School of War - Ep 138: Joshua S. Treviño on the Southern Border Crisis

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Joshua S. Treviño, Chief of Intelligence and Research and the Director for Texas Identity at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, joins the show to talk about the crisis on the U.S. southern border. ���️ Times      •      01:28 Introduction      •      02:03 “The border itself is insecure…”     •      06:06 Immigration is not the issue      •      08:58 Texas remembers         •      21:44 The Mexican side     •      31:34 WWI in Mexico     •      32:25 PRC and cartels     •      39:24 DoD and the border     •      44:01 “A sincere security partner…”     •      46:03 The Caroline affair Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

America's southern border is in crisis. But what kind of crisis? Humanitarian, immigration, law enforcement, drugs? Well, yes, all of these. But today we'll talk about how the devolving situation with the border and with Mexico is first and foremost a national security crisis. And not the first we've had in those parts. So we'll get into a little Texas military history as well.

Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We shall fight on the beaches. We will fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram. And also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron. B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Joshua Trevino. He's Chief of Intelligence and Research and the Director for Texas Identity at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He's a writer and commentator on any number of Texas-oriented and national security issues. And I just, Josh, I love Texas because it's only in Texas where you have think tanks that have titles like Director of Intelligence. Thank you. Thank you so much for

joining the show. Thank you, Aaron. Thanks for having me on. So we're going to talk today about the southern border and the connection between the southern border, America's national security, Mexico, sort of western hemispheric security concerns writ large, but we'll start at the border. Let's start this way. You know, you're down there. This is something that you focus on and work on. Explain what the experience of being in a border state and for that matter, visiting the border is like here in the summer of 2024. Give us kind of a quick brief as though we're from Mars. What's going on?

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me on here. And I encourage anybody who's listening to this, any American should come down to the border at some point and see for themselves. There's nothing that I can tell you, although I will tell you a lot, that's going to match the actual experience of being there.

And I would describe just in brief the experience of being at the border, which is where my own family is from, by the by, as a very radical dichotomy. On the one hand, you have very close-knit communities that have been in the region for longer than the United States itself has existed. The settlement occurred in the 1750s, for the most part. And on the other hand, you have insecurity

of a style that would be much more familiar to, say, the Middle East or parts of Africa than ought to be familiar to the United States of America, especially in the 21st century. The border itself is insecure. I want to be 100% upfront about that. We are bordered by a state in the Mexican state. I'm going to criticize Mexico a lot, by the way, Aaron, but I want to be very, very clear up front what I mean by it.

My critiques are directed toward the Mexican state, which for my money is one of the worst and most irresponsible polities out there, certainly in the Western Hemisphere. But I don't include the people of Mexico in it, partly out of self-interest because I am very proudly Mexican, half-Mexican. So I don't want to self-indict. But the other reason that I don't, too, is that we see what individuals of Mexican ethnicity, American, were able to achieve in the United States when given the opportunity to live under a society of law. So we have to put that distinction up front. That being said, the Mexican state has to be understood, not as an enemy of the United States. That's too far. But it is at this point an antagonist. And that's the conclusion that I arrive at with great regret. Mexico is governed

by a state cartel synthesis. It's probably the best way to describe it that is at odds with the United States, with Texas, with communities in Texas. And what that produces to your question with life on the border is a scenario in which Americans living in American communities will have a variety of experiences that are simply outside the ambit of the lived experience of Americans anywhere else. I've spoken with Americans who have had their homes come under indirect fire from the Mexican side, 50 caliber in that particular case. I myself have run into individuals in American communities and American streets who have literally just come across the river. and are bound for a human trafficking pickup, and we'll talk openly about it. I have spoken with Americans who have been held at gunpoint on the U.S. side of the border, simply outfishing because there is trafficking occurring in the area.

And I've spoken with Americans who will point out to me the kidnapping houses that are used in towns like Laredo by the cartels across the river for the torture and rendition. I guess there's no other way to put it, the cartel-targeted individuals back into Mexico. So it is at once my favorite place in the United States because of my roots there, but it is also one of the most fraught places in the United States. And I'll close with this, and then we can go wherever you want the conversation to go, Aaron. One of the most poignant conversations I had came in the last year with the gentleman. I don't have permission to say who he is, but he's a landowner. His family has been in the environment of Roma, Texas, my grandfather's hometown for most of the past three centuries.

And he's a U.S. Army veteran. And he asked me, he's elderly, and he said, when I was young, I defended the United States. Why won't the United States defend me now? And that's a good question. So I'm struck by the way in which you answered that question, immigration was sort of, it was a, it was a theme in your answer. It kind of popped up a couple of times, but it wasn't, it wasn't your answer. You know, one reads in the news about the border.

One reads principally about the influx of illegal immigration, which is, you know, this is not my issue, I read the news like everyone else and it seems to be at genuinely historic highs. I'm struck that that's not the first thing that you went to. You painted sort of a different and broader picture of insecurity of which the immigration is but one part. Was that intentional? Like, help me understand how you think about immigration as a part of this. That's a great question.

