THE HYDRA: THE 

STRATEGIC PARADOX 

OF HUMAN SECURITY IN 

MEXICO

Zachary Martin, Major, USAF
Air Command and Staff College

Evan L. Pettus, Brigadier General, Commandant

James Forsyth, PhD, Dean of Resident Programs

Bart R. Kessler, PhD, Dean of Distance Learning

Paul Springer, PhD, Director of Research 

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The Wright Flyer Papers 

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AIR UNIVERSITY

AIR COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE

The Hydra: The Strategic Paradox of 

Human Security in Mexico

Zachary Martin, major, usaf

Wright Flyer Paper No. 78

Air University Press

Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
Accepted by Air University Press November 2019 and published October 

2020.

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied 

within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of 

the Air Force, the Air Education and Training Command, the Air 

University, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public 

release: distribution unlimited.

This Wright Flyer Paper and others in the series are available electronically at the AU Press website: https://www.airuniversity.af

.edu/AUPress/Wright-Flyers/

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College

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Air University Press
iii

Contents

List of Illustrations iv

Foreword v

Abstract vi

Context vii

Introduction, Thesis, and Methodology 1

Argument 1: The State Misunderstands the Nature of the 

Human Security Threat 2

The Nature of Cartels 3

Argument 2: War Strategy Fails to Solve Human Security 12

The Mérida Initiative 21

Argument 3: The Strategic Paradox of the 

Human Security Threat 25

Conclusion: The Hydra of North America 30

Abbreviations 37

Bibliography 38
iv

List of Illustrations

Figure 

1. Regional influence of DTOs in Mexico 9

Table 

1. Mexican DTO typology 10
v

Foreword

It is my great pleasure to present another issue of The Wright Flyer Papers. 

Through this series, Air Command and Staff College presents a sampling of 

exemplary research produced by our resident and distance-learning students. This series has long showcased the kind of visionary thinking that 

drove the aspirations and activities of the earliest aviation pioneers. This 

year’s selection of essays admirably extends that tradition. As the series title 

indicates, these papers aim to present cutting-edge, actionable knowledge—

research that addresses some of the most complex security and defense challenges facing us today.

Recently, The Wright Flyer Papers transitioned to an exclusively electronic 

publication format. It is our hope that our migration from print editions to an 

electronic-only format will foster even greater intellectual debate among Airmen and fellow members of the profession of arms as the series reaches a 

growing global audience. By publishing these papers via the Air University 

Press website, ACSC hopes not only to reach more readers, but also to support Air Force–wide efforts to conserve resources. In this spirit, we invite you 

to peruse past and current issues of The Wright Flyer Papers at https://www

.airuniversity.af.edu/AUPress/Wright-Flyers/.

Thank you for supporting The Wright Flyer Papers and our efforts to disseminate outstanding ACSC student research for the benefit of our Air Force 

and war fighters everywhere. We trust that what follows will stimulate thinking, invite debate, and further encourage today’s air, space, and cyber war 

fighters in their continuing search for innovative and improved ways to defend our nation and way of life.

EVAN L. PETTUS

Brigadier General, USAF 

Commandant
vi

Abstract

Cartels in Mexico produce significant levels of violence and criminality in 

Mexico through their illicit narcotics trade. The effects of cartel activity spill 

over into the United States through immigration issues and narcotics deaths. 

In 2006, the Mexican government applied a counternetwork decapitation 

strategy to eliminate cartel leadership and thereby reduce criminality in an 

attempt to ease pressure from both sides of the border. The US supported the 

Mexican strategy through the Mérida Initiative to build security capacity. 

However, from 2006 to 2018 homicide rates per 100,000 residents increased 

in Mexico by 248 percent, while illicit narcotics trafficking and indicators of 

corruption, extortion, kidnapping, and human trafficking rose. I have shown, 

using secondary source material and analytical and qualitative methods, the 

nature of the illicit-narcotics problem and explain why past strategies failed. 

The problem facing the US and Mexico consists of deficient human security 

fueled by an illicit narcotics supply-demand dynamic rooted in societal issues 

and economic underdevelopment. Cartels take advantage of this shortfall. Because the Mexican government misdiagnosed the threat, it applied incoherent 

and unproductive measures more suited for a Clausewitzian war paradigm 

strategy. Finally, I identify a paradox in the narcotics legalization argument 

that harbors significant challenges to successful implementation and holds 

the potential for transforming a human security problem into an insurgency.
vii

Context

In mid-October 2018, an exodus of over 7,000 people from Honduras, 

Guatemala, and El Salvador began moving toward the US border in search of 

safety from endemic crime and economic privation.1 Dubbed the Caravan, 

the group of migrants made their way north, crossing into Mexico, a country 

facing significant challenges to its internal security, including a high rate of 

homicides and assassinations of political candidates.2 Mexico is the primary 

US source of illicit narcotics, including heroin, methamphetamines, fentanyl, 

and other synthetic opioids.3 According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, drug poisoning deaths remain the leading source of injury death in 

the US, causing 52,404 deaths in 2015 alone, more than the deaths caused by 

firearms and motor vehicle accidents.4

Whether granted legal entry or asylum or not, the members of the Caravan 

found themselves tied to US domestic concerns over illegal immigration. The 

Department of Homeland Security noted a vast surge of illegal immigration 

in 2018, a 325 percent increase in unaccompanied children and 435 percent 

increase in family units compared to 2017, equating to over 50,000 illegal 

entries per month.5 As individuals within the Caravan enter the US, some 

may contribute to criminal activity around the country, where domestic attention on gang-related violence by groups such as MS-13 remains high. In 

2017, US Border Patrol agents arrested 536 gang-affiliated illegal aliens, 40 

percent of whom were affiliated with MS-13.6 Taken in sum, these problems 

pose a major threat to US national security.
1

Introduction, Thesis, and Methodology

In his seminal work, On War, Carl von Clausewitz scribed a profound dictum for strategists: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that 

test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor 

trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all 

strategic questions and the most comprehensive.”7

History demonstrates the consequences of overlooking this fundamental 

task when states decide to go to war. During the Vietnam War, the United 

States approached its national objective for a stable, noncommunist South 

Vietnam as a traditional conflict, gradually escalating air attacks and covert 

raids to coerce the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to withdraw its support 

for the Vietcong insurgency. The Tet Offensive of 1968 provided clear evidence that US statesmen and commanders did not understand the character 

of the conflict in Vietnam, which resulted in strategic defeat.

Similarly, in 2003, after Saddam Hussein’s defeat, the character of the conflict in Iraq changed from traditional to irregular warfare. It took statesmen 

and commanders several years to grasp the kind of war they now faced. A 

grueling, bloody, and protracted war ensued that undermines US strategic 

objectives in the region to this day.

Closer to the US homeland, a different threat looms south of the border, 

and both the US and Mexico remain locked in a war against a common enemy 

that neither the statesmen nor the commanders understand. Because of this, 

US national security suffers.

This paper seeks to judge the nature of the threat and the character of the 

enemy to determine the kind of conflict the US and Mexico face. Clausewitz’s 

definition of war provides the foundation for my argument: “War is an act of 

force to compel our enemy to do our will. . . . Force is the means of war; to 

impose our will on the enemy is the object of war. . . . To secure that object we 

must render the enemy powerless; and that, in theory, is the true aim of warfare.” Clausewitz further defines war as a “paradoxical trinity—composed of 

primordial violence, hatred, and enmity . . . the play of chance and probability 

. . . and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which 

makes it subject to reason alone.” War is a political instrument, a device by 

which political discourse is continued when other means of communication 

are ineffective.8

The first argument of this paper posits that the nature of the mutual threat 

and of the enemy precludes a war against the United States and Mexico because the enemy remains unbound by Clausewitz’s paradigm. The threat con-
2

sists of deficient human security fueled by an illicit narcotics supply-demand 

dynamic. The enemy is made up of organizations exploiting this shortfall. 

Derek Reveron and Kathleen Mahoney-Norris state that human security consists of the “people-centered approach focused on individual human beings 

and their rights and needs,” and is one of the prerequisites for achieving national security.9

 The organizations exploiting the lack of human security are 

known by many names: violent drug trafficking organizations, transnational 

criminal organizations, narcos, insurgents, cartels, and criminals.

The human security threat that cartels propagate resembles the mythological Hydra: immortal, multiheaded, regenerative, and poisonous. States cannot wage war, as traditionally conceived, against such a threat. To frame this 

first argument, this paper will analyze the characteristics of this human security Hydra and the cartels to show how they do not fit any current models of 

traditional or irregular warfare.

Second, this paper will argue that because the US and Mexico misunderstand the threat, they apply incoherent, unproductive, and untenable strategies as a solution. A review of the US containment and building partner capacity (BPC) strategy and the Mexican counternetwork decapitation strategy,10

as well as a review of these strategies’ negative consequences on both human 

security and national security, will support this argument.

Third, this paper argues that the policy measures necessary to solve this 

human security problem introduce a strategic paradox that inhibits their 

adoption in the US and Mexico. Sweeping domestic policy reforms to legalize 

narcotics within the US and Mexico can end the illicit narcotics supplydemand dynamic fueling deficient human security. Such reforms will prove 

politically difficult to implement within states, produce public health challenges, and require multilateral cooperation. More importantly, a legalization 

strategy creates a duality of interests between the state and cartels over natural 

and man-made resources, which sets the conditions for widespread economic 

grievances that can stimulate an insurgency and transform a human security 

problem into a war.

Argument 1: The State Misunderstands the 

Nature of the Human Security Threat

The threat to both the US and Mexico consists of human insecurity, and 

the enemy consists of cartels exploiting this insecurity. Cartels exist at the 

substate level, primarily to maximize profits from the drug trade. They focus 

violence mostly against each other to expand control over a competitive illicit 

market and rely on corruption to undermine the state and preclude interfer-
3

ence in their activities. To frame this first argument, this section analyzes the 

human security threat and the characteristics of the cartels to demonstrate 

how they do not fit any current models of traditional or irregular warfare.

Two key elements underscore the nature of the human security threat: societal issues and economic underdevelopment. The societal issues boil down 

to high US demand for illicit narcotics. The United Nations Office on Drugs 

and Crime estimated there are 41.33 million cannabis, opioid, and opiate users in North America, as well as 5.99 million cocaine, amphetamine, and 

ecstasy users, plus 1.78 million users who inject drugs.11 The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) identifies Mexican criminal organizations 

as the main source of narcotics for users in the US.12 Cartels supply a variety 

of narcotics to fulfill this demand and profit from human psychological and 

biological addiction vulnerabilities. Cartels do not grow, manufacture, distribute, and sell narcotics to destroy or undermine an enemy for political 

ends. Rather, they do so to gain profits for personal use within the licit economy and for status and power within the illicit economy.

Economic underdevelopment in areas throughout Mexico, Latin America, 

and South America provides the incentive for individuals to supply narcotics. 

