Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The new Cold World War is raging and with a lot of force. There are several hot war fronts: Ukraine and Gaza are the most notorious. Mexico is another front in this war and faces serious dangers. Mexico has challenges from a global geopolitical point of view.
The conflict exists because López Obrador wants to transfer Mexico’s traditional political-ideological loyalties to the United States and Europe and move them to Russia and China. The significant obstacle to this transfer of loyalties is the economy. The Mexican economy is part of the domestic economy of the United States and Canada. There is no way to separate Mexico’s economic and North American interests.
In addition, the social bond between the North American countries is deep. Millions of Mexicans live in the United States, and it is in their interest that good neighborliness between the two nations endure. Mexicans living there feel they have a dual identity, which is their dual nationality.
Mexico, Russia, and China have no economic or social link. But, for strictly ideological reasons and reasons of personal persuasion of President Lopez Obrador, Mexico is opening its doors to the enemies of the West while it is closing its doors to the United States in Mexico.
Images: on socialistchina.org and on facebook.com (Momento Financiero)
From the first day of his administration, López Obrador railed against the presence of U.S. intelligence elements in Mexico. Especially against those who, like the DEA, are dedicated to fighting drug trafficking. Such is the President’s phobia of U.S. agents that he ordered his legislators to modify the National Security Law to prevent the operation of those intelligence agencies in Mexico.
But his action revealed a marked ideological preference. While he demanded that DEA agents hand over their information collected to the Mexican government and delayed granting them visas, the treatment of other countries was more than accommodating. Since López Obrador’s administration, the Russian government has established one of its largest espionage missions in the world in our country, which operates without restrictions.
On the other hand, the purchase of Chinese technology has been proposed to monitor customs on the northern border, allowing that Asian country a privileged view of everything that enters and leaves the country, giving it a commercial advantage in terms of crucial information, especially in the field of high technology, chemical substances such as fentanyl and precious minerals.
In addition, the Mexican government has allowed espionage and security operatives from Cuba and Venezuela to operate in the country, also without restrictions, as is the case with the Russians, without observance of the National Security Law, in contrast to the application of such regulations to U.S. agencies. At least half of the supposed Cuban “doctors” in Mexico are security agents.
However, the entry of espionage and intelligence apparatus into our country was only the beginning of the significant shift in the intention to link Mexico with the Eurasian bloc of authoritarian and anti-democratic regimes.
Mexico invited the Cuban dictator to speak to the Mexican Armed Forces at the parade to commemorate Independence Day on September 16, 2021, in the capital’s Zócalo, two months after having ordered his Armed Forces to repress and imprison demonstrators demanding freedom on the Island. López Obrador’s intention was clear: to legitimize the use of force to repress democrats on the Caribbean Island. One day after the military parade, at the CELAC meeting in Mexico, President Xi of China was invited via Zoom to close such a distinguished gathering. Cuba and China were the privileged actors in those events sponsored by López Obrador. The political tone of both events was notoriously anti-American.
However, what moved, and moves, the Mexican economy during and after the Covid pandemic is the privileged commercial relationship with the United States. The whole phenomenon of economic relocation from Asia to the United States makes the North American economy a great recovery engine for Mexico.
The fact that Mexico’s exports to the United States are more significant than China’s describes that everything Mexican exists as a function of this strategic relationship with the North. But López Obrador has postulated that the United States is a declining power and China is a rising one to justify his supposed “Asian” shift.
The Mexican government’s behavior is, therefore, incomprehensible. It insults, kicks, and offends the liberal partner that ensures millions of jobs in Mexico. At the same time, it cozies up to and flirts with countries whose strategic interest is to destroy the Mexican people’s source of food.
But the problem is even more severe for Mexico. The Mexican government is breaking the rules of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, the trade agreement that cements the trilateral relationship. It exports Chinese steel and aluminum to the United States, pretending it is a Mexican product. In other words, it is lying and trying to deceive its partner, although it does not succeed. The only thing it generates is distrust and the decision of the other side to threaten our country with tariffs. The same happens with energy, food, mining, and pharmaceutical products—disconformity and distrust reign in the bilateral relationship.
Things reach a breaking point with the issue of drug trafficking, fentanyl, insecurity, and migration. Because all these issues are intimately related. Lopez Obrador’s policy of leniency to drug trafficking is reaching a breaking point in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. The various recent news reports linking drug trafficking to Lopez Obrador have an obvious reading: Washington is telling the Mexican President that he must break his ties with drug trafficking. And if he does not do so, the same fate awaits him as the former President of Honduras: extradition and jail in the United States.
For the U.S. government, it is a fact that AMLO and his children have dangerous relationships with Mexican drug traffickers. It is presumed that they came to power with that support and that they want to continue governing with the support of organized crime during the next administration.
The change of the person in charge of Mexico and Latin America policy in Washington could not be more revealing: it comes from the Pentagon and the security and intelligence services. Aside from recommending raising the level of trade conflict with Mexico in the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC negotiations and pushing publications on Lopez Obrador and drug trafficking, she has also pushed for another critical change in Washington’s policy toward Mexico.
Mexico has always been considered friendly and strategically committed to North American causes. For that reason, Mexico and its Armed Forces were an integral part of the Northern Command, with access to the privileged intelligence that relationship represented. As a result of Mexico’s new friendship with Russia and the intelligence services of countries unfriendly to the United States, our country has been excluded from the Northern Command and sent to the Southern Command, where countries with drug trafficking problems, authoritarian regressions, and severe internal social conflicts are located.
Mexico is no longer a reliable partner for Washington. Mexico is in a dilemma. The big question is: what will Mexico sacrifice with its new path: its economic and political stability with the United States or its ideological friendship with the enemies of the United States? The two routes are incompatible.
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