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High US and Mexican officers met on Friday to strive revitalise a bilateral safety relationship that has been blighted by the high-profile arrest of a former Mexican defence minister final yr.
Having simply sought to patch up relations with France after the fallout from the Aukus submarine deal, Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, met Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, to debate migration, drug trafficking and felony justice.
The 2 sides outlined a broader framework for safety co-operation together with work on substance abuse, social programmes and port controls to dam passage of chemical compounds used to make artificial medicine.
“It’s time for a complete new method to our safety co-operation,” Blinken mentioned in Mexico Metropolis on Friday.
The US state division mentioned on Thursday that it hoped to have an in depth plan by the tip of January 2022. Some see the mere existence of high-level talks as a step ahead for the rocky relationship between the nations, which share a border that’s practically 2,000 miles lengthy.
“The truth that we’re speaking once more is enormously essential,” mentioned Pamela Starr, a professor on the College of Southern California who has suggested each the Mexican and US governments on international affairs. “Speaking and collaborating is step one to getting stuff achieved.”
US-Mexico relations grew extra fractious underneath former president Donald Trump, and sustained important harm final yr when US authorities detained Salvador Cienfuegos, a former Mexican defence minister, on drug trafficking fees with out tipping off Mexico upfront.
In response, Mexico’s authorities launched a marketing campaign to have him launched, calling the allegations baseless, and handed a regulation limiting the actions of international brokers on Mexican soil.
The US finally relented and dropped the fees, citing “delicate and essential international coverage issues”. However when Mexico later revealed a whole bunch of pages of proof from the case, Washington threatened to finish felony co-operation.
A cornerstone of the bilateral safety relationship has been the Mérida Initiative, a US funding stream that turned synonymous with army tools for Mexico’s warfare on medicine. Mexico had requested for it to get replaced.
Blinken mentioned on Friday that after 13 years of Mérida, it was time for one thing new to deal with to root causes of the nations’ safety issues.
“Goodbye Mérida, welcome Bicentennial Settlement,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s international minister mentioned, calling it a brand new part for the bilateral safety relationship.
Alejandro Mayorkas, US homeland safety chief, additionally attended the assembly. Immigration by means of Mexico has turn into a political drawback for president Joe Biden, with the US authorities’ dealing with of the arrival in September of hundreds of Haitian migrants on the border drawing widespread condemnation.
Lately, the US has pushed Mexico to step up enforcement in opposition to migrants, together with the usage of the Nationwide Guard and deportation flights. That reliance has made Washington reluctant to criticise López Obrador publicly about different insurance policies, specialists mentioned.
“There’s no query in my thoughts the Biden administration is making an attempt to be as quiet and as diplomatic as they probably can with López Obrador,” mentioned Starr from the College of Southern California. “They simply don’t have the political area in the US to lose Mexico’s co-operation on migration.”
The US-Mexico safety relationship has lengthy been targeted on drug trafficking and associated violence. Since 2007, Mexico has seen a surge in its murder price, with organised crime infiltrating authorities, nearly 100,000 individuals lacking, and a whole bunch of hundreds displaced from their houses.
López Obrador has taken a much less confrontational method to the nation’s drug cartels than his predecessors, in what he calls a “hugs not bullets” technique. In a seminal second in 2019, his authorities released the son of infamous drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán not lengthy after seize to keep away from civilian deaths.
“There’s a technique to keep away from confrontation,” mentioned Romain Le Cour, co-ordinator of the safety and violence discount programme at think-tank México Evalúa. “When it comes to figures, it’s apparently not working — murder charges aren’t dropping.”
Along with rising violence, the US has turn into more and more involved over the booming commerce for Mexican cartels in artificial medicine like fentanyl, which kills tens of hundreds of individuals a yr within the US.
Le Cour hopes that the dialogue will acknowledge the previous failures and search for methods to construct public establishments moderately than simply react to threats.
“There have been billions of {dollars} poured into the US-Mexico safety co-operation, and the scenario shouldn’t be bettering in goal phrases,” he mentioned. “On the bottom, it’s a complete failure actually.”
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