In November 2017, the Mexican government increased the minimum wage to 

the equivalent of $5.26 per day (not per hour).13 By comparison, drug sales 

reap profit margins as high as 1,600 percent for each kg of heroin or 58,000 

percent for each kg of pure fentanyl, netting up to $1.92 million from a $3,300 

investment.14 The DEA valued drug sales in the US in 2017 at $64 billion, totaling 21 percent of the $300 billion in illicit revenue from criminal activity in 

the US.15 The enormous profits offered on the supply end of the illicit economy clearly outweigh the meager living standard available to many people.

Societal issues of psychological and biological addiction create demand for 

illicit narcotics, and economic underdevelopment incentivizes participation 

in its supply—creating a dynamic producing numerous human security issues. When governments fail to address these underlying problems, the human security Hydra demonstrates its immortal and regenerative capacity.

The Nature of Cartels

Cartel behavior differs from rational policy and thus demonstrates its critical 

departure from Clausewitz’s paradigm of war. Dr. Paul Kan identified five fundamental behaviors resulting from the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic. 

First, cartels act to fill drug demand in a hypercompetitive market to maximize 

profits.16 Second, they use purposeful and directed violence to increase market 

share in the highly profitable drug trade, enforce loyalty within their organiza-
4

tion, and move up within the group hierarchy. Third, cartels corrupt state agents 

through bribery and intimidation to facilitate their profit-driven business. 

Fourth, they develop and employ soft power to maintain cohesion within the 

organization. Fifth, they cultivate community support or acquiescence to prevent interruption of their illicit business activities.17 This support isn’t to help 

cartels gain power through governance or to solve any social, economic, racial, 

or religious grievance. Instead, cartels aim to limit both public and government 

interference in their pursuit of maximizing profits.

The nature of the human security threat and the enemy’s behavior it drives 

represent a fundamental departure from Clausewitz’s paradigm of war for 

two reasons, the first being that cartels do not seek to defeat the state; they rely 

on the services and infrastructure ensured by the government’s survival. Cartel members still require access to food, running water, sanitation, residential 

property, roads, railways, and cell towers that the continued operation of the 

state provides. The threat of violence and the actual violence employed against 

the state do not target its downfall but rather its acquiescence. Clausewitz 

notes two objectives in war: “to overthrow the enemy—to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent, thus forcing him to sign whatever peace 

we please; or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can 

annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiation.”18 Cartels do 

not pursue these objectives because they do not seek to bargain toward an end 

state of peace. Instead, they seek to operate in parallel with the state to pursue 

their illicit business. Additionally, the lack of a political, economic, or social 

grievance to motivate the narcotics supply-demand dynamic means that the 

state lacks a coherent entity to negotiate with toward its own objectives. Likewise, because individual cartels do not hold authority over this dynamic, the 

state cannot bargain with them to end it. To do so would be akin to attempting negotiations with a force of nature.

Second, there is no polarity between the objectives of the state and those of 

cartels. In defining war, Clausewitz noted the principle of polarity between 

the opposing sides: “the principle of polarity is valid only in relation to one 

and the same object, in which positive and negative interests exactly cancel 

one another out.”19 Cartels engaged in the hypercompetitive illicit economy 

exist at the substate level and seek to maximize profits and market share. The 

polarity necessary for war demands that the state’s objective focus also on 

maximizing its profits and market share while proportionally reducing the 

profits and market share of criminal organizations. However, the state does 

not seek control of the illicit market but rather to enforce law and order. If 

cartels sought to govern and enforce their own law and order in competition 

with the state, then this would produce a polarity of interests. Clausewitz’s 
5

paradigm of war does not apply because of this lack of polarity, the nature of 

cartel objectives, and the absence of a coherent use of force against the state to 

pursue these objectives.

The nature of the human security threat also drives behaviors in cartels 

that mirror elements of Clausewitz’s paradigm of war. Clausewitz posits that 

“war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means” and “the act 

of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”20 To maximize profits and increase market share, cartels either bargain or employ directed force against 

one another. To limit state interference, cartels also use force to resist active 

operations against cartel assets or to coerce acquiescence through fear. Cartels 

rely primarily on bribery and intimidation over the use of force against the 

state to pursue their objective of noninterference. As a result, most violence 

occurs between and within cartels, not against the state or its law-abiding 

citizens. According to the University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, of 

the 5,700 drug-related homicides documented by mid-2010, security forces 

suffered 395 losses, less than 7 percent of the total.21 Limiting state interference through violence proves counterproductive because the government can 

employ significant resources to overwhelm the cartels and because of the high 

likelihood the government will not back down until it establishes law and 

order. Corruption through bribery and intimidation is far more effective than 

the use of violence and involves lower risk. Nevertheless, it remains clear that 

cartels do in fact use the act of force to continue their policy of government 

noninterference by other means. The slang phrase, “Plata o plomo,” which 

means silver or lead, characterizes this relationship: either take the bribe in 

exchange for noninterference, or take the act of force.

The human security dilemma from the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic displays additional beguiling similarities to war. It contributes to a level 

and type of violence comparable to modern irregular warfare. While most of 

the violence occurs between cartels, violence still spills over into mainstream 

society. The press freedom organization Article 19 lists Mexico as the second 

most dangerous country for journalists behind Syria.22 The recent federal, 

state, and municipal elections in 2018 witnessed targeted killings of politicians in 22 of 31 states, claiming the lives of 48 candidates.23 Violence also 

frequently claims the lives of innocent bystanders not involved with cartel 

activity. In April 2018, six bystanders died in the crossfire between two cartels. 

Three civilians died in March 2017 as they drove through a firefight between 

Mexican security forces and gunmen.24 In 2018, Mexico had 29,168 homicides, equating to 22.5 per 100,000 residents, nearly five times the homicide 

rate in the US. Between 2006 and 2018, the number of homicides in Mexico 

reached 256,428.25 This number includes all homicides, not just those related 
6

to violent cartel activity, and incorporates the deaths of government officials, 

security forces, journalists, innocent bystanders, and cartel members. By 

comparison, statistics show that civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan during this same period totaled 164,739 and 19,349 respectively, or, 184,088 in 

total.26 While this statistic measures slightly different metrics from different 

sources compared to Mexico, the significance of this comparison remains that 

the level of intentional homicides in Mexico resulting from dismal human 

security proves comparable to the combined level of civilian casualties in two 

contemporary wars.

Cartels also demonstrate capabilities akin to trained paramilitary forces. In 

1997, 31 members of the Mexican army’s elite airborne special forces group 

defected and formed the core enforcement arm for the Gulf Cartel (Cártel del 

Golfo). This group later split from the Gulf Cartel to form The Z’s (Los Zetas) 

and demonstrated sophisticated tactics by integrating intelligence operations 

with deliberate mission planning to conduct attacks using state-of-the-art 

weaponry and communication systems to rival the capabilities of Mexican 

security forces.27 In 2015, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cártel de Jalisco 

Nueva Generación, CJNG) managed to kill 15 police officers in a coordinated 

ambush and shoot down an army helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade, 

killing five soldiers.28 The high level of violence and the paramilitary capabilities of some cartels draw easy comparisons with modern irregular warfare.

Some of the violence enacted by cartels displays a level of anomie that bears 

resemblance to terrorist tactics. Anomic violence relates to purposeless and 

gruesome acts of aggression in complete contravention of societal norms and 

values. For example, in April 2011, cartel gunmen raided an apartment and 

executed an entire family, including a 22-month old toddler, to incite fear in 

the populace and rivals.29 Mexico’s attorney general’s office reported 1,303 beheadings between 2007 and 2012 as part of a campaign to instill fear and 

demonstrate dominance.30 Cartels typically leave the heads and decapitated 

bodies in view of the public. Some beheadings are posted on the internet to 

intimidate rivals and the populace to acquiesce to illicit activity. Other anomic 

violence behaviors include the use torture, car bombs, marking corpses with 

targeted messages, dismemberment, assassinations, the use of mass graves, 

and kidnapping. A November 2018 report by Amnesty International puts the 

number of unsolved kidnappings in Mexico at 35,410, a low estimate assuming the prevalence of under-reporting due to fear of reprisal.31 Homicides 

against other cartels enables access to a greater market share of the illicit narcotics economy. Anomic violence facilitates the acquiescence of state agents 

and the local community through fear. In this regard, the presence of anomic 
7

violence resembles the tactics employed by nonstate terrorist organizations 

like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or al-Qaeda.

Cartels rely primarily on corruption practices to undermine the ability of 

state institutions to interfere with their illicit economy and enable their freedom of action to conduct violent and nonviolent crimes with impunity. Corruption practices between cartels and state institutions derive from 71 years 

of political dominance by Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido 

Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) from 1929 to 2000. During this time, the 

PRI engaged in a complex scheme of bribery with cartels at the federal, state, 

and municipal levels and in turn protected the illicit narcotics trade along 

specific trafficking corridors, or plazas, that traversed territory under their 

jurisdiction. This practice extended to local, state, and federal police units as 

well as to the military and judiciary. This arrangement contributed to lower 

levels of violence (11.8 per 100,000 people in 2000).32 But the stable system 

collapsed in 2000 when the PRI lost political power to the democratically 

elected National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) under the new 

president, Vicente Fox. The change heralded a steady rise of violence in Mexico. As new PAN members took office at federal, state, and municipal levels, 

they destabilized long-standing corruption schemes used by cartels to route 

illicit narcotics through plazas into the US. PAN proved unable to resist the 

cartels’ corruption practices.

National leaders’ frequent focus on anticorruption campaigns, surveys from 

Mexican citizens on perceptions of corruption, and the high impunity rate for 

crimes seem to indicate the presence of deeply institutionalized corruption 

within Mexico. In 2010, a Department of Public Security report found that the 

majority of municipal officers received an income of $310 per month, making 

them susceptible to corruption.33 The Associated Press estimated that cartels 

pay out $100 million per month to municipal police to maintain freedom of 

action in their illicit economy.34 In response, President Calderón launched a 

“new police model” to mitigate the high level of corruption at the municipal 

level by centralizing them into a state-level organization.35 The Peña Nieto administration launched a police-wide vetting campaign in 2012.36 The current 

Obrador administration is considering appointing an intermediary to oversee 

federal-to-state money transfers to combat graft and selecting an autonomous 

attorney general to pursue corruption cases without restriction.37

In 2018, the global corruption perception index ranked Mexico 138th out of 

180 countries in the world for corruption, tying it with Russia.38 The amount of 

money used to bribe federal and state police, military units, political figures, 

and other institutions remains unknown, but the level of impunity for crime 

implies a high number. According to data from the National Institute of Statis-
8

tics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografic), there were 

154,557 murders in Mexico between 2010 and 2016, and 94.8 percent were 

never convicted.39 Article 19 reported a 99.6 percent impunity rate for crimes 

against journalists.40 The causes behind this enormous shortfall extend beyond 

corruption to a lack of police training, inefficient use of federal funds, a shortage of police officers (Mexico’s 0.8 officers per 100,000 residents falls short of 

the international average of 1.8), and the lack of homicide prosecutors.41 Attorney general agents earn a monthly average salary of $1,165; police officers, 

$265 per month; police detectives, $740 per month.42 The low pay compared to 

the enormous revenue generated by the sale of illicit narcotics creates a vector 

for corruption to take hold and contribute to criminal impunity.

