'PLAN MEXICO' LATEST FRONT IN FAILED U.S. DRUG WAR

After months of talks, President George W. Bush finally announced the
"security cooperation" plan for Mexico. On October 22, he sent a
request for $500 million in supplemental aid for 2008 as part of a
$1.4 billion dollar multi-year package.

No surprises there. The Bush administration has been negotiating the
package with President Felipe Calderon's administration for months. In
the lead-up to the announcement, both governments marshaled studies
and statistics to support the dual --and contradictory-- thesis that
the drug war in the United States and Mexico has reached a crisis
point and that current efforts on both sides of the border have been
very successful.

From what's known of it, the package -- officially dubbed the "Merida
Initiative" but more commonly referred to as "Plan Mexico" -- contains
direct donations of military and intelligence equipment, and training
programs for Mexican law enforcement officials. A White House fact
sheet lists surveillance equipment, helicopters and aircraft, scanners
for border revisions, communications systems, and training programs
for "strengthening the institutions of justice." An additional $50
million dollars is earmarked for Central American countries to support
their fight against "gangs, drugs, and arms."

The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the "Overall
Justification Document," reported that more than a third of the
package will be spent on aerial surveillance and facilitating the
rapid deployment of troops.

But what has legislators and civil society worried on both sides of
the border is not the money involved or the equipment to be sent. It's
the reach of Plan Mexico in recasting the binational relationship, to
create what the Bush administration calls "a new paradigm for security
cooperation."

The Politics of Counternarcotics

Characteristic of the "war on drugs" model, Plan Mexico takes a
serious transnational problem and casts it in such a way as to promote
the specific interests of the U.S. and Mexican rightwing
governments.

Following his narrow and questionable electoral triumph, President
Calderon has made the war on drugs a cornerstone of his government.
After taking office Calderon rapidly built an image of strength in
arms. He dispatched over 24,000 army troops to Mexican cities and
villages, dressed himself and his children in army uniforms for public
appearances, and created an elite corps of special forces under his
direct supervision.

The message of a weak presidency bolstered by a strong alliance with
the military has not been lost on Mexican citizens. Many have
criticized the repressive undertones, increasing human rights
violations, constitutional questions, and threats to civil democratic
institutions.

For the Bush administration, Plan Mexico has a dangerously misguided
political thrust as well. Mexico is one of only two far-right
governments among the major countries in the hemisphere. The other,
Colombia, has received billions of dollars of U.S. military aid, also
originally as part of a war on drugs that soon broadened into an
overall military alliance.

Washington officials have been lavish in their praise of the Calderon
government and stated explicitly that the National Action Party's
government permits an "historic" level of cooperation in security
matters. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Tom Shannon spoke openly about the newfound commonality of interests
between two nations with a history of conflict: "The Calderon
government has acted with alacrity, with intelligence and with
boldness in its fight against organized crime and drug trafficking,
and we want to be part of that."

But Bush administration interests go well beyond aiding the Calderon
government in its domestic drug battles. Stephen Johnson, deputy
assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Defense
Department, recently made the connection between Plan Mexico and
Washington's bid to recover its influence in a slipping geopolitical
context.

"While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the
United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and
to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador. For now, Venezuela and Cuba are
clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy,
markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our
challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better
job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors."

In this context, Johnson -- a former Heritage Foundation analyst --
cites Plan Mexico as an excellent example of the direction to move in,
stating, "With some 2,000 execution-style murders this year on the
part of drug mafias, Mexico is under siege. Yet, this is an historic
opportunity for the United States to cement closer ties with its
closest Latin American neighbor and encourage a sea-change in law
enforcement."

The concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back
at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity
Partnership (SPP) in March of 2005. Since that time, the Bush
administration has attempted to push its Northern American trade
partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility
for protecting the United States from terrorist threats and bolstering
U.S. global hegemony in the region.

The Bush administration and the right-wing think tanks that have
developed the strategy explicitly formulate hemispheric security
policy in these terms. The American Enterprise Institute's Thomas
Donnelly calls the Western Hemisphere "America's third border" and
argues that "American hegemony in the hemisphere is crucial to U.S.
national security."

Plan Mexico twists the plot by presenting Bush administration efforts
to create a North American security strategy in the guise of a war on
drugs. It builds on SPP security negotiations that included expanding
the presence of U.S. drug enforcement and customs agents within
Mexico, requiring legislation to commit Mexico to fight "international
terrorism," and curtailment of civil liberties similar to those found
in the U.S. PATRIOT Act that would legalize increased spying. Although
not formally announced as elements of SPP agreements, the Mexican
government has complied with all these requests.

Blanket Security

The Merida Initiative Joint Statement reads, "Our shared goal is to
maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to fight criminal
organizations -- so as to disrupt drug-trafficking (including
precursor chemicals); weapons trafficking, illicit financial
activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking."

