Mexico’s Twin-Border Beast: Saturated State?

Mexico has the most to profit from, but simply cannot connect well with, the Kirchner-Sperling proposals. Even by utilizing a wider range of policy preferences, given its two plagued borders, and having paid the highest price to quell cocaine traffickers, Mexico is being constantly undermined by too many forces it cannot control: some groups within society defy the state, others representing the state actually collude with the “enemies,” and yet others happen to be too transnational to be easily netted. All exemplify soft threats, ranging from illegal migrants to illicit weapons, with drugs and money to boot in between. All also point to the very multilateral proposals Kirchner and Sperling have forwarded but have been utterly neglected even as the stakes get higher and the playground wider. Alone Mexico might never be able to seriously dent its domestic beasts, while externally fomented threats require going beyond the state at a time of resurging nationalism: no country wants outside forces digging in its own backyard or fighting in its own drug-trafficking trenches.