021 by Bryce Farabaugh

By Bryce Farabaugh

The future of nuclear arms control is uncertain. On February 3, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the 5-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the agreement between the United States and Russia that limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers each state may possess. The extension was a welcome relief for those concerned about the fate of the last remaining pillar of the global arms control regime, a system intended to reduce nuclear risks by improving insight, verification, and trust between the two states with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. As the treaty’s survival was anything but certain under the previous administration, proponents of its extension are celebrating this victory, but such celebrations are bound to be short-lived as looming arms control challenges come into focus. U.S. policymakers are increasingly wary of China’s military capabilities, including its modernizing nuclear arsenal, and both supporters and skeptics of the New START extension concede future arms control agreements will likely need to include China in some capacity. Indeed, if meaningful arms control agreements are going to continue to serve the national security interests of the United States by reducing global nuclear risks in an evolving security environment, it’s helpful to interrogate arguments that were made against the New START extension to explore whether such arguments are likely to be obstacles in future arms control dialogues.

New START is largely a product of the post-Cold War thaw in relations between the United States and Russia. In the 1990’s, as the dust settled from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States came to terms with “the unipolar moment,” global nuclear stockpiles were reduced while cooperation on nuclear issues generally increased between the two states. Cooperative arms control measures between the United States, the former Soviet Union, and others were achieved during this period: the Open Skies Treaty improved confidence and security in Europe, Soviet nuclear weapons were successfully removed from Ukraine, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) created an international network capable of monitoring nuclear detonations (among other successes) While there have undoubtedly been setbacks including the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and the failure of the US Senate to ratify the CTBT, for a while it appeared increasingly likely that intense nuclear competition between the US and its rivals was a thing of the past.

Indeed, the crown jewel of the post-Cold War arms control agreements, New START, entered into force in 2011 and was viewed by many as a major achievement in US-Russian relations. Set to expire in February 2021, the United States and Russia appeared unable to come to an agreement on its extension. This fact was somewhat surprising, as New START was widely popular among US nuclear experts. Arms controllers praise its limits on deployed strategic warheads, while counterforce advocates value the verification and monitoring protocols that provide visibility into Russian military capabilities. Likewise, leaders at the highest levels of the Russian Government publicly stated their desire to extend the agreement without preconditions. The reticence by the US to extend New START had been attributed to a host of explanations, but one complaint from US negotiators surfaced repeatedly: the absence of China from the treaty.

The US’s insistence on including China in New START and related strategic dialogues is puzzling for several reasons. First, China is believed to have a much smaller arsenal than either the US or Russia, meaning its number of strategic warheads is already far below the limits of the agreement. Second, China was not party to the original negotiation and had few (if any) incentives to join. And third, Chinese security concerns are very different than the decades-long nuclear rivalry between the US and Russia, etc. This begs the question then that if the US possesses nuclear superiority over China, both quantitative and qualitative, why does it continue to behave as if China is a significant and growing nuclear threat that must be controlled at all costs?

One answer may lie in how humans process information. US policymakers are often students of history and thus rely on historical analogies for interpreting new events. Additionally, behavioral scientists have shown that humans, in general, often rely on information that they believe is relevant for a situation even when the circumstances, parties involved, stakes, and other conditions are quite different, resulting in cognitive biases that can impact decision-making. In the context of US-China cooperation/competition over nuclear weapons issues, these two facts suggest policymakers may be heavily inclined to view the current situation as a replay of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. This could lead policymakers to mistakenly pursue policies that previously worked for the US despite the drastically different circumstances of the current situation.

This overreliance on the flawed Cold War analogy between the US and China can be seen in statements by senior US officials responsible for overseeing nuclear weapons policy. For example, in May 2020, US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, Marshall Billingslea, stated that the US is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race. Billingslea had also reportedly called Chinese efforts to modernize its nuclear forces “a ‘highly alarming effort’ to gain parity with the far larger arsenals that Russia and the United States have kept for decades.” These concerns evoke memories of the infamous “missile gap” argument that plagued American political discourse beginning in the 1950’s , a myth that still echoes in comments like those of Billingslea and other former officials

In addition to these tired Cold War analogies, theoretical arguments about the structure of the international system may alternatively explain increasing nuclear competition between the United States and China. Under this framework, states are constantly competing with one another in order to achieve national goals, whether supremacy in the international system or narrower goals like regional security or relative gains vis-à-vis competitor states. Nuclear competition in this scenario is largely inevitable as states constantly strive to improve military capabilities. Recent scholars have argued why maintaining a robust nuclear arsenal is important to deter nuclear conflict with a rising power like China or, in the event of a crisis, possess the ability to terminate the conflict on terms favorable to the US. Matthew Kroenig argues maintaining “nuclear superiority” can provide significant utility for the US should such a crisis or conflict occur. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press similarly argue that states may be able to escape nuclear “stalemate,” which suggests that while the US currently maintains a significant nuclear advantage over China, technological advances may erode this advantage and thus some form of nuclear competition is inevitable. Additionally, some US Government intelligence agencies have contributed to this perceived “inevitability” by promulgating largely-unrealistic projections of the growth of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which further reinforces the US-China nuclear competition framing.

Policymakers’ overreliance on Cold War logic and deterministic structural forces may make the future of arms control look bleak, but students of history would be wise to remember that even during the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were able to find common ground to reduce risks and avoid catastrophe. The unfolding competitive relationship between Washington and Beijing shouldn’t be viewed through a strictly zero-sum lens, and cooperation between the United States and China on security issues with global implications must be pursued when possible. With New START officially expiring on February 5, 2026, the clock is ticking; now is the time to get creative and imagine how a new world of arms control can deal with emerging nuclear risks that threaten to erase the progress previous generations worked so hard to achieve.

Bryce Farabaugh is a master’s student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations and an external representative for Strife. You can follow him on Twitter @brycefarabaugh

The Case Against Mexico Joining NATO

March 11, 2021 by Raúl Zepeda-Gil

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.

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