High levels of violence and institutionalized corruption contribute to the 

presence of clientelism and ungoverned spaces in Mexico. Citizens have more 

incentive to support cartels than to oppose them: lack of economic opportunity and welfare from the licit economy reduce the opportunity cost. For individuals who do not actively participate in supporting the illicit drug trade, 

cartels use a combination of fear, bribery, and, in some areas, social services 

to establish a form of clientelism to minimize interference. This enables cartels to engage in widespread extortion, criminal theft and black-market resale 

of oil, film piracy, money laundering, and human trafficking.

The presence of clientelism demonstrates a breakdown of the Mexican government’s ability to monopolize the use of force and provide law and order for 

citizens in exchange for regular taxes. The states of Michoacán and Guerro 

experienced such a high level of extortion by Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacán 

(LFM), and the Knights Templar Cartel (Los Cabelleros Templarios) cartels 

that autodefensas (rural militias) grew in prominence to fight the cartels’ influence.43 The presence of clientelism and ungoverned spaces share similarities with an insurgency, where opposition groups hold legitimate authority 

and influence over a population in the absence of the government.

To varying degrees, cartels operate through a networked structure. Some 

cartels fulfill only a few functions of the illicit narcotics business and rely on 

relationships with other cartels to carry out other necessary tasks such as cultivation, manufacturing, transport, distribution, sales, and enforcement. 

These arrangements typically require cartels to pay a cuota, or tax, to those 

cartels who maintain territorial control over trafficking plazas, but they allow 

for greater specialization within each task and limit the need to conduct widespread violence against other cartels.

Many cartels possess flat organizational structures and compartmentalize 

information, enabling the organization to conduct business in the absence of 

the core leaders, to create resilience against targeting by state security forces.44
9

Some cartels conduct business along a more hierarchal and territorial model, 

whereby a clear chain of command exists to manage illicit operations across a 

larger range of functions. Large cartels like Sinaloa and CJNG possess the resources to carry out all aspects of their operations, with less reliance on relations with other cartels. However, in exerting influence or outright control 

over a large territorial area, these cartels supplant state authority and disrupt 

society to a high degree, which makes them principal targets for crackdown 

by state security forces. These large, territorial-based cartels represent warlordism in all but name. Cartels also engage in significant transnational activity that extends their destabilizing influence well beyond North America. 

Cartels exert influence over populations or maintain relationships with other 

organizations in Central and South America and transport illicit narcotics 

along the tenth degree of latitude (Highway 10) toward West Africa, where 

narcotics find their way into Europe.

Figure 1. Regional influence of DTOs in Mexico45

As of 2018, the landscape of bad actors in Mexico includes nine major cartels and over 200 local cells.46 Perpetual cartel infighting plus state security 

forces’ operations affect the number of cartels, their size and relative power and 

resources, and their territorial influence or control, thus the exact number and 
10

composition of cartels in Mexico changes too frequently to warrant a focus on 

individual groups. Instead, grouping cartels into types and regions provides a 

more usable foundation for analysis and discussion. Stratfor Global Intelligence mapped cartels according to three geographic areas: Tamaulipas state, 

Sinaloa state, and Tierra Caliente (see fig. 1, Regional Influence of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) in Mexico).47 Mexican political scientist Eduardo 

Guerrero-Gutierrez developed a typology to group cartels by their level of activity, denoting national cartels, regional cartels, toll-collector cartels, and drug 

trafficking cells (see fig. 2, Mexican DTO Typology).48 Both Stratfor’s regional 

map of influence and Guerrero-Gutierrez’s typology will change frequently as 

cartels fight among themselves or bear the brunt of state targeting.

Table 1. Mexican DTO typology49

Category Organizations

National Cartels

These DTOs control or maintain presence on numberous drug 

routes, including points of entry and exit along the northern and 

southern borders. Also, they operate major international routes to 

and from the country. Reardless of their wide territorial presence, 

they actively seek to expand control over new routes that lead to 

the north. These organizations have sought to buid upon the profits 

they receive from drug trafficking to diversify their illegal portfolios 

mainly toward oil theft, a highly lucrative and low-risk activity.

• Jalisco-Nueva 

Generación

• Los Zetas

• Sinaloa

Regional Cartels

These DTOs keep limited control over segments of drug trafficking 

routes passing through their territory. They play a secondary role in 

the drug trading business because they receive relatively smaller 

profits from it. However, these DTOs have aggressively diversified 

toward other criminal activities, such as extortion, kidnapping, oil 

theft, smuggling of goods and people, and vehicle theft.

• Golfo

• La Familia Michoacana

• Los Caballeros 

Temparios

• Pacífico Sur (Beltrán 

Leyva)

Toll-Collector Cartels

These are DTOs whose main income comes from toll fees received 

from other organizations that convey drug shipments through their 

controlled municipalities along the northern border. Given that 

these cartels are largely confined to some border municipalities, 

they cannot diversify their illegal activities as actively as other 

DTOs. If these DTOs eventuallly lose control of their respective 

border areas, they probably will disappear.

• Juárez (Carrillo Fuentes)

• Tijuana (Arellano Félix)

Drug Trafficking Cells

These DTOs are mostly disbanded cells from larger organizations. 

They are locally based; however, their range of operations can 

extend from a few contiguous localities to several states. Their 

business activities are mainly focused on small-scale drug distribution. In some cases, they have extended their illegal business 

toward extortion, kidnapping, and vehicle theft.

In total, 202 mafia cells 

have been identified. The 

states with the highest 

number of mafia cells are 

Tamaulipas (42), Guerrero 

(25), and Distrito Federal 

(24)

Source: Eduardo Guerrero-Gutiérrez, June 2015.

Notes: Information provided by Eduardo Guerrero-Gutiérrez to CRS on July 14, 2015. Spanish names used in this table 

are translated as Jalisco-Nueva Generación = Jalisco Cartel-New Generation; Golfo = Gulf; Los Caballeros Templarios = 

Knights Templar.
11

US Department of Defense joint doctrine provides a baseline to assert that 

the nature of the human security threat and the character of cartels do not 

conform to any model of warfare. Joint Publication 1 defines traditional warfare as a violent struggle between nation-states in pursuit of national interests. 

These conflicts focus military operations on the adversary’s armed forces, 

war-making capabilities, or the seizure of territory through maneuver and 

firepower. These trends also apply to irregular warfare, defined in joint doctrine as a “violent struggle among state and nonstate actors for legitimacy and 

influence over the relevant population(s).”50 As described previously, cartels 

exist as substate and transnational actors and use violence to obtain legitimacy and influence over a population in an effort not to govern, but rather to 

subvert state sovereignty, law, and order, to pursue illicit profits without interference. The population’s acquiescence toward illicit activities remain one of 

the key objectives of cartels. Thus, neither traditional nor irregular warfare 

provides a guide for dealing with this threat.

Attempts to counter cartels under a paradigm of war will inevitably fall 

short. A state may prove capable of dismantling an individual cartel though 

force, yet these efforts will only temporarily degrade the human security 

threat. Force alone cannot counter the dynamic of societal issues of psychological and biological addiction that creates demand for illicit narcotics and 

the economic underdevelopment that reward participation in its supply. This 

supply-demand dynamic does not possess a will that force can overwhelm or 

an ideology among the population to counter.

The behaviors of cartels that undermine state sovereignty and governance 

extend the problem well beyond crime and do not adequately frame the human security threat they exploit. Cartels engage in many illicit activities to 

produce a level of violence, corruption, and instability that exceeds the norms 

of criminal behavior. Some characteristics of cartels resemble elements of war, 

such as the use of violence to pursue profit objectives by other means than 

corruption (plata o plomo), widespread territorial control that resembles an 

insurgency, the deliberate use of terror tactics to instill fear and coerce government and population acquiescence, and the use of violence that resembles 

a civil war between cartels. The portfolio of cartel activity outside of the narcotics business expands into torture, extortion, kidnapping, theft, human 

trafficking, and corruption—suggesting their transcendence beyond criminality into something far more dangerous. Attempts to counter cartels using 

a crime paradigm will fall short for the same reason a war paradigm does: it 

does not solve the supply-demand dynamic underpinning the human security problems that cartels exploit. Law enforcement does not solve economic 

underdevelopment or treat drug addiction. The supply-demand dynamic cre-
12

ates an inexhaustible supply of recruits for cartels and a tremendous profit 

surplus to facilitate transnational corruption. A crime paradigm thus does 

not offer a tangible solution or end to the human security threat.

The human insecurity exploited by cartels requires its own paradigm separate from war and crime to conceptually understand. This modern Hydra derives from elemental human needs, whether they are psychological and biological addiction, or the need for financial resources for basic subsistence and 

status, or the need for belonging apart from the resources offered by family or 

religion. Reveron and Mahoney-Norris differentiate human security from national security in noting that in the former, individuals, not states, constitute 

the primary actors and the threats derive from nonstate entities and illegally 

armed groups to produce disease, poverty, and crime across transnational 

borders.51 In this lens, cartels contribute to all these pathologies, not as a 

means to profit maximization or an end in itself but rather as unintended 

spillover effects from corrupting civil institutions, undermining governance, 

and committing violence in pursuit of their illicit narcotics business. These 

differences underline the reason why a crime or warfare approach alone will 

not suffice as a solution. Reveron and Mahoney-Norris explicitly note that 

“military forces largely lack the capabilities, doctrine, and culture to confront 

these transnational security challenges.”52 This observation also extends to 

law enforcement institutions that do not possess the means or mandate to 

solve wide-ranging human security problems. The use of warfare or crime 

paradigms to combat human security fundamentally cannot address the 

causes of deficient human security.

Argument 2: War Strategy Fails to Solve Human Security

The US and Mexico failed to understand the nature of the human security 

threat. As a result, they applied the wrong strategies in their attempts at a solution. A review of the US containment and BPC strategy, Mexican counternetwork decapitation strategy, and their negative consequences for both human security and national security will support this argument.

Both the US and Mexico misidentified the nature of the problem. Carl von 

Clausewitz provided a prescient warning for strategists embarking on a military campaign: “So long as no acceptable theory, no intelligence analysis of 

war exists, routine methods will tend to take over even at the highest level.”53

The failure to properly identify the nature of the human security threat led the 

Mexican government to apply routine methods common to a war paradigm 

through a counternetwork decapitation strategy. Meanwhile, the US appears 

to support this paradigm while pursuing a strategy of containment and lim-
13

ited security force assistance. Between 2006 and 2018, these strategies proved 

insufficient and counterproductive. Illicit narcotics trafficking and violence 

increased over this 12-year period by 248 percent, along with other indicators 

of human insecurity (corruption, extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking).54

Now both nations face an increasing national security threat from the underlying human security problem.

