The United States continues to monitor the innovation of methods that could also be used to introduce terrorist cells or even weapons of mass destruction.

In the last ten years, the proliferation of submersible and semi-submersible vessels, which are difficult to detect, has accounted for a third of drug shipments from South America to the United States. The incorporation of GPS systems by the cartels also hampers the global counter-narcotics fight. A possible use of these new methods for terrorist purposes keeps the United States on its toes.

▲ Narco-submarine found in the jungle of Ecuador in 2010 [DEA].

article / Marcelina Kropiwnicka [English version].

Drug trafficking to the major consumer markets, especially the United States and Europe, is particularly innovative: the magnitude of the business leads to attempts to overcome any barriers put up by the States to prevent its penetration and distribution. In the case of the United States, where the illicit arrival of narcotics dates back to the 19th century - from opium to marijuana and cocaine - continued efforts by the authorities have succeeded in intercepting many drug shipments, but traffickers are finding new ways and methods to bring a significant Issue of narcotics into the country.

The most disturbing method in the last ten years has been the use of submersible and semi-submersible vessels, commonly referred to as narco-submarines, which make it possible to transport several tons of drugs - five times more than a fishing boat - while evading coast guard surveillance [1]. Satellite technology has also led traffickers to leave drug loads at sea, which are then picked up by pleasure boats without arousing suspicion. These methods are reference letter in recent reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US anti-narcotics agency.

Through the waters of Central America

For many years, the usual way to transport drugs leaving South America for the United States has been by fishing boats, speedboats and light aircraft. Advances in airborne detection and tracking techniques have pushed drug traffickers to look for new ways to get their loads north. Hence the development of narco-submarines, whose issue, since a first interception in 2006 by US authorities, has seen a rapid progression.

This means of transport is one of the reasons why, since 2013, trafficking along the drug route from Colombia (the country that produces 93% of the cocaine consumed in the US) to Central America and Mexico, from where the shipments are smuggled into the US, has increased by 10%. According to the DEA, this corridor now accounts for an estimated 93% of the movement of cocaine from South America to North America, compared to 7% of the route that seeks the Caribbean islands (mainly the Dominican Republic) to reach Florida or other parts of the US coast.

For some time, a rumor spread among the US Coast Guard that drug cartels were using narco-submarines. Without having seen one so far, the agents gave it the name of 'Bigfoot' (as an alleged ape-like animal known to inhabit the forests of the U.S. Pacific).

The first sighting occurred in November 2006, when a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat spotted a blurred shape in the ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. When the agents approached, they discovered three plastic tubes emerging from the water, which came from a submersible vessel making its way six feet below the surface. Inside they found three tons of cocaine and four men armed with an AK-47 rifle. The Coast Guard christened it 'Bigfoot I'.

Two years later there would be a 'Bigfoot II'. In September 2008, a U.S. Navy frigate on coast guard duty apprehended a similar craft 350 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border. The crew consisted of four men and the cargo was 6.4 tons of cocaine.

By then, US authorities estimated that more than 100 submersibles or semi-submersibles had been manufactured. In 2009 they estimated that they were only being able to stop 14% of shipments and that this mode of transport supplied at least a third of the cocaine reaching the US market. The navies of Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala have also seized some of these narco-submarines, which in addition to being located in the Pacific have also been detected in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Manufactured by hand in the jungle, perhaps the most striking episode was that one of them was found in the interior of Ecuador, in the waters of a river. 

Their technical innovation has often surprised counter-narcotics officials. Many of these self-propelled narco-submarines are as long as fifteen meters, are made of synthetic materials and fiberglass, and have been designed to reduce radar or infrared detection. Some models have also been fitted with GPS navigation systems so that fuel can be refueled and food can be delivered to rendezvous along the route.

GPS Location

The development and generalization of GPS has also served drug traffickers to introduce further innovations. One procedure, for example, has been to fill a torpedo-shaped container with drugs - like a submersible, but this time unmanned - attached to a buoy and a signal transmitter. The container can hold up to seven tons of cocaine and is attached to the bottom of a ship by a cable. If the ship is intercepted, it can simply drop the container deeper, only to be retrieved by another vessel thanks to the satellite locator. This makes it extremely difficult for the authorities to capture the drugs and arrest the traffickers.

The GPS navigation system is also used to deposit drug loads at points in U.S. territorial waters, where they can be picked up by pleasure boats or a small group of people without arousing suspicion. The package containing the cocaine is coated with several layers of material and then the whole thing is waterproofed with a foam subject . The package is placed inside a canvas bag which is deposited at the bottom of the sea to be later retrieved by other people.

As the DEA notes in its 2017 report , "this demonstrates how drug trafficking organizations have evolved their methods for conducting cocaine transactions using technology." And it quotation the example of organizations that "transport kilos of cocaine in waterproof packages to a predetermined location and attach it to the ocean floor for later removal by other members of the organization who have GPS tracking," which "allows members of drug trafficking organizations to compartmentalize their work, separating those who do the maritime transport from the onshore distributors."

Terrorist risk

The possibility that these very difficult to detect methods could be used to smuggle weapons or could be part of terrorist operations is of concern to U.S. authorities. Retired Vice Admiral James Stravidis, former head of the U.S. Southern Command, has warned of the potential use of submersibles especially "to transport more than just narcotics: the movement of cash, weapons, violent extremists or, at the worst end of the spectrum, weapons of mass destruction."

Rear Admiral Joseph Nimmich also referred to this risk when, as commander of the Joint Interagency work South, he was confronted with the emergence of submersibles. "If you can carry ten tons of cocaine, you can carry ten tons of anything," he told The New York Times.

According to this newspaper, the stealthy development of homemade submarines was first developed in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tiger rebel group used them in their confrontation with government forces. "The Tamils will go down in history as the first terrorist organization to develop underwater weapons," the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense claimed. In 2006, as the NYT states, "a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan provided the Colombians with plans to build semi-submersibles that were fast, quiet and made of cheap, commonly available materials.

Despite this origin, ultimately written request related to Tamil rebels, and the terrorist potential of submersibles used by drug cartels, Washington has reported no evidence that the new drug transportation methods developed by organized crime groups are being used by extremist actors of a different stripe. Nonetheless, the U.S. is keeping its guard up given the high rate of shipments arriving undetected.

[1] REICH, S., & Dombrowski, P (2017). The End of Grand Strategy. US Maritime Pperations in the 21st Century. Cornell Univesity Press. Ithaca, NY. Pp. 143-145.

