Harrying Mexico

 In each of the last two Republican primary debates, the same bizarre line has cropped up (usually emanating from DeSantis, but echoed by others of the candidates who are trying to occupy or at least flirt with the MAGA/"nationalist" lane of the party). Usually one of the candidates will be asked about Ukraine, and whether the United States should continue supporting the country's defense. The candidate first will hem and haw (if they are one of the aforementioned MAGA/nationalist lane types), because they don't want to utterly antagonize and alienate the party's more traditional hawkish wing, but they also don't want to lose the votes of the party's neo-fascist Putin-loving contingent that is sometimes over-generously described as "isolationist." 

After unburdening themselves of whatever vague and noncommittal response the Ukraine question first elicited, the candidate then executes the pivot to what they really want to talk about. "The real problem," they say, "isn't the invasion happening at Ukraine's border; it's the invasion happening at our border!" or: "Instead of spending money to defend Ukraine's border; we should be spending money to defend our border!" Then comes the litany about Mexican drug cartels, asylum-seekers, and undocumented immigration, with the candidate usually winding up by declaring their intent to invade Mexico on "day one" after they take office. 

(It is a sign of just how abjectly terrifying Trump is, and how far gone the whole Republican party is at this point, that even the candidates pledging war with Mexico on "day one" seem "moderate" in comparison with the current GOP frontrunner.)

Now, all of this may seem like a strange contradiction, or at least an ideological tension. How comes it that the same politicians who want to cravenly toady to Putin and sacrifice U.S. allies to Russian expansionism are also simultaneously urging a war of aggression against our own contiguous neighbor and sister republic to the south? Isn't there some kind of discrepancy between the isolationism of the first position and the militant interventionism of the second? 

Well, yes and no. Perhaps the MAGA candidates' current endorsement of this cracked line—about cutting Ukraine loose so as to focus better on invading Mexico, that is—is really just an internally-muddled and incoherent attempt to jam together two equally potent—but ideologically incompatible—impulses on the part of the current American Right: on the one hand, their admiration for authoritarian strongmen like Putin who bully their neighbors, even if the bullies should happen to be U.S. adversaries and the neighbors U.S. allies; and on the other hand their worship of raw American military might and their desire to throw it around in some part of the globe—preferably against a much weaker adversary, rather than someone our own size—in a way that would make us feel powerful again.  

But thinking about it further today, I realized that there is a deeper consistency and affinity between these two positions even than that: namely, that the MAGA wing of the current GOP in effect admire Putin so much perhaps because they want to mimic his actions. They not only support Putin invading his next-door neighbor in an act of overt aggression, based on a spurious pretext of the need to counter that neighbor's shifting geopolitical allegiance, that is to say; they also want to do the exact same thing to our next-door neighbor based on the same absurd premise. 

Putin, recall, invaded Ukraine ostensibly to prevent Russia's nearest neighbor from becoming a NATO member, thus part of the Western military alliance. Now, in reality, Ukraine was not about to be admitted to NATO anytime soon, in part because of the ongoing conflict—initiated by Putin years earlier—over Crimea and the Donbas. Should the West have underlined even more clearly and forcefully that Ukrainian membership in NATO was not on the table, in order to dissuade Putin from acting? Possibly. 

But regardless of whether the West made any blunders that heightened tensions and should have been averted with the benefit of hindsight, two facts remain: first, it's things like Putin's brutal 2022 invasion and his earlier unilateral annexation of other countries' sovereign territory (viz Crimea) that make his next-door neighbors want the protection of NATO and similar alliances in the first place. And second: Even if the very worst interpretation of the West's actions were true, it still wouldn't justify the fact that Putin launched a wholly unprovoked invasion in February 2022—one that was aimed unmistakably not just at hiving off more territory from the country's hinterlands, but at destroying the very heart of its sovereign existence as an independent entity. 

When MAGA candidates admire or downplay the egregiousness of these actions on Putin's part, it is in part because of their sheer worship of raw power; but it is also because this is precisely the same playbook they would like to follow in their own plans for invading Mexico. After all, Robert F. Kennedy (who must be classified as a MAGA candidate despite his preposterous long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination, proving that one can be a MAGA Democrat as well as a MAGA Republican, and that far-out conspiracism can take root among segments of the anti-institutional left as well as the right) has already made the comparison: imagine, he said in an interview, if Mexico entered into a military alliance with China. Wouldn't we invade them? 

