Bye-bye Mérida
The Mexico-US security relationship is undergoing a major overhaul, with the launch of a new ‘Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities’ which has ambitious and wide-ranging objectives. On close inspection, however, it is not entirely clear how much will change.
Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard had the most succinct description of what is happening in the US-Mexico security relationship. “Goodbye Mérida, welcome Bicentennial Agreement” he said on 8 October, after a two-day high-level security dialogue (HLSD) between the two countries held in Mexico City (CDMX) and attended among others by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The current Mexican administration had been wanting to jettison the Mérida Initiative for some time. Launched 13 years ago in 2008, the initiative channelled over US$3bn in US aid to help train and equip Mexican law enforcement institutions in the “war against drugs”. It was closely linked with the US view of how that war should be fought. Under the Mérida framework for example, the previous government, led by President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), pursued a “kingpin strategy” of targeting top ‘high-value’ leaders of drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) for capture, trial, and in some cases extradition to the US. According to Ebrard, under Mérida the thesis was that “[DTO] capos had to be captured and that was sufficient”. The new approach would be much wider, among other things expanding opportunities for youth and treating addiction, and its success would be measured by “fewer homicides in Mexico and less drug consumption”. The spirit of the new arrangement, Ebrard said, would be more “symmetrical and respectful”.
The new three-year security alliance is certainly ambitious. It is called the Bicentennial Agreement to mark the 200th anniversary of US-Mexico diplomatic relations, which falls next year, 2022. It goes someway to acknowledging the “hugs not bullets” approach of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who has sought to avoid military confrontation with DTOs and instead to concentrate on tackling the social and economic causes of violence. Officials say the refreshed approach from both countries will usher in a “new era in security cooperation”. According to a White House press release, it is based on three pillars: investment in public health and anti-crime programmes; prevention of transborder crime; and pursuing transnational criminal organisations (TCOs). Subsidiary goals include reducing the smuggling of US guns to Mexico and the trafficking of drugs to the US.
There are however reasons for scepticism. No details of specific programmes or funding levels have yet been announced – these depend on further ongoing talks between the two sides and are expected to be revealed next January. Most importantly the announcements do not address a major deterioration in the security relationship that has taken place since October last year, when, without giving Mexican officials any warning, the US arrested Mexico’s former defence minister (2012-2018) General Salvador Cienfuegos at Los Angeles airport and held him on corruption charges. Faced with Mexican diplomatic fury, the outgoing Donald Trump (2017-2021) administration then conducted a U-turn, releasing Cienfuegos back to Mexico, on the understanding that he would face possible trial in Mexican courts.
However, Mexico showed little interest in pursuing the case. The Mexican court authorities dismissed the charges. The López Obrador government released the previously sealed US indictment, a move that would make any future trial difficult. Mexico also passed a law limiting existing security cooperation by mandating the presence of foreign ministry officials at any bilateral meeting of law enforcement agencies, including bodies such as the US Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA). The move has made any informal intelligence sharing much more difficult, if not impossible. In short, the Cienfuegos affair undermined trust on all sides.
An early criticism of the new approach is that it fails to address weaknesses in current Mexican security policies. In practice, the “hugs not bullets” approach seems to be allowing DTOs free reign to conduct their business and infiltrate weak local authorities in various parts of the country. Plans for socio-economic policies to tackle the roots of crime remain vague and are weakened by the economic effects of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Writing for US think tank Brookings, Vanda Felbab-Brown comments “There are good reasons to be sceptical that López Obrador’s tree planting scheme will dissuade rural populations from criminality, particularly if their municipalities are controlled by criminal groups.” She adds that the López Obrador government seems to believe that any school or grant programmes will reduce crime, “a very long term proposition at best, and one that is not likely to materialise”.
Another major difficulty is posed by migration. Officially migration was not on the HLSD agenda but remains the subject of separate talks between the two countries. There are strong reasons for a more joined-up response to the impact of migration on security. First, major DTOs are also involved in the people trafficking business, smuggling undocumented Central American, Haitian, and other migrants through Mexico and into the US. Second, successive US governments, and in particular the Trump and Joe Biden administrations, have put Mexico under different types of pressure to contain the flow of migrants, which creates competition for law enforcement resources. After creating a new national guard (GN) primarily to combat the DTOs, the López Obrador government diverted many of its units to border control duties at the behest of Washington on both the southern border with Guatemala and the northern border with the US. Such is the domestic political pressure for migration control in US politics, that it can be seen as distorting the approach to other bilateral security issues.
Remain in Mexico coming back?
One of the most controversial programmes of the Trump era, the migration protection protocol (MPP, otherwise known as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ programme) is likely to be reinstated in November. The programme required those seeking asylum in the US be held in camps in Mexico pending the results of their application to the US migration courts (a process which can take more than a year). The Biden administration had terminated the programme, which the President had described as sending people to “the edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat”. Migration lobby groups said it exposed applicants to persecution and kidnapping in violent Mexican border cities. In August a Texas based US District Court ruled that the termination had been “unjustified”. To comply with that ruling the federal government said it would re-instate the programme in mid-November but at the same time it would make renewed legal efforts to end the programme. Reinstatement would in any case require approval from the Mexican government.
New agreement
A White House press release described the new bilateral security agreement as being “based on partnership, guided by shared responsibility and driven by a national security interest in both countries.”