The cancellation of the new CDMX airport, already more than 31% built, sows doubts about the economic success of the new administration.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador arrives to the presidency of Mexico facing the economic world, to which he has put up a fight with his advertisement to paralyze the works of the new airport of the capital, despite the fact that a third of the works have already been carried out. The desire to make clear to the economic power who rules the country and to bury what was to be an emblematic bequest of the PRI -whose historical hegemony he hopes to replace with his own party, Morena- may be behind the controversial decision.

▲ Image of the projected NAICM created by Fernando Romero Enterprise, Foster and Partners.

article / Antonio Navalón

The Mexican PRI returned to the presidency of the country in 2012, led by Enrique Peña Nieto, with the promise of making a major investment in public infrastructure that would put Mexico in the world's showcase. The stellar work chosen was the construction of a new airport, whose project was commissioned to architect Norman Foster and which the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) saw as the inheritance that would always be attributed to it.

This major project was to overshadow any negative bequest of Peña Nieto's term in office, which has been particularly marked by corruption cases and historic record violence figures. Although useful for political marketing, increasing the air traffic capacity of Mexico City (CDMX), whose metropolitan area has 23 million inhabitants, is a necessity for boosting national Economics .

The $13.3 billion project was one of the largest investments in the country's history. Named Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de Ciudad de México (NAICM, later simplified as NAIM) and located in the Texcoco area , a little further away than the current facilities in use, the new infrastructure was to be developed in two phases. The first phase consisted of the construction of a large terminal and three runways, which were initially planned to be ready by 2020, but whose entrance into service had been postponed to 2022 due to construction delays. The second phase would see the construction of three additional runways, plus a second terminal, which would be ready for operation from 2035.

Plans called for NAICM to have the capacity to transport between 70 and 135 million passengers annually, thanks to an operating Issue of between 115 and 135 slots per hour. These figures gave a potential long-term benefit of more than US$32 billion, according to government estimates.

The project sought first and foremost to solve the serious air saturation problem suffered by Mexico City's current Benito Juarez International Airport, caused by the low performance capacity of the two runways that operate simultaneously. In addition, the construction of NAICM was based on the hope of turning CDMX into a world logistics hub, with the potential to increase the current airport's cargo transport capacity by a factor of four.

The level of freight transport in this macro project would be able to reach 2 million tons per year, thus becoming, as its promoters assured, the main distribution center in Latin America. NAICM's ambition, therefore, was to become a reference not only in the American continent but also worldwide, both in the transfer of tourists and in the transport of goods.

Construction of NAICM began in 2015 and to date 31% of the work has been completed. Although this Degree of completion represents a slight delay with respect to the original schedule, the foundation and channeling works are already finished and high Structures intended to hold the wide roof can be seen on the surface. However, despite this progress and the investment already made, the country's new president has announced that he is completely burying the project.

Elections and enquiry

The presidential elections of July 1st were won by the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (inaugurated on December 1st). Former leader of the PRI, thanks to which he served as mayor of the capital, over time he drifted to the left: he first joined the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and, after losing two elections for the presidency of the country, he created the National Regeneration Movement (Morena). In July, Morena won a majority in both houses of congress and also conquered the CDMX government, giving AMLO, as the new president is commonly known, broad powers to carry out his policies. While he fell 17 votes short of a qualified majority in the Senate that could change the Constitution, he could gain allies for that purpose.

During the election campaign, Lopez Obrador defended the cancellation of the new airport project on the grounds of its high cost, and raised the possibility that, as an alternative, some improvements could be made to the current airport and that the Santa Lucia airport, a military base in the area of the Mexican capital that could be used for international flights, could also be upgraded. However, the Morena candidate assured that he would make an enquiry to know the opinion of the Mexican people and that he would abide by the results.

Without waiting to take office as President, López Obrador had Morena carry out this enquiry, which was not organized by the Government but by a political party, and furthermore did not take place in the whole country but in 538 municipalities out of the 2,463 that exist in Mexico. The ballot boxes, set up between October 25 and 28, voted "no" to NAICM: with a participation of only 1% of the national electoral body, 69% voted for the Santa Lucia alternative and 29% voted to continue the works in Texcoco. López Obrador announced that, in application of the result, he will stop work on the new airport, despite the investment already made.

Some popular movements and also naturalists calling for the preservation of the natural environment applauded the advertisement, but there were also protest marches against the decision in the streets of downtown CDMX. The private sector has greatly regretted the purpose to cancel the NAICM project . Leading Mexican businessmen and organizations such as the Confederation of Mexican Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN), which represents 35% of Mexico's GDP and 40% of employment in the country, came out in defense of the original project and asked López Obrador to reconsider his decision. Their argument is that any alternative will fall short of the demands of the growing air traffic, thus hindering the country's development . They also argue that any decision other than continuing with the construction of the NAICM will be more expensive than completing the planned airport [1].

Economic impact

For CONCAMIN, "the current airport lacks the infrastructure and any improvement would not fix the fundamental problems it has", and a bet on the Santa Lucia base "would be a waste of time and money, which will create problems rather than solve them", according to the president of this business association , Francisco Cervantes.

José Navalón, of CONCAMIN's Foreign Trade and International Affairs Commission, of which he is a member, warns that López Obrador's decision will be a major blow to Mexico's macroeconomic and financial system. In his words, "it is still too early to assess possible consequences, but we will have to see if Mexico has the appropriate airport infrastructure, in terms of competitiveness and connectivity, for what is the second largest Economics in Latin America". In any case, for the moment "there has been a problem of lack of confidence in the markets, which has been immediately reflected in the fall of the peso and the markets" [2].

Indeed, while López Obrador was greeted in July with a rise in the markets, because his resounding victory seemed to augur stability for Mexico, his inauguration in December is being accompanied by an "exodus" of investors. The peso has fallen nearly 10% against the dollar in August, the stock market is down 7.6% and in October alone investors sold 2.4 billion dollars in Mexican bonds.

"The main questions that investors are asking nowadays", Navalón continues, "is whether it is safe to invest in Mexico and how often this subject of decisions that do not follow any subject of legality are going to be taken", since important companies will be affected by the cancellation of a project in progress. He also warns that "the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil, whose profile is a magnet for foreign investment, may directly affect investment in Mexico".

