THE STING MEXICO CAN'T FORGET

MORE THAN one person has his nose out of joint about this," says one drug
official of Casablanca, the undercover operation mounted on Mexico soil by
U.S. Customs and the Department of Justice without the authorization of the
Mexican government. The sting netted 167 people, including 26 Mexican
bankers, on charges of money laundering.

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the czar of the U.S. anti-narcotics effort, found
out about the operation on television. Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright was kept out of the loop and complained bitterly to Treasury
Secretary Robert E. Rubin, who himself is said to have been informed about
the operation only a few months ago, even though the investigation was
initiated three years ago by the Los Angeles branch of Customs. The result
is the most serious crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations since the Drug
Enforcement Administration kidnapped Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Mexican
implicated in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

The Casablanca incident occurs at a time when constructive voices are
increasingly drowned out by a neo-populist coalition hurling rocks south of
the border; by a relentless torrent of harsh U.S. news coverage of Mexico
and by an ever more vitriolic certification process in the U.S. Congress.
For the average Mexican, the collective harangue of many members of
Congress has fused into one hostile and threatening picture of the United
States. Casablanca is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

`I'm Sorry' Not Enough

Although President Clinton and his Cabinet rushed to make apologies to
their Mexican counterparts, "I'm sorry" was not enough for Mexico's
foreign-relations minister, Rosario Green. She threatened to indict the
U.S. Customs officers who conducted undercover operations on Mexican soil
without permission and to begin extradition proceedings. Under Mexican law,
a sting is considered illegal entrapment.

Mexico's escalation of the conflict left senior White House officials
stunned and wondering whether or not the Mexicans know who their friends
are in Washington. Mr. Clinton has many flaws, but if there is one area in
which he has behaved as a statesman, it has been in U.S.-Mexico relations.
He has taken it on the chin for the North American Free Trade Agreement,
the peso crisis and has defended bilateral anti-drug efforts. But it may be
especially difficult for Mr. Clinton to go to the mat to defend bilateral
relations against critics in Congress, particularly Republican critics in
an election season, if the Mexicans are sticking it in the U.S. eye.

The dance of injured pride and face-saving seemed to end at the U.N. summit
on drugs. After delivering a blistering speech criticizing U.S.
unilateralism and proposing a U.N.-led, global certification process,
President Ernesto Zedillo met privately with Mr. Clinton to alleviate
frictions. But lingering tensions surfaced in Ms. Albright's closing
briefing, at which she warned Mexico against pursuing the extradition of
U.S. agents.

Meanwhile, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced a resolution urging Mr.
Clinton to defend Customs agents against any extradition effort, and some
congressional staffers say it will pass if it reaches the floor. This is an
ominous prospect given that wavering senators, who will have to vote on the
matter of certification in nine months, may wonder how they can support
certification when the Mexicans seem determined to make themselves
obnoxious.

Mexican calculations go beyond Casablanca to include the possibility that
certification next year may not be winnable or winnable at an unacceptably
high price. The prospect that Congress may overturn a presidential
recommendation to certify Mexico is looming. Even if a presidential veto
were exercised and sustained, such a victory would be Pyrrhic. "We have to
inoculate ourselves," explains one Mexican foreign ministry official, who
acknowledges that the government is considering a variety of contingencies.
The threat to investigate U.S. agents is just one sign that the Mexican
government is contemplating new options in anticipation of U.S. hostility.
Mexico is approaching a turning point where the political cost of
subjecting itself to U.S. imprecations in the name of cooperation may be
higher than the cost of alienating the United States. Mexico's presidential
candidate selection season will begin early in 1999, and continued
confrontation feeds a nationalist backlash that aides candidacies hostile
to the United States.

Progress In Drug War

Ironically, confrontation is looming at a time when there are signs of
progress in the drug war. The leaders of a major Mexican methamphetamine
cartel, the four Amezcua brothers, recently were captured. Significantly,
the Mexican police team that made the arrests is one of the new, vetted
anti-narcotics groups jointly trained by Mexico and the United States. The
fruits of building new Mexican law-enforcement institutions take years to
mature, but the Amezcua arrest suggests that patience is warranted by a
U.S. Congress searching for results.

Mexico needs to come to grips with the reality of the global drug trade. It
speaks often and eloquently about the need to acknowledge the global nature
of drug-related crime, but its behavior is not consistent with its
analysis. It makes no sense to turn law enforcement issues such as the
extradition of vicious criminals into points of national pride. Undercover
U.S. Customs agents are not the moral equivalent of drug traffickers, nor
should they be treated as egregious law breakers by the Mexican government.
By failing to modernize its notion of national sovereignty, Mexico has been
unable to come to grips with the realities of binational law enforcement
and leaves itself open to charges of a lack of will. Why must joint
operational capabilities in law enforcement, which is what is really needed
to be effective against transnational criminals, founder on the rock of
outdated notions of sovereignty? An accident-prone U.S. policy toward
Mexico will have a high cost as the potential for a nationalist backlash
grows south of the border.

Similarly, a reassessment of U.S. law enforcement is in order.
Undisciplined unilateralism and bilateral cooperation are incompatible. The
United States would not accept unilateral foreign operations in its
territory. Why should we expect the Mexicans to behave differently?