The drug war in Mexico is entering its fourth year as of 2011. The level of violence has spread throughout Mexico raising doubts as to Mexico's ability to win and assert its State authority. The violence in the Northern part of Mexico causes...
Since 2007, when President Felipe Calderon declared his government's war on the drug trafficking organizations operating in his country, the level of narcotics related violence has increased dramatically. The violence, which had been largely...
In 1969, President Nixon started the now well-known "War on Drugs." The reason behind his "declaration" of war was the increasing national security threat posed by the transnational drug trafficking organizations. With the aim of making as much...
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels in December 2006, more than 35,000 Mexicans have died due to narco-violence. This monograph examines whether the various Mexican drug trafficking organizations are insurgents...
Since 2006, more than 30,000 Mexican citizens have died in drug-related violence. With the threat of this violence escalating and spilling across the border into the United States, it is necessary to employ the full range of assets and options...
With the U.S. high domestic consumption of illicit drugs, a relationship has formed between transnational gangs and powerful Latin American drug cartels. The ineffectiveness of the war on drugs, along with the high cost of such a program, begs the...
Drug Trafficking Organizations within Mexico have become a challenge to the state and are affecting both Mexican and U.S. citizens within the U.S. and Mexico border region. As the situation continues to spiral out of control, the U.S. military,...
The security of the U.S.-Mexican border is an issue of considerable interest for both countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement has created a web of symbiotic links between the two countries. Unfortunately, this has also presented...
The increasing volume and manner of violent deaths in Mexico nearly doubled in 2009 to just over seven thousand. Mexico appears capable of devolving into a failed state status where an insurgency threat could potentially thrive. These indices...
Drug trafficking has been a menace in most Latin American countries for many decades. We know enough about how the phenomenon works as an economic and social problem and how it affects the continent, but in the last decade, with the attention of...
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 underscored the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland. In response to those attacks and to protect the homeland, U.S. policy-makers created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for homeland security, and...
This paper argues that to counter border spillover violence, America must control the border with Mexico and generate the public and political commitment to do so. This study applies a military problem solving methodology to identify how best to...
Information operations (IO) are defined as actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one’s own information and information systems. Based upon this definition, at the tactical level, the focus of IO is...
The current layered and bifurcated approach to homeland security and defense is insufficient for combating future threats to the nation. This monograph describes a new approach to homeland security and defense. Broadly speaking, this new approach,...
United States. Army. Engineer Center and Fort Leonard Wood.
The Guidon came into being as a weekly publication in 1966 under the title Fort Leonard Wood Guidon. Between 1966 and 1987 the title was simplified to Guidon before becoming Essayons in 1988. The name reverted back to Guidon in 1999. It has been...
Arthur D. Simons Center for Interagency Cooperation
This study is the result of several months of academic research by a group of mid-career professionals participating in an alternative educational program with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) that focused on issues related to...
The construction of a US-Mexico border fence has proved an increasingly divisive method for securing the southern US border since its initial construction as the San Diego Fence in 1990. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the...
Military support to law enforcement agencies is a key piece of solving the problem that exists along the southwestern border. Military support along the southwestern border has existed since the initial westward expansion of the United States....
With the exception of Cuba, US-Latin American relations do not have the specter of Communist influence in the hemisphere distorting the thrust of foreign policy. What does remain is the threat of crises that endangers the viability of the fledgling...