The big question is why López Obrador maintains his decision against the new airport, in spite of the economic penalty it will mean for the Government and the risk of investor flight. We must understand that Mexico has always been a country that has been led by economic power. With its attitude towards NAICM, it aims to clearly mark the line of separation between political and economic power, making it clear that the era of economic power is over. A second reason is that NAICM was going to be the PRI's inheritance and López Obrador probably seeks to destroy any subject of association of this macro project with the party he intends to bury.

REFERENCES

[1] CONCAMIN Document "Airport Proposals" 2018.

[2] Personal interviews with Francisco Cervantes and José Navalón.

[Justin Vaïsse, Zbigniew Brzezinski. America's Grand Strategist. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 2018. 505 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter, is one of the great names in U.S. foreign policy in recent decades. In some respects comparable to Henry Kissinger, who also went directly from the University - where both were colleagues - to the Administration, the latter's greater renown has sometimes obscured Brzezinski's degree program . Justin Vaïsse's biography, written with access to Brzezinski's staff documentation and first published in French two years ago, highlights the singular figure and his own thinking of a man who was a continuous presence in the discussion on US action in the world until his death in 2017.

Born in Warsaw in 1928 and the son of a diplomat, Brzezinski arrived with his family in Canada during World War II. From there, he went to Harvard and quickly rose to prominence in the academic community in the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen and lived for the rest of his life. If in the 1940s and 1950s, the leading positions in the Administration were nurtured by an older generation that had led the country through the war and established the new world order, in the following decades a new group of statesmen emerged, in many cases from the leading American universities, which at that time had acquired an unprecedented preeminence in the gestation of political thought.

This was the case of Kissinger, born in Germany and also emigrated with the war, who was first National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, and also under Gerald Ford. The next president, Jimmy Carter, brought Brzezinski, who had advised him on international issues during the election campaign, to the White House. The two professors maintained a respectful and often cordial relationship, although their positions, ascribed to different political camps, often diverged.

For biographical reasons, Brzezenski's original focus - or Zbig, as he was called by his collaborators to overcome the difficulty of pronouncing his surnamewas on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Relatively early on he came to the conclusion that the USSR would be unable to maintain the economic pulse with the West, so he advocated a "peaceful engagement" with the Eastern bloc as a way of accelerating its decomposition. This was the doctrine of the Johnson, Nixon and Ford Administrations.

However, from the mid-1970s, the USSR faced its evident decline with a headlong rush to try to resettle its international power, both in terms of strategic arms and its presence in the Third World. Brzezinski then shifted to a tougher stance toward Moscow, which brought him into frequent confrontation with other figures in the Carter Administration, especially Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Carter had come to the White House in January 1977 with a certain speech of appeasement, although he was still belligerent in terms of human rights. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 reinforced Brzezinski's thesis .

Carter's short presidency gave little room for the National Security committee to score special triumphs. The biggest, albeit the joint work of the presidential team, was the signature the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. But the fiasco of the attempted rescue of the hostages at the Tehran Embassy, which was not Brzezinski's direct responsibility, weighed down an Administration that could not have a second term.

Situated on the right of the Democratic Party, Brzezinski is described by Vaïsse as a "fellow traveler" of the neoconservatives (the Democrats who went over to the Republican side claiming a more robust defense of U.S. interests in the world), but without being a neoconservative himself (in fact, he did not break with the Democratic Party). In any case, he always remarked his independence and was difficult to pigeonhole. "He was neither a warmonger nor a pacifist. He was hawkish and dovish at different times," says Vaïsse. For example, he opposed the first Gulf War, preferring extreme sanctions, but was in favor of intervening in the Balkan War.

After leaving the Administration, Brzezinski joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington and maintained an active production of essays.

WORKING PAPER / Marianna McMillan

ABSTRACT

In appearance the internet is open and belongs to no one, yet in reality it is subject to concentrated tech firms that continue to dominate content, platform and hardware. This paper intends to highlight the importance in preventing any one firm from deciding the future, however this is no easy feat considering both: (i) the nature of the industry as ambiguous and uncertain and (ii) the subsequent legal complexities in defining the relevant market to assess and address their dominance without running the risk of hindering it. Thus, the following paper tries to fill the gap by attempting to provide a theoretical and practical examination of: (1) the nature of the Internet; (2) the nature of monopolies and their emergence in the Internet industry; and (3) the position of the US in contrast to the EU in dealing with this issue. In doing so, this narrow examination illustrates that differences exist between these two regimes. Why they exist and how they matter in the Internet industry is the central focus.

Download the document [pdf. 387K]

[Bruce Riedel, Kings and Presidents. Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR. Brookings Institution Press. Washington, 2018. 251 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

Oil in exchange for protection is the pact that Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz bin Saud sealed on board the USS Quincy in early 1945, in the waters off Cairo, when the American president was returning from the Yalta lecture . Since then, the special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has been one of the key elements of international politics. Today, fracking makes Arabian oil less necessary for Washington, but cultivating Saudi friendship continues to be of interest to the White House, even in an unorthodox presidency in diplomatic matters: the first country that Donald Trump visited as president was Saudi Arabia.

The ups and downs in this relationship, due to the vicissitudes of the world, especially in the Middle East, have marked the tenor of the contacts between the various presidents of the United States and the corresponding monarchs of the House of Saud. This book by Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and member of the US National Security committee as a specialist on the region, who now directs the Intelligence project of the Brookings Institution think tank, is devoted to analyzing the content of these relations, following the successive pairs of interlocutors between Washington and Riyadh.

In this relationship, the central position occupied by the Palestinian question is surprising. One might sometimes think that many Arab countries' invocation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rhetorical, but Riedel notes that in the case of Saudi Arabia the issue is fundamental. It was part of the initial pact between Roosevelt and Abdulaziz bin Saud (the U.S. president pledged not to support the partition of Palestine to create the State of Israel without Arab consent, something that Truman did not respect, aware that Riyadh could not break with Washington because it needed U.S. oil companies) and since then it has appeared on every occasion.

Progress or stalemates in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the differing passion of Saudi kings on this issue, have directly shaped the relationship between U.S. administrations and the Saudi Monarchy. For example, Washington's support for Israel in the 1967 war led to the 1973 oil embargo; George Bush senior and Bill Clinton's efforts for a peace agreement helped a close relationship with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah; the latter, on the other hand, led to a cooling off in the face of the disinterest shown by George Bush junior. "A vibrant and effective peace process will help cement a strong relationship between king and president; a stalled and exhausted process will damage their connection."

