Ecuador - Security Notes - March 2024
The "try harder" approach to security is delivering some surprisingly positive results. The biggest question now is whether Noboa can make it sustainable.
President Daniel Noboa extended the state of emergency in Ecuador for another 30 days. For some recent reporting on the security and political situation, go read Bloomberg, Conectas, InSight Crime, War on the Rocks, and WOLA. Written below are some disorganized thoughts I have on the subject right now.
In early January, as violence rocked Ecuador, I wrote that I "expect violence to spread and worsen in the short term."
It didn't. There was continued violence over that week and several high-profile attacks have occurred since including the assassinations and attempted assassinations of police and prosecutors. I still think much of the analysis from that January newsletter was good. But the overall security situation in the country has improved in the past two months, suggesting the one prediction I made about violence increasing in the short term was wrong.
It's worth asking why. Let me put forward four hypotheses:
H1: The gangs remain powerful but have strategically decided to reduce violence for a few months to avoid the wrath of the government. They could turn the violence back up any time they choose.
H2: The Noboa government secretly negotiated a pact with key gang leaders to reduce violence.
H3: The Noboa government's security strategy successfully represses the violence in the short term but is not sustainable beyond a few months.
H4: The Noboa government's security strategy is both successful in the short term and sustainable over the coming two years.
These aren't mutually exclusive. The answer could be some mix of the above. But it's a useful way to think through the logic of the situation.
My sense is that it's either H3 or H4. I don't think the gangs are capable of simply turning the violence back on right now and I have seen no evidence that Noboa, unlike Bukele, has negotiated with the key gang leaders and given them any sort of benefits.
We should all have lots of questions about why it's working in the short term. If Ecuador's security forces always had the capacity to reduce crime, why did they allow the situation to worsen for four years? Was it just that Presidents Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso didn't try hard enough?
Even if it's only temporary, we should be thinking about this magical hidden capacity that Ecuador has found to improve security. Are there other countries out there that could unexpectedly flip a switch and improve their security like El Salvador and Ecuador? Could Mexico? Could Haiti? It seems unlikely, but then again, until late January, would any of you have honestly predicted that Ecuador could cut its violence in half simply by trying harder with its military? Even in hindsight, it seems like an unlikely outcome.
Pre-Bukele, the conventional wisdom was that mano dura is not a sustainable solution to security challenges. Numerous governments had attempted some form of militarized, arrest everyone strategy only to see the problems of the approach bounce back and actually worsen the crime situation in the years that followed. One reason so many analysts were dismissive of Bukele's efforts early on was that El Salvador had tried the same thing at least two or three times in the previous two decades and had not just failed but actually worsened the problem in the process. Now a big question is whether El Salvador is a new model or an outlier in terms of its success in reducing violence (ignoring for a moment all the corruption and democratic decline that have come with it). What happens in Ecuador in the coming months may point to answering that question.
What are the Mexican, Colombian, and Albanian criminal groups doing now that they have lost at least some of their influence and operational capacity in Ecuador? We haven't seen signs they've moved to another country yet. Back in January, I also wrote that Ecuador's security crisis should create a search for regional solutions, citing the fact that many of the threats in Ecuador are transnational. It seems incredibly unlikely that the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG simply gave up in Ecuador and decided to stop trying to be influential and lock up their supply chains in South America.
Understandably, Noboa's security policies are wildly popular. His approval rating is at least 70% and potentially 80% according to Cedatos. The president plans a referendum in late April and all the issues are likely to go the government's way (though the question on international arbitration issues will not get as much support as the security-focused questions). He's also planning to use his popularity to raise revenue via taxes and oil to get the country in better fiscal shape, another way in which Noboa's strategy diverges from Bukele's. Given that buy-in from the private sector is critical to security strategy success (something Paul Angelo writes in his new book), this seems like a smart move that can help move from H3 or H4.
When the evidence changes, I change my analysis. In January I thought the security situation would worsen, but given the reductions in homicides so far, I have to believe there is some path forward that locks in the improvements. There is also a path forward where the security situation falls apart again. The short term improvements in Ecuador aren’t an argument that the situation can now be ignored or wasn’t as bad as we thought. We shouldn’t just pay attention to crises when they get to their worst point. The hemisphere should be doing everything possible to help Noboa lock in the short term security successes in Ecuador and build upon it both within the country and regionally.