[lazaroclapp]

We have quite an amount of oil. But that oil will continue to be sold to the U.S. (and others) regardless of what happens with the cartels or to the people of Mexico (Short of a revolution, I suppose). In fact, in recent years, reforms have been passed to make it easier for foreign companies to get involved in oil extraction in Mexico. Given that, there is very little incentive to send an occupation force in order to secure resources.

The drug cartels do not currently threaten or terrorize other countries, just the people living in Mexico, so arguments about national security (valid or not) also do not apply.

Besides, as terrible as things are right now, does anyone believe having an armed occupation force from another country would be better for the average person living in Mexico? Has that ever turned out well in recent memory? It would just be: 'hey, you know how you get shootings, executions and beheadings? Have some of them drone strikes as well!".

I am not saying international pressure cannot be used to help (there is some pressure coming from the European Union, rather the USA, and it has arguably had some impact in the actions of the Mexican government, at least when coupled with internal pressures). Sending an army, however, is probably the last kind of help Mexico needs right now...

[victorhn]

The amount of oil reserves in Mexico is not that great as it used to be, PEMEX production continues to decrease every year.

PEMEX became the classic example of am inefficient, corrupt and bureaucratic government company which has already extracted all the "easy" oil and sees that this is unsustainable on long term, many of the large remaining oil reserves is now not easy to extract which due to bad management and lack of long term thinking is economically not convenient for PEMEX to try to extract it on its own.

So the government pushed those reforms to allow foreign companies with more advanced technical know-how and more willingness to risk, to invest and at least get some money in terms of taxes and permits.

[vacri]

Has that ever turned out well in recent memory?

Yes - UN peacekeepers do have a positive effect. They just don't hit the news much because they're not dramatically beating their chests about it and bragging about how big their guns are. They're not perfect, but they're certainly better than just leaving things be.

Have a poke around here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_Nations_peac...

[lazaroclapp]

I guess I was thinking about a unilateral intervention by a single country's army. UN peacekeepers are a different thing altogether, both the scope of the mission and the goals are usually very different. I don't have enough information to know how would that turn out. Keep in mind that they would be going into a very complex system that includes actors such as: the drug cartels, federal and state police, the Mexican army, federal and state political bodies, (multiple) self-defense civilian armies, (multiple) organized protest movements. The more official of those actors are - to an unknown degree - corrupted/infiltrated/colluded with the cartels. The more unstructured ones might very well consider peacekeeper intervention forcing them to disarm or stopping them from protest acts (which have included burning a state police building, an act that had surprising public support) to be further government repression.

In general I think just having independent media and investigators from outside the country can be helpful, since they can be perceived as not part of the system of internal corruption. I think it gets a lot more complicated when you have international actors as supposed to observers and/or pressure. Not saying it can't work, but it is far from simple to predict... (there are, of course, people who know great many orders of magnitude more about the issues involved than I do, both within and without Mexico, so maybe someone is looking into whether or not that sort of intervention would help).

[stephenhuey]

I just visited Rwanda and Bosnia a couple months ago, and I heard stories about the UN failing miserably in both places only a couple of decades ago. A guide in Sarajevo even said the UN would sometimes accidentally return captured Bosnian civilians to the Serbian army on the hillside. With "friends" as competent as that, Mexico would probably be better off without UN soldiers.

[jacquesm]

The UN made plenty of mistakes. But that does not mean the situation with their actions is worse than what would have been without. Without such competent friends your guide in Sarajevo might not even be alive today.

Yugoslavia was an ugly war, the 'coalition' made plenty of grave mistakes but in the end it did stop a conflict that would have most likely ended much worse.

I have friends on just about all sides in that particular war and it is absolutely incredible how explosive Yugoslavia was under Tito and how vicious a conflict buried for decades flared up right after he died, it was really only a matter of time and even today I feel that it would possibly re-ignite if not for some dire threats.

[fractallyte]

Apologies, but I have to nitpick.

UN actions (ie. the arms embargo) made the conflict unbalanced - giving the advantage to one side, which then proceeded to run amok. Then, the UN repeatedly failed to protect civilian populations from this aggression. The current 'stability' in many places is an artificial equilibrium, maintained by outside forces and those 'dire threats'.

The conflict should reignite - for justice, but just as importantly, for lasting stability.

[nashequilibrium]

What would be the effects of legalizing all drugs in Mexico? Will this reduce the power of the cartels?

[lazaroclapp]

Just within Mexico? Without changing anything in the US? Not sure. It might not have any effect at all, or it might reduce violence because it diminishes the clashes of the cartels with the Mexican authorities. But, as far as I understand it, the vast majority of the income of the cartels comes from trafficking drugs from Mexico and south america into the U.S. market. So, as long as drugs are both illegal and widely consumed in the U.S, I wouldn't expect the influence of the cartels to diminish significantly.

That said, violence spiked significantly after the Mexican government decided to use the army to combat the drug cartels (10 or so years ago). So maybe if drugs were legal within Mexico and we completely refused to have any part on policing their traffic across the border, we might have a more peaceful situation, albeit still one in which organized crime has a huge influence in politics in most or all of the country's territory. Then again, at this point the cat might be out of the bag regarding the violence... a lot of it involves cartels fighting each other for control of different regions or routes at this point.

[vishnugupta]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, very insightful!

What does it take for the Mexican government to prohibit the oil export? It does seem that Mexico is some sort of energy/resource-extraction site for the US and for that drug cartels are looked upon as collateral damage. Can it learn from Brazil which doesn't export oil as much? Or is it the case of pseudo democratic government held hostage by a handful of multinational corporations?

[lazaroclapp]

Nothing quite that dramatic. Oil in Mexico is nationalized and the only company that can actually extract oil within Mexican territory is PEMEX, which is a government owned company. Recent reforms allow private companies to perform many tasks on behalf of PEMEX, including extraction, but it still maintains a national oil monopoly under the law (simplified: your company can go to Mexico and drill for oil on behalf of PEMEX and get paid by them to do so, but the oil still belongs to PEMEX until it sells it to you).

That said, a lot of the revenue for the federal government comes from oil exports. This further means that very little of PEMEX revenue gets re-invested into PEMEX, since it mostly goes to pay for what would otherwise be a huge federal deficit every year. It is also widely believed that there are strong political pressures from the U.S. not to reduce oil exports. So, in general, it's not easy for Mexico to prohibit oil exports without creating a huge crisis and/or majorly affecting trade relations.

The above becomes even more complicated when you add things like corruption, shared/disputed territorial water reserves (the Gulf of Mexico has large areas which fall under the territorial waters of the U.S., Mexico and Cuba, but access to oil deposits in those areas is not necessarily equal...) or contraband of "stolen" oil by drug cartels. But at a large scale, the main issue is: the federal government depends on oil exports and trade with the U.S. which might be partially conditioned on oil exports.

(Disclaimer: I am going to add to my posts that all this comes from the perspective of someone who was born and lived most of his life in Mexico and follows what I believe to be reasonable news sources. I am not a subject expert on: organized crime, Mexican law, Mexican trade relations, etc... you get the idea.)

[nailer]

How would preventing oil export harm the cartels?

[dllthomas]

"a lot of it involves cartels fighting each other for control of different regions or routes at this point."

Though if the activities themselves were legal, then a cartel that did not itself engage in violence would have recourse to the state, which is probably also cheaper for the cartel than engaging in violence themselves.