Mexican Hollowing

By Dave Anderson:

I have long thought that the primary cartel goal in Mexico is not a collapsed state, as we see that Somalia is too dysfunctional for large scale, complex criminality in the anarchic south, but a hollow state that maintains the pretenses and appearance of sovereignty but not the capability to effectively control its territory or its population.  

It is nice to see that my amateur analysis is starting to get picked up in the US government decision apparatus, as Small War Journals passes along an interesting paper from the Army War College.  Here are a couple of highlights:

generates relatively uncontrolled coercion
and violence, and its perpetrators tend to create and
consolidate semi-autonomous political enclaves
(criminal free-states within the Mexican state) that
develop into what the Mexican government has called

�Zones of Impunity.� In such zones, criminal quasi
states may operate in juxtaposition with the institutions
of the weak de jure state, and force the local population
to reconcile loyalties and adapt to an ambivalent and
precarious existence that challenges traditional values
as well as the law...

The drug cartel, the
enforcer gangs, and the Zetas operating in Sinaloa have
marginalized Mexican state authority and replaced it
with a criminal anarchy. That anarchy is defined by
bribes, patronage, cronyism, violence, and personal
whim. One is reminded of Thomas Hobbes description
of life in a �State of Nature.� That is, life is �nasty,
brutish, and short..."

What makes these small private armies so effective
is the absence of anyone to turn to for help. Weak and/
or corrupt state security institutions, as in Mexico,
are notoriously unhelpful and tend to be a part of the
problem�not the solution. In such a vacuum, only a
few relatively well-armed and disciplined individuals
are capable of establishing their own rule of law...

the Zetas organization does
not appear to be intent on completely destroying the
traditional Mexican state political-economic-social
system and replacing it with its own. Rather, the Zetas
demonstrates a less radical option; it apparently seeks
to incrementally �capture� the state.   [my emphasis]

To accomplish this aim, the leaders of the Zetas have
determined that�at a minimum�they need to be able
to freely travel, communicate, and transfer funds all
around the globe. For this, they need to be within easy
reach of functioning population centers. Thus, the Zetas
does not find the completely failed state particularly
useful. It would prefer to have Mexico as a weak but
moderately functional international entity. The shell
of traditional state sovereignty protects the Zetas
from outside (U.S.) intervention....