THA 1AC

Contention 1: Inherency
THA agreement stalled in the US and poses the biggest threat to US-Mexico relations. Pemex drilling in the gulf key to Mexicos economy but they need the USs expertise
-US hasnt been able to pass THA -Best way to put energy into the agenda cooperation -Oil is k2 Mexican Economy1/3 of the budget production -Tech and finance k2 revive PEMEX -Reverse causal: Failure to pass=Setback US: Mexico Relations

Rampton, 13 (Roberta Rampton, Associated Press Staff Writer for Reuters. April 29, 2013.
U.S.-Mexico deal on expanded Gulf oil drilling still in limbo, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/usa-mexico-oil-idUSL2N0DG0CV20130429)//SDL (Reuters) - More than a year after the United States and Mexico signed a much-lauded deal that would remove obstacles to expanding deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the agreement still has not been finalized by the United States. The delay, for which people close to the
administration blame Congress while Republicans in Congress blame the administration, is certain to be discussed when President Barack Obama visits Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City on Thursday. Mexico

immediately ratified the pact in April 2012, but the United States has so far been unable to pass a simply worded, onepage law to put the agreement into force. The deal, formally known as the Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement, provides legal guidelines for deepwater drilling in the 1.5 million acres (600,000 hectares) of the Gulf that straddle the U.S.-Mexico boundary. It is seen as the key to opening a new era of cooperation on oil production between the two countries. Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex needs technology and investment to boost its stagnant production, and U.S. companies are eager to help. "The U.S. has a real opportunity now to put energy back on the agenda with Mexico in a way that it really hasn't been able to be on the agenda for the last several years," said Neil Brown,
who worked on the issue during the last Congress as lead Republican international energy aide in the Senate. But the final step of implementing the deal has languished. "I'm not aware of strong opposition to it. I think it's been a little more inertia," said Jason Bordoff, a top energy official at the White House until January who now runs Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. In the past several weeks, there have been some signs that the implementing legislation may move forward, but there also could be new complications related to disclosure requirements. DEAL COULD OPEN THE DOOR Oil

is critical for the Mexican economy, paying for a third of the government's budget. But production peaked in 2004 at 3.4 million barrels per day and has slipped below 2.6 million bpd. PEMEX says it can revive production with deepwater wells in the Gulf, but needs technical and financial help. The cross-border agreement would be the first step toward joint projects for reservoirs that cross the boundary, providing a way for PEMEX and other oil companies to share production and creating a framework to solve disputes that could arise. "Without the agreement, it creates a barrier to investment," said Erik Melito, a director at the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's lobby group. The agreement could help calm Mexico's fears about what is termed the "popote" or drinking-straw effect - fears that U.S. oil companies are going to drain reservoirs that extend into Mexico's side of the border, robbing Mexico of its share, said David Goldwyn, a former State Department official who helped launch
negotiations. "This has been an urban myth in Mexico for decades," said Goldwyn, now president of Goldwyn Global Strategies, a consulting firm. Pena Nieto is working toward reforms for PEMEX that would allow for more production and cooperation in projects generally - a delicate issue in a country where PEMEX and oil are symbols of national pride. "If they can see some success here (with the transboundary deal), that's going to change the political conversation in Mexico," Goldwyn said.

Failing to implement the deal, though, would be a major setback for U.S.-Mexico energy relations , former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar warned in December, in one of his final reports as the top Republican on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he left Congress.

Advantage 1: Mexico
Drilling in the Western Gap is inevitable cooperation is key to effectiveness
-US out competes Mexico in resource development - Exploiting is happening now -Co-op= Urdaneta 10 associate at Grau Garcia Hernandez & Monaco (Law Firm) (Karla, TRANSBOUNDARY PETROLEUM RESERVOIRS: A RECOMMENDED APPROACH FOR THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO IN THE DEEPWATERS OF THE GULF OF MEXICO, Houston Journal of International Law, Volume 32, Number 2, Spring 2010)
In view of this, Mexico

