In South America, the balloon effect has coincided with another phenomenon: The rise of a generation of populist leaders who view U.S. antidrug efforts as a version of the “Yankee imperialism” they disdain.
Both Venezuela’s Mr. Chavez and Bolivia’s Mr. Morales built support among mostly poor populations as staunchly anti-U.S. leaders. They describe the drug war as a facade for a strategy to control the region’s politics and natural resources, especially oil.
Mr. Chavez and other leaders say they are fighting drug trafficking. But in Venezuela, thwarting U.S. drug efforts appears to be a cause for promotion. In 2008, the U.S. declared Venezuelan Gen. Henry Rangel Silva a drug “kingpin.” This month, Mr. Chavez named Gen. Rangel defense minister.
Imagine this. Several large coca producing countries have leaders that were elected based on their ‘support for coca farming’, and one country elects leaders that were financed and influenced by drug cartels. And then you have multiple countries that dislike the US and try to interpret the drug war to their people as some form of ‘Yankee Imperialism’. That to me is like the perfect alignment of events to create not just Narco States, but Narco Coalitions. The combining of states that produce the drugs with states that distribute them, all with the intent of pushing those drugs into the US and world and lining the pockets of politicians and cartels. It sounds like a premise in some crazy far out crime/war movie, all wrapped up with ‘world domination’. lol
Except in this case, it is a very plausible scenario and parts of it have already come true. In the articles below, they discuss how vulnerable Mexico’s political process is to cartel influence. The second one talks about how both Peru and Bolivia have seen a huge increase in coca production, all because they have leaders who were elected based on their pro-coca farming views. Ecuador and Venezuela gets a mention because they are all about supporting the drug trade as well. So chalk those countries as lost to the narcos….
As for Mexico, who knows if Calderon can keep his presidency? The cartels are doing all they can to work against him and his party at the local levels, and they are easily using the rules of insurgency to do so. From assassination, to bribes, to kidnapping, to voter intimidation, etc. The cartels are also using media and any other angle to get the public to reject Calderon’s war against the cartels.
Finally, the thing that I am most interested in is how will the US and the rest of the world react to such a Narco Coalition, if Mexico falls? What is the strategy to counter these narco insurgencies, and what does victory or defeat look like in the context of a drug war like this? –Matt
Bolivian President Evo Morales, holding coca leaves in 2009, built a political movement by demonstrating against the drug police. He has named coca growers to law-enforcement posts -- including drug czar.
Mexico’s 2012 vote is vulnerable to narco threat
12/21/2011
“We cannot allow organized crime to decide at the ballot box,” said Josefina Vazquez Mota, a leading contender to be the 2012 presidential candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), which ended 71 years of PRI-party rule with Vicente Fox’s election in 2000.
Mexican presidents are limited to one six-year term, and the PAN held on to power in 2006 with Calderon’s narrow win over leftist challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who will top the ticket for the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, again in 2012.
This time around, analysts expect PAN candidates to be hobbled by public dissatisfaction with Calderon’s military offensive against the drug cartels. At least 50,000 people have been killed since he took office in December 2006, and gangland violence has spread misery to parts of the country that were previously considered safe.
Outdated election laws
Calderon has angered rival lawmakers by suggesting that a presidential victory by PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto would represent a capitulation to the criminals. But many Mexicans seem nostalgic for the relative tranquility of life under the PRI, whose network of patronage and corruption once kept organized crime in check.