Every once in a while I’m a bit ahead of the news curve. Which actually scares me since I don’t consider myself especially prescient or intelligent. As Lazarus Long once commented,

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

Which doesn’t really have much to do with today’s topic, but I like quoting LL.

Before I hurt my shoulder patting myself on the back, I’ll get to my point,

U.S. military report warns ‘sudden collapse’ of Mexico is possible.

In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.

Instability is bad, especially if well armed criminals are active along the border. Although many may think that this is entirely drug related, the truth is that there is a terrorist – drug cartel that starts in Afghanistan and wends it’s way into the US. If the drug cartels can smuggle drugs in now, imagine what they could do, and probably have already done, if there was no effective government in Mexico.

I guess that depends on what you mean by “effective government”.

Things don’t seem to be going all that well along the border right now,

2,000 fresh troops sent to Juárez as violence continues

The Mexican army has sent an estimated 2,000 troops to Juárez as part of a rotation even as the death toll surpassed 35 so far this year.

Thirteen days into the New Year and there are 35 murders? Not good at all.

The facts of the next report are reassuring, but the need isn’t.

U.S. ready for Mexico violence

EL PASO — If Mexico’s vicious drug war ever spills into El Paso, the United States has several response plans, one of which calls for a military surge along the U.S.-Mexico border, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this week.

My good friend Mule Breath opines that this would all stop if the US would legalize drugs, or at the least decriminalize it. He may be right, but it may be too late. Legalization is years away and even if it happens, the gangs will find some sort of illegal activity to engage in and the violence will continue.

At least the El Paso Times is on top of this story, because no one else seems to be.