A Great Perspective on the U. S. Mexican Border

 

Our Borders, Ourselves   

www.claremont.org   -  Part I of IV  -  By Angelo M. Codevilla May 24, 2011

Reacting to the American public's mounting frustration; both political parties now make much of "border security," by which they mean militarizing, to some extent, the U.S.-Mexico border. But few try to explain what kind of security, and against what, any given measure—from a "virtual" fence to armed guards—would provide. Fewer still have asked why, after decades of ever tighter security, the Mexican border gives greater cause for worry. Remarkably, until the 1960s just about no one worried about the Mexican border, though it was entirely unguarded.
A friendly border is like oxygen: when you've got it, you don't think about it. Only when you lose it does its importance seize you. But by then it is difficult to remember the fundamental truth: if borders are friendly, you don't have to secure them; and if they are unfriendly, you must pay dearly for every bit of partial security, because ever harsher measures produce ever greater hostility.

Unfriendly Neighbors

Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War gives us what may be history's most poignant description of how a hostile border proved disastrous to a great power. In the war's 19th year, Sparta put a small garrison in Decelea, in their enemy's backyard, which, Thucydides tells us, "was one of the principal causes of [the Athenians'] ruin." "[I]nstead of a city, [Athens] became a fortress," with "two wars at once," and in a few years was "worn out by having to keep guard on the fortifications." Having lost a friendly border, Athens turned itself inside out trying to secure an unfriendly one.
Today's troubles on the Mexican border augur a similar deterioration in our peace at home as well as in our geopolitical situation. Mexico's war on drug trafficking and friendship with the United States since 2000 have been historical anomalies that Mexico is even now reconsidering. Next year, its presidential election is likely to bring into office an administration that will radically decrease cooperation with the U.S. and, as a result, allow increased freedom for the drug cartels on the Mexican side that will transfer their murderous warfare north of the border. The next Mexican government is also likely to support some American politicians' efforts to transform Mexican immigrants into yet another aggrieved "racial" group—though they are not even a "race" much less a repressed one—further poisoning American politics. The new government may even align Mexico with Iran, Venezuela, and other countries that wish America ill.
To imagine what such a shift on the international scene could mean, one need only remember that in the 1970s and early '80s Mexico very nearly granted the Soviet Union consulates in ten border cities with the U.S. Or that American public opinion shifted decisively in favor of world war in 1917 when an intercepted telegram raised the prospect of German foreign aid to Mexico in order to re-conquer the American Southwest. The prospect that a truly hostile Mexico may soon be added to the other problems that have bedeviled our ruling class should sober Americans' attitudes about the border.
Instead, talk of "border security" substitutes for serious thought. It conflates the fact that some illegal border-crossers seek work, others want to immigrate, a few are smuggling drugs, and fewer still may have terrorism in mind. Yet understanding our border problems requires distinguishing the choices we must make about immigration, labor, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Overarching each part of the problem is the question of America's relationship with the Mexican people, with whom we share a 2,000-mile border, and who are relatives of a substantial part of our population. It should not be necessary to point out that the following is not an argument for the libertarian option of "open borders," much less for the Democratic Party's not so secret agenda of "amnesty" (meaning voting rights) for illegal immigrants.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano's confidence that the two governments are "going to get that border right" could not be more misplaced. Politicians north and south of the Rio Grande are making (mostly inadvertently but nonetheless inexcusably) a hostile Mexican border more likely every day. On our side, the Right—bolstered by footage of Mexicans scaling border fences—portrays "illegal immigrants" as harbingers of crime and drugs, here to rob us of jobs and overload our welfare system. Meanwhile the Left maintains that the majority of Americans are racists because they balk at granting voting rights to illegal immigrants. Both narratives fuel an equally poisonous view, increasingly popular in Mexican politics: All the gringos are racists, from the greedy businessmen who exploit Mexican labor to the lazy unions that restrict it. The gringos are rotten with drugs and the billions they pay to traffickers have turned Mexico's cities into war zones. And they have the gall to blame Mexico. To hell with them!