NAFTA, now the single largest economic zone in the world.
The two centuries of both worse and better Mexican-American relations are a reminder of the inherent difficulty of managing such an asymmetrical relationship. Domestic fears on both sides, political instability in Mexico, and the periodic assertiveness of US power often constricted what should have been a burgeoning partnership. Their close geographic proximity only compounded those issues, making economic and security cooperation more essential to national success but political instability and cultural fears more inhibiting to their neighborly cooperation. Thus, with intermittent periods of great compromise and acute tension, sustaining a constructive Mexican-American partnership has been a challenge to the leadership in both nations.
America and Mexico share cultural and personal links as well as economic and security concerns, all of which make a regional partnership mutually beneficial. America’s economic resilience and political stability have so far also mitigated many of the challenges posed by such sensitive issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. However, a decline in American power would likely undermine the health and good judgment of America’s economic and political system, therefore intensifying the particular difficulties mentioned above. A waning United States would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others’ development. Hence stable cooperation with Mexico would enjoy less popular support.
In such a setting, domestic politics in the United States would be likely to turn more protectionist, much like European powers did in the aftermath of World War I. The United States would be less likely to create institutions (such as the proposed North American Development Bank) to help foster regional—particularly Mexican—economic growth through jointly funded initiatives and more likely to impose subsidies to support powerful domestic constituencies to the detriment of Mexican exports. America’s role as global leader has often helped protect American trade policy from the effects of protectionist-oriented domestic interests.
The resulting consequences would severely damage the Mexican economy, creating social and political aftershocks that would complicate further the next two most important issues in the Mexican-American relationship: immigration and the narcotics trade. Both issues are the target of tense, sometimes begrudging cooperation between America and Mexico. America’s fair treatment of Mexican immigrants and its commitment to help Mexico combat the drug trade are essential to sustaining a productive partnership. However, the domestic and regional outlook of an America in decline would almost certainly increase American demonization of Mexican immigration and American skepticism regarding Mexico’s will to combat its drug cartels. The United States would be likely to pursue more coercive solutions to these issues (i.e., cut off or deport immigrants, build up or deploy troops at the border), thus scuttling the good-neighbor policy and possibly igniting a geopolitical confrontation.
Mexican immigration, especially illegal immigration, is the result of the sharp contrast between economic and political conditions in Mexico and the United States. Over time, these differences have led to massive Mexican migration to America, such that the population of Mexican immigrants in America was estimated at around 11.5 million in 2009.[10] The estimated population of illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States is said to be 6.6 million.[11] And, the total population of individuals who are ethnically Mexican in America is now around 31 million or 10% of the total US population, most of whom remain deeply tied to their families in Mexico. Likewise, citizens of Mexico and the Mexican government itself are understandably concerned with the condition of immigrants in the United States. For example, Arizona’s strict 2010 immigration law, aimed at increasing the prosecution and deportation of illegal immigrants, angered many in Mexico. Though President Obama denounced the bill, it still produced a sharp drop in the favorability with which Mexicans viewed Americans. According to the 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 44% of the Mexicans polled viewed the United States favorably after the enactment of the Arizona law, compared to 62% before.
A more coercive US attitude and policy toward Mexican immigrants would heighten Mexican resentment, adversely affecting the overall US-Mexico partnership. After 9/11, the issue of border security has come to be seen as essential to homeland security; the specter of an Islamic terrorist crossing the border from Mexico enhanced popular cries to seal off the border completely. America’s decision to construct a wall/fence to separate itself from Mexico as a mechanism to support border security has already stimulated anti-American sentiments. It evokes negative images of Israel’s construction of a “security barrier” in the West Bank or of the Berlin Wall. An internationally declining America is likely to become even more disturbed by the insecurity of its porous border with Mexico and the resulting immigration, inspiring a continuation of similar policies and creating a dangerous downward spiral for relations between the two neighbors.
Growing antagonism can also only further complicate both nations’ ability to cooperate on the narcotics trade, an issue already of acute mutual concern. As a result of America’s highly successful efforts to eliminate the Colombian drug trade, Mexico has increasingly inherited Colombia’s role; 90% of all cocaine bound for the United States now goes through Mexico. This new reality has escalated violence in Mexico, for example in Juarez, and created spillover effects in the United States. And while America and Mexico have made combating the cross-border drug trade a policy priority, the problem has proven difficult to solve. The related violence has intensified and the corruption has persisted. It has been estimated that since 2006 about 5,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence, with 535 Mexican police officers perishing in 2009.[12] In short, this has produced unsustainable pressure on Mexico’s local and national governments and on law enforcement in the United States.
Defeating the narcotics pandemic would become exponentially more difficult if the United States declined, its financial and military resources dwindled, and its policies became more unilateral. Should the current strong north- south partnership then cease to exist because of growing anti-Americanism in Mexico resulting from America’s economic protectionism and harsh immigration policies, the subsequent reorientation of the Mexican government away from full cooperation with the United States would weaken the effectiveness of any American counternarcotics efforts. Furthermore, a Mexican government lacking US support would find it impossible to defeat the drug cartels, and the political landscape in Mexico thus would become susceptible to political pressures for accommodation with drug lords at the expense of American security. This would return Mexico to levels of corruption equal to and beyond those present in Mexico prior to the shift of power from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to an open, multiparty democracy in 2000. A return to such a state would stimulate further anti-Mexican tendencies in the United States.
A waning partnership between America and Mexico could precipitate regional and even international realignments. A reduction in Mexico’s democratic values, its economic power, and its political stability coupled with the dangers of drug cartel expansion would limit Mexico’s ability to become a regional leader with a proactive and positive agenda. This, in the end, could be the ultimate impact of an American decline: a weaker, less stable, less economically viable and more anti-American Mexico unable to constructively compete with Brazil for cooperative regional leadership or to help promote stability in Central America.
In that context, China could also begin to play a more significant role in the post-American regional politics of the Western Hemisphere. As part of China’s slowly emerging campaign for greater global influence, the PRC has initiated large-scale investments in both Africa and Latin America. For example, Brazil and China have long been trying to forge a strategic partnership in energy and technology. This is not to suggest that China would seek to dominate this region, but it obviously could benefit from receding American regional power, by helping more overtly anti-American governments in their economic development.
In the longer run, the potential worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents. Political and economic realities have forced Mexicans to sublimate historical memories of territory lost to the United States for the sake of more beneficial relations with the most powerful state in the Western Hemisphere and (later) the sole global superpower. But in a world where Mexico did not count as much on a weakened United States, incidents resulting initially from the cross-border narcotics trade could easily escalate into armed clashes. One could even imagine cross-border raids made under the banner of “recovery” of historically Mexican soil; there are historical precedents for such a transformation of banditry into a patriotic cause. An additional and convenient pretext could be the notion that anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States is tantamount to discrimination, thus requiring retaliatory acts. These in turn could lead to the argument that the presence of many Mexicans on the formerly Mexican territory raises the issue of territorial self-determination.
Speculation along these lines reads today like futuristic fiction, unrelated to reality, but geopolitical realities would change dramatically in the event of America’s decline. That could well include the once-hostile but lately
