It’s Time to Try the Kleiman Strategy in Mexico
Dr. Mark Kleiman was a drug policy expert that was known for innovative approaches based on human psychology and interests. Kleiman passed away in 2019, having served as a professor at New York University and University of California Los Angeles. In 2011, Kleiman proposed a strategy for confronting organized crime in Mexico. In an article entitled “Surgical Strikes in the Drug War,” he laid out a compelling argument for his methodology. Unfortunately, the Mexican government never adopted his approach. Kleiman’s strategy was elegant in its logic and simplicity, but he misjudged the intensity of political challenges in Mexico and the importance of the role of the United States. The politically charged and volatile environment facing bilateral relations today is counterintuitively the most propitious moment to revisit Kleiman’s strategy.
Kleiman’s Surgical Strikes
At the core of Kleiman’s work on drug policy was a focus on creating deterrence mechanisms based on “swift and certain” punishments supported by a concentrated effort against the types of crime that were most detrimental to society. His examination of Mexico’s security policy followed these tenets. Kleiman’s approach was pragmatic and integrated law enforcement efforts with a clear messaging campaign. Most importantly, it was sequential and set conditions for the state to mass its resources against one threat at a time. A Kleiman strategy consists of four steps: developing scoring criteria, scoring, execution, and messaging.
In the first step, “The Mexican government crafts and announces a set of violence-related metrics a—‘scoring system’—for the violence level of each organization.” For nearly a decade, Mexico has consistently exceeded 30,000 homicides a year and there are more than 130,000 missing persons. There is no shortage of violence. However, one could differentiate groups by what kind of violence or activities they pursue. In the 2024 election cycle, 38 political candidates were killed. In 2025, ten mayors were murdered. According to Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley, political violence is a key element of Mexico’s internal security crisis. Perhaps groups that target journalists should be prioritized. Over 150 journalists have been killed since 2000, leading Reporters Without Borders to say, “Year after year, Mexico remains one of the world’s most dangerous and deadly countries for journalists.” Groups that maintain and utilize armored vehicles and military style units could also be selected.
Once scoring criteria are established, in the second step, the Mexican government publicly announces the standards and the measurement timeline. This is a critical component as it gives criminal organizations time to adjust their operations, and it sets clear boundaries. “At the end of the announced period, or once it became clear that one organization clearly ranked first, that ‘most violent organization’ would be proclaimed and targeted for destruction.”
In the third step, the government masses its law enforcement, intelligence, and military capabilities against the highest-ranking group and completely dismantles it through arrests, seizures, and potentially lethal force. Other approaches like the kingpin strategy or the middle-out strategy leave weakened or fractured organizations which are likely to increase rather than decrease violence. The Kleiman strategy more closely resembles an enterprise investigative approach but leverages all elements of national power. Of the upmost importance here is that the destruction is complete—leaders are arrested or killed, political allies are likewise prosecuted, funds and assets are seized, financial institutions are fined and prosecuted, etc. This is an act of deterrence, and the devastation must be a warning to the other criminal organizations in the system.
The final step is messaging. Once the targeted criminal organization has been dismantled, the government publicly outlines the operations and their effects. It is reiterated that the group was targeted because it was the most violent group and was engaged in the type of activities identified in the scoring criteria.
Then the government reassesses the criteria and simply runs the contest again. Over time, the strategy should result in a change in criminal behavior and lower the level of violence in Mexico.
A Political Non-Starter
I met Kleiman in 2017 while working on transnational crime issues. Since first reading his work, I had been a proponent of his thinking. I saw parallels with the sequential dismantling of the Medellín and Cali Cartels in the 1990s, and I was eager to ask him why the Mexican government never adopted his strategy. He informed me that he had discussed his ideas with Mexican officials, but they were reluctant to implement them. They told him that a sequential approach with the associated messaging would be political suicide. If a Mexican administration were to select one criminal organization over another as the priority target, they would instantly be branded as corrupt and favoring the untargeted group.
