The Kingpin Strategy of Everything
Presidents, Cartel Leaders, and why everyone might be wrong.
Good morning from Bogota, Colombia.
My weekly column in World Politics Review (gift link) is 1,600 words on the El Mencho operation and the conflicting counternarcotics goals of Mexico and the US. After discussing Mexico, I end on a global comment:
Less than a week after the El Mencho operation, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and several other senior government officials. Taken together, and combined with the U.S. raid to seize and rendition Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, these events reveal something about the Trump administration’s worldview and theory of power. For Trump and his team, removing the people running states and criminal groups that threaten the U.S. is decisive, because individual leaders matter more than systems or institutions. It is a “kingpin strategy” on a global scale, one that prioritizes spectacle and the elimination of individuals over the patient, unglamorous work of dismantling networks, reducing demand, building institutional capacity and addressing the structural conditions that allow organized crime to thrive.
I’m still forming a comprehensive view on this, so consider what follows more of a thinking-out-loud exercise than a polished argument.
On one hand, there is something particularly Trumpian about this worldview, with the US president projecting his own image of executive authority upon other issues. And I think understanding this is important to analyzing what the current US administration does in foreign policy. Tangentially, this also explains why Trump values the presidential-level relationships in a way that appears more important than the state-to-state interests.
On the other hand, this sort of executive focus and hyper-presidentialism is also a very Latin American problem that extends well into the past. When democracies in the Western Hemisphere degrade, it’s generally because a president breaks apart the checks and balances of other institutions. Many in the region swiftly apply the “coup” label and demand a response any time a president is removed, but the undermining of legislative or judicial branches is treated as a long term and slow problem. Too many of the most important regional institutions including the OAS General Assembly are a club of executives, with other institutions given a backburner role.
There are exceptions and a counterargument to the above worth considering. Peru and Guatemala are top of mind for places where other branches of government are trying to overwhelm an executive branch in an undemocratic manner. Additionally, there is a case to be made that maybe this hyper-presidentialism analysis is simply wrong in many cases. The mid-term elections in Argentina changed the policy direction of the country; Milei couldn’t pass his agenda before and now he can. I heard analysts make cases over the past week that the upcoming legislative elections in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil may be more important than the presidency because they will drive the agenda and limit any efforts by the president, no matter who is elected. Hyper-presidentialism is a sometimes problem, but we don’t talk about it much when the opposite is occurring. And on the cartel side, we know that taking out top leaders doesn’t stop violence.
It’s easier for journalists, analysts, and citizens to focus on the person at the top, particularly when that person makes an effort to dominate the news. Call it the “kingpin strategy” of analysis. Unfortunately, even if the lower level institutions and systems matter, the focus creates a self-reinforcing cycle that may boost executives. And it is influencing how the US treats foreign policy right now, which remains a dominant narrative for understanding the political debates across the hemisphere
Having run in circles, I’ll stop there without pretending to have a tidy conclusion. More to come as this idea develops.
