It’s time for the United States to step in and clean up Mexico by whatever means necessary.
Last weekend, Fox News host Tucker Carlson stated that Mexico “is a hostile foreign power” and that America “must strike back. He identified Mexico as a hostile foreign power attacking he United States, and noted that for decades, the Mexican government has sent its poor north to the United States. This has allowed Mexico’s criminal oligarchy to get richer, and at great expense to the United States.
Carlson’s claims are not without merit. Statistics show a marked increase in crimes committed by illegal immigrants. The proliferation of Mexican gangs across U.S. cities is tragic and unacceptable. While our public school systems are failing American students, several of whom graduate with compromised literacy and math skills, is it fair to ask American tax payers to finance the education of illegal residents in this country? Illegal residents who are the beneficiaries of Medicaid and other subsidized health care simply play a pivotal role in increasing the overall costs of such care.
Mexico is, undoubtedly, a political, economic and ecological disaster.
The larger issue, though, is that by whatever skewed and biased and ever-fluctuating criteria are used to determine what counts as a failed state — Mexico is a failed state. It is also an economic rogue state. It has failed to put into practice a set of sound economic policies that satisfy the basic needs of a substantial number of its citizens.
Mexico has reneged on its right to claim the right to both de jure and de facto sovereignty and national autonomy. Sovereignty is not an unquestionable given nor a political axiom. It is a contested concept dependent on constraints of justice and criteria that warrant its legitimacy.
Sovereignty in a proper society is always endorsed by the will of the people that ratifies a body politic to govern them in ways that are conducive to their well-being and flourishing. No rational people would ever grant sovereignty to a government to enslave them, condemn them to economic policies that lead to their destitution or obstruct their liberty.
When, through political calumny a country compromises the security of its people, it morally forfeits its right to sovereignty and autonomy.
When the violated citizens of an economic rogue state make excessive demands against the United States, it is time for the United States to take actions that secure its national self-interests. Mexico, in extricating itself from the process of history, endangers the world order.
What can the United States do? It can place Mexico in economic and political receivership. Receivership is an act of self-defense and an act of political and economic retraining of a politically immature nation in need of guidance of how to manage its internal affairs and governance.
The United States, as does any mature and free nation, has the right to strip Mexico of sovereignty and autonomy to the extent that it gives the latter a chance to save the Mexican people from ruin, and just as importantly, to protect America from an ethical crisis it faces each days as thousand pour illegally into the country and apply for economic asylum.
The United States could be custodians of Mexico’s internal and natural resources that could be ethically appropriated by an external governing body to restructure the state by raising it to a level of functionality by reordering its political regime, restructuring its constitution to one resembling a U.S. based model predicated on liberal republican values. Hence we may propose trusteeship and receivership as proper modes of self-defense against incursions to our state that threaten our national security.
This model is not radical. Much of Africa is under the economic annexation of China. A system of ethical trusteeship and political and economic receivership would be no more unethical than what Iran and China are doing in the continent. The United States could simply defend such actions as a deterrent against future possible threats against its national and international security. Proper appropriation of the natural resources of a failed state, whether they be gas, oil or uranium reserves, can finance the restructuring of a failed state, along with the levying of appropriate rescue and restructuring taxes.
This model could be applied to any failed state, or rogue state — annexation would be justified in the case of the latter. What should be clear is why both rogue and failed states both pose a threat to the Unites States. In the interlocking world of global geopolitics, no state can be allowed to behave with impunity. If it does, it sends a signal to other states that they too can behave in such a manner.
Failed states are sinkholes in the world. They actively detract value from the region in much the same way that condemned buildings used by criminals spread mayhem and drag down home values throughout a neighborhood. Since regions are interconnected via a vast causal networks of interlocking social, political and fiscal systems, they contaminate the entire liberal order. China has already recognized the implications of this dilemma.
Carlson, I believe, senses it too. Will the United States wake up and do something about it?
Jason D. Hill (@JasonDhill6) is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy, cosmopolitanism and race theory. He is the author of several books, including “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People” (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press).
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.