Mexico has applied a war paradigm to execute a counternetwork decapitation strategy that spans across three federal administrations. The government 

reactively deploys centrally controlled national military units to arrest cartel 

leadership, disrupt cartel command and control, break their capacity to operate, and placate public demand for action in a fast and visible manner. Military units do not deploy as part of a proactive security campaign but as a reaction to significant public and political demands and media attention for 

government intervention. The principal metric to measure the strategy’s effectiveness is the homicide rate, despite the fact that of the 43 internationally 

determined indicators to obtain accurate homicide data, state authorities 

across Mexico comply with an average of 14.8.55 The counternetwork decapitation strategy does not exist in any open-source national security literature 

from the Mexican government. The approach described above instead derives 

from a study of government actions and behaviors since 2006.

Part of the reason for this absence of a national security strategy for tackling dismal human security and the cartels that exploit it comes from the underdeveloped state of the Mexican institutions responsible for national security policy formulation. Dedicated national security policy institutions and 

formulations did not exist until 2005. At that time, a confluence of increased 

human security issues within Mexico since the 1980s, the democratic transition away from single-party rule under the PRI, and the growing awareness of 

national security in the Mexican defense department and intelligence apparatus created the impetus for institutional change.56 The Vicente Fox administration secured passage of the National Security Law in 2005, which mandated the creation of a National Security Council to formulate a security 

police and the publishing of a periodic National Security Program and clarified roles for Mexico’s national intelligence service, the Center for Intelligence 

and National Security (CISEN). Four years later, during the Calderón administration, the 2009 National Security Program identified drug trafficking as a 

threat yet did not stipulate any end state or means to counter the problem. A 

biannual public survey by the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 

a Mexican university and think-tank, revealed in both 2008 and 2010 that 

fighting drug trafficking and organized crime constituted the primary na-
14

tional interest among Mexican residents—yet a government strategy to address these threats never materialized.57

The administration of President Felipe Calderón (2006–12) inherited an 

undefined national security strategy amid rampant institutional corruption 

and violence. In response, Calderón enacted a sporadic application of a counternetwork decapitation strategy to topple the most visibly violent and destabilizing cartels in Mexico. This approach only served to increase violence and 

balkanize cartels into greater numbers of smaller organizations. At the outset 

of his term, four major cartels existed: Arellano Félix Organization (Cártel de 

Tijuana, AFO), Sinaloa Federation, Vicente Carillo Fuentes Organization 

(Cártel de Juárez, CFO), and Gulf Cartel. These groups contributed to a homicide rate of 9.9 per 100,000 residents in January 2006. By the end of Calderón’s 

term six years later in January 2012, seven major cartels operated in Mexico 

and the homicide rate rose to 22.2 per 100,000 people.58 The AFO, CFO, 

Sinaloa Federation, and Gulf Cartel still operated but with lower capabilities 

because of the internal fracturing that occurred after the loss of their leadership cadres under the decapitation strategy. These fractured elements gave 

rise to new cartels: Cartel Pacífico Sur, Los Zetas, and LFM. The Calderón 

administration primarily relied upon military means to enact its counternetwork decapitation strategy in the belief that targeting cartel leaders would 

cement rule of law in crime-ridden areas and reduce cartel activity. Instead, 

targeting top leadership resulted in fracturing the groups, which created a 

power vacuum. Violence increased because of the high homicide rates between and within cartels as aspiring leaders fought to control elements of the 

organization and fought for plazas vacated by other groups.

Despite disorder within the military itself, the Calderón administration relied upon it to enforce public security because the state and municipal police 

forces typically charged with the prevention of crime demonstrated even 

lower capacity to deal with cartel activity. Before the Calderón administration, the Department of National Defense experienced 123,218 desertions out 

of 191,142 troops (64.5 percent) between 2000 and 2006.59 Deserters commonly found new work in the cartels themselves, which could provide much 

higher pay. The Secretaria de Marina (SEMAR, Mexican marines)—the best 

trained and most disciplined organization in the Mexican military—played a 

principal role in fulfilling Calderón’s militarized strategy, with the Secretaria 

de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA, Mexican army) contributing additional 

military means. SEMAR and SEDENA conducted operations against cartels 

to give the federal government time to enact reform to bolster law enforcement institutions. Reliance on the military created significant consequences, 

principally because the Mexican government treated cartel activity as insur-
15

gent warfare. As a result, military action aimed at the elimination of leadership did not allow for active citizen involvement in the public security of their 

municipalities. This limited the amount of actionable intelligence military 

units could acquire and complicated targeting because cartel members blend 

in with the law-abiding populace. These actions also failed to install sustainable law and order elements when military units redeployed to other locations. The use of the military during the Calderón administration did not 

coincide with a declared state of emergency, and thus military operations 

within municipalities undermined local law and order and led to abuses of 

power, such as extrajudicial killings and violations of search and seizure 

laws.60 Military units replaced local authorities in their area of operations, 

detained police officers, installed curfews, manned checkpoints along major 

lines of communication, and conducted military raids against cartel infrastructure and personnel.61

The Calderón administration’s initiative to reform municipal and state police corruption failed to transform these crime deterrence entities into a viable 

law and order entity. After Mexico’s democratic transition in 2000, government institutions at the state and municipal levels worked within a decentralized system in which the rewards offered to officials to work with (or at least 

not directly against) cartels far exceeded the pay provided by the government 

to crack down on an entrenched illicit narcotics enterprise. Police forces simply lost their crime deterrence function. Additionally, municipalities lacked 

adequate numbers of personnel for crime prevention, with half the 2,022 municipal police organizations employing 20 officials or fewer.62 Calderón attempted to launch a new police model to overcome these problems by unifying and centralizing municipal and state police into state-level organizations. 

This move gave power to state-level police forces, and undermined the federalized political system in Mexico that required the municipal level to provide 

for the welfare of its residents.63 The law presented to the Mexican Congress 

to institutionalize this new police model remained in political limbo, and only 

some states voluntarily adopted the plan.64 The push toward a centralized police model carried with it an additional and crucial drawback for law enforcement: the reduction in quantity and quality of human intelligence. Without 

persistent manpower at the local level to induce citizen participation, centralized law enforcement lacked the requisite information needed to prevent 

criminal activity. Calderón also attempted to bolster federal police force 

strength, but the effort increased the quantity of federal police agents at the 

cost of quality training. The federal police training course reduced instruction 

time from 12 to three months to accommodate the necessary throughput of 

personnel, cutting course content on leadership, integrity, codes of conduct, 
16

doctrine of intelligence and counterintelligence, culture of legality, public image, and public participation—all hallmarks of a professionalized force.65

The administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–18) persisted 

in continuing the militarized counternetwork decapitation strategy against 

cartels and failed to resolve the underlying human security problem. In January 2013, President Peña Nieto gave the first speech connecting cartels and 

Mexican security strategy. One of his five strategic principles consisted of creating a “safe Mexico with improved security and with the citizen and families 

at the center of the security policies.”66 Despite President Peña Nieto’s stated 

principle, a coherent strategy to enact it remained elusive. Peña Nieto also 

outlined a broad strategy in his 2014–18 National Security Program to combat violence, drug cultivation, and trafficking in Mexico by increasing coordination among national, state, and municipal institutions, improving access to 

actionable intelligence through a fusion intelligence center, and utilizing military forces. This strategy provided his administration time to enact 10 lines 

of effort including criminal justice reform, prison reform, and citizen participation but lacked concrete objectives necessary to measure success.67

Peña Nieto aimed to halve the homicide rate in his first six months of office, signaling the importance of this metric to measure performance. As 

pointed out by Brookings Institute foreign policy expert Vanda Felbab-Brown, 

this metric masked whether decreases of violence resulted from national 

strategy and lines of effort or from cartels establishing stable balance of power 

to facilitate their business.68 During Peña Nieto’s term, the homicide rate of 

22.2 per 100,000 residents increased to 24.6 per 100,000 residents by January 

2018. The seven major cartels broke into nine flatter cartels and over 200 cartel cells, and they constructed smaller, more networked organizations.69

Peña Nieto’s approach, like Calderón’s, failed to establish sustainable law 

and order after military operations. Military units continued to succeed in 

conducting decapitation operations and win the local battles against cartels 

but failed to win the ensuing peace their improved security provided because 

of the absence of sustained law and order reforms. Peña Nieto’s continuation of 

Calderón’s decapitation strategy manifested in the death or capture of 69 cartel 

leaders out of a list of 122 high-value targets during his first year in office. 

SEMAR and SEDENA focused on the most violent cartels, particularly Los 

Zetas, LFM, and its successor Knights Templar Cartel.70 Violence decreased in 

2013, but the reduction fell well short of his 50 percent reduction promise.

While new balances of power developed and likely contributed to temporary reductions in violence, the manufacture, distribution, and sale of illicit 

narcotics continued to undermine human security though kidnapping, extortion, and corruption of institutions. Metrics to measure the rate of kidnap-
17

ping and extortion vary and remain underreported given the potential consequences of punishment by cartels for providing the government with credible 

information that could lead to their arrest or prosecution.71 The absence of 

sustained public security resulted in the rise of rural militias in the states of 

Michoacán and Guerrero. As the militias grew in popularity as a counter to 

local cartels, Peña Nieto responded by deploying military personnel to decapitate cartel leadership. He attempted to disarm and reintegrate the militias 

into the Mexican security apparatus as a rural defense corps. Several militias 

resisted the federal government’s attempts to disarm them and continued to 

operate independently while others evolved into fronts for cartels.72

In the aftermath of military operations against cartel leadership, all the 

structural conditions remained in place to fuel the narcotic supply-demand 

dynamic: the large profit margins of illicit trafficking; the lack of socioeconomic programs to reintegrate criminals into society; the lack of adequately 

motivated or trained law and order personnel to deter and prevent crime; the 

drug demand from the US. Instead of operating in hierarchal and centralized 

organizations, cartels evolved into transactional networks, with organizations 

focused on trafficking over territorial control. Cartels demonstrated a greater 

aptitude for working with other groups through partnerships. In this manner, 

cartels resemble a Hydra, capable of entirely regrowing a lost appendage or 

producing an entirely new and separate organism.

Thus far, the counternetwork decapitation strategy only resulted in increased levels of homicides and a far greater number of decentralized cartels. 

The branches of the larger cartels typically operate in small areas and lack the 

organizational, resource, and messaging capacity to deter violent acts from 

other cartels. As a result, these smaller groups possess less deterrent power 

within the greater cartel enterprise as they seek to increase their illicit market 

share. When this increasingly crowded, hypercompetitive market combined 

with the lower levels of leadership experience among cartels as a result of the 

decapitation strategy and a unique narco culture, violence naturally increased. 

The increased violence and instability caused by cartel fragmentation after 

decapitation outweighs the effects of increasingly networked groups willing 

to negotiate mutually beneficial arrangements to conduct business.

