\t5 mars 2009 L’article du Washington Times<\/em> du 3 mars<\/a> produit un choc, sans aucun doute \u00e0 cause de ce qu’il d\u00e9crit des conditions de militarisation de ce qui est de plus en plus identifiable comme une guerre sur la fronti\u00e8re Sud des USA et au Mexique m\u00eame. Le choc principal pour l’information spectaculaire, c’est l’information exclusive sur laquelle le journal fait son accroche, qui est l’estimation du Pentagone que l’arm\u00e9e des cartels de drogue, les soi disant foot soldiers<\/em>, atteint 100.000 hommes. L’arm\u00e9e mexicaine compte, elle, 130.000 hommes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tIl est tr\u00e8s significatif que le Washington Times<\/em> se soit adress\u00e9 au Pentagone pour obtenir une information compl\u00e8te sur la situation. D\u00e9sormais l’\u00e9valuation est qu’il s’agit d’une crise de premi\u00e8re dimension, et elle vient du Pentagone: \u00abIt’s moving to crisis proportions, a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels’ foot soldiers are on a par with Mexico’s army of about 130,000.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLes divers organismes de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 nationale US placent le Mexique en t\u00eate de liste des menaces contre les USA, souvent \u00e0 \u00e9galit\u00e9 avec le Pakistan, ou avec l’Iran, ou avec les deux et, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, au-dessus de l’Irak et de l’Afghanistan. On a d\u00e9j\u00e0 eu des \u00e9chos<\/a> de ces \u00e9valuations<\/a>, et les nouvelles qui nous viennent maintenant les confirment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThe biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the Federation or Golden Triangle, and its main rival, Los Zetas or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands. The two cartels appear to be negotiating a truce or merger to defeat rivals and better withstand government pressure. U.S. officials say the consequences of such a pact would be grave.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbI think if they merge or decide to cooperate in a greater way, Mexico could potentially have a national security crisis, the defense official said. He said the two have amassed so many people and weapons that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is fighting for his life and for the life of Mexico right now. As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbOther U.S. officials and Mexico specialists agreed with this assessment. Michael V. Hayden, who left as CIA director in January, put Mexico second to Iran as a top national security threat to the United States. His successor, Leon E. Panetta, told reporters at his first news conference that the agency is paying … a lot of attention to Mexico. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday that the stakes are high for the safety of many, many citizens of Mexico and the stakes are high for the United States no doubt.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn a December interview with The Times, President Bush said his successor would need to deal with these drug cartels in our own neighborhood. And the front line of the fight will be Mexico. A State Department travel advisory last month seemed timed to caution U.S. students contemplating spring breaks south of the border. Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades, the advisory said.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tDans le Guardian<\/em>, le 25 f\u00e9vrier<\/a>, David Rieff fait une analyse g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la situation mexicaine. Son approche initiale est int\u00e9ressante. Elle concerne la situation des USA vis-\u00e0-vis du Mexique, du point de vue le plus large possible. L’observation essentielle renvoie aux remarques de Joe Biden durant la campagne \u00e9lectorale, selon lesquelles Obama serait sans doute confront\u00e9 \u00e0 une grande crise de politique internationale dans les six premiers mois de son mandat, comme \u00e0 un test de sa capacit\u00e9 pr\u00e9sidentielle. Le test n’a pas besoin n\u00e9cessairement d’\u00eatre un complot humain, il pourrait \u00eatre plus simplement une crise venue \u00e0 maturation. Les crises \u00e9voqu\u00e9es \u00e9taient lointaines, l’Iran, la Russie, le Pakistan. Pourquoi pas le Mexique? interroge Rieff, avec nombre d’arguments qui vont d’eux-m\u00eames.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abShortly before the US elections last November, then vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was widely criticised for predicting that an Obama administration would almost certainly be tested by what he called a generated international crisis, in much the way that the Soviet Union tested John F Kennedy shortly after he assumed office. Biden did not point to a specific region of the world, but mentioned the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Russia as the likeliest sources of trouble for the new president.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbImpolitic or not, Biden’s anxieties seem to have informed several of the administration’s early foreign policy decisions. These include his own extension of an olive branch to Russia at the recent Munich security conference, and Barack Obama’s appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan and of George Mitchell to a similar post for Israel-Palestine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbBut, as pressing as the Middle East, south Asia, and Russia (as well as Iran and North Korea) are, another crisis far closer to home could create as much peril as a nuclear-armed Iran, an aggressively resurgent Russia, or even an Islamist-dominated Pakistan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThat crisis is located in Mexico, which is in free fall, its state institutions under threat as they have not been since at least the Cristero uprising of the late 1920s and possibly since the Mexican revolution of 1910. While the Obama administration is obviously aware of what is happening south of the Rio Grande, the threat simply does not command the attention that its gravity requires.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n