The Duck of Minerva

Another Nail in the Battered Coffin of Irony

by Dan Nexon

2 August 2012, 1945 EDT

This must be satire. It isn’t? No, it has to be.  I mean… seriously?

In a post on his Twitter account, Calderón offered his condolences to the victims but then added that the incident showed that “the American Congress must review its mistaken legislation on guns. It’s doing damage to us all.” 

It was hardly a new theme from Mexico’s lame-duck president. But his latest statement requires an extraordinary amount of gall. During Calderón’s presidency, more than fifty thousand of his people have died in the war on drugs that he chose to escalate. A foreign leader with that awful of a track record daring to lecture the United States on its policies regarding firearms is not likely to sit well with most Americans.

Yes, the blame for the Mexican war on drugs falls squarely on Calderón’s shoulders, and his shoulders alone. 
But there can be no doubt that this sort of thing does not sit well with Americans. As the saying goes, with great power comes the right to lecture, and not be lectured to. 

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

3 Comments

  1. Colin Wight
    Colin Wight on 2 August 2012 at 22.11 EDT

    Not sure where quote ends, but my understanding is that the decision to take the war to the cartels doesn’t actually rest on his shoulders alone, but that Washington was also in on the decision if you know what I mean. The US has never been shy of telling political leaders in South America, and other states around the world, that its domestic problems with drug consumption are actually their problem. Apparently the lesson of prohibition was never properly learned.

    • LFC
      LFC on 2 August 2012 at 22.41 EDT

       I think if you give the post another read, you’ll see that the sentence containing “his shoulders alone” is (and is intended to be) sarcastic: the argument of the linked post at The National Interest is being disputed, not affirmed.  

    • dnexon
      dnexon on 3 August 2012 at 01.34 EDT

      What LFC said. I was being sarcastic. The links contradict the claim in the quotation.