In the Introduction we met two very different broad ideas about secur ity failure. The first is the dominant idea, the idea of the failed state agenda. It presides in the world of pol icy briefs, stra tegic papers, coun try warning reports and intelligence assessments-and it augurs ill. The threats faced by weak states are awesome-global criminal networks, insurgencies, terrorists. These are trans-national enemies operating from the outside, and they aim to come in, take control of and overthrow the state. They thus pose a threat to inter na tional order. Not only is securitization a justified response to them by the state and its inter na tional allies; it is the only possible response. The threatened state must put itself on max imum secur ity alert. This means that it must undertake militarization-the milit ary’s openly active involvement in pub lic order pol icies, as well as in the wars on drugs and terror. The assistance the state receives from its key inter na tional allies will be predominantly in the form of trans fers bolstering milit ary capacities and responses. Both the state’s own efforts and this assistance will save it from failing. We argue against this idea and aim to rein in talk of state failure. Our starting point is an observation: while it calls itself “state failure,” the agenda has nothing to say about states: every thing hinges on the exogenous threats to them. From our per spect ive, things are exactly the other way round. The Mexican state doesn’t confront a drug insurgency aiming to overthrow it. The Mexican state faces co ali tions of indi viduals-some of them extremely power ful and violent-whose ultimate ambition is to pay taxes to the state, to be able to issue Treasury-registered receipts to their hotels’ customers, to receive a state subsidy for their agricultural businesses.1 This enemy wants the state to function for it, needs its collusion and protection, aspires to shape its elect oral and legis lat ive pro cesses. This

enemy is also nestling within the state’s eco nomic, polit ical and social orders. Our focus, then, is upon the state’s institutions and capacities-and this is what we denote by secur ity failure, a failure of the state to provide in ternal and external secur ity. This is such a ser ious failure that we find it tragic that the securitizing agenda should completely misrepresent the true challenge, and waste enorm ous resources on the wrong “war.” As for militarization, it increases viol ence and further under mines the state-pushing it towards “failure.” Those are the battle-lines. In this chapter we expand on our core claim that to take ser iously the threat of or gan ized crime to Mexico the dia gnosis ought to begin with the state. So, where the failed state agenda only sees an inert victim-state, secur ity failure focuses on the agency of the state-its struggle and change in inter action with the threat. The survival of the Mexican state is not in question, but its evolutionary path has very much become a question now. Once again, that is, pressing secur ity prob lems have emerged not from a vacuum, but in a polit ical frame. We have two threads through this chapter. We first resume the nar rative thread from 2008. Then we test its consonances with the precedent of Colombia. We also return to the polit ical-theor et ical dialogue about state failure that, in the Introduction, we saw to be unfinished, in order to get some para digmatic sense of how the Mexican state’s evolution could change it. In conclusion we posit that, while author it arian shoots can be detected at an early stage of germination, the challenge of Mexico’s secur ity failure can be cast more bracingly. A challenge to the coun try’s young demo cracy, it ought to be realized that it can only be resolved by more democracy. To begin with, though, we unpack just why author it arian evolution concerns us more than the failed state agenda for Mexico, as expressed by President Calderón:

The duty is to fight crime, par ticu larly or gan ized crime, other wise they will take control of the im port ant parts of the gov ern ment or im port ant parts of the coun try. So we’ll act on time to fix the problem. The al tern ative doesn’t exist.2