How to destroy Mexico in three easy steps

If the United States wanted to destroy the nation of Mexico, without armed conflict, there are three straightforward steps that could be followed.

Step 1: Make sure that the most lucrative Mexican industries are extra-legal. This step is probably the most simple of the three. The disparate wealth between the US and Mexico and the 3-to-1 population ratio creates a nearly limitless market for Mexican drug and human traffic. Exploiting these areas of Mexico's economy will rapidly grow these industries large enough to create significant conflicts of interest for government intervention. The concept is similar to the cigarette tax in the US, but several orders of magnitude larger. The key is to make the undesirable behavior too lucrative for government to live without.

Step 2: Create a mechanism that removes individuals from the Mexican population that have a combination of strong work ethic and morals while simultaneously keeping their identity tied to their native land. This step significantly increases the effectiveness of step 1 by making sure that there are compelling reasons to allow uncontrolled cross-border access into the US from Mexico. It also reduces the incentive for legitimate industry to grow in Mexico. By not making it too easy to get into the US illegally, we can rest assured that those that do make the journey for US labor jobs will largely be above average in their work ethic, not interested in getting involved in the drug trade, and have strong ties to their homeland that encourage them to send money back home and incentivize others to make the arduous trek. Some level of cooperation from Mexican officials on the other side of the border will be needed to make this viable. Step three helps secure the cooperation of these officials.

Step 3: Keep Mexican law enforcement at a disadvantage against organized crime. The first step listed above goes a long way towards enabling this end. By ensuring that criminal organizations are well funded relative to Mexican law enforcement and government officials the US can make sure that these officials have some motivation to go along with the overall scheme. The "Plato o Plomo" approach can be effective for motivating Mexican government or law enforcement officials. The drug cartels can pay the officials with gold (plato) to get the desired result or pay them with lead (plomo) until you find cooperative officials.

The US could put the Mexican government on the verge of collapse in a relatively short period of time if this simple three step plan of subversion were put into action. Obviously, no country would be foolish enough to create such chaos at it's own doorstep, but this exercise illustrates that it is theoretically possible to achieve the stated end.