Peña Nieto’s other initiatives failed to fix the underlying human security 

conditions needed to inhibit the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic. Peña 

Nieto moved both the federal police and Secretariat of Public Security under 

the Ministry of the Interior to improve coordination between Mexican and US 

law enforcement. The change disrupted long-standing cooperation between 

the US and SEMAR, Mexico’s most capable and least corrupt security organization and did nothing to alter the execution of its decapitation strategy. A new 
18

fusion intelligence center received increased funding and manpower to facilitate information sharing between Mexico and the US, but it primarily focused 

on strategic analysis. An attempt to erect a civilian paramilitary national gendarmerie of 40,000–60,000 officers to police rural areas culminated in only 

5,000 candidates attached to the federal police. The gendarmerie initiative suffered from both a lack of funding as well as a lack of suitable recruits; it relied 

on enrollment from former SEDENA and SEMAR operatives. A one-time police vetting initiative produced dismal results, identifying an insignificant 

number of corrupt officials given the widespread perception of bribery and 

criminal impunity (as little as 2 percent in some states).73

In 2014, the Mexican Congress reformed the military justice code to clamp 

down on human rights abuses conducted by military forces. The reform required that abuses committed by military members face investigation and 

prosecution under the civilian criminal justice system instead of the military 

system.74 A 2017 US State Department report indicated that human rights 

abuses by the Mexican military still occur and yield low rates of conviction.75

In 2017 alone, the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office reported 4,390 

torture cases under review.76 The current criminal justice system allows for 

arraigo, a form of preventative detention, whereby the military or police can 

hold people up to 80 days without charge.77 The reliance on the military to 

conduct a decapitation strategy directly correlates to these abuses and further 

undermines human security and the public’s trust in Mexican institutions.

Under Peña Nieto, Mexican security forces also increased drug eradication 

and interdiction operations. Security forces seized 26.5 metric tons (MT) of 

methamphetamines, 10.2 tons of cocaine, and 1,346.4 MT of marijuana from 

April 2014 to September 2015, a 74 percent, 186 percent, and 45 percent increase respectively compared to the same period from 2013 to 2014. Security 

forces also seized 272 drug laboratories in 2016, a 90 percent increase over 

2015.78 Drug eradication efforts prove difficult in Mexico because of difficulties accessing cultivation sites in remote and mountainous terrain along the 

Sierra Madre Occidental region, small plot sizes, and lack of economic programs available to encourage farmers to convert to other crops.79

On the socioeconomic front, in 2013 the Peña Nieto administration 

launched a crime prevention program in 57 areas known as poligonos (polygons) and secured passage of medical marijuana legalization. Within each 

polygon, the federal government funded a variety of initiatives: youth activities, drug treatment programs, focused employment opportunities, and increased school resources. The programs obtained inputs from municipal and 

community leaders to focus projects within each polygon to suit local conditions and counter the root causes of cartel participation.
19

The program demonstrated several shortfalls. It lacked a coherent application and produced polygons of different sizes throughout Mexico with no 

standard criteria for application in one area as opposed to another. It also did 

not account for the influence of crime that crosses the invisible border surrounding a polygon from outside areas. Lastly, it lacked a clear means to measure the effectiveness of a polygon’s socioeconomic initiatives to reduce violence and narcotics trafficking.80 In June 2017, despite 60 percent of Mexicans 

disapproving of the right to grow and use recreational marijuana, Peña Nieto 

signed into law a provision allowing medical marijuana use.81 This legislation 

will likely accelerate the demise of the illicit marijuana market, in conjunction 

with Canada’s complete recreational legalization in June 2018 and partial US 

legalization.82 The fact that the majority of Mexicans disapproved of their supreme court’s decision to uphold recreational use implies that efforts to decriminalize or legalize other illicit narcotics will face significant challenges.

The administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018–

present) did not promise any drastic change in strategy to address underlying 

human security threats. A month after his inauguration in December 2018, 

homicides in Mexico stood at 24.6 per 100,000 residents. The CJNG, based in 

the Tierra Caliente region, poses the most overt threat to Mexico, possessing 

assets valued at over $20 billion, operating in 22 states, sharing ties with the 

local militias in Michoacán, and contributing to the record levels of homicides 

in 2018.83 In 2015, CJNG demonstrated its operational capability by shooting 

down an army helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade.84 Its transnational 

connections throughout Central and South America, control over prime cultivation areas, and access to major ports used to acquire synthetic drug precursor chemicals provide it with the means to aggressively expand and overtly 

undermine Mexico’s control over its own population.85 In this context, President Obrador ran on a campaign promising to demilitarize the state’s war on 

cartels. He won over 53 percent of the vote in a three-way election and should 

benefit from his party’s control in both houses of congress.

President Obrador faces the task of synchronizing the realities of a domestic 

threat as pervasive as CJNG with his aspirational policy promises. In a complete reversal of campaign promises, his Plan Nacional de Paz y Seguridad (National Plan for Peace and Security) calls for the creation of a national guard. 86

The national guard will combine both SEMAR and SEDENA battalions with 

elements of the federal police under the Ministry of Defense. The initiative 

seeks to recruit 150,000 troops within three years and provide training, discipline, and equipment mirroring current military arms.87 His initiative effectively ends the federal police as a separate entity and does not provide additional resources to state or municipal police forces to conduct civilian law 
20

enforcement duties.88 The implementation of this plan remains far off and requires no fewer than 16 constitutional amendments.89 The Obrador administration also seeks to abolish the CISEN intelligence agency and replace it with 

a new national intelligence agency under a renovated Department of Public 

Security that had been disbanded under the Peña Nieto administration in 

2012.90 Other initiatives under consideration include decriminalizing marijuana and regulating medical opium use, providing amnesty for low-level 

criminals and disadvantaged youth, appointing an intermediary to oversee 

federal-to-state money transfers to combat graft, and appointing an autonomous attorney general to pursue corruption cases without restriction.91

The proposed security initiatives under the Obrador administration represent a continuation of his predecessors’ counternetwork decapitation strategy 

via a rearrangement of existing security institutions. Both the Calderón and 

Peña Nieto administrations enacted similar reforms with no noticeable effect 

on the problem. Obrador’s decriminalization initiative will likely make minimal impact on the hypercompetitive drug market because it does not and cannot solve the enormous drug demand from the US. Amnesty for even lowlevel criminals may undermine the government in the eyes of law-abiding 

families who suffer at the hands of cartels. Amnesty also does not solve the 

underlying conditions that motivate people to work for cartels. The use of an 

intermediary to fight graft only adds people to a system thoroughly penetrated 

by cartel corruption. Fundamentally, the Obrador administration remains 

committed to a war paradigm to resolve a human security problem and continues the trend of misdiagnosing the nature of the problem it seeks to tackle.

Meanwhile, the US supports this paradigm and, in response, pursues a 

strategy of containment at the border and BPC to support Mexico’s counternetwork decapitation approach. In 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the drug violence in Mexico as an insurgency similar to the 

conflict against cartels and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

(FARC) in Colombia.92 The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) links cartels 

with crimes that exploit gaps in governance to fuel the opioid epidemic, corruption of democratic institutions, and violence within communities. The 

NSS lays out its approach to counter this threat via improved border control 

and immigration policy along with defeating transnational criminal organizations at their source. The strategy also calls for the “construction of a border 

wall, the use of multilayered defenses and advanced technology, the employment of additional personnel, and other measures” as the means to improve 

border control and immigration. This containment approach seeks to limit 

some of the spillover effects of poor human security. The NSS also supports 

the use of US agencies and foreign partners to “target [transnational criminal 
21

organization] leaders and their support infrastructure.”93 The US applies a variety of mechanisms to facilitate the counternetwork decapitation strategy 

within Mexico.

The Mérida Initiative

The main US effort to build partner capacity with Mexico came under the 

bilateral Mérida Initiative launched in 2007 under Congressional appropriations for fiscal year 2008. As of March 2017, the US Congress appropriated 

$2.8 billion in funds toward the initiative. Of that amount, the US delivered 

$1.6 billion in assistance to Mexico under Mérida’s four pillars: disrupting the 

operational capacity of organized crime, institutionalizing reforms to sustain 

rule of law and respect for human rights, creating a twenty-first century border, and building strong and resilient communities.94

The initiative included a pledge from the US government to tackle domestic drug demand and the trafficking of weapons and bulk currency that fuel 

cartel activity. A government accountability report found that 70 percent of 

firearms seized between 2009 and 2014 originated from the US.95 The bulk 

currency enables cartels to finance illegal wages and bribes in cash that prove 

more difficult to track and target. Between 2007 and 2017, 74 percent of 

Mérida’s $2.8 billion of appropriations went to narcotics control and law enforcement efforts while only 10.3 percent funded economic development and 

15.7 percent funded military equipment and training.96 Thus far, the Mérida 

Initiative lacks useful metrics to measures its progress, and reports tend to 

focus on statistics like the number of at-risk youths counseled, the number of 

police vetted, or the numbers of judiciary officials trained.

Mérida shares responsibility for some of the positive developments in 

Mexico, such as the increased number of cartel members extradited to the US 

where the criminal justice system offers a better capability to convict top leaders. Mérida also helped Mexico transition to its accusatorial justice system in 

2016, improve its correctional facilities to a degree where 55 of them received 

international accreditation, and successfully apprehend 150,000 migrants in 

2015 and 2016.97

The initial years of Mérida focused funds on the transfer of military equipment and technical assistance. These efforts aligned with the Calderón administration’s use of military personnel to conduct a counternetwork decapitation strategy. Under Mérida, Mexico received four CASA-235 aircraft for 

surveillance, nine UH-60 Blackhawk and eight Bell 412 helicopters to enhance mobility for raids and interdiction efforts in both urban and rural areas, and a Dornier 328JET for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. 
22

Mérida also provided $873.7 million in nonintrusive inspection equipment, 

forensic technology, and canine teams during the Calderón years and another 

$146 million in training.98 Training occurred via an instructional pyramid 

approach whereby US specialists trained Mexican personnel who then served 

as the instructor corps to disseminate this training to Mexican security forces.

During the latter years of the Calderón and throughout the Peña Nieto 

administrations, the Obama administration tailored Mérida toward institution building, economic development, and community-based social programs and put fewer resources into equipment and technical assistance transfers. These efforts coincided with Peña Nieto’s implementation of the poligonos

community program, the legalization of medical marijuana, police vetting, 

and a security force professionalization initiative. In 2012, Mérida’s foreign 

military financing came to an end and shifted to bilateral military assistance 

under the US Department of Defense. In 2014, the US Congress reappropriated 15 percent of the assistance slated for Mexican security forces because of 

human rights concerns prohibited by the Leahy Act. Law enforcement cooperation endured under such programs as the US Immigrations and Customs’ 

Border Enforcement Security Task Force and the Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit. In 2015, Mérida funded a $75 million biometrics program 

and in 2016, another $75 million for a secure telecommunications infrastructure between US and Mexican law enforcement offices along the border. 

