Despite recent improvements in the overall security situation in Colombia, the Bush administration remains worried about that country.  Washington’s nightmare scenario is the emergence of a narcotrafficking state allied with extremist political elements and terrorist organizations.  U.S. leaders are sufficiently concerned about that possibility that they are ready to continue America’s extensive antinarcotics aid to Bogotá for several more years.

The fears about Colombia are not unfounded, but U.S. policymakers have a serious problem brewing much closer to home—in Mexico.  The drug trade in Mexico has mushroomed in recent years.  Five years ago, Thomas Constantine, then head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told Congress that the power of Mexican drug traffickers had grown “virtually geometrically” over the previous five years and that corruption throughout the country was “unparalleled.”  Matters have grown substantially worse since his testimony.

Mexico is now a major source of heroin for the U.S. market as well as the principal transit and distribution point for cocaine coming in from South America.  People both inside and outside Mexico have begun to worry that the country may descend into the maelstrom of corruption and violence that has long plagued Colombia, the chief drug-source nation in the Western Hemisphere.  Indeed, Mexicans now openly speak of the “Colombianization” of their country.

True, Mexico does not face a large-scale radical political insurgency like that afflicting Colombia.  The absence of such an insurgency is an important difference because it means that there are no significant anti-American political forces that can exploit the illegal drug trade for revenues to fund their cause.  Nevertheless, the similarities between the situations in Colombia and Mexico are greater than the differences, and Washington has been slow to react to that troubling reality.

In just the past few months, there have been several alarming developments.  Rival drug gangs in numerous cities—especially cities along the border with the United States—are waging ferocious turf battles.  Several of those struggles, including the one in and around the popular resort city of Cancun, have involved present or former police officers.

The worst situation exists in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.  There, the level of violence—and the level of police corruption—reached the point in early June that Mexico’s national government suspended that entire police force and sent in the federal police to patrol the streets.  For President Vicente Fox’s administration, the final straw came when Nuevo Laredo’s new police chief was assassinated on June 8, just hours after his appointment.

Federal authorities proceeded to purge the city’s police force.  After being required to take polygraph exams, 305 of the 765 police officers were dismissed.  Indeed, 41 of them were arrested for attacking the federal police when those units arrived in the city.  The “new and improved” Nuevo Laredo police were put back on the streets in late July, wearing new uniforms with white shirts.  The white color was chosen deliberately, according to Mexican federal authorities, to demonstrate that they were a trustworthy new entity.  Those officials apparently were serious.

Aside from the considerable doubt that the purge of the local police would have any lasting benefit, the federal takeover of law enforcement had no meaningful impact on the extent of violence in Nuevo Laredo.  Indeed, the number of drug-related killings actually went up during that period.

The fiasco with the Nuevo Laredo police is just one indication of the mounting corruption within Mexico’s political and law-enforcement systems.  Earlier this year, evidence came to light that some of the country’s biggest drug kingpins were still running their organizations even while they were inmates in supposedly high-security prisons.  The power of the drug organizations is generating fear throughout the country.  There is even concern that ruthless drug gangs may have targeted Vicente Fox for assassination, and security around the president has been tightened.

All of this is familiar to those who have studied the impact of the drug trade on Colombia over the past two decades.  Another Colombian pattern also is beginning to emerge in Mexico: the branching out of the drug gangs into kidnapping and other lucrative sources of revenue.  That aspect has made Colombia the kidnapping capital of the world in recent years.  Now, the same phenomenon is becoming noticeable in Mexico.  Indeed, several American citizens traveling in Mexico have been victimized.  That danger reached such an alarming level that the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert in January—much to the annoyance of the Mexican government.

It would be a tragedy if the corruption and violence that has plagued Colombia also engulfs Mexico.  Such a development would automatically be of grave concern to the United States.  Colombia is reasonably far away; Mexico is our next-door neighbor and a significant economic partner in the North America Free Trade Agreement.  Chaos in that country would inevitably impact Americans—especially those living in the Southwest.

It should not come as a surprise, though, if Mexico is on the path to becoming the next Colombia.  The trade in illegal drugs is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, with the United States as the principal retail market, and Mexico is a key player.  Rival gangs are willing to do whatever is necessary to gain control of that trade.

U.S. policy seems to assume that, if the Mexican government can eliminate the top drug lords, their organizations will fall apart, thereby greatly reducing the flow of illegal drugs to the United States.  Thus, U.S. officials have rejoiced at the willingness of President Vicente Fox’s administration to make the capture of major drug-trafficking figures a high priority.  But that is the same assumption that U.S. officials used with respect to the crackdown on the Medellin and Cali cartels in Colombia during the 1990’s.  Subsequent developments proved the assumption to be erroneous.  The elimination of the Medellin and Cali cartels merely decentralized the Colombian drug trade.  Instead of two large organizations controlling the trade, today some 300 much smaller, loosely organized groups do so.

The arrests and killings of numerous top drug lords in both Colombia and Mexico over the years have not had a meaningful impact on the quantity of drugs entering the United States.  Cutting off one head of the drug-smuggling hydra merely results in more heads taking its place.

Mexico can still avoid going down the same tragic path as Colombia.  Time, however, is growing short.  Washington had better pay far more attention to the problem than it has to this point, and U.S. officials need to come up with better answers than the ineffectual and dis