On the US side of the equation, pressure on Mexico is all about reducing the flow of drugs. Kleiman’s strategy acknowledged the limitations of enforcement and interdiction on the market for illicit drugs. He asserted that, even in a maximalist scenario, “an end to Mexican exports would, once new routes and sources replaced Mexico in serving the US market, have only a modest impact on the US drug problem.” For US drug warriors this challenges the sacrosanct proposition that reducing availability will reduce demand. For law enforcement officers, the idea of allowing some criminals to avoid accountability is jarring. US drug policy has been and remains—attack everywhere all the time.
The Missing Components
As Kleiman came to understand, political will is central to the organized crime problem in Mexico. Often, discussions center on training, equipment, and intelligence sharing; but the reality is that Mexican security forces are more than capable of dismantling any criminal group in the country. An exchange between veteran cop Jim Malone and Eliot Ness in the film The Untouchables captures this dynamic in prohibition Chicago beautifully, “Mr. Ness, everybody knows where the booze is. The problem isn’t finding it. The problem is who wants to cross Capone.”
Under 70 years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) single party rule, the government at all levels was able to manage criminal organizations through a corrupt but effective system. When multiparty democracy was established with the election of Vicente Fox from the National Action Party (PAN) to president in 2000, that system broke down. Security scholar Raúl Benitez Manaut explains, “Multiparty democracy didn’t consider that its enemy would be corruption and narcotrafficking.” Multiparty democracy failed to adapt as quickly as the transnational criminal organizations that were benefiting from the destruction of Colombian cartels and the shift in cocaine flows to ground routes in part due to the success of the US-led Joint Interagency Task Force South. In 2006, President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime. He deployed the military initially to Michoacán, but then operations expanded into multiple states aimed at multiple criminal organizations simultaneously. The failure to consolidate efforts against a single target, as Kleiman advised, led to a protracted and frustrating conflict.
Since Kleiman published his strategy in 2011, the Mexican government has been active in its fight against criminal organizations. The Zetas faced a heavy enforcement effort, Chapo Guzmán was captured (twice), Nazario Moreno González was killed, and Héctor Beltrán Leyva was captured. Most recently, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes was killed in a military operation. Unfortunately, kingpin targeting splintered criminal organizations, going from three major organizations to at least nine today. As a result, conflict and violence among the groups and government forces has only increased.
Despite significant enforcement efforts, political collusion with criminals seems unshakable. The former Secretary of National Defense Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested and then released by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the former Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna was arrested for taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. Cases of corruption among state and local officials are endemic. While much of this corruption is based on raw greed, there is a component of self-preservation at work. Plata o plomo (silver or lead) is a reality for many politicians. Collaborating with a local criminal organization is obligatory if you want to stay alive. Without clear backing from the federal government, it would be foolish to challenge a powerful criminal organization in your local community.
The United States worked closely with the Mexican government, beginning with the Calderón administration, to create a bipartisan security effort initially under the Mérida Initiative. Bilateral efforts have generally followed its pillars: Disrupting the Operational Capacity of Organized Crime; Institutionalizing Reforms to Sustain the Rule of Law and Respect for Human Rights in Mexico; Creating a 21st Century Border; and Building Strong and Resilient Communities. These are all laudable efforts, but they generally aim at institutional capacity building, interdiction, and cultural change. For the United States, the overarching interest remained to reduce the flow of drugs entering the country from Mexico rather than violence reduction.
Beyond bilateral cooperation, US unilateral demands of the Mexican government have been inconsistent. When US. policy would swing from institutional development to operational results, US officials regularly berated counterparts to interdict more drugs, arrest more kingpins, extradite high-level criminals, allow more law enforcement access, tighten port security, etc. Due to the shifting and often vague asks, the Mexican government could easily placate the United States with the arrest of a capo or a major seizure, without risking a major escalation of violence with the powerful criminal organizations.