It is 100% intentional. And I think we have to understand. I was just talking with a journalist about this about 20 minutes before we started recording the show. immigration at this point is a metonym for the broader issue of the border. If you rewind back to say the 1990s, the 1980s, even the early 2000s, which is the border that I grew up with, just to provide context, I'm almost 50. The principal issue on the border was probably some small-scale trafficking of drugs, contraband, and so on. And then you had the illegal immigration issue, which really was

mostly, I'll oversimplify here, but it was mostly a scenario in which individuals came across of their own volition, principally looking for work. And that was a problem, but it was qualitatively different from the problem that we have now. We really don't have a problem with immigration that now's described as such. What we have is a human trafficking problem. It's no longer the case that anyone crosses the border, you know, simply on their own. They're all part of a cartel network. They're all part of a trafficking network. And so we have to describe it for what it is. It's commerce and man. And I borrow that phrase from the radical Republicans of the 18th. who were entirely correct on the topic,

commerce and man is antithetical to American values. But to your point, it's a subset of a larger issue. The border now is the fundamental problem of the border now is not immigration as such. The fundamental problem of the border now is a national security problem of which immigration is just one facet. The human trafficking at the border is part of a much larger network, not just of contraband trafficking, but of extra-hemispheric powers coming in and taking advantage of the very poor southern border and also corruption and violence that comes across the border in ways that I don't

think most Americans are aware of. So it is it is a reversion and we can talk more about this. What we're seeing now from a historical perspective is a reversion to the pre-1920 status quo on the border in which the border was a place of endemic violence, cross-state violence. Well, say more about that. I mean, there's all sorts of different directions we can go from which you've laid out so far. But let's talk a bit about the history of the board. and I guess sort of the military history of the border. Another thing that I love about Texas is, you know, all of America, like much of the world for that matter, but certainly North America is formed by war.

I mean, America is formed originally by imperial competition between different European empires amongst each other and obviously amongst Native Americans. And then, of course, we have wars of our own with civil war, for example. But it seems like Texas uniquely remembers that it's formed by war. It seems more central to the Texan identity as opposed to the Texas. to other parts of the country that, you know, California, I think, probably glosses that over to a greater extent. So what put everything you just said, as you sort of started to do right at the end of your last comment, in context for us, in terms of the military history of Texas

in the border. Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to ask a Texan twice to talk about Texas, so I appreciate the opportunity to do so. But look, every American state, to your point, has a military history behind it, big or small. I lived in, I had the privilege of living in Chicago for a couple of years, and I was genuinely shocked to learn that the Illinoisans generally don't have a memory of, say, Fort Dearborn or Cascarcia, which in Texas would be statewide holidays of what they celebrated, and it's simply something that's mostly forgotten. There are isolated counter examples. I'd say South Carolina does a good job of remembering its military history, but in any case, yeah, you're right. Texas, Texas uniquely remembers its military history.

But I would make the argument that Texas had a pretty uniquely violent 19th and 20th century in particular. There's a reason that prior to the Civil War, between the Mexican War and the Civil War, the bulk of the regular United States Army was deployed in Texas. T.R. Ferenbach, in his late 1960s, I think it was 1969, History Lone Star, talks about Texas being fundamentally born in blood. I think that's his phrase and compares it to the modern state of Israel with essentially he shorthands it as three antagonistic groups contending for the same land. And that's largely true. There's some nuance too, but it's largely true. Texas was always conceived originally as a military frontier.

When we think about the origins of Texas as a geographic entity, and by the way, Texas really doesn't have natural borders. That's another thing to understand. It is a pure cultural creation. The Sabin and the Rio Grande don't constitute much of a barrier to anything. And certainly to the north, the red, or to the west, there's not a lot to define what the expanse of Texas would be. But in the 1750s, the Spanish,

at this point, realized that they have to establish the kingdom of Nuevo Santander. This is when my ancestors on my father's side come into Texas, and it was essentially a string of presidios and settlements up and down the Rio Grande, preceded very slightly by San Antonio and Nacadoches, that sort of constitute the origins of what we come to understand as Texas. Interestingly enough, the initial name they tried for was the New Philippines, Las Nueves Filipinas. But that didn't stick because it wasn't as rich as the Philippines, so nobody bought it. But, you know, Texas, Texas from the start is, is incredibly violent.

Down in Star County, there is a blockhouse that was built by one of my direct ancestors, the Badoris. And you can still visit it. It's out here today. It's San Jose de los Corralitos. And this blockhouse has, has a two-foot-thick walls with firing ports. It's very dark, very smoky inside. And what's interesting about it is it was constructed, I believe, around 1755.

