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October 16, 2007 A very interesting article from Laura Carlsen at the Americas Program in Mexico City that links Plan Mexico (officially the Mérida Initiative) to the SPP, casting the U.S. subsidization of the Mexican military under the plan as, in Bush's terms, "a new paradigm for security cooperation." Bush and gang have been itching to reassert U.S. influence over the hemisphere. Carlsen cites Stephen Johnson, deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Defense Department, as making the connection between Plan Mexico and "Washington’s bid to recover its influence in a slipping geopolitical context." “While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador," says Johnson. "For now, Venezuela and Cuba are clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy, markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors... This is an historic opportunity for the United States to cement closer ties with its closest Latin American neighbor and encourage a sea-change in law enforcement.” Mexico, with the help of U.S. troops, military hardware and and more integrated intelligence, would become a buffer for drugs and migrants and a more militarized friend to deal with South America on Bush's terms. But there are clear SPP links. In a recent Council on Foreign Relations debate about Plan Mexico, Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that, "I think that it is important to consider the Mérida Initiative as an initial step toward the deepening of bilateral security cooperation between the United States and Mexico... Ultimately, if both the United States and Mexico manage the Mérida Initiative effectively, it could conceivably evolve into a framework for subregional security cooperation that could extend to Central America, which cannot be ignored in discussions of security and ways to combat transnational crime. " According to Carlsen, "The concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in March of 2005. Since that time, the Bush administration has attempted to push its Northern American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats and bolstering U.S. global hegemony in the region. "Plan Mexico twists the plot by presenting Bush administration efforts to create a North American security strategy in the guise of a war on drugs," continues Carlsen. "It builds on SPP security negotiations that included expanding the presence of U.S. drug enforcement and customs agents within Mexico, requiring legislation to commit Mexico to fight 'international terrorism,' and curtailment of civil liberties similar to those found in the U.S. PATRIOT Act that would legalize increased spying. Although not formally announced as elements of SPP agreements, the Mexican government has complied with all these requests."
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