Will this issue remain a defining one for the new generations of Saudi princes? "The Palestinian cause is deeply popular in Saudi society, especially in the clerical establishment. The House of Saud has made the creation of a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, emblematic of its policy since the 1960s. A generational change is unlikely to alter that fundamental stance."

In addition to this, there are two other aspects that have proven to be disruptive in the Washington-Riyadh entente: Wahhabism promoted by Saudi Arabia and the US demand for political reforms in the Arab world. Riedel asserts that, given the foundational alliance between the House of Saud and this strict Sunni variant of Islam, which Riyadh has promoted in the world to ingratiate itself with its clerics, as compensation each time it has had to bow to the demands of the impious United States, there is no room for a rupture between the two bodies. "Saudi Arabia cannot abandon Wahhabism and survive in its present form," he warns.

Thus, the book ends with a rather pessimistic outlook on the change -democratization, respect for human rights- that Saudi Arabia is facing from the international community (certainly without much insistence, in the case of the United States). Not only was Riyadh the "major player" in the counter-revolution at the time of the Arab Spring, but it may be a factor going against a positive evolution of the Middle East. "Superficially it looks like Saudi Arabia is a force for order in the region, someone who is trying to prevent chaos and disorder. But in the long term, by trying to maintain an unsustainable order, forcibly enforced by a police state, the kingdom could, in fact, be a force for chaos."

Riedel has personally dealt with prominent members of the Saudi royal family. Despite a close relationship with some of them, especially Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was ambassador to the United States for more than twenty years, the book does not patronize Saudi Arabia in the disputes between Washington and Riyadh. More critical of George W. Bush than of Barack Obama, Riedel also points out the latter's inconsistencies in his Middle East policies.

The Fleet was restored in 2008 due to Venezuela's geopolitical alliances.

Of the U.S. naval forces, the Sixth and Seventh Fleets - based in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, respectively - are the ones that have traditionally been most in the news. The Fourth Fleet usually goes unnoticed. In fact, it barely has any staff, and when it needs ships it must borrow them from other units. However, its restoration in 2008, after having been deactivated in 1950, indicates that Washington does not want to neglect security in the Caribbean in the face of Russia and China's moves.

▲The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arriving in 2010 at Mayport, Florida [US Navy].

article / Dania del Carmen[English version].

The Fourth Fleet is part of the U.S. Southern Command. It is located in Mayport, Florida, and its area of operations is the waters off Central and South America. The ships based in Mayport do not strictly belong to the base and none are currently deployed in the waters of the region. The staff stationed in the fleet is approximately 160 people, including military, federal civilians and contractors. They work out of the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command (USNAVSO) headquarters. The Southern Command commander is also commander of the Fourth Fleet, currently Rear Admiral Sean S. Buck.

It was originally established in 1943, during World War II, to protect the U.S. from German naval actions, both surface attacks, blockade operations and submarine raids. After the war ended in 1945, the FOURTHFLT remained active until 1950. At that time, its area of operations was turned over to the Second Fleet, which had just been established to support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).[1] The FOURTHFLT's operations were then transferred to the Second Fleet.

The Fourth Fleet was reactivated in 2008, during George W. Bush's presidency, in reaction to possible threats from anti-U.S. sentiment promoted by then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. During that time, Venezuela received loans from Russia for the purchase of arms and for Venezuelan military development . In 2008 Venezuela conducted a joint naval exercise with Russia in the Caribbean as a way of supporting Russia's intentions to increase its geopolitical presence as a counterweight to the power of the United States.

The fact that Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador had a similar ideology to Venezuela reinforced Washington's conviction to reactivate the fleet, as a reminder that the US maintained its interest in being the only military power in the western hemisphere. Although US territory could hardly be threatened, preventing any risk status in the free access to the Panama Canal has been a permanent task for the Southern Command. In recent years, Russia has sought to expand its military presence in the Americas, through particular relations with Cuba and Nicaragua, while China has increased its investments in the Panama Canal area .

Current activity

As the USNAVSO/FOURTHFLT website states in its "mission statement" section , the Fourth Fleet "employs maritime forces in cooperative maritime security operations to maintain access, enhance interoperability, and establish enduring partnerships that promote regional security in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility." As mentioned, when ships and other equipment are assigned to SOUTHCOM and the Fourth Fleet, they are provided by other U.S. Navy commands with broader geographic responsibilities based in other parts of the world[2].

FOURTHFLT has three main lines of action: maritime security operations, security cooperation activities and contingency operations.

-In terms of its maritime security operations, it currently provides maritime forces to Interagency Task Force South(JIATF South) in support of Operation HAMMER. JIATF South "conducts detection and monitoring (D&M) operations throughout its joint operational area to facilitate interdiction of illicit trafficking in support of national and partner nation security." It utilizes the resources of the Fourth Fleet or temporarily employs other assets, such as the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group or individual ships from other fleets such as Norfolk, VA Fleet Forces Command or the Third Fleet, based in San Diego, California. Operation MARTILLO is primarily aimed at combating international drug trafficking, enhancing regional security and promote peace, stability and prosperity in Central and South America. As part of Operation MARTILLO, in a joint operation with the U.S. Coast Guard, the USS Vandegrift stopped a suspicious vessel off the coast of Central America in 2014. Security staff found nearly two thousand pounds of cocaine. More recently, in January 2015, the USS Gary and the U.S. Coast Guard seized more than 1.6 tons of cocaine from a fast vessel. However, the absence of dedicated Fourth Fleet assets demonstrates that its counternarcotics missions are a lower priority for the U.S. Navy, even though they are significantly less demanding, operationally.

-In terms of security cooperation activities, the two main events of participation with other nations are the UNITAS and PANAMAX exercises. UNITAS was conceived in 1959 and was first conducted in 1960. It is an annual exercise whose purpose is to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the region and to maintaining strong relationships with its partners. PANAMAX dates back to 2003 and has become one of the largest multinational training exercises in the world. It is primarily focused on securing the defense of the Panama Canal, one of the world's most strategic and economically important infrastructure assets.

-Finally, the Fleet is always ready to carry out contingency operations: basically humanitarian attendance and financial aid in case of disasters. The U.S. Navy hospital ship regularly travels throughout area Caribbean and Central America to provide humanitarian support. In the framework of the Continuing Promise 2015 program, the Comfort visited a total of 11 countries, from Guatemala to Dominica, performing procedures such as general surgery, ophthalmic surgery, veterinary services and public health training . The ship previously participated in the 2007, 2009 and 2011 programs.