According to the terms of the security aid package, there is virtually
no difference between an international terrorist, a migrant
farmworker, a political protestor, and a drug trafficker. The most
unexpected and pernicious feature of Plan Mexico is that it targets
all these groups indiscriminately. Lumping together all "transnational
threats" and stripping them of any social or historical context
creates a broad definition of security in the region and justifies a
blanket regional security strategy.

In this way, Plan Mexico goes beyond Plan Colombia, which at least
began with close congressional oversight to assure that military aid
focused on drug trafficking. Plan Mexico skips the focused stage and
leaps right into a wastebasket definition of security so broad that it
could encompass an unlimited range of problems and actors.

In her testimony before Mexican Senate committees, Foreign Minister
Patricia Espinosa cited four target areas of Plan Mexico:
counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and border security, public
security and administration of justice, and institutional strengthening
and law enforcement. The inclusion of anti-terrorist activities "to
detect terrorists who might try to attack our neighbor" drew fire from
legislators as proof that the U.S. seeks to impose its own security agenda.

Espinosa's admission that the plan contained a program to digitalize
information on migration and apply detection and control measures on
the southern border also caused controversy. Mexico has a history of
offering refuge to Central Americans and accepting them into its
society. That has been changing as the U.S. government has pressured
Mexico to intercept Central American migrants before they make it to
the northern border.

Plan Mexico advances that process and increases Mexican participation
in stopping its own migrants at the northern border too. For Mexican
workers thrown out of a job by the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, being
snagged as criminals by their own government at the border is a cruel
irony.

Reactions North and South

Both governments have sought to avoid the moniker "Plan Mexico," which
despite their efforts tends to be the media's favorite in the
messaging battle. The name "Plan Mexico" invites comparison to the
failed Plan Colombia, which has entrenched violence and corruption in
that South American country while failing to reduce drug flows. The
"Merida Initiative" implies that it is an agreement put together by
the two nations exclusively to address the drug offensive -- Merida is
the name of the Caribbean state capital where Bush and Calderon met
last spring.

Despite their efforts, the announcement has been a PR flop. President
Bush's unilateral announcement of the package annoyed Mexican
legislators, and the plan lost credibility on its claim to be a
binational program.

It also didn't help that it was tacked onto the Iraq supplementary
funding request. Any linkage between Plan Mexico and the reviled U.S.
security doctrine as applied in Iraq increases suspicions among
Mexican politicians and public. In any case, it appears the Mexican
legislature has little say in the matter. Although there was some
confusion as to whether the Mexican government would put up funds for
the plan, the Calderon administration denied any specific funding
commitment. Therefore the aid plan is not subject to congressional
review in Mexico.

In the U.S. Congress, meanwhile, it seems lately you can sell anything
to the democratic leadership if it has a "security" label on it. House
leader Nancy Pelosi was quoted as admitting to not knowing the content
of the new plan and in the same breath implying she would support it
since national security "is our highest priority."

Although U.S. troop presence in Mexico has been ruled out, Mexican
civil society has begun to react to what they see as forms of
interference included in the plan. Members of the judicial system,
including judges from the Supreme Court and lower courts, have
publicly stated objections to U.S. funds for the court system. Foreign
participation in military training is even more questionable and its
expansion under Plan Mexico has raised concerns on both sides of the
border. The School of the Americas military training program in Fort
Benning barely survived a recent vote in the U.S. Congress and Mexican
and U.S. citizens have expressed human rights concerns surrounding
U.S. training methods.

The role of private contractors in implementing the package remains
unclear and a source of dismay. Security analyst Sam Logan says
Blackwater will be likely be the major beneficiary, despite its
tarnished reputation following its shooting of Iraqi civilians.
Corruption in contracts related to both training and equipment
purchase seems a certainty given recent experience in Iraq.

But by far the biggest complaint in both congresses is the lack of
information. The Mexican Senate immediately demanded that Foreign
Minister Espinosa appear to explain the security package negotiated
with the United States. In the United States, Senator Robert Menendez
protested the secrecy and stated that without details, it was
impossible to evaluate the plan.

The Need for a Different Plan

Faced with a real problem--the strength of drug cartels in Mexico and
the United States--Plan Mexico proposes solutions that replicate the
logic of force and patriarchal control that the drug cartels rely on.
Then it applies these solutions not only to a bloody frontal battle
with drug traffickers, but to a multitude of complex security threats
with roots deep in Mexican society.

The "commitment to a regional security strategy," which uses
counternarcotics as a starting point and moves on from there, also
entails a radical break with Mexico's traditional neutrality in
foreign policy. The sheer scope of the package reflects the Bush
administration's military/police focus in international security
issues, just when those strategies have hit a low point in popularity
within the United States.

While heralded as binational cooperation, Plan Mexico seeds grave
divisions within Mexico and in the long-term between the two nations.

It also drives an ideological stake into the heart of Latin America.
By scooping Mexico up into a "common regional security strategy" the
Bush administration creates technological, military, financial and
political dependencies that seal the already overwhelming economic
dependency Mexico has on the United States and isolates it from the
rest of the hemisphere.

Unless checks and balances appear that have so far not been revealed,
Plan Mexico could contribute to the creation of a police state in Mexico.