Implementing the Strategy Today
The administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo represents a unique opportunity to attempt a Kleiman strategy. Sheinbaum, although an acolyte of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has departed from his “hugs not bullets” security strategy. She and her Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, greatly improved security in Mexico City when she was the mayor and he was the chief of police. Sheinbaum’s current security strategy has three objectives: 1) Reduction in crime, above all homicides, and high impact crime like extortion; 2) The neutralization of generators of violence and criminal networks; 3) Reinforcement of prevention capabilities and community policing of local police. Although the Mexican president wields considerable power in the Mexican system, Sheinbaum faces constraints.
Sheinbaum must manage political and bureaucratic challenges to implement her security strategy. The National Regeneration Party (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional)–MORENA) holds the legislature and the majority of state governments. However, it is a coalition of varied constituencies, and it is still responsive to López Obrador, who founded the party. There are also widespread accusations that MORENA leveraged relationships with criminal organizations for political gain. If MORENA complicity with criminal organizations is as intense as some believe, a broad campaign against corruption would be political suicide. When charges of corruption by MORENA officials like Ruben Rocha Moya and Adán Augusto López Hernández arise, Sheinbaum must carefully navigate the political hazards.
Bureaucratically, the Mexican national security structure is divided among the Secretariat of National Defense, the Secretariat of the Navy, the attorney general’s office, and the Secretariat for Security and Citizen Protection. Where the National Security Council in the United States can synchronize national power, only the president in Mexico can coordinate these agencies. Previous efforts to create a super-secretary for security under Fox failed and the military services have been especially jealous of their direct relationship with the president. García Harfuch made “coordination” a key axis of the security strategy, but in practice, operations against criminal organizations are often bureaucratically driven, dividing up the load of high priority targets and intelligence requirements rather than organizing around a campaign plan.
In a speech commemorating the 1914 seizure of Veracruz by US forces, Sheinbaum made it clear, “Only those that would sell out their homeland are in favor of going in search of foreign help to resolve the internal problems in our country!” Yet, the United States could provide the answer to both her political and bureaucratic challenges, allowing her to implement an effective Kleiman strategy.
Unfortunately, the current US policy toward Mexico lacks discipline and focus. Mexico policy falls within the administration’s Trump Corollary or “Donroe Doctrine,” an unbounded reimagining of the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary. Perhaps the most concise description of the new policy was made by President Trump after the US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Mexico, along with Colombia, Panama, Cuba, and incredibly Greenland, has been the recipient of multiple threats of military action by the United States. The threats are not just bluster. In addition to the military operation in Venezuela, more than 200 people have been killed in lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Humire repeatedly asserted that US lethal strikes against drug traffickers in the hemisphere were a “deterrent” or “deterring.” However, it is unclear if US regional policy is designed to reduce drug flows, dismantle criminal organizations, or simply reassert US dominance.
The United States has shifted its posture toward Mexico and prioritized security issues. The US created Joint Task Force Southern Border and “national defense areas” along the US-Mexico border. The Trump administration has also linked economic issues with security issues, a move that other administrations have avoided due to the complicated nature of the drug trafficking problem and the importance of commerce with the US number one trading partner. Threats and diplomatic pressure on Mexico have been relentless, and they have resulted in the transfer of more than 90 criminals to the United States, a Mexican military operation that led to the death of the leader of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación–CJNG), and increased operations in Sinaloa. Many Mexican security officials are privately applauding the US pressure which they believe has forced the government to take action. Others are becoming frustrated with the ever-shifting goal posts of US. demands which may end in an all-out war with the cartels and more violence.
Setting aside the very real motivations of scoring domestic political points for taking on the cartels and the vibes of placing armored combat vehicles on the border, US foreign policy is designed to deter transnational criminal organizations from destabilizing its neighbor and smuggling highly dangerous drugs like fentanyl, while also compelling the Mexican government to take action against criminal organizations. Thomas Schelling tells us that to deter or compel one needs to have a credible threat, communicate effectively, and the target must “be left some tolerable recourse.” Currently the United States is failing to meet Schelling’s requirements—a refinement to a Kleiman strategy could fix that.
