Mexican Cartels:
A Strategic Approach
Adam Elkus
[1] - Red Team Journal Washington, D.C.
Areas de influencia de los carteles. |
Mexico’s drug
conflict is best understood by a strategic approach drawing from Clausewitz’s
General Theory, classical understanding of strategy, and political realists who
focus on the timeless struggle for both external and internal political power.
Cartels are war-making entities whose origin and dynamics are well understood
in strategic history, but have since been forgotten in an era of strong
centralized states. Their power and lethality makes them worthy of the
strategist’s study, especially in an era in which scholars increasingly — and
erroneously — argue that classical strategic approaches do not apply to
non-state warfare.
Elements of a Strategic Approach
A strategic
approach begins from several assumptions. First, as A.E. Stahl argued in an
article regarding non-state actors and armed rebellion, politics is best
understood within Harold Laswell’s formula of “who gets what, when, and
how.”[i] Second, as Richard K. Betts observes, the preparations and
requirements for war always sit at the foreground of an actor’s calculus — even
if the prospects for conflict end up being remote.[ii] Most crucially, actors —
no matter their origin and composition — use strategy as an instrumental device
to further a defined policy in war.
M.L.R. Smith
argues that we use a morally neutral mode of analysis to evaluate policy and
strategy.[iii] We cannot call an adversary “insane” or “irrational,” since
states, communities, and civilizations are not patients on Freud’s couch. We
must assume that their actions further defined political goals — even if such
goals or actions aren’t optimal or always coherent. This is what separates war
from small-scale crime and senseless murder, although both are certainly
present in many wars.
Sub-state groups
and criminal groups are often thought to defy these basic rules. But as Carl
von Clausewitz observed, war obviously existed long before the rise of
organized nation-states — and whole groups and communities have waged war
according to their own understanding of policy.[iv] Moreover, the classic
realist idea of an anarchic international system is a world lacking a powerful
single authority to police it — an extrapolation of the basic condition of
sub-state armed conflict that predates powerful central governments.[v]
This is exactly
the type of environment that cartels compete in today. Criminal organizations
operate beyond the law and cannot expect to receive legal resolution of their
disputes. Moreover, due to the decay of Mexican government authority, for
example, and the fact that government public goods are precisely the objects of
competition, cartels are struggling over de facto political power.
A strategic
analysis is not only appropriate but it will yield more analytical benefit than
a purely criminological, area studies, or “new wars” perspective. Internal
conflict in Mexico is the bleeding edge of the 2,300 year-old triptych of
“fear, honor, and interest,” but a reluctance to utilize the tools provided to
us by Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and others as well as unfamiliarity with a time
in which war was not waged by powerful centralized states hinders our
understanding of the struggle occurring south of the border.
Dynamics of
“Warlordism”
The root of the
present struggle lies in far more than drugs. The delicate balance of patronage
has been eroded by political change and the dynamics of the drug trade — with
deadly results.
Mexican internal
politics has long been dominated by the powerful central state built by the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).[vi] As Luz Nagle notes, systemic
institutional corruption characterized the one-party state, leading to the
familiar process (often seen in authoritarian systems) of extensive competition
for “public goods” by various internal factions.[vii] Corruption, in this view,
is not something aberrant but a political lubricant that maintains equilibrium
within interlocking systems of patronage. The PRI’s decline unhinged this
balance.[viii]
Powerful drug
cartels built around the domination of singular personalities are not new in
Mexico. However, the state decapitation of Colombian drug cartels — who
controlled the drug trafficking routes to the profitable American market —
opened up those plazas to new ownership. Extensive American surveillance
of sea routes makes the overland route the only way to make money. Conflict
escalated as the Mexican government attempted (futilely) to re-assert its
authority, and old relationships tolerated by the PRI frayed.
What started as a
straightforward underworld drug competition became a struggle for the state’s public
goods, with cartels and their enforcers targeting everything from control of
local governments to state-run energy monopoly PEMEX. Guatemala and other
surrounding Central American states were drawn into the battle as cartels
increasingly utilized border regions as sources of manpower and crucial
logistical routes.
Is it war? Yes. If
we understand politics as power over people, and war itself as political
intercourse — a combination of policy and politics — with the added element of
violence, the Mexican cartel war is a sub-state conflict between various
criminal elites over the state’s licit and illicit resources. Between 34,000-40,000
Mexicans have died so far — making the cartel conflict far more than simply
crime and low-level gangland murder.[ix]
The implicit
arrangements that allowed political resources to be distributed without
violence have broken down. Now the cartels are out to get theirs. The cartels
can boast military-grade arsenals, private armies that can fight effectively on
the small-unit level, and political power arising from their ability to extract
resources from drugs and other “franchises.” Such power accounts for the
lethality of their battles and their overall political impact on the
distribution of Mexican politics and material resources.
The dynamics of
warlordism on display in Mexico were second nature to Machiavelli and should
not be foreign to us.
Policy and
Strategy
Cartel policy can
be understood as maximization of control of public and private resources.
