Crisis on the border. Roots, origins, angst, and what is to be done.

May 13, 2023

Mexican Border Crisis

The predicted chaos did not ensue yesterday, which doesn't mean it's not arriving.

Those seeking asylum, FWIW, are required to have first applied in the countries from which they are departing, or online, or if they traveled through another country or countries, those places.  The problem remains of dealing with the requests of those who are allowed in.

Most of the migrants are fleeing economic distress or violence in their homelands, the product of a wide-ranging number of things, and which varies by countries.  Haiti, for example, remains impoverished as a legacy of paying its original French slaveholders upon achieving independence long ago.  Almost all of the Central American and South American states contributing to the human flood also suffer from the legacy of Spanish Colonialism, which saw its original liberators largely act in the name of their own self-interest rather than that of the native populations.  Stable Central American states, looked at with a long lens, have a single stable government example, which also contributes to the flood due to being in an unstable neighborhood.  The existence of multiple Central American states in the first place is nonsensical and is a symptom of failed policies itself. They should really all be part of Mexico, which in fact was at least partially the plan early on.  Repeated efforts to reunite into one state have failed, leaving tiny rump states that have been corruptly ruled and which have fallen into the control of criminal gangs, something the US's unending appetite for illegal drugs, a symptom of its own failed American Dream, fuels.

Marines in Nicaragua, 1932.

Central Americans have lived in fear of US intervention for decades, although that seems to have ceased, as has U.S. intervention.  Unfortunately, the region is terribly governed, with Socialist ineptitude governing in some places (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), to simply featuring failed states in others.  The US has repeatedly tried a "good neighbor" policy of non-intervention, and it retains guilt over supposed "American colonialism"  for intervention.  The US last put troops on the ground in Panama when it deposed the Panamanian leader during the Reagan Administration and then went right on to invade Grenada.

The problem remains that the neighbor analogy may be too appropriate.  It might be neighborly to ignore your neighbor's dissolute living for a while, but when it turns violent, do you?

It's clear something has to be done to address the root problems of what's being seen. But what is that?

Gun Boat Diplomacy? What year is it?

Yesterday in the news it was reported that over several days President Trump kept raising the topic of removing the government of Venezuela by military force.

Crew of the USS Denver in Nicaragua, 1912.

Yikes.

Let's make no mistake. The government of Venezuela is ruining the country.  But invading it?  That's wacky.

Apparently the President raised this with his advisers by surprise and kept raising it over a period of a couple of days, each time meeting opposition to the concept.  It was just a concept, but still that's really scary. And he even apparently mentioned the concept to the chief executive of Columbia.

Yikes again.

Trump seemed impressed by the American deposing of the Manuel Noriega, the military dictator of Panama in the 1980s whom President Reagan had removed (oddly, this was a topic of conversation with my son just yesterday, July 4.)  And it was mentioned in my very recent post on the U.S. Marines and World War One.   He also referenced the American invasion of Grenada.

M113 personnel carrier in Panama during Operation Just Cause.  Twenty three US servicemen died in the invasion and about ten times that number of Panamanian servicemen.

Neither of these are analogous.  After all, Panama was ruled by a military figure who had light support in that country in general, and Panama is a creature of the United States over which we exhibited fairly extensive control for eons.  Grenada is an island (over which the British retain some technical sovereignty).  Neither of these military missions were calculated to meet with much opposition, although they did meet with some.

82nd Airborne Division M102 howitzer firing a fire mission in Grenada.  Nineteen American servicemen died in this action and about three times that number of Grenadians and Cubans.

There would definitely be opposition in Venezuela.

And invading a nation simply because it is lead by whackadoodles is not a Just War.

Hopefully this idea has passed.