Objectives met at reasonable cost

As an integrated part of Southern Command, the Fourth Fleet has been involved in major humanitarian operations, such as the response to the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. The FOURTHFLT had naval command in Operation Unified Response, which was the largest contingency response in humanitarian attendance and financial aid in disasters.

The budget for those missions does not rely solely on the Navy, as a SOUTHCOM spokesperson stated, but there is also a contribution of resources from "other U.S. entities, such as the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, which also provide platforms and forces, both maritime and air, that are core topic for the support of those missions. So, we are looking for a good expense counterbalance."

In addition to developing effective humanitarian actions, at a limited economic cost, the Fourth Fleet also serves the purpose of ensuring that the United States has a significant military presence in the Western Hemisphere in the eyes of Latin American and Caribbean states, as well as superpowers such as Russia and China.

1. The Second Fleet was deactivated in 2011 and reestablished in 2018.

REICH, Simon and DOMBROWSKI, Peter. The End of Grand Strategy. US Maritime Operations In the 21st Century. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, NY, 2017. p. 144.

[Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, The End of Grand Strategy. US Maritime Operations In the 21st Century. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, NY, 2017. 238 pages]

review / Emili J. Blasco [English version].

The concept of Grand Strategy is not univocal. In its most abstract sense, used in the field of geopolitics, Grand Strategy refers to a country's geopolitical imperatives and determines what a state must necessarily do to achieve its primary and fundamental purpose in its relationship with others, usually in terms of power. In a lesser Degree of abstraction, the Grand Strategy is understood as the principle that should govern the way in which a country deals with conflicts in the international arena. It is what, in the case of the United States, is often referred to as a President's Doctrine and aims to create a rule for the response, especially military, to be given to the challenges and threats that arise.

This second, more concrete sense is the one used in The End of Grand Strategy. Its authors do not question that there are geopolitical imperatives that should mark a particular U.S. action, constant over time, but rather that a single strategic response to the variety of security risks facing the country is intended. "Strategies must be calibrated in agreement with operational circumstances. They exist in the plural, not in a singular grand strategy," warn Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, professors at Rutgers University and the Naval War College, respectively, and both experts on defense issues.

For both authors, "the notion of a grand strategy is a vain search for order and coherence in an increasingly complex world", "the very idea of a single, all-purpose grand strategy is of little use in the 21st century. In fact, it is often counterproductive".

Despite the doctrines that are sometimes invoked in some presidencies, in reality different strategic approaches often coexist in the same mandate, or there are even specific strategies that transcend presidencies. "The United States does not favor a dominant strategy, nor can it," Reich and Dombrowski warn.

"The concept of grand strategy is discussion in Washington, in academia and in the media in the 'singular' rather than the 'plural.' The implication is that there is a way to secure U.S. interests in a complicated world. Those debating even tend to accept a fundamental premise: that the United States has the ability to control events, and thus can afford not to be elastic in the face of a changing and increasingly challenging strategic environment," the two authors write.

The book examines US military operations so far this century, focusing on naval operations. As a maritime power, it is in that domain that US action has the greatest strategic expression. The result of this examination is a list of six strategies, grouped into three types, which the US has operated in a "parallel" and "by necessity" manner.

1. Hegemony. It is based on the global dominance of the United States: a) primatist forms are commonly associated with US unilateralism, which in the 21st century has included the neoconservative variant of nation building (Iraq and Afghanistan); b) leadership strategy or "cooperative security" is based on the traditional coalition in which the United States assumes the role of first among equals; it seeks to ensure greater legitimacy for US policies (military exercises with Asian partners).

2. sponsorship. It involves the provision of material and moral resources in support of policies basically advocated and initiated by other actors: a) formal strategies, which are specifically authorized by law and international protocolspartnership against pirates and terrorists); b) informal strategies, which respond to the request of a loose coalition of states or other entrepreneurs rather than being authorized by intergovernmental organizations (captures at sea).

3. Entrenchment: a) isolationism wants to withdraw U.S. forces from foreign instructions , reduce U.S. commitments in international alliances and reassure U.S. control through strict border control (barrier against drug trafficking from South America); b) containment, which implies selective engagement or balancing from outside (Arctic).

The description of all these different actions demonstrates that, as opposed to the theoretical approach that seeks a unifying principle, there is actually a variety of situations, as the military knows. "Military planners, by contrast, recognize that a variety of circumstances requires a menu of strategic choices," say Reich and Dombrowski. "U.S. policy, in internship, does not replicate any single strategic one. It reflects all of them, with the application of different strategic approaches, depending on the circumstances."

The authors conclude that "if observers were to accept that no grand strategy is capable of prescribing responses to all threats to U.S. security, they would necessarily recognize that the primary purpose of a grand strategy is only rhetorical-a statement of values and principles that lacks operational utility." "By definition, the architectural design of any single, abstract strategy is relatively rigid, if not static in fact-intellectually, conceptually, analytically, and organizationally. And yet that single grand strategy is expected to work in a context that claims enormous adaptability and routinely punishes rigidity (...) Military leadership is far more aware than academics or policymakers of this inherent problem."

What are the benefits of a plurality of calibrated strategies? According to the authors, it underscores to policymakers and citizens the limits of US power, sample that the US is also influenced by global forces it cannot fully dominate, and tempers expectations about what US military power can achieve.

Trump has maintained several of the measures passed by Obama, but has conditioned their implementation

Donald Trump has not Closed the embassy opened by Barack Obama in Havana and has kept to the letter of the rules allowing only certain travel by Americans to the island. However, his imposition of not establishing commercial or financial relations with companies controlled by the Cuban military-police apparatus has affected the trade Issue . But it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has returned the relationship almost to the Cold War.

▲Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, at the baseball game they attended during the U.S. president's 2016 visit to Cuba [Pete Souza/White House].

article / Valeria Vásquez

For more than half a century, relations between the United States and Cuba were marked by political tensions. The last years of Barack Obama's presidency marked a significant change with the historic reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the approval of certain measures of U.S. openness toward Cuba. The White House then hoped that the climate of growing cooperation would boost the modest economic reforms that Havana had begun to implement earlier and that all this would eventually bring political transformations to the island.

The Cuban government's lack of concessions in subject of freedoms and human rights, however, was used by Donald Trump to reverse, upon his arrival to power, several of the measures approved by his predecessor, although it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has created a new hostile environment between Washington and Havana.