is primarily concerned with reservoirs located outside the Western Gap, and more specifically, those located in the Perdido fold belt. Nonetheless, it is only a matter of time until the Western Gap is made available for exploitation and production by both countries, which will create the same issues for the Western Gap faced by other areas of the GOM. The principal challenges that Pemex faces with regard to deep-water production
include: (i) human resources; (ii) exploration; (iii) exploitation; (iv) technology; and (v) financing. (85) These challenges will have to be assumed in the short term because Mexico's oil production is decreasing, and Pemex has estimated that fifty-five percent of the country's 54 billion barrels of equivalent oil from prospective resources (86) is located in deep-waters. (87) Currently, Mexico

cannot compete with the United States with regard to the development of the resources in the GOM, for it has not yet progressed beyond the stage of exploration. In order to strengthen
Pemex's financial and technical capacities and provide it with more flexibility for the performance of its functions, Mexico began reforming its energy legislation. (88) This process ended in November 2008. However, the last legislative reform does not endow Pemex with the capital and technology necessary to undertake the activities of exploration and production of deep-waters in the GOM. (89) The

issue

of transboundary reservoirs has attracted the attention of Mexican lawmakers, politicians, and economists, among others. (90) Most of them advise taking prompt action to protect Mexico's rights to its resources. (91) Moreover, the exploitation of the resources located in the GOM will be a way for Mexico to increase its levels of petroleum production. To summarize, in the GOM (i) there are formations, like the Perdido fold belt, that cross the maritime boundary of Mexico and the United States, and that will enable production as early as 2010, (ii) substantial exploration activity has already been conducted by the United States, (iii) large areas have been leased by the United States for exploitation, while others are currently being exploited, (iv) Mexico has not achieved the levels of resource development that the United States has achieved, and (v) both countries need to take advantage of the production of their hydrocarbons in the short term. (92) In light of these circumstances, with the aim of protecting the rights of both countries and optimizing the use of resources, it would be appropriate for Mexico and the United States to cooperate in the development of their transboundary reservoirs. This cooperation will maximize economic benefits, avoid physical waste, increase energy security, and avoid international disputes likely to arise if the United States initiates production of the transboundary reservoirs. Cooperation has led to beneficial results among other countries that have faced similar dilemmas.

PEMEX is failing Melgar 2k12 [Senior reporter for Americas Dailyhttp://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781) ]

Exploration and Production: The Keys to Deeper Reform The

2008 Energy Reform initiated the makeover of the Mexican exploration and production (E&P) industry. Crucial institutional arrangements were defined, such as the governance of PEMEX, the establishment of a regulator for E&P, the terms for procurement, and the structure of contracts. Some of the innovations have since raised questions about their usefulness. But they opened a path toward an institutional architecture that resembles more closely the organization of the oil industry worldwide. Mexico continues to have one of the mostif not the mostclosed arrangements in the petroleum industry. The lack of outside investment and input in PEMEX Exploration and Production (PEP), the crown jewel subsidiary of PEMEX, has hindered innovation and technological advancement. The limits of existing arrangements become increasingly evident as traditional areas of production decline and new opportunities, such as in the deep and ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, are pursued under tougher conditions. Preserving the status quoand maintaining legal coherencehas been made more costly by the refusal to amend the Constitution to allow some degree of private participation in the energy sectoras has been done in
Brazil, Norway and even Cuba. Mexicos oil industry is accepting inefficiency while paying a high price to pretend that it can do it all on its own. In fact, world-class service companies such as Halliburton, Schlumberger, Noble, and Baker-Hughes work closely with pemex engineers to keep the oil flowing. According to Petroleum Intelligence Weekly,

PEMEX paid over $16 billion for oil field services in 2007. PEP is repeatedly the number-one client of Schlumberger. A central element of the 2008 Energy Reform was the definition of a new incentive-based contractual framework. The model was developed to attract leading oil companies to the Mexican market while keeping the constitutional mandate intact. It relies on a fee-per-barrel rate determined in a bidding process, where ownership of hydrocarbons belongs to the Mexican state. Production, profits and risk are not shared, and there is no reserve booking for the companies. Thus far, the new contract model has not attracted any major oil companies. It has been applied to low-risk projects where a high recovery rate is ensured. Instead of having a Petrobras or a Chevron working jointly with PEMEX in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, bidding has gone to mature fields, with services companies such as the United Kingdoms Petrofac Facilities Management winning the auction.

