WikiLeaks and the truth behind the scenes

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have learned how the US has really evaluated Mexico’s efforts to fight the drug cartels.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we are able to see beyond the typical lip service paid by diplomats and to know that some high-ranking officials in the US don’t trust President Felipe Calderon’s publicized accounts of success in the war against organized crime.

What WikiLeaks has revealed is something similar to what many Mexicans probably were concluding after four years of the drug war: that Mexico’s Army was not fully prepared to fight organized crime, that corruption continues to permeate security agencies and that some regions of the country are lawless and under the control of criminals.

However, it is not common to get such access to the truth hidden beneath the politically correct statements of the diplomacy world.  It is more common to hear US officials praising President Calderon’s efforts to fight organized crime than to hear that they are concerned about how the President Calderon is dealing with stress. 

If U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is really concerned about Calderon’s state of mind–as was revealed in a leaked cable–or if US Ambassador Carlos Pascual has seen that President Calderon has been “down” at meetings, does that mean they are questioning Calderon’s abilities to stand up to the pressure? Do they trust him now? I would say that they probably don’t.

What makes the WikiLeaks’s documents about Mexico more significant is the fact that they have exposed a certain amount of distrust regarding Calderon’s strategies–which is lamentable because Mexico needs the US to fully support this effort.  It also exposes the tension between the US and Mexico in their collaborative efforts. In one of the memos released, the writers said the Mexican Army has been slow to react to US intelligence tips about the location of drug cartel leaders. Another memo reveals the US’s concern about giving money to Mexico through the Merida Initiative because of the levels of corruption they believe exists within the government.

Just a few hours after the documents on Mexico were revealed, officials from both countries have begun to react. The Mexico Foreign Relations Ministry was the first to react, arguing that “the leaked documents and their content are partial and inaccurate.” It also added that the criteria used to select the documents are unknown. Today, the US Ambassador also sent a letter to Mexico City’s newspaper, El Universal, asking the public to put the documents in context and stressed the importance of a strong relationship between Mexico and the US.

Until now, we just know about a small portion of the more than 2,600 documents leaked by WikiLeaks on the US’s real vision of Mexico. It is predictable that the rest of the documents will expose more truths behind the diplomatic-political scene. However, the same revelations could force both countries to come together again and to analyze honestly what they can do to strengthen their collaboration and so both can succeed in this war that affects both countries.

 

 

Comments

[tigre1]

I seriously foresee great challenges ahead for my country, for Mexico, for the entire Hemisphere.
The US will pull out of Afghanistan. Afghan opiates will follow to Mexico's deepwater ports and join the flow of cocaine, meth and pot northward through already-established networks.

Given the recent financial reverses for most people to the accumulation of massive wealth at the top of the social tiers and the resulting on-going recession, heroin flooding the country
could permanently cripple and adversely affect about 98% of the populace, directly or indirectly. The immanence of of the new heroin flood may have exacerbated and started the current drug war within Mexico to decide who would control the drug routes into the US.
And thus the fence may not have been just to block people, either. I welcome your response...
and suggest you ask some questions about that...

[Barticles]

While the situation in Mexico appears grim, things can still change for the better. Mexico's problems is not the cartels, it is a failure of governance. The actions of the cartels and the pervasiveness of the cartels are only the most obvious symptoms of the problem.

A number of things need to happen before the situation will get better. The first issues appears to be containing the cartel problem. This is going to involve some fundmental counterinsurgency methodologies. The intent and focus of these methodolgies is to disrupt the grip the cartels have on the population. Allowing with that is improved governance. This is going to involve a number of changes that go beyond this posting, but can be found via this link http://www.mexdrugcartels.com . Regardless of the approaches used, it's going to take time...meaning a decade or more. The cartel problem has been an issue for years; it's just now they have consumed so much of Mexican society, that it is no longer a society, but fiefdoms.