the family did not spend a night, the extended family did not spend a night outside of that blockhouse because of Comanche and Apache raids for about half a century. It was really well into the 19th century that they were able to actually live in a ranch house and live in what we consider kind of a civilized fashion. And that's the nature of violence that has marked Texas from the start. When you get to the period of Anglo settlement, you sort of end up getting this contested land between the noasis, it's called the noasis strip between the noasis and the Rio Grande. grand that is that is a scene of just constant raids and counter raids possession of the noisces strip by the way was the proximate cause of course of the 1846 1848 US-Mexican war you know I'm I'm sorry

to say that the more that I investigated the more that I suspect that the Mexicans have the stronger case than the no Waste the strip but Zachary Taylor made his own law and took it and frankly those of us who were descended from the inhabitants of the original south Texas or for the better for it because had we been left in Tamilipas, who knows whether you and I would be having this conversation even now. But, you know, go ahead. If I may just interject quickly, this is always, I have the same impression based on my no doubt more superficial knowledge of the episode than you. And this is kind of my, but at core, my problem with land acknowledgments, you know, the sort of trendy thing where you have to do honor to, you know, the original indigenous peoples of whichever

place you are standing on, which is, unless we, unless we think that the indigenous, the original people of whom we are aware happen to have like literally sprung from the earth, you know, and we're aututhanists in the way that the ancient Athenians took themselves to be. What we are in fact doing is doing honor to, you know, the sort of, you know, the penultimate dispossessor of others on the way, at least the last one we're aware of. Anyway, sorry, please, please continue. No, no, no, but, but that's, that's completely correct, actually. I mean, it's not, there's nothing indigenous about my, about my Spanish or as one would

have a Mexican ancestry. It's simply wave upon wave of settlement and movement of peoples, which is the norm throughout history. And I think Texas is a great example of that. You know, at the risk of going to in depth, which I don't want to do because I know this is your show, not mine. But the bottom line is this. From the final securing of the Rio Grande as the U.S.-Mexico border, all the way until about the 1920s, you're talking about a 70-year period, it was very, very common to live in violence and with the presence of military forces, especially in southern and western Texas, to an extent that, again, is totally alien to American life now. And it's one reason that from a policy perspective, we're having a hard time dealing with

it because we don't have the same concepts or tools that previous generations of policymakers have. You know, when you think about in, and I'll put it this way, it's useful to understand. In 1915, there is a very ill-conceived, a Karan Sista movement in South Texas, the Mexico. revolution is underway at the time. And there's a group of Mexican nationals, nationalists, I should say, some of whom were Texan, who gathered in a town called San Diego, Texas. You've been to San Diego, Texas. There's one intersection in San Diego, Texas, but it's a farming community. And they issue what's called the Plan de San Diego. And the Blonde San Diego

is a plan for genocide. There's no other way to characterize it. Their plan is to start a revolution among Mexican Americans. I guess they didn't conceive of themselves as such, but ethnic Mexicans. This would be my great-grandfather's generation in South Texas. and they will kill all Anglos, I believe, over the age of 12, if I remember the cutoff. So it's very nice of them. They're not going to kill anybody under 12 years old, but if you're 12 and a half, you're going to be shot. And they issued this plan.

They don't get far. Their organizational skills as guerrillas are not great, but I think they derail a train and they rob a bank and they murder some farmhands, and it's awful what they do. The Texas Rangers, for the most part, with some help from the United States Army, but but mostly the state of Texas conducts a brutal counterinsurgency in South Texas. I don't think there's any other way to describe it. And from about 1915 all the way through, say, 1918 or so, they kill a lot, a lot of Mexican Americans in South Texas.

The most infamous incident is they destroyed the town of Portabaneer, which is a Texas town inhabited by ethnic Mexicans, and they probably with the help of some local U.S. Army personnel, kill the entire male population of the town, and the women and children are expelled into Mexico. You can still actually go visit the site now if you're willing to wander far into Presidio County, Texas. But in understanding things like that,

we have to look back to what the lived experience is. And I say this without making excuses. I mean, history should be engaged on its own terms. If you are Anglo and you're 85 years old in 1915, you have lived through at least two known attempts to conduct a genocide against you and your fellows in South Texas, because you'll have lived through the runaway scrape,

you'll have lived through the Cortina's War, you'll have lived through the Salonennial War, you'll have lived through various bandit raids, the Bright Ranch raid, you'll have lived through a lot. And then so when the Planet of San Diego comes around at the end of your life, it's just one more of the same, right? Flip side, if you're ethnically Mexican, and you're that age two,

you have been constantly conquered and, you know, perhaps striving and failing to fight the Anglos who have erupted, in your view, into Texas and South Texas throughout your lifetime. And so it's a very fraught, it's a very fraught area. And the civic piece that descends upon Texas, and South Texas in particular, after about 1920, is the product of two major things.

And again, I risk oversimplifying, but I think it's worth emphasizing. One is that the Mexican-American population of South Texas largely decides, it's not a conscious decision, but they largely decide to politically align themselves with the United States, which is not the case before the decade of 1910, 1920. There's a couple of very good books on this.

One is Benjamin Heber Johnson's book, Revolution in Texas, which talks about this political redefinition, self-redefinition of the Mexican-American community. And there's another one called the World War I Diary of Jose de la Luz science that Emilio Samora, UT, Austin, translated about a decade back, that really illuminates kind of how this process happens. And one of the interesting factors in it is that what Mexican Americans in South Texas saw is that the state of Texas treated them very poorly. Again, I'm overgeneralizing. But the United

States Army personnel who came down after the Secretary of War mobilized the National Guard in 1916 in response to instability from Mexico is that they realized that the U.S. Army, you know, who tend to be Midwesterners and Southerners, Northeasterners, and so on, there's a very touching monument from a New Hampshire National Guard Unit in the border town of San Ignacio, Texas, because they enjoyed San Ignacio so much. You imagine being in New Hampshire, right, from 1916 coming to San Ignacio. It's an alien world, right?