Obama era: détente  

In his second term, Barack Obama began secret negotiations with Cuba that culminated in the advertisement in December 2014 of an agreement for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The respective embassies were reopened in July 2015, thus overcoming an anomaly dating back to 1961, when the Eisenhower Administration decided to break relations with the Antillean neighbor in view of the communist orientation of the Cuban Revolution. In March 2016, Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years.

Beyond the diplomatic sphere, Obama also sought an economic opening towards the island. Since lifting the decades-old US embargo required the approval of congress, where he faced a Republican majority, Obama introduced certain liberalizing measures by means of presidential decrees. Thus, he eased travel restrictions (he hardly changed the letter of the law, but did relax his internship) and authorized raising the Issue of purchases that Americans could make in Cuba.

For Obama, the economic embargo was a failed policy, as it had not achieved its purpose of ending the Cuban dictatorship and, consequently, had prolonged it. For this reason, he was in favor of a change of strategy, in the hope that the normalization of relations - diplomatic and, progressively, economic - would help to improve Cuba's social status and contribute, in the medium or long term, to the change that the economic embargo had failed to bring about. According to Obama, the embargo had had a negative impact, as issues such as the limitation of tourism or the lack of foreign direct investment had affected the Cuban people more than the Castro nomenklatura.

A new economic relationship

Faced with the impossibility of lifting the economic embargo on Cuba, Obama opted for presidential decrees that opened up trade relations between the two countries. Several measures were aimed at facilitating better access to the Internet for Cubans, which should help to promote democratizing demands in the country. Thus, Washington authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to establish business in Cuba.

In the financial field, the United States allowed its banks to open accounts in Cuba, which facilitated transactions. In addition, Cuban citizens residing on the island could receive payments in the U.S. and send them back to their country.

Another of the measures adopted was the lifting of some of the travel restrictions. As required by U.S. legislation, Obama maintained the restriction that Americans can only travel to Cuba under various circumstances, all linked to certain missions: academic, humanitarian, religious support trips... Although purely tourist trips were still excluded, the lack of control that the U.S. authorities deliberately stopped applying meant a considerable opening of the hand.

In addition to authorizing banking transactions related to such travel, to cater to the anticipated increase in tourists it was announced that several U.S. carriers such as JetBlue and American Airlines had received approval to fly to Cuba. For the first time in 50 years, in late November 2016 a U.S. commercial aircraft landed in Havana.

The U.S. president also eliminated the expense limit for U.S. visitors in the purchase of staff products (particularly cigars and rum). He also promoted partnership in medical research and approved the importation of medicines produced in Cuba.

In addition, Obama repealed the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, whereby Cubans arriving on U.S. soil were automatically granted political asylum, while only those intercepted by Cuba at sea were returned to the island.

Trump's review

Since his election campaign, Donald Trump showed clear signals about the direction his relations with Cuba would take if he became president. Trump announced that he would reverse the opening towards Cuba carried out by Obama, and as soon as he arrived at the White House he began to strengthen Washington's anti-Castro speech . The new president said he was willing to negotiate a "better agreement" with the island, but on the condition that the Cuban government showed concrete progress towards the democratization of the country and respect for human rights. Trump raised the prospect of free elections and the release of political prisoners, knowing that the Cuban regime would not accede to these requests. In the absence of a response from Havana, Trump insisted on his previous proposals: maintenance of the embargo (which in any case the Republican majority in congress is not willing to lift) and reversal of some of Obama' s decisions.

In reality, Trump has formally maintained several of his predecessor' s measures, although the ban on doing business with companies controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which dominate a good part of Cuban economic life, and the respect for the letter in travel restrictions have reduced the contact between the US and Cuba that had begun to occur at the end of the Obama era.

Trump has ratified the repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy decided by Obama and has maintained the diplomatic relations reestablished by Obama (although he has paralyzed the appointment of an ambassador). It has also respected the timid commercial and financial opening operated by the Democratic president, but as long as the economic transactions do not take place with companies linked to the Cuban army, intelligence and security services. In this regard, on November 8, 2017, the Treasurydepartment published a list of companies in these sectors with which no U.S. contact subject is allowed.

In terms of travel, the restricted assumptions for American travel to the island are maintained, but in contrast to the blind eye adopted by the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration requires that Americans who want to go to Cuba must do so on tours conducted by American companies, accompanied by a representative of the group sponsor and with the obligation to communicate the details of their activities. Treasury rules and regulations require that stays be in private hostels (casas particulares), meals in restaurants run by individuals (paladares) and shopping in stores run by citizens (cuentapropistas), with the purpose of "channeling funds" away from the Cuban army and weakening communist policy.

Reduced tourist expectations led already at the end of 2017 to several US airlines having cancelled all their flights to the Caribbean island. Cuban Economics had counted on a large increase in U.S. tourists and yet now had to face, without higher revenues, the serious problem of falling shipments of cheap oil from Venezuela.

Future of diplomatic relations

The greatest tension between Washington and Havana, however, has not been in the commercial or economic sphere, but in the diplomatic sphere. Following a series of apparent "sonic attacks" on U.S. diplomats in Cuba, the United States withdrew a large part of its staff in Cuba and expelled 15 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington. In addition, the State department issued a travel advisory against travel to the island. Although the origin of these alleged attacks, which the Cuban authorities deny having carried out, has not been clarified, it could be the accidental side effect of an espionage attempt, which would have eventually caused brain damage to the persons being monitored.

The future of relations between the two countries will depend on the direction taken by Trump's policies and the pace of reforms that the new Cuban president may establish. Given that not many changes are foreseen in Miguel Díaz-Canel's management , at least as long as Raúl Castro lives, Havana's immobility in the political and economic fields will probably continue to run up against Trump's anti-revolutionary rhetoric.

[Robert Kaplan, Earning the Rockies. How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World. Random House. New York, 2017. 201 pages]

REVIEW / Iñigo Bronte Barea

Despite rising powers in conventional geopolitics, the United States today remains unopposed due to geography as an overwhelming advantage for the US. As such, the country is blessed with a trifecta of comparative advantages. The country is bound by oceans on both sides, lacks any real threat from its neighbors, and contains an almost perfect river network.

Throughout the book, Author Robert D. Kaplan guides the reader as he travels the US, portraying how geography impacts the livelihood of its population, analyzes the concerns of its citizens, and studies how the country achieved its current composition from a historical lens.