Expanding drilling in the Western Gap is key to boost Pemex production Iliff 12 (Laurence, Pemex Makes Its First Big Oil Find in Deep Gulf, The Wall Street Journal, 829-2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577619712736497598.html) Mexican state-owned oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has made its first big crude-oil discovery in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, near the Mexico-U.S. maritime boundary, President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday. Mr. Calderon said the initial estimate of a deposit in the Perdido area on Mexico's side of the Gulf was between 250 million and 400 million barrels of light crude, using the industry's broadest measurement of "proven, probable and possible," or 3P, reserves. The exploratory well was drilled in 2,500 meters (8,250 feet) of water. "We estimate that this deposit could belong to one of the most important regions of the deep-water Gulf," he said. The larger "petroleum system" of additional fields, Mr. Calderon added, "could have from four billion to 10 billion barrels of crude, which bolsters our reserves and will allow Mexico to maintain and increase petroleum production in the medium- and long-term." The new well, dubbed "Trion I," was drilled 39 kilometers (24 miles) south of the U.S.-Mexico maritime border, and 180 kilometers east of
Gulf state of Tamaulipas, which also borders the U.S. On the U.S. side of the Gulf, Royal Dutch Shell RDSB.LN -0.11% PLC operates its Perdido oil-and-gas platform in the region. The platform has a peak production capacity of 100,000 barrels per day, according to Shell's website. Prior to Pemex's discovery of crude oil at Trion, the oil monopoly had found only natural gas during the recent increase of its deep-water exploratory efforts. Carlos Morales, head of Pemex's exploration-andproduction division, said in a radio interview that Trion I could be among the top 10 crude-oil discoveries on either side of the Gulf. He said typically a deposit of its type would take seven years to get to the production phase, but that Pemex is going to try to do that in five years. Mr. Morales said Pemex began committing more resources to Gulf oil exploration in 2007 with the construction of special drilling platforms and said he foresees a Tamaulipas oil port to service Pemex's future operations in the Gulf. Mr. Morales said

pushing aggressively into deep waters could raise Pemex's

crude-oil production to four million barrels a day from the current 2.55 million barrels a day. The deep waters of the Gulf are seen by analysts as one of Pemex's best bets to have another surge of oil production after eight years of steady declines. Pemex has traditionally
drilled in the shallow waters of the southern Gulf, where the discovery of the supergiant Cantarell complex in the late 1970s launched Mexico as an oil power. Cantarell's output peaked at more than two million barrels of oil per day in 2004 and is now around 400,000 barrels a day. Mr. Calderon, who held up a sample of crude oil taken from the well, said half of Pemex's petroleum reserves could be in the deep waters of the Gulf. Pemex reported proven hydrocarbon reserves of

barrels of oil equivalent as of Jan. 1. Its 3P reserves were 43.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Under current law, Mexico doesn't allow foreign companies to drill in its territory except under contract to Pemex, with strict rules that ban the sharing of risk or of oil. Oil majors have expressed
13.8 billion interest in drilling with Pemex on the Mexican side of the Gulf, but only under shared-risk contracts.

Melgar 12 director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School
of the Tecnolgico de Monterrey. (Lourdes, The Future of PEMEX, Americas Quarterly, 2012, http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)
The challenge for PEMEX is to increase reserves and oil and gas production in areas that are not part of its traditional zone of expertise.