But they've got this monument there. Anyway, all which is say is that these other Americans treated them relatively well. And this is actually the historical source of the extraordinary rates of military volunteers. that still prevail in South Texas today. You know, when you go to the Rio Grande Valley in particular, but not just there, but throughout South Texas, one thing that you'll see is, is that there's a real civic investment in an American military heroes who are almost totally unknown anywhere else in the country.

The Museum of South Texas has an entire wing dedicated to Freddie Gonzalez, who earned the Medal of Honor at Hawaii, sacrificed himself. And when you read, when you read about Freddie Gonzalez's exploits in way in 1968, it's basically the tale of a superhero. I mean, this man, this Marine saves countless lives, fellow Marines. And if I remember correctly, ends up sacrificing his life, like attacking an armored vehicle or something. I mean, it's just, it's incredibly touching and heroic. And that's, that is their streets named after him. The museum, which is a very good museum, has a wing dedicated to him.

his mother gave all of his letters to the museum. Everybody knows about Freddie Gonzalez. Another local hero is Roy P. Benavides, who also ran the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Thank God he lived. But to his, you know, his tale, he was a green beret. His tale of heroism is also exemplary. And frankly, if you put it in a movie script, you wouldn't believe it. I believe he was taken for dead.

And as they were zipping him up in the body bag, he spit in the medic's face to let him know that he was still alive. I mean, this is a guy who gave everything. That kind of volunteerism is part for the course. I'm not saying that kind of heroism is part for the course, but that kind of volunteerism, this desire to go serve, is part for the course. I think of my father and his family. My father was in the Air Force. His father was briefly in the Air Force.

His many, many, many uncles were on, gosh, I couldn't remember all of them. They were at Pearl Harbor. They were in Guam in 1944. They were in the Gulf of Tonkin and so on. And this is normal. This is normal. And so the political alignment and the belief that military service is a pathway to that political alignment is very, very common there. That's one factor.

The other factor that led to civic peace after 1920 is that the Mexican state descended into autocracy. There's no other way to put it. The Mexican state stopped being semi-anarchic, you know, under the pre-dictatorship of about 70 years, was able to largely control its side of the border. And that, too, contributed to this lull in what I think is more of a historical norm of violence on the border. Post 2000, all that's gone away. The nature of the Mexican state has reverted back to the status quo, any, and we need to understand that because these challenges are coming anew. Anyway, I've spoken too long. I'm sorry, Aaron. No, no, well, you've again concluded, I think, in the natural point for us to keep going,

which is if it is a change or a reversion in the nature of the Mexican state, which has led to a reversion in conditions, in some sense, what you're asserting is we've been here before, I assume that there are also dimensions that are wholly new. Like, help us understand the Mexican side of things, what's old and what's new in conditions in 2024. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, from the Mexican side, and I strain to exert charity toward the Mexican state, but I will do my best, there is a perennial belief. Some of it's empirical, but I would say more of it is really ideological, that the United States is constantly

seeking to encroach upon the sovereignty and prerogatives of Mexico and the Mexican state constantly. Now, you know, in the 19th century, that was actually true. You know, let's not, let's not obscure that. I don't think it's true now. You know, one of the things that I tell Mexican counterparts is that the, the overriding goal, a strategic desire of probably every American policymaker is just to not have to think about Mexico. I mean, that's really, that's really, that's really the truth. They don't view it that way.

It is, it is a constant web of conspiracies, conspiratorial thinking, and, you know, and frankly, paranoia that shapes the kind of the Mexican political class's view of the United States and our agenda. I mean, I wish we were organized enough to have an agenda, but we don't. This is, of course, the core problem of all conspiracy theories is it assumes competence on the part of the conspirators, usually the American government, which I both know is unlikely. Extremely unlikely, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, let us be the Americans that are Mexican antagonists think we are, right? I mean, that would be great if we had a plan.

But we got. It's always my response to the Jason Bourne movies, which, of course, you know, you flash to, you know, the, the bad CIA guys in this, in the, in the, in the control room, like instantly zooming in on, you know, hacking into the live shot from, you know, victorious or Paddington Station or whatever and, you know, tracking Jason Bourne. All, they're always five seconds behind him. I always think, if only, if only the deep state were indeed so badass, our national security considerations would be far less acute. Sorry, I digress now. No, no, no, no, it's okay. Well, I mean, to your point, it's sort of like everybody's, you know, when you're like 24 and you've got your first job in government and you're really excited to like finally see how things work. And there's sort of the horror realization in your first 18 to 24 months that everybody's just like you.

You know, it's there's no, there's no genius on the other end who's going to conduct you into the way things work. Yeah, but they do think that. There is a belief that there's an agenda and there's a hostility and there's a desire to subordinate Mexico. And there is an ideological belief that Mexico is. is perpetually a victim. It's very interesting. You know, when you go to the, I spend a lot of time in Mexico City, which is a great city, it's world class.

Everybody should go and see it. But especially before relations totally break down, you should go see it. But there's a history museum. The National Museum of History is in Castillo Chapultepec, which is, you know, for those of us who remember military history, it was a site of a great American victory in the 1847 conquest of Mexico City. So when you actually go up there, there's this heartbreaking mural on the wall of these very devilish-looking American soldiers throwing Mexican children off the ledge.

