All your bases belong to us

I’ll leave it to Franc Contraras (presently with CCTV-America, China) to lay out the situation

So, let’s see.  The US has “given” Mexico 2.4 billion dollars to allegedly “fight drugs”.  Not mentioned, most of that 2.4 billion is already spent in the United States, not including the half billion spent buying new Humvees for the Army.  The cost of all those Blackhawk helicopers is not included.

US. consumers purchase somewhere around 600 billion dollars in “drugs” every year, which I suppose makes it sensible that the US might want to “fight drugs” just to protect its own domestic narcotics traders, but doesn’t explain why Mexico then would buy US equipment.

Supposedly, the Peña Nieto government was going to de-emphasize the “drug war” of the previous administration, and while the Peña Nieto administration hasn’t been able to keep its promises, that excuse wears thin.

I don’t like to frame everything in terms of the “drug war” (there are drugs, there are gangsters, there is not a “war”… except maybe on the poor in this country), and I think there is a simpler explanation for the massive purchases.

The U.S. is an expansionist, imperialist power, whose economy largely depends on military spending.  Mexico has never been expansionist, and has been cutting its military budget consistently over the last eighty years.  Even during the Second World War, the Mexican military budget dropped as a percentage of overall federal spending.

However, with the United States now “over-extended” throughout the world (with bases in 180 countries) and despite pro-military propaganda (both official and unofficial… Hollywood films, TV shows, etc.) is having trouble filling its ranks.  The US military has openly coveted using Mexican troops to swell its own ranks and serve its needs.

Making the Mexican forces dependent on U.S. equipment, the U.S. accomplishes two key goals.  Not only does it bind the Mexican military to the United States as its supplier, it also lets the United States accomplish a long-range goal (one it never has given up) of direct control of Mexico.  The Mexican military always saw the United States as the most probable foreign invader and, in the supply department, those items it had to buy from abroad, it bought from a basket of countries… Sweden, Germany, Russia, France (and in the past, Belgium, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia) … none of which (except France) have ever had any territorial ambitions in Mexico, nor been in a position to subordinate the country.

Using the premise of the “drug war”, the United States is, without formally invading, “conquering” Mexico.  Given that if the US did invade, they’d win no matter what, the best defense … besides unilaterally ending the “drug war” and investing more in human resources and jobs would be to lessen cultural and economic ties to the U.S.

Don Porfirio was right about that, never putting all the import/export eggs in one basket… in the economy or in military hardware.  For that matter, Santa Anna was right, though buying second hand British weapons (left over from the Napoleonic Wars) was a mistake. I’ve suggested before that Barack Obama is another Woodrow Wilson (not a good thing to Latin Americans), but in this matter, his administration is another James Knox Polk.