The author introduces the topic by arguing that the world's security during the 20th and 21st century largely depended on the political unity and stability of the United States. Kaplan crosses the country to study how geography helped the US attain the position that they have in the world. The title of his book, "Earning the Rockies," emphasizes the importance of the fact that in order to achieve western part of nowadays US, it would be necessary to first control the East, the Midwest, and the Great American Desert.

During his travels, Kaplan brought three books to reinforce his staff experiences on the road. His first book was "The Year of Decision: 1846" from the DeVoto trilogy of the West. From this text, Kaplan learns that America's first empirical frontier was not in the Caribbean or Philippines, but earlier in the western part of the country itself. Kaplan also stresses the idea that the solitude and dangers of the old West are today very present in the common American character. In particular, he argues such values remain manifested in the extremely competitive capitalist system and the willingness of its population for military intervention. The last and most important idea that Kaplan gleans from DeVoto was that the defining feature of US greatness today is based ultimately on the country being a nation, an empire and a continent, all rolled into one.

Kaplan starts his journey in the spring of 2015 in Massachusetts. He wanted to contemplate the American continent and its international role, and the one that must be expected for it in the coming years; he wanted to discover this while hearing people talking, to discover what are their real worries.

Back on the East coast, Kaplan traces the country's origins after the independence of the thirteen colonies in 1776. Kaplan starts his eastern journey by examining the US from a historical perspective and how it grew to become a global force without equal. Primarily, Kaplan argues that the US did so by first becoming an army before the US became a nation. For the author, President Theodore Roosevelt was the one who realized that the conquest of the American West set the precedent for a foreign policy of active engagement worldwide.

Kaplan continues his travels through the Great Lakes region; Lancaster, Pittsburgh, Ohio, and West Virginia. His travel is set in the context of the Presidential primary season, in which he examines the decline of the rural middle class from the staple of the American workforce to near poverty. As such, the devolution of the social process ended with the election of Donald J. Trump. Despite a legacy of success in globalization and multilateralism, America quickly became a nation enthralled with a renewed sense of nationalism and isolationism.

From his travels, Kaplan deduces several types of groups based on the founding fathers. He categorizes them as following: elites in Washington and New York were Wilsonian (who seek to promote democracy and international law), Hamiltonians (who are intellectual realists and emphasize commercial ties internationally) or Jeffersonians (who emphasize perfecting American democracy at home more than engaging abroad). Surprisingly, the huge majority of the American people were actually Jacksonians: they believe in honor, faith in God, and military institutions.

Kaplan continues his path toward the Pacific by crossing Kentucky and Indiana, where the transition zone leads him to the arid grasslands. During his voyage, Kaplan finds that the people did not really care about ISIS, the rise of China, the Iraq War or any other international issues, but instead their worries on their work, health, family, and basic economic survival. This is in fact because of their Jacksonian way of seeing life. This in turn means that Americans expect their government to keep them safe and to hunt down and kill anyone who threatens their safety. Related to this, was the fact that isolationism was an American tradition, which fits well within the current political landscape as multilateralism has lost much of its appeal to people in the heartland.

The native grasses and rich soil of the temperate zone of this part of the country, such as Illinois, promote the fertility of the land that goes on for hundreds and hundreds of miles in all directions. For Kaplan, this is ultimately what constitutes the resourceful basis of continental wealth that permits America's ambitious approach to the world.

West of Lincoln, the capital city of Nebraska, it could be said that you enter the real West, where roads, waterways and urban cities rapidly disappears. At this point, Kaplan begins to make reference to the second book that he read for this part of the journey. This time, author Welter P. Webb in "The Great Plains" explains that the history of the US relies on the history of the pioneers adapting to life in the Great American Desert. This author argues that the Great Plains stopped slavery, prompting the defeat of the Confederacy. He states so because for Webb, the Civil War was a conflict between two sides whose main difference was largely economic. The Southern system based on the plantation economy with huge, "cash" crops and slave labor. On the other hand, the Northern economic system was based on small farms, skilled labor, and a rising industrialized system. While the Great Plains were a barrier for pioneers in general, that wall was greater for the Southern economy than for the industrializing North, which could adapt to aridity unlike the farming economy of the south.

The last book that Kaplan reads while crossing the country is "Beyond the Hundredth Meridian" by Wallace Stenger. The author of this book stresses the importance of the development limitations in immense areas of the western US due to a lack of water. This desert provided a big challenge for the federal government, which manages the little resources available in that area with the construction of incredible dams, such as the Hoover Dam, and turnpike highway system. It remains quite clear that the culmination of American history has more to do with the West than with the East. Stenger is well aware of the privileged geographic position of the US, without dangerous neighbors or other inland threat. In addition, the US contains an abundance of inland waterways and natural resources that are not found on such a scale anywhere else. This characteristic, helps provide the US with geographical and political power unlike any other in modern history. As Stenger stipulates, the fact that World War II left mainland America unscathed, which inly shows how geography has blessed the US.

One of the key aspects that Kaplan realized along his trip was the incredible attachment that Americans have to their military. For Kaplan, this feeling becomes more and more romanticized as he headed westward. In Europe, despite the threats of terrorism, refugees, and Russia, the military is seen locally as merely civil servants in funny uniforms, at least according to Stenger. On the contrary, America, which faces less physical threats than Europe, still maintains a higher social status and respect for military personnel.

In summation, the radical landscape of the west provided Americans with a basis for their international ambition. After all, if they could have conquered and settled this unending vastness, they settle the rest of the world too. However, the very aridity of the western landscape that Kaplan faces at the end of his voyage, requires restraint, planning, and humility in much of what the government had to invest in order to make the west inhabitable and successful. But despite the feeling that they could conquer the world, America faces huge inequalities, real and imagined, that force US leaders to focus on domestic issues rather than foreign affairs. Therefore, elites and leaders in Washington tend to be centrist and pragmatic. In such, they do not dream about conquering the world nor opt to withdraw from it either. Instead, they maintain America's "pole position" place within its global affairs.

At the end, it could be said that American soil itself is what in fact really orients the country towards the world. Despite all the restraint and feelings for the heartland, what really matters are the politicians and business leaders that enable the new American reality: the world itself is now the final, American frontier.