Mérida appropriations partially enabled Mexico’s transition from a closedroom justice system that relied on written statements to the US model of an 

adversarial and accusatorial justice system using oral testimony and witnesses 

in court. This change necessitated significant law enforcement and judicial 

professionalization, partially funded by Mérida appropriations, to codify 

standards, vet police officers, centralize personnel records, run state-level 

academies and training courses, acquire audio and video recording equipment for oral proceedings, improve prosecutor and judicial capacity, and conduct public outreach.99

Mérida appropriations also support efforts by the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection to secure the border. 

Mérida partially funds a Mexican customs training academy to enhance their 

agents’ ability to perform inbound inspections and created a Border Bilateral 

Executive Steering Committee.

The Mérida Initiative does not clarify who bears inspection responsibility 

for the flow of drugs north and the flow of money and weapons south, nor 

does it address how to do so effectively without halting the flow of licit products across the border. The US Department of State provided another $24 

million in Mérida funds toward equipment, canine teams, and training for 
23

security forces along Mexico’s southern border. The US Agency for International Development devoted $90 million in Mérida funds to community support programs such as outreach to at-risk youth and programs to encourage 

citizen participation in crime prevention, while the US State Department focused efforts on programs for “drug demand reduction, culture of lawfulness, 

and government accountability.”100

The Trump administration reverted to the Bush administration’s approach 

to prioritize the Mérida Initiative’s first pillar of disrupting organized criminal 

groups and placed lower emphasis on providing resources toward Mexico’s 

institutions, economic development, and community programs. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Homeland Security Secretary John 

Kelly met with their Mexican counterparts in May 2017 and produced a statement concerning the need “to disrupt and destroy criminal organizations 

which threaten our citizens, our communities, and our country.”101 The 2018 

budget request for Mérida amounted to only $54 million, 38.8 percent less 

than fiscal year 2017.102

Department of Defense efforts align with this refocus on Mérida’s first pillar by supporting the counternetwork decapitation strategy. At Peterson AFB, 

Colorado, US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), in close coordination 

with US Southern Command and US Special Operations Command, provides forces to actively identify and disrupt threat networks, lead the military 

BPC effort, and support combined law enforcement efforts.103 The DOD spent 

$64.2 million in 2016 to provide military training and equipment to Mexican 

security forces in its BPC effort.104 USNORTHCOM provided training courses 

in information fusion, surveillance, interdiction, and logistics and well as 

equipment like communication devices, night vision devices, boats, and aircraft upgrades.105 To combat cartels, USNORTHCOM also provided smallunit tactical training to 1,500 Mexican marines in 2017.106 These initiatives 

facilitated Mexico’s ability to pursue its counternetwork decapitation strategy.

Despite the significant efforts of US and Mexican civil servants working to 

implement the Mérida Initiative, it remains insufficient in scope to tackle the 

underlying human security problem and lacks adequate metrics to measure 

its effectiveness. The $1.6 billion delivered under Mérida and hundreds of 

millions under DOD initiatives are insubstantial compared to the $100 billion 

that Mexico has invested in its own security and public safety since 2007.107

US monetary, training, and intelligence contributions to Mexico’s security approach only exacerbated the negative consequences of the counternetwork 

decapitation strategy. Mexican security forces, armed with US equipment 

from the Mérida Initiative, intelligence from bilateral cooperation agree-
24

ments, and military tactics and techniques from USNORTHCOM personnel, 

applied these tools to unseat cartel leadership.

In doing so, they facilitated instability within the hypercompetitive illicit 

market that produced increased violence, as cartel infighting ensued to establish control over resources and plazas. Despite small successes in judicial reform and increased extradition agreements, the US BPC strategy failed by 

every conceivable metric available: homicide rates, illegal immigration entries, corruption, and drug cultivation. The use of a decapitation strategy in a 

militarized anticrime approach, and the US contribution to its execution, 

yielded counterproductive results.

The US containment strategy also yields unproductive results in solving 

the human security dilemma. While heightened border security increases the 

capacity of border agencies to detect and detain illegal migrants, it also produces a counterproductive effect in the long term. The current zero tolerance 

policy toward illegal entries, barriers to asylum application, and long delays 

for legal entry combine to motivate people fleeing Mexico because of deficient 

human security to pursue human trafficking options. Cartels dominate this 

human trafficking business because they can capitalize on their established 

plazas into the US to smuggle people and narcotics.108 The implementation of 

a containment strategy via increased border security also raises the risk for 

cartels to transport drugs into the US, thus increasing costs.

This dynamic cuts into cartel profits and helps explain their incentive to 

expand into other illegal markets like human trafficking and kidnapping for 

profit.109 Border security focused on the control of illegal entry and illicit narcotics does little to correct the flow of revenue and weapons from the US 

south into Mexico. Containment also must contend with the reality that the 

level of screening necessary to stop illicit activity from crossing established 

legal points of entry along bridges, roads, and ports will likely stifle the flow 

of licit goods. Enacting the level of security necessary to interdict human trafficking and drug smuggling can produce an economic crisis and lead to even 

higher levels of instability within Mexico as economic privation worsens and 

cartels battle for a share of an even smaller revenue stream.

Both the US and Mexico applied incoherent national security strategies to 

solve what amounted to a human security threat. This result stems directly 

from a fundamental failure to understand the nature of the problem. Mexico 

and the US favored a variety of strategies for only the symptoms of human 

insecurity.110 Counternetwork decapitation can yield results in combating 

violent extremist networks and insurgencies, because those types of threats 

typically possess a hierarchy of leadership that formulates rational policy 

aimed toward defeating a state or increasing its influence and legitimacy to 
25

govern. When applied to a human security threat fueled by societal issues like 

drug addiction and economic underdevelopment, however, the strategy eliminates targets who have no control over the narcotic supply-demand dynamic.

Containment seeks to reduce the symptom of illegal entries. It can produce 

results in a long-term grand strategy against a rational state actor because it 

threatens traditional military force for the infringement of sovereignty or security interests. But when applied to a human security threat where no rational state actor can be held accountable for illegal entries and targeted by traditional military force, containment bears no deterrence or coercive power. 

BPC seeks to correct multiple symptoms of deficient human security, including corruption and violence. Yet facilitating the ability of a partner nation to 

execute an ineffective strategy more efficiently only exacerbates the counterproductive results of decapitation.

Some elements of the US BPC strategy, notably in civic reform, economic 

development, and social programs, address more than the symptoms of human security. These BPC initiatives outside of decapitation and containment 

address the narcotic supply-demand dynamic by targeting some of the economic incentives and social enablers that entice people to participate in the 

supply end. However, when applied with insufficient resources, like the 

Mérida Initiative, the effort cannot produce any fundamental changes in the 

human security dilemma.

Argument 3: The Strategic Paradox of the 

Human Security Threat

The policy measure necessary to solve the human security problem introduces a strategic paradox that inhibits its adoption by the US and Mexico. 

Comprehensive domestic policy reforms to legalize narcotics within the US 

and Mexico can end the illicit narcotics supply-demand dynamic fueling deficient human security. This option will prove politically difficult to implement within states, produce public health challenges, and require multilateral 

cooperation. More importantly, a legalization strategy creates a duality of interests between the state and cartels over a resource and sets the conditions 

for widespread economic grievances that can stimulate an insurgency and 

transform a human security problem into a war.

The US and Mexico militarized counternetwork decapitation strategy will 

never prove capable of re-establishing widespread law and order within 

Mexico because it does not integrate long-term public security, law enforcement, economic development, and social programs to alter the incentives for 

residents to participate in the illicit drug trade and its offshoot criminal ac-
26

tivities. Decapitation strategies increase the risks for those involved in the 

drug trade and force cartels to devote resources to self-protection; however, 

decapitation holds no deterrent value as evidenced by the continued prevalence of the illicit market. Decapitation strategies do allow the state to enact 

justice upon those who exploit deficient human security and commit criminal acts. The endemic corruption within Mexico and high impunity rate severely limits the ability of Mexico to swiftly and persistently hold criminals 

accountable for their actions.

A whole-of-government strategy that provides persistent security for economic, political, and social initiatives to take hold suffers from a lack of financial and manpower resources. Mexico’s police density ranges from 366 to 370 

officers per 100,000 residents, 150 percent more than US levels.111 These numbers include military personnel performing law enforcement duties. Poor pay 

and inadequate training undercut police effectiveness in providing security 

and appear to exacerbate the perception of corruption and criminal immunity. Efforts by federal administrators to reform law enforcement institutions 

proved inadequate to correct these shortfalls. It remains unclear where Mexico can find or develop trained and incorruptible police forces to provide persistent security, nor do they appear willing to ask for or permit a US military 

and law enforcement ground presence to augment their internal security. This 

shortfall in public security keeps economic, political, and social programs 

from taking root because cartels remain free to coerce and intimidate residents into avoiding participation in said programs, while extorting revenue 

from licit businesses and assassinating officials who promote policies against 

the illicit narcotics business. Even with adequate public security, Mexico requires substantial economic investment to alter the underlying underdevelopment and poverty that fuel the narcotic supply-demand dynamic.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, 46.2 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and as much as 25 percent of the labor force 

is unemployed.112 The reality is cartel activity produces enormous profits that 

can sustain people’s economic needs through a salary or bribery. It is not clear 

how the Mexican government can acquire the financial resources to improve 

its economic opportunities enough to reduce participation in the illicit narcotics market. US economic investment through the Mérida Initiative and 

other programs does not offer much promise in overturning this trend, especially given the current US focus on rejuvenating its domestic economy and 

revising economic relationships.113

In the political realm, the cartels’ ability to facilitate corruption as well as 

undermine civil governance through terror tactics severely limits Mexico’s 

capacity to enact reforms and enforce compliance to solve these problems. A 
27

civil law and order enforcement strategy would allow Mexico to mitigate the 

spillover effects of the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic, hold citizen 

rights sacrosanct to facilitate civic participation, and deter corruption practices to incentivize more responsive governance.114 Despite these potential 

benefits, Mexico does not possess the means to conduct a deliberate and effective civil law and order enforcement strategy. Additionally, enacting this 

strategy only focuses on the symptoms of poor human security such as high 

levels of violence and corruption. It does not alter the economic underdevelopment fueling the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic. However, if Mexico proved able to enact and enforce this strategy, it would at least inhibit the 

ability of cartels to exploit human insecurity, as well as set the conditions for 

follow-on social and economic initiatives.

Since both a civic law and order strategy and a decapitation strategy appear 

unfeasible, policy makers may defer to a blended civil-military clear-holdbuild counterinsurgency strategy like the one that yielded results in Colombia. The US BPC experience in Colombia presents US policy makers with a 

beguiling analogy, because counterinsurgency efforts blended with counternarcotics operations as both insurgents and criminal groups relied on the illicit drug trade for revenue.