It's awful, but so be it. But what's interesting is the signage in the museum. And I've enjoyed looking at sort of this historical interpretation in places like, you know, when I go to museums in the PRC or in Mexico and you see what they promulgate. And one of the things on this plaque is still there when they explain the American invasion of Mexico in 1846, 1847, is that the United States had the best army in the world then, and Mexico had an inferior army, and therefore it was an unequal contest.

That's the phrase that they use. It's unequal, which is completely fictitious. The United States did not have the best army in the world in the 1840s, I mean, far from it. And the Mexican military was what was actually not bad. It had just, you know, in the decade prior to the U.S. invasion, the Mexicans had seen off the Spanish, They'd seen off the French, you know, that they'd beaten European powers.

And they actually beat the Americans at Buena Vista. We don't like to remember that, but it's true. They did. They just, the Mexican incapacity in that war was political. It didn't have anything to do with the fighting quality of the Mexican soldier. Ulysses Grant and his memoirs, I think is a point where he talks about the San Cosmos Gate has an aside in which he says that, you know, from his estimation, the individual Mexican and the Mexican junior officer was every bit as good.

the American. There's not a quality problem in the individual. The problem with Mexico is the leadership. It's the elite. It's the political class. And my thesis, which I'll stick with, even though I couldn't possibly vindicated in a scholarly article, but my thesis is that a lot of this is self-serving. The Mexican elites don't really have a lot invested in a critical exploration of the Mexican elites, whether it's in the 1840s or in the 2020s, right? And so this failed political class that has perennially led its nation to disaster in almost any era, needs to, to, you know, nurture this belief that the United States is extremely competent, extremely directed, and extremely sinister and manipulative in ways that, I mean, those of us who are American citizens only can dream of.

And so, you know, when you talk to them about, and I won't betray confidences here, but we have, you know, we have a lot of conversations in, of course, my work with, with people who are in Mexican government, and to their credit, they do talk to us. But when you talk to them, There really is this belief that, you know, and take your pick. Disorder in Mexico is a fiction. They'll tell you that. I've had people tell me with a straight face that the Mexican state is sovereign over every inch of Mexican territory, which is transparent. Transparently false.

Absolutely false. They control maybe half the country if that. They'll tell you that there is no meaningful corruption in Mexican governments, which is almost a comedy line. And they'll tell you that disorder in Mexico, this is a widespread. I think sincere belief, actually. I think it arose from cynical motives, but there are people who sincerely believe it. The disorder from Mexico is a consequence of American gun trafficking southward into Mexico, which is simply untrue.

Now, gun trafficking does happen, but the reason that the cartels have anti-air capabilities and light armor, and many of them have very good, actually light infantry capabilities, which is shocking to say, and can go toe to toe with the Mexican army in a variety of cases is because they're getting this weaponry from the Mexican state's own armories. You know, there's, again, we talk about the state crop tail synthesis. And, and so, you know, I'm, I'm very concerned, just in candor. I'm very concerned, and I've said directly both in public and in private conversations to individuals in Mexico that they are misreading the Americans and they're misreading our collective desire, and I'll include myself in this, to not have to worry

about Mexico. But because they're so deeply invested in this thesis of the Americans as an antagonistic and maligned force that is bent upon, I don't know, completing the work that James K. Pulp began, or Sam Houston, I guess, as a Texan, that they're walking themselves into a crisis in relations that is going to be very unpredictable and, frankly, quite violent in its final stages. And I'm not, you know, history is contingent and nothing is inevitable. But if I had to place money right now, which, for clarity, I have not. But if I had to, I would say that we're going to end up a bad impasse sometime in the coming decade, and that's going to be a tragedy for all concerned.

Oh, good. Good, because we don't have anything else cooking, so our calendar is clear on the geopolitical front. Well, you know, it's funny, if I could interject on that, you know, you and I talked about this pre-show, but I think, I think it's worth eliminating for the audience. You know, the United States is engaged in multiple strategic theaters abroad at this point. I mean, everybody knows this, right?

We're, you know, the Middle East and Europe and Western Pacific at this point, and we clearly don't have the capacity to do so fully in a variety of ways. That's kind of external to the topic of this show. But the strategic front that we're ignoring and that is going to come and hit us pretty hard in ways that are very close to home is the Western Hemisphere and is Latin America. And the absence of preparation for that and the absence of even just awareness of it is extremely concerning among policy circles in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. And I'm very, very, very worried about it. I'm worried when I can go to Mexico City and I can see PRC nationals in the airport and numbers that I haven't seen before. I'm worried when security personnel in Laredo, Texas

tell me that fentanyl precursor trafficking between Mexico and China has essentially ceased, but the reason is that the Chinese have moved all of their personnel and production into northern Mexico. I'm worried when this actually happened in 2014, a Mexican newspaper editor, a big newspaper, asked me very casually what the United States would do if the PRC established military facilities in Mexico, which is a question that he claimed was hypothetical, but doesn't come from nowhere. And I'm very concerned when, as actually happened,

in the Mexican Independence Day parade in the Sokolow last September 16th, you can find this on YouTube. There's Russian infantry and Chinese infantry marching in review past the president in Mexico. All this is signaling. All this is stuff coming in. There's a very good book by a man named Friedrich Kemp. Tats came out quite some time ago called The Secret War in Mexico that details the use of Mexico

as a platform against the United States by foreign powers. And he focuses upon the First World War era. The Zimmerman Telegram was not a shot in the dark. There really were Germans in Mexico who were acting against the United States. And in one case, the 1918 battle of Rosamos Nogales, Nagaris, actually fought the United States. It's the only land battle of the First World War on the Western Hemisphere. It's not well known. But the U.S. Army garrison in Nogales, Arizona, fights the Mexican garrison.

