A New Framework for US-Mexico Relations?
Last October, the United States and Mexico put a formal end to the Mérida Initiative, a 13-year and $3 billion anti-drug trafficking and corruption program. This American security assistance package, which provided Mexico military equipment, and established law enforcement training programs and other anti-crime and corruption measures coincided with a rise in Mexican violence and insecurity. Since the start of the program, synthetic drug production has increased, drug gangs have multiplied, and homicides have more than doubled.
A new “Bicentennial Framework” will take the initiative’s place, which is slated to focus less on militarized solutions and more on human rights, economic opportunities, and crime prevention. According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US-Mexico relations have relied “too much on security forces and too little on other tools in our kit.” Will this new era of security cooperation actually address the root causes of violence, corruption, and migration which has embroiled US-Mexico policy for decades? We traveled to Mexico to find out.
This video includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.
This post is part of Independent America, a research project led out by IGA senior fellow Mark Hannah, which seeks to explore how US foreign policy could better be tailored to new global realities and to the preferences of American voters.
