Bush and Fox Lead a Two-Fisted Assault on Cartels

Arguably the biggest success for President Bush’s foreign policy has come closest to home. Bush may feel more comfortable personally dealing with Mexico than with any other country. And it shows. When Mexican President Vicente Fox arrives for a state visit with Bush later this week, the two men will celebrate not only an improved tone but also practical progress on problems that have long divided their nations.

Most of the attention (deservedly) will focus on their efforts to negotiate a new approach to immigration. But just as important may be the gains they’ve made against the torrential flow of drugs across the border--an issue that has strained relations between the two countries as much as the tide of illegal immigrants. There may be an inevitable tendency this week to overstate the improvement; the Mexican drug cartels aren’t cowering yet. But there’s evidence that Bush and Fox have encouraged a new level of cooperation in the ground war against those cartels and that may be the first cause for optimism in years.

The cartels have built their empire around a modern version of the triangular trade. Cocaine and heroin flow north from the Mexican traffickers into America. Cash flows south from the U.S. buyers. With the vast resources from their American markets, the drug smugglers then systematically pay off Mexican law enforcement and frustrate virtually all efforts to disrupt their traffic.

Only four years ago, Mexico was, humiliatingly, forced to arrest its top anti-drug official when it turned out he was working for one of the cartels. Thomas Constantine, the career New York cop who headed the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time, publicly declared that Mexico’s law enforcement agencies were in a virtual state of collapse, hollowed out by “unparalleled levels of corruption.” Even when Mexican authorities moved against one trafficker, American officials concluded, it was often secretly on behalf of another cartel angling for their business. Constantine says that DEA investigations routinely found local politicians providing cover for drug smugglers and local police literally riding shotgun for their shipments.

Now, since Fox’s election, American officials say they see a new attitude. “This administration is convinced that we are dealing with individuals in the leadership of the nation of Mexico who are of good faith, and of good intention, and respect the law,” Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said in an interview.

Given Bush’s commitment to Fox, some might say Ashcroft could hardly conclude otherwise. But even some who have been most skeptical of Mexico’s effort share his assessment. “I am impressed with some of the things that have happened,” says Constantine, now a professor of public policy at the State University of New York at Albany. “It looks to me like significant change.” Likewise, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who led congressional efforts to punish Mexico for its faltering anti-drug efforts in the late 1990s, has indicated she sees clear signs of progress.

American officials cite advances in both the quantity and quality of Mexican action. The Justice Department says that already this year 39 American fugitives have been captured and returned from Mexico, compared with just 17 last year. Fox turned heads among American critics when Mexican police arrested the former governor of the Quintana Roo state, Mario Villaneuva, for conspiring with the drug traffickers.

And American officials really lifted their eyebrows in May when Mexico extradited for trial in the U.S. Arturo Paez Martinez, a key lieutenant in the Arellano-Felix cartel that operates from Tijuana. Paez Martinez was the first Mexican national in the upper reaches of one of the cartels extradited to America on drug charges alone. Overall, the Justice Department says Mexico has already agreed to more extraditions this year than it did all of last year.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign came in June, when Mexican and American officials jointly mounted Operation Marquis, a 16-city raid against a drug trafficking operation based in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The results of the raid may have been less important than the way in which it was conducted. Historically, American agents haven’t wanted to exchange information with their Mexican colleagues because corruption ensures that it passes so quickly to the drug cartels themselves. But of Marquis, Ashcroft says, “we shared information on that operation with the Mexican authorities in late May; we made the apprehensions in [late June] and we didn’t have any leakage.” That suggests the Mexican effort to construct elite units of uncorrupted investigators, vetted with American help, is making progress.

Even so, these advances remain a fragile beachhead. The American tendency to see Mexico with our hopes more than our eyes virtually qualifies as an addiction itself. Amid all the celebrations this week, it’s worth remembering that just before Mexico arrested its drug chief, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, his American counterpart, retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, described him as “a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity.”

It’s also important to keep in mind that even if the Mexican government remains resolute in its pursuit of the cartels, its efforts can be frustrated, if not undermined, by continued corruption at the state and local level. New DEA Director Asa Hutchinson injected a welcome note of caution into the approaching celebration when he recently told CNN that Mexico has hardly exorcised corruption: “We don’t go in there naively saying we can work with all of the authorities, that corruption is not a problem, because it is.”

Of course, corruption, if not so pervasive, isn’t extinct on this side of the border either. If Mexico shouldn’t be judged too leniently, neither should it be held to an impossible standard. The steps Fox has taken this year won’t stop the flow of drugs. But they can provide a foundation of trust that produces more cooperation and, with that, more progress.

“We should always proceed with caution,” says Ashcroft, “but when you have steps that affirm confidence, then you take more steps.” As Fox and Bush seek new ways to link arms against the drug cartels, the best compass for American officials remains Ronald Reagan’s maxim about arms control: trust but verify.

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See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.