Does Foreign Assistance Reduce Drug Trafficking?

On July 18th, the Mexican Navy intercepted a mini submarine that was transporting more than 5 tons of cocaine. This is a significant operation that highlights the ability of Mexican armed forces to combat drug trafficking by air, land, and sea. Bilateral cooperation between the United States and Mexico contributed to the capture of the submarine. Given the current context, it is important to ask whether foreign assistance in the form provided by the Mérida Initiative or Plan Colombia actually reduce drug trafficking.

Answering such a question is not an easy task. Indeed, there are methodological issues that do not allow to test whether military assistance provided by one country (or countries) to another actually reduce drug trafficking. A large transfer of resources to combat drugs is public information. Drug cartels can observe this transfer. Having observed the transfer, they can modify their activities accordingly. However, this modification is not observable‚ although intelligence agencies should be able to observe these activities. Cartels can improve their efforts and become even more difficult to catch (they become better drug traffickers); or they can reduce their efforts, thus giving the impression that the aid is working (they play a low profile). This last event is a response to the transfer, not a response to the actual implementation of the funds provided by the transfer.

But high office is run by politicians and not by researchers. Indeed, it is always good to show the photos of a submarine being taken over by Special Forces. We can expect observing more dramatic seizures of drugs under a new bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States. The question is whether those seizures will be masking other types of illegal operations that make use of even more fantastic ways of transporting drugs across countries.