in Mexican, Nogales, and they end up killing a bunch of Germans who, I don't know, maybe there were tourists who happens to be there, but the reality is that they were advisors. Go ahead. For the listener who they hear Zimmerman Telegram, they dimly recall APUS history, maybe a Barbara Tuckman book, but they're like, ah, Zimmerman Telegram, Zimmerman, 60 seconds. 60 seconds. The Zimmerman Telegram was a German effort to engage Mexico in war against the United States on a war of reconquest. This is prior to the American Declaration of War against German. it was a German attempt to create a strategic diversion for the U.S. And it was not as nearly as irrational as the German part as people assume. Because the Carancistas, who were then in the process of winning the Mexican Revolution, were in fact hostile to the United States and conducted military operations against the U.S. on more than one occasion.

I'm struck by the phrase strategic diversion. Is that how you would characterize Chinese policy, PRC policy in Mexico right now, taking advantage of the disorder that you outlined to apply pressure on us such that we cannot apply pressure on them elsewhere? I think, yeah, I think that's probably true. And look, I don't have a window into Chinese strategic decision-making at all. But that's the effect, obviously. You know, the United States has essentially withdrawn in the past 30 years from its prior role

as hemispheric security guarantor. We used to accept that as a core responsibility, a core strategic task of the United States. States, which is why we invaded Panama, and why we invaded Haiti, and, you know, we were the bringers of order. This is our, this is our backyard, so to speak. The Latin Americans hate this rhetoric, but I'll use it anyway because it's accurate. And, you know, post-1990s, we abandoned the role, and there are extra hemispheric powers that are stepping in. Think of the Chinese engagement in particular, also the Russian engagement, too, because the Russians, you know, the largest Russian diplomatic mission in the world is in Mexico. It's not because they like Mexico. It's because

It's adjacent to us. But the Chinese and Russians are stepping into Mexico for the same reasons and to the same strategic ends that the Germans did in the First World War era and also that the French did in the American Civil War era. It's a platform to be strategically leveraged against the American Republic. And that utility for extra-hemispheric powers has not gone away. Back to the nature of the disorder itself that's being leveraged. I want to ask you a question that's deceptively simple, but as a student of history and

political typology, you will, you will appreciate that it's not simple. What is a cartel? Oh, boy. A cartel is a, I would, this is a matter of a lot of dispute. Cartails, you can define them as simply organized crime operations with a defined vertical. You can also define them, which I think is more accurate as quasi-state organizations that exercise characteristics of sovereignty, sometimes in cooperation with, sometimes against, but always external to the formal state in Mexico. How's that for a fuscatory academies answer? No, no, I mean, but it's a little bit of academies, but a little bit sometimes is just the right dose.

And I thought, you know, I think most people would say, well, they're drug trafficking organizations, which is probably largely true, but it just doesn't, it's not enough. Like, the Taliban is a drug trafficking organization, or at least was in my time. It's not enough. No, no, no, no, no, it's not enough. And I'm glad you mentioned the Taliban because that's a good way to think about it. It obscures analysis and I think leads to bad policy when we think of the cartels is simply organized crime. They may have many of them started that way.

And I think, you know, if we were to go back to 1990, you could probably define them mostly in that way. But they have taken on so many characteristics of sovereignty by this point that we have to think of them much more broadly. You know, one of the examples I like to use, the Taliban is one. it's a good one another is you know one of the major forces and like international cigarette contraband trafficking is actually hesbalah and and and and and that's that's a good way to think about it it is it is evil amazon really they're logistic firms with with small armies attached that will profit from whatever they can and and increasingly take on the characteristics of insurgency i want to i want to if i could for just a moment i bring to the fore an actual episode that happened

And early in 2024, there was a battle between Sedena, the Mexican army, and elements of the Sinaloa cartel in some Sinaloa in small town. And I apologize to the listeners. I'm struggling to recall what the name of the small town was, but it was almost irrelevant what the name was, but it's a small town in Sinaloa. And what was interesting to me is that I was reading in El Pais. El Pais, by the way, is a Spanish publication. It's not Mexican, but it's got some of the best Mexico reporting out there.

So if you can, if you can read Spanish, it strongly suggests following El Pais for his Mexico coverage. They're very, very good. Mexican press is almost useless now because they get killed in such large numbers. It's more dangerous to be a journalist in Mexico than it is in Syria, which is shocking to say. But anyway, El Paiz had had a very interesting bit of coverage following this military operation in Sinloa, and it was essentially something that they launched to get, I think El Raton, who was one of the low-level chapitos and hand them to the American, sort of this placation gift to the Biden administration from Mamlo. And post-bott, post-battle, which shot up this small town.

