My internal thesis debate: COIN or Mexico

Before, I thought my graduate thesis would be on the Merida Initiative. Essentially to explore whether the Initiative is the best way for the US to focus its counter-narcotics efforts with Mexico. Well in true Bender fashion, instead of settling, I may change my thesis. Consequently giving myself heartburn and headaches because the replacement thesis will most likely be much more difficult. Here's the basics on thesis option #2:

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in a re-thinking of counter-insurgency (COIN). As before, the army concentrated solely on killing the bad guys - an "enemy-centric" strategy - which often led to many civilian deaths from collateral damage and has been well argued (read Kilcullen and Exum, amongst others) was self-defeating. Now, the prevailing theme in COIN is to protect civilians at all costs - a "people-centric" strategy - which places a premium on protection, even if it means less strikes against insurgents.

However, there are some who argue (read Bacevich and Cohen) that this approach to COIN is flawed for several reasons: principally it requires too long of a commitment, the military is not designed for it, and the US doesn't have the political will for it.

Now regarding my thesis, I believe the critiques of contemporary COIN as mentioned above are legitimate. But as I believe Exum has said how do we confront insurgents in any other way? Because if a "people-centric" approach can't work and an "enemy-centric" approach produces more harm than good, then what is the US to do in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I guess this would be the root of my thesis... The question of "if not this, then what else?"

And yet another area of contemporary COIN that I would like to explore is its foundation. This area concerns me because I feel in practice it is a) unsustainable, b) uneconomical, and c) irrespective of the local political culture. Principally this is all because the system - with its various security controls, economic assistance, and political manufacturing - is not based on the initiative of the people. It is not organic.

In this sense, COIN doctrine seeks to gain the will of the people by making them clients of an occupying force. In the end, this results in citizens either becoming dependent on the force or moving away from the model. While either scenario may not be catastrophic, they assuredly cannot be the best outcomes.

Since this post is getting a little wordy, I'll close now with a paradox courtesy of Andreas Kluth (heads-up its about how achieving success may ultimately lead to failure):

Failure is often the result of succeeding at the wrong thing (eg, choosing the wrong “battles” and “wars” to win, as Pyrrhus did). Ironically, success is therefore often the result of failing at the wrong thing, and thus having an opportunity to “return” to the right things.

What does this mean, who knows? But, maybe it can be of help to analyze the trajectory of current approaches to COIN.

Thesis topic

So, I believe I decided on a thesis topic. Or at least something definitive enough to look into. I was thinking that an analysis of the Merida Initiative would be good.

What kind of analysis, I'm not to sure. Potentially it could be about how the $1.4 billion USD is being used for the initiative. Most of it is going to supply Mexican counter-drug forces with equipment to do interdiction. For this, the US is supplying Mexico with various types of equipment from helicopters, to reconnaissance aircraft, to non-intrusive inspection equipment. I may look into the Merida legislation to see if this type of equipment is the best use of our resources, or if other types of assistance would actually work better, bearing in mind that probably the principle goal for any US-assistance in this regard would be for interdiction of narcotics entering the US and not as much to aid Mexican officials in decreasing their violent crime or own domestic drug problem.