July 1 presidential election does not open a serious discussion on the fight against drug trafficking

The 'iron fist' that Felipe Calderón (PAN) began in 2006, with the deployment of the Armed Forces in the fight against drugs, was extended in 2012 by Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI). In these twelve years the status has not improved, but rather violence has increased. In the 2018 elections, none of the main candidates presents a radical change of model; the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Morena) proposes some striking measures, but continues to count on the work of the Army.

▲The Mexican president on Flag Day, February 2018 [Presidency of the Republic].

article / Valeria Nadal [English version] [English version].

Mexico faces a change of sexenio after closing 2017 as the most violent year in the country's history, with more than 25,000 homicides. How has this status been reached? Can it begin to be resolved in the coming years?

There are various theories about the beginning of drug trafficking in Mexico, but the most widely accepted argues that Mexican drug trafficking was born when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States between 1933 and 1945, promoted the cultivation of poppy in Mexican territory with the veiled intention of promoting the production of large quantities of morphine to relieve the pain of U.S. soldiers during World War II. However, drug trafficking was not a serious national problem until the 1980s; since then, cartels have multiplied, violence has increased and crime has spread throughout Mexico.

The new phase of Felipe Calderón

In the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico, the presidency of Felipe Calderon marked a new stage. candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Calderon was elected for the six-year term 2006-2012. His program included declaring war on the cartels, with a "mano dura" (iron fist) plan that translated into sending the Army into the streets of Mexico. Although Calderon's speech was forceful and had a clear goal , to exterminate insecurity and violence caused by drug trafficking, the result was the opposite because his strategy was based exclusively on the action of police and military. This militarization of the streets was carried out through joint operations combining government forces: National Defense, Public Security, the Navy and the Attorney General's Office (PGR). However, despite the large deployment and the 50% increase in security expense , the strategy did not work; homicides not only did not decrease, but increased: in 2007, Calderón's first full presidential year, 10,253 homicides were registered and in 2011, the last full year of his presidency, a record 22,409 homicides were registered.

agreement to the Institute for Legal Research (IIJ) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in that record year of 2011 almost a quarter of the total Mexican population over 18 years of age (24%) was assaulted in the street, suffered a robbery in public transportation or was a victim of extortion, fraud, threats or injuries. The fees of violence were so high that they surpassed those of countries at war: in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 there was an average of 12 murders per day per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Mexico that average reached 18 murders per day. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the number of complaints about this indiscriminate wave of violence was quite leave: only 12% of the victims of drug-related violence filed a complaint. This figure is probably related to the high rate of impunity (70%) that also marked Calderón's mandate.

Peña Nieto's new approach

After the failure of the PAN in the fight against drug trafficking, in 2012 Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was elected president. With this, this party, which had governed uninterruptedly for decades, returned to power after two consecutive six-year periods of absence (presidencies of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, both from the PAN). Peña Nieto assumed the position promising a new approach , contrary to the "open war" proposed by his predecessor. He mainly focused his security policy on the division of the national territory into five regions to increase the efficiency and coordination of operations, on the reorganization of the Federal Police and on the strengthening of the legal framework . However, the new president maintained the employment the Army in the streets.

Peña Nieto's results in his fight against drug trafficking have been worse than those of his predecessor: during his term, intentional homicides have increased by 12,476 cases compared to the same period in Calderón's administration and 2017 closed with the regrettable news of being the most violent year in Mexico to date. With just months to go before the end of his six-year term, and in a last-ditch effort to right the wrongs that have marked it, Peña Nieto brought about the approval of the Internal Security Law, which was voted by Mexico's congress and enacted in December of last year. This law does not remove the military from the streets, but rather seeks to legally guarantee the Armed Forces' capacity for policing, something that previously had only a provisional nature. According to the law, military participation in daily anti-narcotics operations is not to supplant the police, but to reinforce them in those areas where they are unable to deal with drug trafficking. The initiative was criticized by critics who, while recognizing the problem of the scarcity of police resources, warned of the risk of an unlimited military deployment over time. Thus, although Peña Nieto began his term in office trying to distance himself from Calderón's policies, he has concluded it by consolidating them.

What to expect from the 2018 candidates

Given the obvious ineffectiveness of the measures adopted by both presidents, the question in this election year is what anti-drug policy the next president will adopt, in a country where there is no re-election and therefore every six-year presidential term means a change of face. The three main candidates are, in the order of the polls: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena); Ricardo Anaya, of the PAN coalition with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), and José Antonio Meade, of the PRI. López Obrador came close to reaching the presidency in 2006 and 2012, both times as candidate of the PRD (he had previously been leader of the PRI); then he created his own party.

Meade, who represents a certain continuity with respect to Peña Nieto, although in the electoral campaign he has adopted a more anti-corruption tone, has pronounced himself in favor of the Internal Security Law: "It is an important law, it is a law that gives us framework, that gives us certainty, it is a law that allows the participation of the Armed Forces to be well regulated and regulated". Anaya has also positioned himself in favor of this law, since he considers that a withdrawal of the Army from the streets would be "leaving the citizens to their fate". However, he is in favor of the need for the Police to recover its functions and strongly criticizes the lack of responsibility of the Government in subject of public security, alleging that Mexico has entered a "vicious circle that has become very comfortable for governors and mayors". In any case, neither Meade nor Anaya have specified what turn they could take that would be truly effective in reducing violence.

Lopez Obrador, from a left-wing populist stance, is a major change from previous policies, although it is unclear how effective his measures could be. Moreover, some of them, such as granting amnesty to the main drug cartel leaders, seem clearly counterproductive. In recent months, the Morena candidate has changed the focus of his speech, which was first centered on the eradication of corruption and then focused on security issues. Thus, he has said that if he wins the presidency he will assume full responsibility for the country's security by integrating the Army, the Navy and the Police into a single command, to which a newly created National Guard would be added. He has also announced that he would be the only one to assume the single command: "I am going to assume this responsibility directly". López Obrador pledges to end the war against drugs in the first three years of his mandate, assuring that, together with measures of force, his management will achieve economic growth that will translate into employment creation and improvement of welfare, which will reduce violence.

In conclusion, the decade against drug trafficking that began almost twelve years ago has result be a failure that can be measured in numbers: since Calderon became president of Mexico in 2006 with the slogan "Things can change for the better," 28,000 people have disappeared and more than 150,000 have died as a result of the drug war. Despite small victories for Mexican authorities, such as the arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman during the Peña Nieto presidency, the reality in Mexico is one of intense criminal activity by drug cartels. From the electoral proposals of the presidential candidates, no rapid improvement can be expected in the next six years.