Some might claim that the United States has already prioritized the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, but the designation of eight Mexican groups as terrorist organizations and unfocused messaging diluted the information component. As such, the first step would be to develop the targeting criteria as recommended by Kleiman. The United States could conduct this activity with the Mexican government bilaterally. However, if the Mexican government declines to participate in such an activity due to sensitivities to political risks, this could be done unilaterally by the United States with some discrete help from Mexican officials. The criteria must primarily be based on the groups’ violent activity and their ability to threaten governance. However, the United States could also weigh the amount of fentanyl trafficked by each group.
To do this effectively, the United States needs to finally define its national level strategy development and intelligence coordination mechanisms for transnational organized crime. Previous efforts like the Threat Mitigation Working Group and the US Council on Transnational Organized Crime have foundered. It is unclear if the newly formed Joint Interagency Task Force Counter Cartel will now fill an operational role akin to the National Counterterrorism Center. Ideally, the intelligence and operational coordination would go beyond the US interagency and become a binational task force that would mirror the type of cooperation the United States has with Colombia.
The unique opportunity to employ a Kleiman strategy exists because the United States has effectively established the credibility of its threats. The Maduro raid, lethal boat strikes, damaging economic tariffs on allies, and the reckless Iran war have demonstrated that the Trump administration has both the capability and the will to take action in the face of military, legal, or economic risks.
Whether constructed bilaterally or unilaterally, a criminal organization singled out by the United States based on a public targeting criteria alleviate political risk for the Sheinbaum government and short-circuits internal bureaucratic battles. When asked why CJNG or Sinaloa is the priority target, the Sheinbaum government can point to the need to satisfy US demands and skirt responsibility for the decision. This will reverberate all the way down the corrupt political structure and affect the decisions of all political actors that are on notice that working with the targeted organization will result in prosecution.
As the Kleiman strategy recommends, US enforcement should also prioritize the targeted organization. Retail sellers in the United States tied to the organization, financial enablers, and global network nodes should be given priority. Furthermore, efforts on the border should zero in on the ports of entry operated by the targeted group. US visa revocations and indictments of Mexican political actors should be limited to those working with the targeted organization. For a litany of reasons, most notably Mexican nationalism, direct US military actions should be avoided, especially unilateral military actions.
Finally, elements of the Mérida Initiative should be woven into the Kleiman strategy. After effectively dismantling a criminal organization and its political support structure, the Mexican government must fill the vacuum with state institutions. Bilateral efforts to create a culture of lawfulness, economic opportunity, and government accountability will be essential in preventing the spawning of new violent groups.
The greatest obstacle to the execution of this strategy would be the need for a level of policy discipline that has thus far been absent from the Trump administration. Kleiman’s approaches to reducing drug use and criminality require a commitment to clear communication and execution. Rather than broad based attacks on the governability of Mexico or the level of corruption nationwide, the United States would need to precisely aim its assessments and criticisms at the campaign against the targeted group. This would continually reinforce the ability of Sheinbaum to execute a politically difficult sequential strategy.
In addition, President Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of drug trafficking, has created a perception that U.S. efforts are less about fighting drug trafficking and more about political alignment or opposition to Trump and his political movement. Some right-wing policy advocates have put forward the thesis that MORENA is part of a vast anti-US conspiracy linked to Cuba, Venezuelan Chavistas, transnational criminal organizations, and Hezbollah. Not surprisingly, when the United States requested the extradition of the MORENA governor of Sinaloa and nine state officials, Sheinbaum recoiled. The MORENA government will not cooperate in anti-corruption efforts that are designed to remove it from power. Only a focused effort would be palatable.
US and Mexican efforts this century have failed to contain the growth of powerful criminal organizations in Mexico while drug deaths in the United States soared. Perhaps instead of diluted interdiction and public safety approaches, a focused sequential effort would be effective. As Kleiman and Steven Davenport state in a later article on the strategy, “In the absence of another convincing idea, it might be worth trying.”
