Biden’s Outstanding Challenges

The violence of organized crime in the bilateral relationship is threatening to get out of hand (if it hasn’t already) and to jeopardize the national security of the U.S. and Mexico (something Washington has repeatedly emphasized), putting the security agenda of the two countries at risk.

President Joe Biden is facing several geopolitical breakdowns in different world regions. Although each situation touches on one or more regions, in some cases a region is a big issue in itself. In Gaza and in Ukraine, for the moment, he’s playing for his own hide politically, because of the wars; until now, he has been trying, with some success, to constrain Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin. These two conflicts have taken their toll on Biden on the domestic politics level, at a time when Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is running against Donald Trump in the presidential election. Domestic protests, mostly involving graduate students at more than 30 U.S. universities, Muslim Americans and African Americans, are the biggest demonstration of dissent during his presidency. If the alternative of conditioning his support of Israel on its offensives in Gaza and Lebanon doesn’t work, and if Netanyahu gets his way in the attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah, and if, in passing, Netanyahu continues with the extermination of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, Biden’s term could end badly in that respect. Furthermore, it could lead to lost votes to an important extent in the swing states that are key in the election, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Immigration, which is definitely an issue in the presidential campaign, is also an important hot button issue for Biden and Harris. If there is no agreement with Mexico on stemming the flow of migrants coming from Latin America and other parts of the world, the geopolitical breach will be of enormous proportions. And the impact of this breach on domestic politics could be catastrophic for the president. Be that as it may, migration to the U.S. from Mexico is unfinished business, and it will continue to be an issue in the coming years. And most certainly, if Trump wins the election on Nov. 5, it will be an issue for which Mexico must be well prepared starting now, because Trump is going to come in with a very virulent momentum in this respect.

For Mexico, the democratic breakdown represented by the victories of the U.S. populist national ultra-right, and in particular the possibility of a Trump presidency for the next four years, is a challenge to the stability of democracy and the survival of republican institutions in those countries and regions where this form of political extremism is prevalent. For now, the U.S. is the biggest concern, because if Trump wins, we will have a renewed retreat from democracy and an attack of incalculable proportions on democratic institutions.

On the other hand, the violence of organized crime in the bilateral relationship is threatening to get out of hand (if it hasn’t already) and to jeopardize the national security of the U.S. and Mexico (something Washington has emphasized a lot), putting the security agenda of the two countries at risk. Such an outcome would represent an historic break in the relationship between the two nations. And it would also represent a failure of bilateral cooperation on this matter. This will very probably radicalize the U.S. security agencies against the failed security policy of the Mexican government, which will have to be modified by the new Mexican president, with more retaliatory staying power to stop the advance of criminal organizations all across the country. Recent events in Guerrero, Sinaloa, Jalisco and Tamaulipas, where several people, including minors, were killed, is a wake-up call for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to modify the failed policy on organized crime that she inherited from her political godfather. The only thing he left her was a conflict that has to be resolved with, among other things, a strategy to regain control of regions of the country that today are under the control of organized crime. These criminal gangs have Mexico at their mercy and on the verge of turning it into a failed state.

These are the outstanding challenges that Biden is leaving to his successor. There is reason to fear that if the presidency falls into the hands of Trump, these problems, rather than being resolved, will be exacerbated and deepened to very dangerous extremes.