However, the contextual differences between Colombia and Mexico undermine the value of this analogy. First, US assistance to Colombia greatly 

outmatched the aid provided to Mexico. US Special Forces and other advisors 

provided robust military training and equipment to paramilitary counternarcotics commandos known as junglas as well as to mobile brigades in Colombia’s Joint Task Force Omega. US BPC efforts also provided rotary and fixedwing aircraft, training, and parts critical for operating in remote areas for 

sustained periods. In all, the US invested $5.34 billion between 2000 and 2006 

to build the capacity of Colombian security forces to counter the FARC, National Liberation Army, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, and the Medellin and Cali organizations. By comparison, from 2007 to 2018, US aid to 

Mexico amounted to only $1.6 billion. Additionally, the Leahy Act prevents 

the US DOD and Department of State from training organizations implicated 

for human rights violations. This restriction did not exist during US BPC efforts in Colombia where groups implicated in human rights abuses received 

direct support and training.115

 The US BPC strategy layered on top of an effective clear-hold-build counterinsurgency strategy. This type of population-centric strategy proved far 

more effective than the decapitation strategy applied in Mexico because it allowed for localized security and follow-on economic, political, and social reforms. In Mexico, the US BPC effort only exacerbates an ineffective decapita-
28

tion strategy. Despite the benefits of a clear-hold-build counterinsurgency 

strategy, this approach is not readily transferrable to Mexico. Colombia experienced a rural insurgency fueled by ideology, political grievances, and economic inequality between urban and rural residents and could find resolution 

through a war paradigm and political bargaining. Mexico does not share 

these characteristics. Instead, the country suffers from a widespread lack of 

economic opportunity rather than urban-rural inequality and does not have 

an ideological or political element to negotiate with.116 While clear-hold-build 

may provide a template for a law and order strategy, it cannot solve the illicit 

narcotic supply-demand dynamic unpinning the symptoms of human insecurity in Mexico.

The strategic paradox to human security thus presents itself: the logical policy that the US and Mexico should follow to break the illicit narcotic supplydemand dynamic will create the conditions for an insurgency. The three strategies presented for Mexico—counternetwork decapitation, civil law and order 

enforcement, and clear-hold-build counterinsurgency—do not address the 

demand for illicit narcotics from the US that fuels the human security threat. 

The US BPC and border control strategy also does not address the demand 

side of the illicit narcotics trade but instead amounts to an attempt to contain 

the spillover effects of human insecurity to Mexico. In this effort, the US strategy fundamentally fails as seen by increased levels of violence, drug trafficking, 

institutional corruption, and continued migratory pressure.

From an academic standpoint, a logical strategy option entails sweeping 

domestic policy reform to legalize drugs within both the US and Mexico. Doing so allows both governments to control cultivation, manufacture, distribution, transportation, and sales. It also allows both governments to regulate 

dosage and composition and provide robust drug treatment programs and 

education to a wider audience. A legalization policy also directly targets the 

core of the human security dilemma by eliminating the illegal supply-demand 

dynamic and replacing it with a legal one. This change reduces the incentives 

for cartels to use violence and bribery to increase their market share because 

the state, or even regulated businesses operating within a low-risk legal framework, controls the drug trade. A state or business producing and transporting 

drugs under a legal framework can undercut competition from illicit sources 

because they hold a comparative advantage from reduced costs, improved efficiency, and less risk. The resultant reduction in violence and corruption 

could allow Mexican institutions to enact economic, social, and political reforms to improve human security.

Two often-overlooked precedents support legalization of consciousnessaltering and addictive psychoactive drugs: alcohol and nicotine, both major 
29

contributors to public health problems, criminality, and accidental death. Despite the potential benefits of a legalization strategy and the precedents for it, 

widespread public opposition to drug legalization and legitimate concerns 

over its public health effects will realistically make the strategy extremely difficult for politicians to legislate into law in the future. In a 2015 poll, 60 percent of Mexicans noted their disapproval of a person’s right to grow and use 

recreational marijuana (a less drastic domestic reform than legalization).117 In 

a 2018 poll, only 62 percent of Americans approve of marijuana legalization.118

Although similar polls for other illicit drugs like cocaine and methamphetamines do not exist, an overwhelming majority in favor of comprehensive 

drug legalization seems unlikely.

Additionally, legalization will require multinational cooperation and potentially near-simultaneous implementation. If the US and Mexico legalized 

drugs, then cartels would likely increase their supply distribution to African 

and Western European markets where prices remain high. This would facilitate the immortal and regenerative nature of the illicit narcotics supplydemand dynamic. Without multinational cooperation toward legalization, 

cartels will still employ violence and bribery to control new plazas in new 

hypercompetitive markets.

While a legalization strategy appears logical, it presents a paradox. In addition to the public health and social consequences, the legalization of drugs in 

the US and Mexico would create the conditions for a full-blown insurgency. 

Although implementation will likely involve the state coopting some cartel 

elements as cultivators or manufacturers, it will dispossess most people involved in the previously illegal narcotics enterprise. When combined with the 

economic underdevelopment and poverty within Mexico, this creates the 

conditions for an insurgency: an economic grievance as a result of the loss of 

both legal and illegal revenue-generating opportunities, the presence of 

armed hierarchical organizations that share a history of resistance to law and 

order, and ungoverned and semigoverned spaces that provide sanctuary from 

which an insurgency can organize and operate.

Although the Mexican military appears to be capable of defeating any insurgent group in a tactical engagement, they do not hold the numbers necessary to clear-hold-build and enforce law and order by themselves. As recent 

US experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, counterinsurgency requires a long-term commitment of significant resources in both 

money and manpower to produce results in establishing government legitimacy and influence over the population and solving core grievances. Legalization also creates a duality of objectives between the state and cartels as both 

now seek to maximize market share of a resource that provides profits. If the 
30

state gains control over narcotics, then cartels simultaneously lose access to 

them in equal proportion. This changes the nature of the problem from a human security to a war paradigm. Thus, while a legalization strategy can break 

the illicit narcotic supply-demand dynamic and hypercompetitive illicit economy that fuels deficient human security, it will create the conditions for a war 

that bears consequences for rights and needs of individual human beings in 

Mexico. Given this paradox between the logical strategy solution of drug legalization and the capacity of that solution to create the conditions for war, 

the US and Mexico face few good options.

Conclusion: The Hydra of North America

Several things could alleviate some of the negative spillover effects to solve 

the root cause of the human security threat to the US and Mexico. First, Mexico must abandon its counternetwork decapitation strategy, and the US must 

stop supporting it. It motivates cartels to adapt and network, making them 

more resilient. It also splits cartels into larger numbers that make the market 

even more crowded and thus increases incentives to use violence and corruption to enhance market share in a highly competitive illicit economy.

Second, Mexico must apply a clear-hold-build construct to a law and order 

enforcement strategy. This involves using trained, capable, and incorruptible 

security elements to enforce law and order in a localized area and reward 

public participation, while avoiding any violations of civil rights. This approach may require military elements with the equipment and training to 

counter the paramilitary capabilities of some cartels. Then, capable law enforcement entities can provide preventative security measures to deter crime. 

This security approach can allow for robust social, economic, and political 

reforms to alleviate economic underdevelopment and alter the historical public acquiescence to criminal activity in Mexico. Given the lack of trained and 

capable security elements to conduct this approach, Mexico must accept the 

reality that it can only execute this approach in small areas. As it meets governance conditions that limit the spillover effects from the illicit narcotics enterprise, Mexican security forces could expand their operations into another 

small, adjacent area.

Mexico can implement these measures in areas experiencing the highest 

levels of violence; in areas critical for political governance, such as Mexico 

City; in areas critical for economic growth, such as Monterrey; or in areas 

resembling ungoverned space, such as the Michoacán or Guerrero states.

Third, the US and Mexico need to find a way to increase BPC efforts in both 

manpower and money. The enormous capacity and capabilities of the US can 
31

accelerate the ability of Mexico to execute a clear-hold-build law and order enforcement strategy. Without greater US assistance, the timeline necessary to 

carry out this approach will likely exceed the patience of democratic electorates.

These three strategy recommendations will not end the human security 

threat or the flow of illicit narcotics into the US but can reduce the levels of 

violence, kidnapping, extortion, and corruption within Mexico to manageable levels. These recommendations provide a means to mitigate these effects 

on society and in the region.

Analyzing the nature of the threat to the US and Mexico reveals the difficult and limited strategy options available. The failure of American and Mexican strategists to apply the academic rigor necessary to understand the nature of the threat and the character of the enemy resulted in their 

misidentification of a human security threat as a war and a crime problem. 

Consequently, both countries relied upon familiar stratagems to deal with the 

most visible symptoms of the deficient human security: high levels of violence. Mexican counternetwork decapitation strategy aimed to keep cartels 

from conducting coordinated violence that undermined public security. The 

use of military personnel to arrest or kill cartel leadership yielded short-term 

victories that undermined long-term stability. Decapitation disrupted cartel 

operations and forced them to adapt, become more resilient, or divide into 

greater numbers of networked organizations, which increased violence.

Decapitation represented “a way of battle more than a way of war.”119 It 

proved capable of tactical and operational victories but in the long term undermined Mexico’s ability to achieve its political objective of reduced violence. The US enabled this trend through its BPC strategy. The Mérida Initiative provided SEDENA, SEMAR, and some police units with training, 

equipment, and intelligence support to cement tactical and operational advantages over cartels. However, the BPC effort did not contribute appreciable 

resources that could facilitate the economic, political, and social changes 

needed to mitigate the effects of deficient human security. The US BPC strategy only made an ineffective Mexican security strategy more efficient at decapitation. Meanwhile, US containment strategy mitigated some of the spillover effects of deficient human security, notably in illegal entries and violence, 

but failed to stem the tide of illicit narcotics entering the US market. The 

public health results of this failure prove staggering and represent a clear challenge to US national security.

The DEA identified Mexico as the primary supplier of heroin into the 

United States.120 Cartels produced 111 MT of pure heroin and cultivated 

44,100 hectares of poppy in 2017, indirectly contributing to 16,000 heroin 

overdoses in the US in 2017 alone.121 The threat does not come from a tradi-
32

tional or irregular enemy but instead from deficient human security fueled by 

an illicit narcotics supply-demand dynamic. The only strategy option to break 

this dynamic involves legalizing drugs in Mexico and the US, but adopting 

that strategy will contribute to transforming a human security threat into an 

insurgent threat, not to mention the public health and social consequences of 

legalization for the US and Mexico.

Neither the US nor Mexico possesses the doctrine or military best practices to deal with a human security threat. Efforts to employ war and law and 

order enforcement approaches have proven inadequate given the nature of 

the problem. The deficient human security emanates from an environment of 

economic underdevelopment that motivates people to accept the risks involved in the illicit narcotics market, to pursue the potentially enormous profits that can meet basic economic subsistence levels. The potential for biological and psychological addiction in people creates the demand to fund these 

illegal activities in pursuit of profits. Killing or arresting cartel leadership does 

nothing to change this dynamic because an inexhaustible supply of economically dispossessed people will fill the vacancies. This reality makes the human 

security threat and cartels regenerative, able to reconstitute leadership and 

enforcers as well as rebuild networks to perpetuate the supply of illicit narcotics into the US.