Along these lines, the prompts at the GOP debates have tried to plant the suggestion that this is precisely what is happening. The moderators and candidates describe how Mexico is establishing closer ties with the PRC government. Coupled with talk of sending troops to Mexico, the implication is all too clear: this could prove a basis for a U.S. war against our southern neighbor. 

Of course, such a war would have no moral basis or legal justification. You can't just invade a sovereign country because you don't like their politics. Now, I find it as regrettable as anyone else if countries decide to align themselves with the increasingly repressive and dangerously expansionist PRC government in China. But, the more U.S. leaders throw out unhinged suggestions about invading our weaker and smaller neighbors on a whim, the more those neighbors will be inclined to look abroad for tactical diplomatic alliances that might provide protection (just as Ukraine's desire for NATO membership is in large part a product of Putin's aggressive stance, not a justification for it). 

Plus, even if Mexico were culpable for making a strategic alignment with the PRC, that is still no reason whatsoever to violate international law by attacking them. Implicit in the idea of sovereignty is that countries can decide what foreign policy to pursue and what diplomatic ties to foster whether we like their choices or not. The only possible justification for the use of force is if it is in self-defense against an imminent attack, not a speculative fear of shifting geopolitical ties. 

Likewise with Putin's invasion: there was no justification for it, even if it's true that Ukraine was moving toward the Western orbit in the years preceding the war. But you can see how the same politicians who want to mirror Putin's actions at our own southern border, vis-a-vis our own neighbor, would tend to admire his invasion and want to present pseudo-justifications for it. If they can make it sound like it was reasonable for Putin to attack Ukraine simply because he didn't like its foreign policy, then it will be all the easier to sell the American public on a war against our southern neighbor just because we don't like its evolving relationships with our geopolitical adversaries. 

Is war with Mexico a real possibility? It feels far-fetched to me; but I also have to accept that major party candidates for president are openly declaring that they intend to execute such a conflict. Presumably they should be taken at their word, if only out of an abundance of caution. 

Plus, it's not like the U.S. has never invaded Mexico before. One of our country's nastiest wars of imperial expansionism—the one that gave us a large portion of the current U.S. land mass—was waged at the expense of our southern neighbor (as Mexican-Americans in some parts of the Southwest still observe, "we didn't cross the border; the border crossed us"). Why couldn't it happen again? And why would the people who can't even bring themselves to denounce Putin's actions in Ukraine have any moral objection to inflicting the same sort of suffering on our southern neighbor today? 

If it happens, we shall be left as baffled and disgusted as Emerson was, back during the first Mexican-American war of the 1840s. He wrote about the conflict at the time in one of his greatest poems—the "Ode, Inscribed to W.H. Channing." The theme of the poem is how Emerson, repulsed though he may be by current events, including U.S. imperial expansion and the institution of slavery, nonetheless does not wish to spend his time on political advocacy. The rich irony of the poem, though, is that in the course of forswearing any activist role for the poet and savant, and explaining why he does not want to sully his hands with politicking and social reform, Emerson writes some of the most stinging and effective political commentary of the era. 

The few lines in Emerson's poem dealing with the Mexican war are the best literary writing I know of about that conflict (indeed, they are the only literary writing I know of about that conflict—but I say they are the best not only for that reason, but also because they are great and mighty in their justified wrath and fiery indignation, however brief and quickly extinguished by a change of topic). 

Emerson first considers those who speak of America's great democratic promise and cultural mission, as well as of the virtues of the cloistered Ivory Tower life of the mind. Then, in a turn that presages Neruda's call in the twentieth century to stop asking him for disengaged poems about nature's beauty, and to instead "come and see the blood in the streets"—Emerson scoffs at this optimism (for all he himself is often remembered as its prophet), and urges them to go and look at what this democratic government was doing south of the border, or in its own lands where slavery was still being practiced: 

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.

May these words be a warning for us, in an age when major party politicians are once again calling for aggressive war against our next-door republic to the south. May we not take our democratic promise for granted any more than the people of the nineteenth century did, when our own politicians are sidling up to authoritarians abroad, and seeking to mirror their acts of imperial aggression against our own nearest neighbors. Let us never find ourselves beholding again the shameful spectacle of "the famous States/ Harrying Mexico/ with rifle and with knife!"