Although cartels have “diversified,” the most important object of the conflict
is control over the plazas — hence most battles are concentrated around
those routes. To achieve these ends, the ways are armed violence and the means
powerful enforcer groups, co-opted police, military defectors, and other
elements of the state captured by various cartel organizations. The “combats”
that advance strategy are a mixture of small-unit operations, assassinations,
and armed assaults against police and cartel headquarters and safehouses.
Cartels must not only destroy adversaries but also survive governmental
pressure in order to survive.
Often times, as
befitting the nature of these organizations, the policy of the cartels is in
fact the policy of one man or a group of men concerned with personal survival,
power, and prestige — or Al Pacino’s own “trinity” of money, power, and
beautiful women in Scarface. We are accustomed to a marked difference
between the policy of the state and the personal imperatives of its leadership,
which makes it difficult for many to see cartels as capable of making policy.
But as Justin Kelly and Michael Brennan reminds us that for much of human
history the policy, strategy, and tactics were concentrated in the body of one
man — be it the king, tribal leader, or emperor leading his men on the
battlefield.[x]
In such a
dangerous strategic environment, cartels face the “security dilemma”— which is
applicable in full to internal conflict.[xi] Cartels are part of an anarchical
system of relations in which they are ultimately responsible for their own
organizational — and personal — survival. New alliances and relative shifts in
power, patronage, and access can have far-reaching effects. Fear of betrayal
and the zero-sum nature of gains ensure that alliances remain purely tactical
in nature. Slipping up means imprisonment and more frequently a grisly death.
They must conquer or die.
Internal struggles
for leadership are a constant, and smaller groups are forever splitting off. Los
Zetas, the group of former Mexican commandos-turned-Gulf Cartel contractors
has split off to form their own organization — turning on their former
employers and targeting them ruthlessly. There is also the ever-present danger
of the state — which although weakened — still commands significant resources
and can utilize the Mexican Navy’s commandos for high-value targeting. Since
cartels are in armed rebellion against government control, they are fair game
for military resources often reserved for international and external enemies of
the state.
Although cartels
are certainly decentralized in many respects, the targeting of leadership can
lead to a cycle of inescapable decay. Leadership vacuums lead to intensified
internal conflict and a “feeding frenzy” process in which rivals keen on
finishing it off relentlessly attack the now-weakened cartel and thus gaining
control of its resources. In this respect, the cartels are similar to medieval
barons who engaged in constant struggles for power and alliance politics. Often
times, inter-cartel battles are an outgrowth of internal cartel political
intercourse, much as external wars are expressions of internal state
politics.[xii] External shocks often have a destabilizing influence on internal
group politics and dynamics.
A recent example
illustrates the cycle: La Familia, one of the newest and most brutal
cartels, looks set to collapse under the pressure of losing six of its top
leaders. The remainder split off to form a new organization, the Knights
Templar. The foot soldiers left in the lurch are likely to be absorbed by the Sinaloa
Cartel, which opposes La Familia’s hated adversary Los Zetas.[xiii]
The strategy of
cartel combat is cumulative rather than sequential in nature. The relentless
killing of enemy operatives and leaders, sophisticated raids on enemy territory
by cartel battlegroups, destruction of resources and infrastructure, and use of
force to coerce low-to-middle ranking government officials to choose sides adds
up to wear down organizations until they either are reduced to shadows of their
former selves or implode. Rival organizations then feed like vultures on the
fallen cartel’s remaining men, territory, and logistics routes. Operations here
are not so much about maneuvers on the battlefield as a cruel, brutal, and
often blunt process to kill or intimidate an adversary and take his land.
Killing is carried out both with advanced military weaponry and the bowie knife
and machete.
For all of the ink
spilled on information operations in the West, the cartels seem to have
mastered the basics at a fraction of the cost. Brutal cartel killings
intimidate, advancing strategic effectiveness by advertising the brutality with
a variety of media methods. Cartel propaganda uses pamphlets, narcocorrido
ballads, and most infamously YouTube postings of police officers being
decapitated. These displays of power — coupled with the age-old promise of
wealth — are enough to deter government and criminal rivals or convince them to
defect.
This is not to say
that all violence is rationally planned. Much of the violence associated with
the drug war is spillover effects that manifest themselves on the lower level
of petty but vicious gang warfare, mutilation and beheadings, and bizarre
pseudo-religious sects known as narcocultos. Such behaviors were once
common in Europe — the Thirty Years’ War being the most prominent example — and
do not change the fact that deliberate policy and strategy guides the violence,
not mass brutality. We would do well to pay heed to Clausewitz and note the
constant tension between passion, chance, and reason.[xiv]
Managing the
“marvelous trinity” is the greatest strategic challenge cartels face. They must
maintain their organizations under constant warfare, tenaciously hold and
exploit their territories for resources and infrastructure, and devote these
resources to destroy their adversaries. Not all are up to the challenge, but
the rewards for those who do are the stuff of narco legend.
Conclusion: “Silver
or Lead?”