The human insecurity that cartels exploit produces a wide variety of spillover effects, making the problem multifaceted. The problem involves not only 

homicides but also institutional corruption, drug use and addiction, kidnapping, extortion, migration, human trafficking, criminal impunity, money 

laundering, human rights violations, and regional instability.122 These issues 

all produce poisonous effects for human security.

The human security dilemma in the US and Mexico remains a strategic 

blind spot for the United States. Mexico displays several characteristics that, if 

left unchecked, can lead to a slow accommodation with state decay. Unchecked corruption and any further expansion of the cartels’ ability to coerce 

political processes and citizen participation can fuse their lucrative illicit 

economy into the normal functioning of the state, requiring the government 

to co-opt these groups as the only means to reduce violence.123

While Mexico is not a failed state politically, socially, economically, or militarily—and is not close to the brink—the human security threat undermines 

all these elements of state sovereignty over a generational timeline. Mexico 

possesses the eleventh largest economy in the world at $2.4 trillion and remains the US’s second-largest export market and third-largest source of 

imports,124 but these statistics mask the enormous human security problem 

brewing throughout the region.
33

Potential state collapse in Mexico or the long-term social and economic consequences of illicit narcotics use in the US will undermine the US’s ability to 

sustain a favorable balance of power across the globe. Drug use and addiction 

reduce human productivity and reduce the available labor pool and intellectual 

capacity that underpins a society’s sustained economic growth and quality of 

life. The cartels create regional instability that foreign competitors can leverage 

to gain access to the Western hemisphere. The human security threat draws the 

attention of nearly every international and nongovernmental entity in the 

world. The high levels of violence and lack of human security in Mexico are a 

global responsibility. The US and Mexico cannot kill or arrest their way out of 

the problem, and this paper presents an explicit warning to legalization advocates lest that policy mutate from a human security threat into a war.

Notes

(All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in the 

bibliography.)

1. Averbuch and Semple, “Migrant Caravan Continues North.”

2. Diaz and Campisi, “Mexico Goes to the Polls this Weekend.”

3. US Drug Enforcement Administration, 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, vi.

4. US Drug Enforcement Administration, v.

5. US Department of Homeland Security, “DHS Secretary Nielsen’s Remarks on 

the Illegal Immigration Crisis.”

6. The White House, “Protecting American Communities.”

7. Clausewitz, On War, 88–89.

8. Clausewitz, 75, 89, 87.

9. Reveron and Mahoney-Norris, Human Security, 14.

10. Building partner capacity is defined as the monies, programs, and activities 

used to help other nations achieve their shared goals with the US. Decapitation strategy, or decapitation strike, is a military strategy that focuses on the removal of leadership and command in order to defeat an enemy group. —Ed.

11. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Overview of Drug Demand, 39–41.

12. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, 1.

13. Department of State, “Mexico 2017 Human Rights Report,” 36.

14. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, 62.

15. Drug Enforcement Administration, 125.

16. Kan, Cartels at War, 25–26.
34

17. Kan, 26–32.

18. Clausewitz, On War, 69.

19. Clausewitz, 83.

20. Clausewitz, 69, 75.

21. University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, “Fact Sheet: Narco-Trafficking 

and Violence in Mexico.”

22. Albaladejo, “Mexico Journalists Face Violence.”

23. Diaz and Campisi, “Mexico Goes to the Polls This Weekend.”

24. U.S. News, “6 Killed in Mexico Border City Apparently Bystanders.” The Mexican marines claimed responsibility for the deaths of the civilians, saying that the car 

was hit with bullets from a helicopter. —Ed.

25. Molloy; Statista, “Total Number of Murders;” Valle-Jones, “Homicides in 

Mexico 2006–2009.”

26. Iraq Body Count, “Documented Civilian Deaths From Violence;” United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “Highest Recorded Civilian Death from 

Conflict at Mid-Year Point–Latest UNAMA Update;” and Crawford, “War-related 

Death, Injury, and Displacement in Afghanistan and Pakistan 2001–2014.” The Iraq 

Body Count site recorded 164,739 civilian deaths between 2006 and 2018. This total 

does not include combatants. United Nations Assistance Mission Afghanistan report 

and the Boston University paper total 19,349 for the same period in Afghanistan.

27. Insight Crime, “Zetas.”

28. Gagne, “Challenging the State.”

29. O’Connor and Booth, “Mexican Drug Cartels Targeting and Killing Children.”

30. Pachico, “Tracking the Steady Rise of Beheadings in Mexico.”

31. Amnesty International, “Mexico: Reformed Laws,” 9.

32. Valle-Jones, “Crime by State.”

33. Moloceznik, “Organized Crime,” 189.

34. The Associated Press, “Cartels Pay Corrupt Cops $100 Million a Month.”

35. Moloceznik, “Organized Crime,” 187–88.

36. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 22–23.

37. Asmann, “Are Mexico President-Elect’s Security Proposals Wishful Thinking.”

38. Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2018.”

39. Angel, Martinez, and Rea, “Solving Mexico Homicide Backlog.”

40. Albaladejo, “Mexico Journalists Face Violence.”

41. Angel, Martinez, and Rea, “Solving Mexico Homicide Backlog.”

42. Angel, Martinez, and Rea.

43. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 20.

44. Jones, Mexico’s Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction, 31.

45. Beittel, 26.

46. Beittel, Mexico: Organized Crime, 26–27.

47. Reed, “Mexico’s Drug War,” 4–5.

48. Beittel, Mexico: Organized Crime, 27.

49. Beittel, 27.
35

50. Joint Publication 1, x, I-5.

51. Reveron and Mahoney-Norris, Human Security, 3.

52. Reveron and Mahoney-Norris, 12.

53. Clausewitz, On War, 154.

54. Molloy, “Homicide in 2007.”

55. Salomon, “Mexico’s Failure to Gather Quality Homicide Data.”

56. Espinosa, “Mexico’s National Security Framework,” 220–22.

57. Espinosa, 169, 198, 200.

58. Molloy, “Homicide in 2007.”

59. Moloceznik, “Organized Crime,” 179.

60. Beittel, Mexico: Organized Crime, 28; and Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game 

or Dropping the Ball?,” 19.

61. Moloceznik, “Organized Crime,” 185.

62. Moloceznik, 189.

63. Moloceznik, 188.

64. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 23.

65. Moloceznik, “Organized Crime,” 181.

66. Espinosa, “Mexico’s National Security Framework,” 192.

67. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 7–8.

68. Felbab-Brown, 8–9.

69. Beittel, Mexico: Organized Crime, 24.

70. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 14.

71. The Global Economy, “Kidnapping Rate–Country Rankings.” This site lists 

Mexico as 23rd of 52 reported countries for kidnapping with a rate of .9/100K. ValleJones in the blog TheElcri.men reports a rate of 1.1/100K in 2015; Valle-Jones, 

“Crime by State.”

72. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 18.

73. Felbab-Brown, 20–23.

74. Human Rights Watch, “Mexico: Events of 2015.”

75. Department of State, “Mexico 2017 Human Rights Report,” 13.

76. Amnesty International, “Mexico: Reformed Laws,” 8.

77. Amnesty International, 7.

78. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 27.

79. Seelke and Finklea, 26–27.

80. Felbab-Brown, “Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball?,” 28–30.

81. Stargardter, “Two-thirds of Mexicans Against Decriminalizing Marijuana.”

82. Sapra, “Canada Becomes Second Nation in the World to Legalize Marijuana.”

83. InSight Crime, “Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG).”

84. Dittmar, “Is Mexico’s CJNG Following in the Footsteps of the Zetas?”

85. Stewart, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2018.”

86. Corcoran, “What Is Behind AMLO’s Security Policy U-Turn in Mexico?”

87. Estévez-Soto, “Mexico’s New National Guard Unlikely to Stem Crimewave.”

88. Bargent and Clavel, “GameChangers 2018.”
36

89. Estévez-Soto, “Mexico’s New National Guard Unlikely to Stem Crimewave.”

90. Corcoran, “Mexico’s Proposed Institutional Reforms.”

91. Asmann, “Are Mexico President-Elect’s Security Proposals Wishful Thinking.”

92. Entous and Hodge, “World News: U.S. Sees Heightened Threat in Mexico.”

93. Office of the President, National Security Strategy, 9, 10, 12, 51.

94. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 1, 13, 15, 19, 22.

95. Government Accountability Office, Firearms Trafficking.

96. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 11.

97. Seelke and Finklea, 25.

98. Seelke and Finklea, 13, 13n47.

99. Seelke and Finklea, 12, 14–15, 17–18.

100. Seelke and Finklea, 22–23.

101. Department of State, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, “Press Availability.”

102. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 12–13.

103. Robinson, Statement of General Lori J. Robinson, USAF, 16–18.

104. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 30.

105. Seelke and Finklea, 30.

106. Robinson, Statement of General Lori J. Robinson, USAF, 18.

107. Seelke and Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation, 1.

108. Dudley, “Trump’s Border Policies Strengthen Organized Crime.”

109. Dudley.

110. Clausewitz, On War, 88.

111. Kan, Cartels at War, 145; and Paul, Clarke, and Serena, Mexico Is Not Colombia, 40.

112. Central Intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook, North America, Mexico.”

The poverty line is based on a food-based definition. An asset-based criterion puts 

more than 47 percent of Mexicans below the poverty line.

113. Office of the President, National Security Strategy, 19–20.

114. Kan, Cartels at War, 145–46.

115. Paul, Clarke, and Serena, Mexico is not Colombia: Case Studies, 7–9, 21.

116. Paul, Clarke, and Serena, 17–18.

117. Stargardter, “Two-thirds of Mexicans Against Decriminalizing Marijuana.”

118. Hartig and Geiger, “About Six-in-Ten Americans Support Marijuana Legalization.”

119. Echevarria II, “Toward an American Way of War,” vi.

120. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, 52.

121. White House, “New Annual Data.”

122. Kan, Cartels at War, 72–85.

123. Paul, Clarke, and Serena, Mexico Is Not Colombia, 21.

124. Central Intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook, North America, Mexico.”
37

Abbreviations Abbreviation Definition

AFO Arellano Felix Organization

BPC building partner capacity

CFO Carillo Fuentes Organization

CISEN Center for Intelligence and National Security

CJNG Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación

DEA Drug Enforcement Administration

DOD Department of Defense

DTO Drug Trafficking Organization

FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

LFM La Familia Michoacána

MT metric tons

NSS National Security Strategy

PAN Partido Accion Nacional

PRI Partido Revolucionario Institucional

SEDENA Secretaria de la Defensa

SEMAR Secretaria de Marina

USNORTHCOM US Northern Command
38

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