Explaining the Flights

The United States confirmed it; they have carried out surveillance flights over Mexico to locate drug-trafficking networks. The Calderon government accepted it. Today, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa will visit the Senate to explain the agreement, as well as “Operation Fast and Furious,” under which the United States permitted thousands of arms to enter the country.

Thanks to those flights, says the U.S., various suspects linked with organized crime have been located. This does not sound so bad and is in line with the spirit of cooperation that should prevail when two countries have a serious problem in common. Even so, an elemental sense of national security demands setting careful boundaries when it comes to receiving help.

Finding criminals is not the only thing that these devices are capable of. Once in Mexican airspace, there is nothing to keep our neighbors from collecting information on the movements of Mexican armed forces, migrants’ routes, oil explorations and other matters that, out of prudence, strategy and diplomacy, concern Mexicans only.

This is not a matter of appealing to a crude nationalism that in other spheres weakens the country and isolates it from the rest of the world. In this case we are talking about a sense of defending one’s own territory.

It is important to receive help from the United States to the extent that they have a greater technological, human and logistical capacity to counter drug trafficking; this is the reason for the Merida Initiative, which provides equipment and support to the Mexican armed forces. But even this support should be limited in order to protect our national interests in other spheres. Exchanges of information, for example, are welcome. Armed U.S. agents operating in Mexico are not.

Cooperation has its limits, and we should not give more than diplomatic common sense would recommend. In any case, the Obama government is not doing Mexico any favors; it is simply collaborating in a struggle where it too has victims and problems caused by organized crime, which thrives on both sides of the border.

It would be more useful if the United States collaborated from within its own territory by reducing drug consumption and trafficking of assault rifles. That would truly make a significant contribution to winning this war.