@Cosmas-the-Explorer
My theory is that sectors of the American ruling class see the recent industrialization of Mexico and its gradual slipping out of the US orbit with concern for the future of their dominance over the area. Knowing how they often apply the same “containment” strategy to their own rivals (see, Russia wrt Ukraine and China wrt some of its neighbors, such as Taiwan), there is palpable fear that the US’ rivals, in seeing chances for diplomatic bargaining with Washington slip away, could finance an estrangement between Mexico and the US and create a hostile military force on their very doorstep. Ensuring US control over the waterways in the Caribbean and the American portion of the Pacific could secure American hegemony over a sector of the New World in the middle of a time period in which US global dominance seems less secure and more threatened than before, or so Trump and his acolytes think.
Today they blare on and on about the drug cartels being such a force, but if things go wrong, it could be the Mexican government itself. Trump’s tendency to lump both of them in the same box, his professed “doctrine” for transactional diplomacy and his musing in a rally last year about installing a version of Israel’s Iron Dome on the US-Mexico border could be a sign of how things are changing, though i don’t believe he’s the prime mover of this sort of thing himself.
My theory is that sectors of the American ruling class see the recent industrialization of Mexico and its gradual slipping out of the US orbit with concern for the future of their dominance over the area. Knowing how they often apply the same “containment” strategy to their own rivals (see, Russia wrt Ukraine and China wrt some of its neighbors, such as Taiwan), there is palpable fear that the US’ rivals, in seeing chances for diplomatic bargaining with Washington slip away, could finance an estrangement between Mexico and the US and create a hostile military force on their very doorstep. Ensuring US control over the waterways in the Caribbean and the American portion of the Pacific could secure American hegemony over a sector of the New World in the middle of a time period in which US global dominance seems less secure and more threatened than before, or so Trump and his acolytes think.
Today they blare on and on about the drug cartels being such a force, but if things go wrong, it could be the Mexican government itself. Trump’s tendency to lump both of them in the same box, his professed “doctrine” for transactional diplomacy and his musing in a rally last year about installing a version of Israel’s Iron Dome on the US-Mexico border could be a sign of how things are changing, though i don’t believe he’s the prime mover of this sort of thing himself.