The army actually comes in, and they basically got whatever the Mexican of Coagland of Civil Affairs units, right? And so they come in and they've got packages of food and they've got construction engineers who were fixing up homes that were shot up and things like that. And this is the thing that got my attention.

I almost feel like Michael Corleone in Havana like telling this to Hyman Roth. Remember the scene and Godfather 2 where the guy throws himself up? I said, it tells me they can win. It was sort of like that. I read this and I sent it to a variety of people that I knew because you've got to pay attention.

to this. When the army comes, the locals who, I think the assumption was they lived, they've been terrorized by the Sinaloa cartel and then this battle happens. And now their army, the army of Mexico, their nation is coming to help them out. The locals came out and they chased the army away. And they actually went on record. These guys were talking to the Alpa'Isa reporter and said, this isn't our army. You know, this isn't our community. This isn't our, you know, we're, you know, we're locals. Like they've come here to. And that's insurgency. That's insurgency. That is localism.

It is sovereignty. It is antagonistic to the formal state. And to see what's happened before elsewhere, but to see an explicit example on the record in legitimate press of a cartel, in this case, the Sinaloa cartel being the bearer of that sovereignty, being the champion of that sovereignty, that local identity is a profoundly dangerous development in Mexico. And that leads to places that those who know military history, those who know history period, are well aware of and it pretends dark times ahead for Mexico, unfortunately.

So here's a really big and kind of obviously complex question. You predict the worst in the coming years in terms of U.S.-Mexican relations, and you make a pretty plausible case for that. And obviously tied to that, I mean, I'll offer some thoughts on my own, but we're more likely to get the worse if we indeed continue to do what I think you correctly describe as follow the preference of U.S. policymakers with regard to Mexico, which is, it would be great if we could just think as little as possible about it. I think that's absolutely right.

That is absolutely the attitude in Washington, except for, again, sort of the issues as they are typically discussed. You know, a lot of people do want to think about immigration. They do want to think about this or that sort of piece of it, but not the overall scheme that you have laid out. If, in fact, we continue to think in that narrow way, it seems to me more likely that you are going to end up with some kind of, we have a crisis already, but some sort of acute crisis that could lead to violence.

presumably there's another path there's a sensible american policy it would be diplomatic it would be economic it might be muscular but probably fall short of you know sending the marines back to the halls of montezuma josh trevino what what is your what's the what's the sketch of such a policy what what's the smaller way well i'm supposed it than things really have gone south well well look i mean i mean i think i think the the premise of any policy needs to i'm going to i'm going to say this and then to qualify it very heavily. The premise of any policy, it's got to be backed by a willingness to involve the Department of Defense. And the Department of Defense on the American side must be involved with security on the southern border. What do we have a national security establishment

for if not to protect actual American communities in the United States? And in full candor, that is something I have been very disappointed to find over several years that the Department of Defense writ large simply does not want to do for a variety of reasons. I've had meetings where people complained about the funding, which is real, but it's a very D.C. complaint. What do you, what do you for if, if American communities that are getting shot up by 50 cows from Ciudad Mierre are not protected? You know, in that case, and just to put my cards on the table, I'm, I'm on the international side. I support American engagement in a variety of places, including in Eastern Europe. But those who critique that engagement as as off center to the defense of American

citizens and American communities in America are correct. That is a legitimate critique. And that has to be fixed. So I would fix that. But that being said, a successful policy involves no kinetic action at all. A successful policy, a truly successful policy involves zero puts in the ground. It involves zero rounds fired. And we must understand that. There's got to be a resort to it, because without that possibility, just to be one, the Mexicans will not respect us, just first, last, and always. That being said, what I recommend as policy premises are twofold. It's got to be a national security issue rather than just an immigration issue. I think we've covered that. The other thing that needs to be done is that trade and security must be linked. Trade and security must

be linked. As a South Texan subject to the parochialism, not just of Texans, but also of South Texans, which is amping it up to 11, I'm very keenly aware that we really only have a middle class in South Texas because of NAFTA and now USMCA. So I don't say this lightly. But the reality is that NAFTA and then USMCA is a successor, but they're really, they're really mostly the same thing. It was enacted as a bet. There was a bet laid on the future of the Mexican state, which is that the Mexican state would liberalize and that it would become a true partner. And that bet has not paid off. Many people have made a lot of money off of it. But the reality is that just as there was a that laid on the PRC with entry into the World Trade Organization.

That hasn't paid off either. We have to go back and re-examine the fundamental policy premises that undergird the kind of the grand strategic relation with Mexico. And trade has to be at the center of it. If Mexico is not going to deliver security, it ought not enjoy the benefits of trade. And that is easy to say. It is very difficult to do, given the billions, tens of billions of dollars in trade and commerce. I mean, the largest port in the United States is Laredo at this point, the largest port of entry

for goods. So it's not a small deal. But until we're willing to address that and until we're willing to break down the policy barrier between trade and security, the Mexicans have no incentive to cooperate with this. They simply don't. And they know that hitherto, we've been unwilling to do that. So demonstrating that willingness. And again, there's a variety.

