Brian Jenkins: Drug Cartels an X-Factor for Presidents Obama and Pena Nieto Brian Michael Jenkins - OC Register
go to original February 20, 2013

The war on Mexico's criminal cartels dominated the presidency of Felipe Calderon. If the country's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has his way, it will not dominate his administration. And although the United States applauded and supported Calderon's campaign, absent evidence that Mexico's ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional is returning to the bad old days of lucrative détente with drug traffickers that characterized its administrations in the 1990s, the United States will not demand that Peña Nieto make continuing Calderon's campaign his primary focus.

President Peña Nieto and President Obama both face daunting domestic challenges and have ambitious domestic agendas. Critically, both administrations need a measure of tranquility and prosperity in Mexico to succeed in meeting their goals.

Just before Peña Nieto's inauguration, the already installed PRI-led congress, working with a lame-duck President Calderon, succeeded in passing an important labor reform bill. Peña Nieto has proposed further fundamental reforms to Mexico's energy sector and fiscal management. Income from PEMEX, Mexico's national oil company, directly subsidizes government spending, so the two are inextricably connected.

Although inviting more foreign investment in Mexico's oil industry would be a politically unpopular move, Peña Nieto sees it as a path to obtaining needed capital and know-how. The new president has also promised education reform. Foreign participation in Mexico's energy sector would alter the way Mexico funds its social programs. For Peña Nieto, such changes will require taking on the country's unions and other vested economic and political interests.

Read the whole story at Orange County Register

Brian Michael Jenkins is senior adviser to the president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corp.

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