Shannon O’Neil

Below is a video interview I did for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Campaign 2012 series. In it I talk about the three big issues in U.S.-Latin America policy facing...

Last week WOLA released the report “A Cautionary Tale: Plan Colombia’s Lessons for U.S. Policy Toward Mexico and Beyond.” The study is a useful reminder of the real differences between...

Last Wednesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its report “Neither Rights Nor Security: Killings, Torture and Disappearances in Mexico’s ‘War on Drugs’.” The report is incredibly thorough – based on...

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently released a report penned by Carl Meacham titled “Latin American Governments Need to ‘Friend’ Social Media and Technology,” calling on U.S. policymakers to recognize...

Free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea finally passed, after four plus years of delay. My colleague Ted Alden talks about the consequences for the U.S. job market...

Front-runner Otto Pérez Molina won 36% of the vote in first round of Guatemala’s presidential elections on Sunday, and will face off against second place finisher Manuel Baldizón in the...

The “drug war” strategy of the last four decades revolves primarily around supply side measures. Whether eradication, interdiction, or arrests, it fixates on stopping the seemingly endless flow of drugs and cash across U.S. borders. But there is obviously another side to the equation – U.S. demand. The United States is the largest consumer of drugs across the globe (though there are signs that the cocaine and marijuana markets in Europe and the developing world are catching up) with 1 in every 7 Americans having tried an illegal substance.

The Pew Research Center released the results of a wide-ranging public opinion poll based on interviews with some 800 Mexicans (the study is part of their larger Global Attitudes Project). It finds strong continued support for military - 83 percent favor their role in the drug war - and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, with nearly 3 in 4 Mexicans supporting U.S. training and weapons for national security forces.

While two weeks ago Damien Cave’s great New York Times piece highlighted the positive economic factors keeping Mexicans at home, this week the Wall Street Journal adds border crossing dangers to the reasons for a downward trend in undocumented migration. This holds doubly true for Central Americans. A recent RAND study shows that while fewer Mexicans are coming to the United States, fewer are leaving as well, even with the economic downturn. Its authors suggest that this is due to the “target earner hypothesis,” which holds that migrants will not return to their home country until they have earned a prefixed level of savings. I’d add that the increasing costs and dangers of returning must also affect migrants’ calculation.

Reformers say never to waste a crisis — or a scandal. They certainly have found one with the ATF’s Fast and Furious program, in which bureau officials allowed hundreds of firearms to “walk” across the border, straight into the hands of Mexican drug traffickers.