I mean, I can go in great detail on this, but there's a variety of steps that we can take to link trade and security. But the bottom line is if you want to drive a truck of goods of manufacturers from Monterey or anywhere else or Guanajuato across the Columbia International Bridge in South Texas, the prerequisite to that is that you've got to deliver security. And without that, there shouldn't be commerce. Well, the obvious follow up then is, well, what if they can't? So if your strategy, and I'm just going to repeat it back to you and you, you know, quibble with my summary, if you like. But first of all, take the national security dimensions of what's occurring seriously. and employ the parts of the U.S. government that are designed to deal with such challenges appropriately. So that's one. It's not just a humanitarian immigration law enforcement challenge. It's a national security challenge. And then two, having established that as your operating premise and giving it actually some substance, use trade as leverage to demand things, principally security changes,

changes in security policy for the better from the Mexican state and use trade as leverage to get those outcomes. What if they can't deliver the outcomes? I mean, the whole, the whole premise here is Mexican state collapsed. So how do you think about that? Well, you know, a very good question. Canton won't are two different things. If they, if they cannot, if they genuinely cannot do it, then a positive willingness to cooperate with the United States to achieve those ends is something I think that we should look favorably on. You know, we did it with the Colombians. The Colombians in the 1990s were unable to deliver security. You know, they had a, you know, people forget. Not everybody forgets. You haven't forgotten, but I think the general public forgets.

Pablo Escobar was in the business of bombing international flights when we sent Delta Force down there. But yeah, and implemented Blan Colombia, Felipe Calderon, who was president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, presided over a tremendous increase in Mexican insecurity, but we cooperated with him because Galdoran, for all of his flaws, and they were multitudinous. Nevertheless, was a sincere partner,

which is why we had Blan Marida and so on and cooperating with him. I think we should look with charity upon Mexico and the Mexican state, if it is a sincere security partner. So maybe that's a slight amendment of that they should try to deliver security and do so in a way that is verifiable and open. And there are steps that they can take to do that. You know, prior to December 2012, the United States was involved in a variety of activities. We did signals intelligence collection in Mexico.

We had active liaison with Mexican security forces at various levels. We cooperated with the Mexicans on vetting individuals, didn't always work, you know, some big ones, through Henara Garcia Luna being one of them. But there was an active partnership and there was a sincere desire to pursue reform and security and partnership with the United States. All that's gone now.

As of January 2021, DEA, DOJ operations in Mexico were effectively illegal under Mexican law. There is no meaningful security cooperation except at very, very basic levels. And so if, you know, Mexico has to choose what kind of a neighbor it wants to be. I'll say this, and this is something that we're currently working on, so I'll give a little bit of a preview of our work.

And this is not fully baked yet. But there's a principle in international law called the Caroline test. Do you familiar with this? I confess I'm not. I would fail the exam on this question. I would have failed the exam prior to about two years ago. So, you know, international law is not a speciality of mine. But it's worth knowing about the Caroline affair in 1837.

And I'll give like the 15-second synopsis of it. In 1837, there was a group of Americans of Irish descent who formed a plan to invade British Canada and overthrow the British Empire, which is nuts, right? I mean, it was nuts. You know, this is a dynamic nation full of a lot of energy, and I raise these patriots. Yes. No, no, there's a reason like Irish-Mexican empathy is just so profoundly strong because they have this tradition of charging the wrong hill.

But anyway, so they formed this conspiracy. They buy a boat. The boat is called Caroline. line. And I believe the boat is outside of Buffalo. And so the British authorities, to kind of short-circuit, the British authorities communicate repeatedly with the Americans, like, hey, there's an army forming, you know, or, you know, you should do something about it. The American authorities do nothing. So one night, the British invade the United States and attack the Fenians and burn the Caroline. So they do. They invade America. And so there's a war scare and there's three years of

diplomacy and litigation and so on. So what ends up happening in 1840, it's, very interesting is that the settlement reached is I think the British pay some nominal compensation for property destruction. But the United States effectively acknowledges that it was at fault because the United States allowed its territory to be used as a base for warmaking against the sovereign power with which it was not at war. And so the British had, you know, made a good faith effort to communicate with American authorities and we did nothing. And so the British were justified on the principle of self-defense in invading the United States and scattering the threat. This, by the way, is one of the legal bases for our invasion of Afghanistan.

and the overthrow of the Taliban regime in October 2001. Because again, the Taliban didn't attack New York City, but on 9-11, but they allowed their territory to be used as a base. So Mexico fails a Caroline test. This is why I bring it up. Mexico fails a Carolina test. And bringing that level of accountability to it, which involves, you know, I think set aside the question of concrete results, which everybody knows is going to take time.

It's not like the Mexicans themselves can snap their fingers and suddenly they can deliver security. It's going to be impossible. They've ceded too much. It's going to be a long effort. going to be a bloody one. But if they're, but if they're working with us, then, then, yeah, we should be, we should be the friends that we wish to be to them. But if they're not, and they aren't right now, but we have to bring accountability in our own ways without deference

to them. Joshua Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation is a really interesting and concerning conversation. It's a topic that we really haven't done enough with here at School of War. So more on this topic to come and maybe you'll agree to come back from time to time and keep us updated on how things are going. It would be a pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Aaron. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.