PEMEX has been outstanding at E&P in shallow waters. But its experience is mostly limited to 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) deepfar above the 8,200 to 11,500 feet (2,500 to 3,500 meters) needed in the most interesting area of the Gulf of Mexico. Going to deep and ultra-deep waters or to complex, fractured onshore fields such as Chicontepec requires new skills . Mexico is in the process of developing regulatory and safety measures to do so. But it is not a matter of buying technology in the market, as some politicians have asserted. Particularly in the case of deepwater production, international best practices show that because of the associated complexity and high risk, no company can operate alone. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010,
when a BP-operated drilling rig exploded on the U.S. side of the Gulf of Mexico and caused a 4.9 million barrel leak, reinforces the concerns over risks. Ideally, PEMEX

would enter in a joint venture with companies at the cutting edge of deepwater production, such as Chevron, Shell, Petrobras, or BP. Yet this is prohibited by the Mexican Constitution, and the new contracts are unlikely to attract those companies. In the past decade, over 4 billion barrels were extracted on the U.S. side of the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The area offers one of the richest potentials for oil and gas production. That is why the U.S., Mexico and Cuba are eager to exploit those resources, most of which lie in the deep and ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico where E&P presents great challenges and high
risks. But the sophisticated technical and managerial requirements of deepwater E&P are a great challenge for Mexico. Still, in a controversial move, PEMEX has rented three rigs to initiate deepwater drilling in the Perdido Fold Belt area in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH) recently approved regulations that are consistent with those in the U.S., but the newly established agency does not yet have the personnel required for the oversight; nor does it have the legal authority to force PEMEX to wait.

The plan solvesthe Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement would cause PEMEX reforms by giving Mexico an overwhelming economic incentive Melgar, 12 (Lourdes Melgar, director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE
Business School of the Tecnolgico de Monterrey. The Future of PEMEX, Americas Quarterly, 2012, http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781)//SDL Deepwater drilling is likely to take center stage with the signing of the U.S.Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement in February 2012. The agreement, ratified by the Mexican Senate but still awaiting approval in the U.S., relieves concerns about the so-called straw effect, in which Mexican oil is sipped away by the U.S. as its production advances closer to the international maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico. The agreement provides a legal framework for development of oil and gas reservoirs that cross the maritime border in the Gulf of Mexicothe first such pact for both countries.
In fact, it is viewed as a dress rehearsal for negotiations the U.S. will have to undertake with Canada, Russia and even Cuba to address shared reservoir exploitation. Implementation will require legal and institutional adjustments in Mexico and in the United States. Since

it requires joint or coordinated production, the agreement possibly opens a new era of cooperation between PEMEX and international oil companies. If a transboundary field were identified, PEMEX would have to work with field operators on the U.S. side. This makes
technological aptitude particularly relevant, since shared reservoirs are more likely to exist in the deep and ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. For

sovereignty, energy security and political reasons, Mexico will go the extra mile to ensure that its hydrocarbon resources are not lost to its neighbor. This gives it a high incentive to develop the institutional architectureincluding strengthening the CNHneeded to implement the agreement. Identifying and developing a joint reservoir would allow PEMEX to work in full partnership with companies at the cutting edge of ultra-deepwater production.
The experience, benefits and know-how that would be gained may reduce the reluctance to undertake joint production and other strategic alliances that are banned by PEMEX bylaws. Implementation of the treaty could trigger an accelerated transformation of the regime under which deepwater resources are exploited in Mexico. Exciting times are in sight. The incoming administration will be compelled to conduct a debate on the future of PEMEX, and the issue of constitutional reform will have to be a full part of it. The

Mexican oil industry can no longer thrive on amendments to distorted

schemes.

PEMEX is critical to the Mexican economy ---- THA reforms key to solve Samples and Vittor, 12 (Tim R. Samples and Jose Luis Vittor, associate and partners at
Hogan Lovells US LLP. Energy Reform and the Future of Mexicos Oil Industry: The Pemex Bidding Rounds and Integrated Service Contracts, Texas Journal of Oil, Gas, and Energy Law, 621-2012, http://tjogel.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Samples-Formatted_Final_June13.pdf) In recent years, Latin America has seen an uptick in interest as a destination for companies seeking new opportunities in the exploration and production of oil and gas.1 From the discovery of
massive pre-salt oil fields off the coast of Brazil to unconventional plays in Argentina and Colombia, the region is generating renewed interest for the international energy industry. Four countries in particularBrazil,

