Mexico’s “Wicked” Security Challenges and Collaboration with the U.S.
Mexico’s “Wicked” Security Challenges and Collaboration with the U.S. by: Dr. R. Evan Ellis is published by Llegado a las Americas.
Dr. R. Evan Ellis begins his piece with the following:
Mexico’s “Wicked Problems” in Security
Scholars use the term “wicked” problems to refer to those whose complexity, changing nature, and difficulty of impacting in necessary ways make them almost impossible to solve. At the beginning of March 2025, as Mexico’s senior security officials were in Washington D.C. engaging with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, I was in Mexico, giving presentations to the country’s Army and Navy War Colleges and engaging with a range of security experts about the country’s challenges, to include countering transnational criminal organizations. I was profoundly impacted by the contradiction between Mexico’s significant efforts to combat organized crime, control migration, address known deficiencies in their own institutions, including collaborating with the U.S., versus the pessimism, shared by most of the people to whom I spoke that those efforts were unlikely to significantly improve the situation.
Mexico’s Dilemma and U.S. Pressure
Mexico’s dilemma is how to combat the phenomena that are tearing apart its society with corruption and violence, when the system to combat those ills is itself broken, while its neighbor to the north, harmed by flows of drugs and migrants across the border and contributing to the problem through the equally difficult-to-address demand of drugs and availability of arms, is demanding immediate action.
While some with whom I spoke in Mexico hoped the pressure by the Trump Administration might oblige the Mexican government to address the problem of endemic corruption and institutional problems, others were deeply concerned about the possibility of unilateral U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican soil, which they warned, could be the tipping point between the Sheinbaum Administration’s “cool headed” negotiations with the U.S. and a far more acrimonious government and societal response.
U.S. and Mexico are bound by a ‘marriage’ of geography, family, and economic bonds, and the cost of ‘Divorce’ unacceptable.
The piece continues as follows:
- The Sheinbaum Administration’s New Security Approach
- Reforms and Challenges in the National Guard and Police
- The Role of the National Guard in Migration Control
- U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation
- Conclusion: The Need for Bilateral Cooperation
Read the full article to learn about Mexico’s evolving security policies, its collaboration with the U.S. on crime and migration, and the challenges of combating corruption and organized crime under the Sheinbaum administration.
