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It has been a violent summer in Mexico.
After the August kidnapping of five young men in Jalisco, a video circulated on social media showing one being forced to decapitate one of his friends. Their bodies were later found by police. In July, police in Jalisco were targeted with improvised explosive devices, which killed six. And in Guerrero, a local criminal group mobilized thousands of protesters and took security officers and government officials hostage in Chilpancingo after two of their leaders were arrested on drug and weapon charges. The city has also been the site of a car bombing that killed a member of the Mexican National Guard and the discovery of five severed heads in the trunk of a car.
This headline-grabbing violence has challenged assurances from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) that his security policy of "hugs, not bullets" is working. The violence is symptomatic of the government's lack of effective control over parts of the country. It also creates major problems for the United States—a power vacuum that criminal groups exploit to produce fentanyl and traffic drugs and people over the U.S. border, while continued insecurity endangers lives and threatens Mexico's long-term social and economic potential.
The Biden administration and the Mexican government have not made significant progress in addressing insecurity in Mexico. President López Obrador's response has been lackluster and, in some cases, raised questions about ties between officials in his party and criminal groups. When reporters first asked AMLO about the murdered Jalisco men, he pretended not to hear and told a joke before later acknowledging the incident. The severed heads in Chilpancingo were accompanied by a note addressed to the city's mayor, a member of AMLO's party who is accused of having ties to criminal groups.
The Mexican president also goes out of his way to downplay security challenges. When U.S. officials pointed out that the Sinaloa and New Generation Jalisco cartels combined have more than 44,000 affiliates worldwide, AMLO directed his anger at the United States, not at the growing reach of these groups. And when a national commission announced that a staggering 110,000 people are known to be missing in Mexico, AMLO said he would conduct his own census that would lower the count, leading to the resignation of the commission chair.
The Biden administration's response has been to go along with AMLO's rejection of past bilateral security efforts such as the Mérida Initiative, and to replace them with the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities. While the initiative is heavy on meetings touting its "success," homicides and drug trafficking continue to worsen, and the United States does not have operational control of its own border. As a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report noted, the Bicentennial Framework has been hampered by reduced operational security cooperation between U.S. and Mexican authorities. Additionally, its focus on high-profile raids against leaders of criminal organizations often lacks any follow-through that meaningfully degrades the cartels' capacity to traffic drugs or grow their territorial footprint.
Another area of focus has been stemming the flow of illegal weapons from the United States into the hands of Mexican criminal groups. Nearly 70 percent of firearms recovered by Mexican authorities and submitted for tracing to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives originate in the United States. The Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy of both the Trump and Biden administrations stated that "the smuggling, trafficking, and illegal export of weapons from the United States into Mexico is a threat to the safety and security of both countries." Recent images of cartel gunmen crossing into the United States highlight how illegal weapons that have gone south can return north.
Strengthening enforcement of existing U.S. laws against straw purchases and unlicensed arms dealing and increasing outbound inspections at the border can help reduce the number of weapons that end up in the hands of the cartels. Mexico must also crack down on corruption in security forces that puts previously seized weapons back on the street. Focusing on the flow of new weapons, however, is not a panacea given existing cartel arsenals.
Washington needs a holistic approach to the relationship with Mexico that recognizes the linkages between economic and security issues. Deeper economic integration will not be politically sustainable without real progress on security. In future high-level dialogues between the two governments, increasing bilateral cooperation to stem the flow of drugs and people north must be at the top of the agenda. Business as usual will no longer cut it.
With elections on the horizon next summer, Mexico needs leaders at every level who have the will to fight corruption, degrade the power of the cartels, and establish a functioning criminal justice system that will no longer allow impunity for serious crimes. As it currently stands, this will only be possible with help from the United States.
One place to start is learning from Plan Colombia, a sustained initiative from the 2000s that helped restore security to much of Colombia with U.S. assistance. While Mexico does not present the same kind of counterinsurgency challenge as Colombia, the initiative provides a model for how U.S. training and assistance can empower local forces to combat criminal groups and regain effective control of territory, with the local partner bearing most of the cost. U.S.-supported economic initiatives and strengthening of institutions would also be an important component. Notably, Plan Colombia did not involve unilateral U.S. military action, which would generate serious backlash and make it difficult for any Mexican president to cooperate with the United States.
As thousands of American communities know firsthand from fentanyl overdoses and the arrival of migrants from the southern border, what happens in Mexico affects us here in the United States. Addressing insecurity in Mexico must be a top U.S. national security priority. That's why the United States must empower the Mexican government to regain control from criminal groups and build a better future for Mexico and its people.
Connor Pfeiffer is the executive director of the Forum for American Leadership and a former national security adviser to a member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His handle on X is @ConnorPfeiffer.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