Colombia, Mexico, and Peruare moving forward with bidding rounds for significant exploration and production contracts with hopes of attracting technology, expertise, and capital from the private sector. The case of Petrleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and Mexico is especially compelling. As a state-controlled monopoly, Pemex is the sole producer of crude oil, natural gas, and refined products in Mexico.2 Pemex, the most important company in Mexico, is simultaneously referred to as the cash cow and a sacred cow of Mexico.3 As Mexicos cash cow, Pemex provides over a third of the federal governments revenues.4 As Mexicos sacred cow, Pemex has immense and symbolic national importance, which is deeply rooted in Mexicos sense of sovereignty and independence.5 Increasingly, these two roles are in tension as Pemex struggles to remain a cash cow while

subject to the legal and political constraints of a sacred national treasure.6 For most of the 20th
century, Mexico figured among the worlds largest oil producers and has been a major exporter for much of that time.7

Currently, however, Mexico is facing the prospect of becoming a net importer of petroleum within a decade.8 Pemex has recently undergone transformations in response to declining production, but reversing the tide will require a dramatic departure from the norm.9 Politically sensitive reforms to the energy sector and a major shift in the traditional Pemex paradigm are needed.10 Together, Mexico and Pemex are entering unfamiliar territory.11 While a restrictive legal framework has barred competition within Mexicos borders, Pemex is subject to rigid constraints under Mexican law with respect to finance and budgeting, contracting, procurement, and corporate governance.12 The collective weight of these restrictions has limited Pemexs ability to address lagging production.13 In
response, under the administration of President Felipe Caldern, legislation designed to modernize Pemex and allow greater private participation in the Mexican oil industry was passed in November 2008 (the Energy Reforms).14

PEMEX decline will trigger instability throughout Mexico timeframe is 10 years

Kohl, 12 (Keith, 11-27-12. Crisis of Consumption, http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/mexican-oil-crisis/2833)//SDL Of course, we all know the story behind the Cantarell field's downfall. Once production started to decline, Pemex began injecting nitrogen to boost output. But this strategy was short-lived, and production at the field has been dropping sharply since roughly 14% each year for the last six years. Cantarell's decline marked the beginning of the end for Mexican oil production. The country's new finds have also
proven underwhelming. The recent discovery by Pemex in Southern Mexico is a perfect example. According to Pemex, the new field holds up to 500 million barrels of crude oil, a trifle compared to the billions of barrels Cantarell once held. But these days,

Mexico will take whatever it can get... and pray it can hold off the decline. Crisis of Consumption Mexico's declining oil production means there's less oil available for export. Those 2.5 million barrels flowing from Pemex's wells daily are crucial to the country's stability. When almost 40% of your government budget is paid from oil revenue, exporting less oil is not an option but that's exactly what's happening (click charts to enlarge): mexico exports to u.s. During the first eight months of
2012, Mexican oil exports to the United States were slightly above one million barrels per day. Last May oil exports fell below one million barrels per day for the first time in 27 years. Barring

some miracle taking place in Mexico's oil industry, I believe the country will be a net oil importer within ten years.

Mexican stability is critical to U.S. power Kaplan, 12 (Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor. With the Focus on Syria,
Mexico Burns, Stratfor, 3-28-2012, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/focus-syria-mexicoburns)//SDL
While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria -- half a world away from the United States -- more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States' southern border, Mexico

will affect America's destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East. Indeed, Mexico may constitute the world's seventh-largest economy in the near future. Certainly, while the Mexican
violence is largely criminal, Syria is a more clear-cut moral issue, enhanced by its own strategic consequences. A calcified authoritarian regime in Damascus is stamping out dissent with guns and artillery barrages. Moreover, regime change in Syria, which the rebels demand, could deliver a pivotal blow to Iranian influence in the Middle East, an event that would be the best news to U.S. interests in the region in years or even decades. