- In Merida, Mexico
Government funding for the military combating of drug trafficking along the Mexico U.S. Border has been on the government agenda for decades. The issue first appeared (briefly) on the decision agenda during the Nixon Administration, when the President initiated “Operation Intercept.” The operation called for an inspection of at least three minutes of all vehicles crossing the southern border from Mexico into the United States.[1] Although the policy initiative only lasted twenty days, it was one of the first real anti-trafficking measures that the U.S. took to prevent the smuggling of cannabis and other illegal substances across the southern border.
For decades afterwards, however, the issue of drug trafficking through the southern border remained largely off of the government agenda. The chief reason for the issue’s long dormancy was that, for most of this time, drug cartels were importing roughly half of their illicit drugs through concentrated routes along the Florida Coast.[2] During this period, Mexican cartels were significantly less powerful in international drug markets than they presently are. The federal government dedicated more of their resources during this period to combat Colombian drug cartels’ production abilities and to reduce the inflow of illicit substances along coastal drug routes. Their efforts to secure coastal and Caribbean drug shipment routes were successful. A negative consequence of this success, however, was that traffickers began to smuggle more drugs into the U.S. through land routes in Mexico. By, 2008, over 90% of all cocaine being consumed in the U.S. was imported through Mexico, according the State Department estimates.[3]
- Border Patrol in Miguel Aleman, Mexico
The key event that opened the “policy window”[4] which ultimately brought mainland drug trafficking to back onto the decision agenda was the election of Felipe Calderón to the Mexican presidency in December 2006. Early in his tenure, President Calderón made ending drug violence and trafficking his top priority. In his first months as President, he deployed thousands of Mexican soldiers to Sinaloa and Michoacán to combat cartel leaders. The military campaign was bloody from the start – 2007 saw more than 2,500 drug related deaths along the U.S. Mexico border.[5] To strengthen his campaign against Mexico’s cartels, Calderón met with then President George W. Bush to ask for aid, assistance, and cooperation from the U.S. government.
Both the rising death tolls and the high profile meetings between the Presidents made the dangers of cartel violence more salient, and Congress devoted significant time and energy to discussing and researching the issue in late 2007 and early 2008. The culmination of the Congressional discussions was the passage of H.R. 6028 – “The Mérida Initiative to Combat Illegal Narcotics and Reduce Organized Crime Authorization Act of 2008” – in June 2008. This bill never became a public law[6], however, as the House and the Senate could not agree on a version of the bill. The legislative work that went into H.R. 6028 was not in vain, though. Many of the policy designs laid out in this bill were rewritten into the Supplemental Appropriations Acts of 2008 and 2009. These bills laid the groundwork for three years of federal aid (totaling over $1 Billion USD) allotted to the Mexican government. The federal funds that were earmarked for the Mérida Initiative represent a “non-incremental” policy change. Before its inaction, the U.S. government had not committed any substantial sum of money to aid Mexico in its war against drug cartels.
In Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Kingdon postulates that policy items are more likely to move onto the decision agenda and ultimately pass into law when they are simultaneously present in the political stream, the problem stream, and the policy stream. An entrance into the political or problem stream increases the likelihood that a policy will move onto the decision agenda, and an entrance into the policy stream increases the chances that policymakers will agree on an appropriate solution to the problem. Interestingly, it was Calderón’s election in Mexico that brought this issue into the political stream in the U.S. Since Calderón made it clear that he was willing to cooperate with U.S. officials on security issues to an unprecedented extent, collaboration with Mexico on a transnational effort to end drug trafficking and cartel violence became more palatable to U.S. politicians. The issue entered the problem stream as cartel related violence and crime erupted along the U.S. Mexico border in 2007 and 2008. It seems as if the issue had long been lurking in the policy stream, however, for some time: actors in the defense contracting industry may have been waiting to latch onto a policy initiative of this nature in order to increase their weapon sales.
H.R. 6028 and both Supplemental Appropriations Acts stipulate that the federal government will provide Mexico with aid money to purchase defense weapons and technology. H.R. 6028 also “expresses the sense of Congress that… activities undertaken under titles I and II (where the defense weapons stipulations are written in) should be performed by employees and officers of the recipient country; and the United States should limit the number of U.S. contractors.” However, there is no concrete mandate in this language that demands that the Mexican government buy the weapons from their own contractors. In fact, the Mexican government has bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons from U.S. defense contractors in the past few years.[7] The political representatives of the defense contracting industry succeeded in “coupling” a (tangentially related) potential policy solution to this growing problem.
The effort to curb cartel violence has gradually become less prominent issue on the decision agenda since its height in 2007. While the federal government is still delivering to Mexico as stipulated in the annual Supplemental Appropriations Acts, the 111th Congress has shown few signs to indicate that it will consider another major piece of legislation concerned specifically with this policy issue in the near future. Cartel violence still has not subsided in response to the joint U.S. and Mexican military responses, but other issues have superceded its importance over the past eighteen months. What seems more likely now is that the policy developed (the Mérida Initiative) will be changed incrementally. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working with other members within the Obama Administration to shift U.S. support away from weapons and military hardware and more towards investments towards community building in parts of Mexico ravaged by drug related violence.[8] These efforts are being written into the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2010, and are designed to dissuade Mexican youth from becoming involved in the cycle of violence that surrounds the culture of drug trafficking. The Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2010 was passed by the Senate on May 27, and the House passed it two months earlier, on March 24. The two Chambers now must agree on a version of the bill, and send it to President Obama for approval.
One of the main implications of this incremental shift in policy (that corresponds, probably not coincidentally, with an administration change) is that the original “policy entrepreneurs” who helped to design the Mérida Initiative will lose some traction. Representative Howard Berman, a Democrat from California’s 23rd District, sponsored the 2008 bill, along with four other co-sponsors from Texas (2), New York, and Florida. Early drafts of the Mérida Initiative outlined a solution that leaned heavily on U.S. provided weapons and military training – the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress have expressed their desire to experiment with different approaches to the problem. Interestingly, however, these new approaches may not leave many opportunities for other policy entrepreneurs to couple their solutions onto this problem. The transnational nature of the cartel problem has led many U.S. Officials to believe that subsidizing community building efforts in affected areas of Mexico will have a greater impact than intensified guerilla warfare against the cartels. If this is the case, then policy entrepreneurs in Mexico may have more potential to affect how the resolution of this problem plays out than domestic policy entrepreneurs will.
Some Helpful Links
Obama Puts Focus on Latin America (A good article from the WSJ previewing Obama’s first trip to Latin America in April 2009.
Update on Recent Events (May 2010
[1] The project also involved aerial inspection of the border, and provided funding for an increased presence of firearms. Gooberman, Lawrence. Operation Intercept: The Multiple Consequences of Public Policy. Pergamon Press, Inc., 1974.
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0922436820080709?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0922436820080709?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
[4] In Chapter 4, Kingdon defines a policy window as “an opportunity for action on a given initiative.”
[5] The death tolls have increased in every year since. Lacey, Marc. “In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself.” The New York Times 29 Mar. 2009. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/americas/30mexico.html?_r=1&ref=americas>.
[6] http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h6028/show
[7] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18877
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032304196.html
