Part 2: A War of Attrition is a Limited Strategy

For the past two years, the Mexican government has been involved in a concerted campaign against the drug cartels, which had operated with near impunity for decades in Mexico’s border areas. While there have been some successes, geographic, institutional and technical factors have made the government campaign an uphill struggle. With rampant corruption plaguing the ranks of Mexico’s law enforcement, President Felipe Calderon is using the military to impose the rule of law on the country’s periphery, where the cartels still pose the greatest danger. But the situation is reminiscent of the early U.S. effort in Iraq, where a small foreign force trained for conventional war could not quickly transition to a counterinsurgency role and where there was no comprehensive strategy for reconstruction.