From the TBA to the USA: Barbarians at the Gate
From the TBA to the USA: Barbarians at the Gate
by Marilyn Stern
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On October 10, 2010, an illegal Mexican immigrant was found beheaded in Phoenix, Arizona as a result of the Mexican drug wars. On October 27, 2010, drug gangs attacked the headquarters of the Los Ramones, Mexico, police department with grenades and the police force quit en masse the next day. The following research provides pertinent background to the increasing chaos at the U.S. southwest border that the federal government continues to ignore.
In The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Zbigniew Brzezinski, advisor to U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Bush, Sr., wrote in 2004,
"For America, the linkage between state sovereignty and national security was traditionally even more symbiotic than for most other states. . . . The linkage was reinforced by the awareness that geography made America a sanctuary. With two huge oceans providing extraordinary security buffers and with much weaker neighbors to the north and south, Americans considered their nation's sovereignty to be both a natural right as well as a natural consequence of peerless national security. Even when America was drawn into two world wars, it was the Americans who crossed the oceans to combat others in distant lands. Americans went to war, but war did not come to America."
Today, America's geographical boundaries no longer provide that sense of security. In fact, there is a war being waged just beyond America's southwestern border. Mexican drug cartels, ruthless in their lawlessness, are in a bloody competition for superiority. Since January 2007, the narcocartels have killed 6,836 people. The potential strategic threat has markedly increased due to an inadequate U.S. policy to address the escalating levels of violence unleashed by the cartels in Mexico. The instability in Mexico is one symptom of the looming crisis beyond the U.S. border. The research will show that the nexus between criminal activity, drug trafficking and Islamist terror is one that poses an increasing security challenge to the U.S.
Download the Full Article: From the TBA to the USA: Barbarians at the Gate
Marilyn Stern is presently a Master's candidate in National Security at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.
