New Article at IVN: Five Foreign Policy Problems the Next President Must Face
I have a new article up at IVN:
Five Foreign Policy Problems the Next President Must Face
3. THE NARCO-CARTELIZATION OF LATIN AMERICA
The recent, much heralded “peace agreement” in El Salvador which reduced a sky high homicide rate from gang warfare is a white-flag harbinger of things to come where weak, failing or failed states in Latin America “hollow out” by legitimizing the armed power of street gangs and narco-cartels with political concessions. The other states in Central America face similar gang problems, while Colombia faces renewed paramilitary and guerrilla activity (mostly fighting over the drug trade) but Mexico takes the destabilization prize with a full-blown criminal insurgency that has killed roughly 50,000 Mexican citizens. ….
August 29th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
This URL…
http://ivn.us/2012/08/29/five-foreign-policy-problems-the-next-president-must-face/
…gets an error.
August 29th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Try this.
August 29th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
6) The Great Game of Africa: While China as well as other Asian countries are snapping up African raw materials; drug lords, militants, and other malcontents are tuning the Sahara and Sahel into a huge Sherwood Forest.
7) The Balkanization of the Balkans. The Balkans’ problems of the 1990s will resurface with a vengeance, as collapse in Greece combines with organized crime to destabilize the region.
Both of these items are largely byproducts of the Latin American drug scene combined with the disintegration of Europe. Drugs will also reach the Balkans from Afghanistan; while East Africa will become more deeply involved with Asian narcotics.
August 29th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Does Peter Dale Scott’s wrestling with ‘deep politics’ get any traction in these pages? The fatal dependence of the world spook community on illegal drugs & arms deals & money-laundering in support of counterinsurgent paramilitary freedom fighters / terrorists just seems so very much where peace efforts ought to be focused if wishes for peace have even a blush of sincerity .. and if we aren’t working for peace, um, what was the point exactly?
August 29th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Isn’t it funny how you here more about Russia still being Czar Putin’s Eternal Evil Empire at the RNC than you do about Mexico being a failed state?
August 29th, 2012 at 9:52 pm
Hi Mr. X,
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Tonight or tomorrow the GOP is planning to address foreign policy…but Mexico won’t come up because the politicians and consultants are scared to death of offending Hispanic voters.
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That said, we’re conducting joint military exercises with Russia, have intrusive arms control agreements with them to boot—with any luck Condi Rice can talk Mitt from the edge (I’d trust her more on Russia than the GWOT, so-called).
August 30th, 2012 at 3:43 am
Hey Gents,
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Agree with Scott on Mexico/Russia – the reticence is partly PC, partly political calculation and partly hypersensitivity to Calderon.
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Duncan,
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Good adds. I pondered Africa but engaging there I decided fell more on the “choice” than “unavoidable” side of ledger.
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Derek,
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I am not familiar with Peter Dale Scott but if he is arguing that black globalization money flows fuel paramilitaries, guerrillas, terrorists, separatists etc. around the world, he’s right. If we ended our war on drugs and treated addiction as a medical issue it would be an economic shockwave to irregular groups everywhere across the political spectrum and it would save a tremendous amount of money at home while improving the climate of freedom.
August 30th, 2012 at 5:29 am
Zen,
Looking fwd to the Creepy State is Here, Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5dA1N3S9Es&feature=player_embedded
http://rt.com/usa/news/facebook-marine-interview-raub-866/
August 31st, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Zen – Peter Dale Scott (whose website deserves at least a quick fly-by) is making the point that for the US in particular (and its allies by extension), an addictive dependence on narcoterrorism, the illegal arms trade and money-laundering became established about the time the OSS was planning the invasion of Sicily. The Anglo-Chinese opium wars were an earlier iteration of a similar theme. The Wikipedia entry for ‘the War on Drugs’ makes a good refresher course in how best not, perhaps, to manage US foreign & domestic policy in the henceforth.