Contrary to their
portrayal as irrational criminals, cartels are war-making entities that have
set clear ends and use violence to achieve them. While their use of policy and
action may not be identical to ours, it fits well within the rubric of
classical strategic thought. The cartel conflict is about far more than crime,
and cannot be understood simply by reaching back to the more familiar American
experience of Prohibition. By looking at cartels strategically, which is to say
the bridging of ends and means, we can see the dynamics of war at their most
basic — war waged not by organized states with tanks and carriers but
organizations and communities armed with guns and knives. Strategy and military
history do not stop at the San Diego border crossing, as the cartel wars
demonstrate “fear, honor, and interest” at their most visceral. The stakes are
literally matters of life and death — those who enter the “business” either
achieve power and glory beyond imagination or are brutally beheaded in front of
millions of YouTube viewers.
Footnotes
[i] A.E. Stahl, “Getting Perspective: The 2000-2005
Palestinian Armed Rebellion,” Small Wars Journal, 1 June 2011,
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/06/the-20002005-palestinian-armed/
[ii] Richard K. Betts, “Institutional Imperialism,” The National Interest, 19 April 2011, http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/institutional-imperialism-5176
[iii] M.L.R. Smith, “Strategic Theory: What It It Is…And Most Importantly, What It Is Not,” E-IR, 28 April 2011, http://www.e-ir.info/?p=8435.
[iv] For more on this see Mark T. Clark, “Does Clausewitz Apply to Criminal-States and Gangs?” in Robert Bunker (ed), Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers, New York: Routledge, 2008, 79-100 and Carl von Clausewitz and Peter Paret (trans), On War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 708-709.
[v] A point made by Anthony Vinci in Armed Groups and the Balance of Power: The International Relations of Terrorists, Warlords, and Insurgents, New York: Routledge, 2008.
[vi] See Enrique Krauze, Mexico: A Biography of Power, New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
[vii] Luz E. Nagle, “Corruption of politicians, law enforcement, and the judiciary in Mexico and complicity across the border,” in Robert Bunker (ed), Narcos Over the Border: Gangs, Cartels, and Mercenaries, New York: Routledge, 2010, 95-123.
[viii] June S. Beittel, “Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence,” Congressional Research Service, 7 January 2011, 5.
[ix] Daniel Hernandez, “How Many Have Died in Mexico’s Drug War,” La Plaza Blog, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/06/mexico-war-dead-update-figures-40000.html
[x] Kelly and Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy, Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2009, vii.
[xi] See Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, vol. 35. No. 1, Spring 1993, 27-47.
[xii] Beittel, 12 and Phil Williams, “El Crimen Organizada Y la Violencia: Una Perspectiva Comparativa,” ISTOR: Revista de Historia International, 11th year, No. 42, Fall 2010.
[xiii] Mariano Castillo, “Drug lord's capture means demise of La Familia cartel, experts say,” CNN, 22 June 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/06/22/mexico.cartel.capture/
[xiv] Christopher Bassford and Edward J. Villacres, “Reclaiming the Clausewitzian Trinity,” Parameters, Summer 1995. Available online at http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Trinity/TRININTR.htm
[ii] Richard K. Betts, “Institutional Imperialism,” The National Interest, 19 April 2011, http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/institutional-imperialism-5176
[iii] M.L.R. Smith, “Strategic Theory: What It It Is…And Most Importantly, What It Is Not,” E-IR, 28 April 2011, http://www.e-ir.info/?p=8435.
[iv] For more on this see Mark T. Clark, “Does Clausewitz Apply to Criminal-States and Gangs?” in Robert Bunker (ed), Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers, New York: Routledge, 2008, 79-100 and Carl von Clausewitz and Peter Paret (trans), On War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 708-709.
[v] A point made by Anthony Vinci in Armed Groups and the Balance of Power: The International Relations of Terrorists, Warlords, and Insurgents, New York: Routledge, 2008.
[vi] See Enrique Krauze, Mexico: A Biography of Power, New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
[vii] Luz E. Nagle, “Corruption of politicians, law enforcement, and the judiciary in Mexico and complicity across the border,” in Robert Bunker (ed), Narcos Over the Border: Gangs, Cartels, and Mercenaries, New York: Routledge, 2010, 95-123.
[viii] June S. Beittel, “Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence,” Congressional Research Service, 7 January 2011, 5.
[ix] Daniel Hernandez, “How Many Have Died in Mexico’s Drug War,” La Plaza Blog, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/06/mexico-war-dead-update-figures-40000.html
[x] Kelly and Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy, Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2009, vii.
[xi] See Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, vol. 35. No. 1, Spring 1993, 27-47.
[xii] Beittel, 12 and Phil Williams, “El Crimen Organizada Y la Violencia: Una Perspectiva Comparativa,” ISTOR: Revista de Historia International, 11th year, No. 42, Fall 2010.
[xiii] Mariano Castillo, “Drug lord's capture means demise of La Familia cartel, experts say,” CNN, 22 June 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/06/22/mexico.cartel.capture/
[xiv] Christopher Bassford and Edward J. Villacres, “Reclaiming the Clausewitzian Trinity,” Parameters, Summer 1995. Available online at http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Trinity/TRININTR.htm
[1] Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and
security. He is Associate Editor at Red Team Journal. He has published in Small
Wars Journal, The Atlantic, Defense Concepts, West Point CTC Sentinel, and
other publications. He blogs at Rethinking Security.
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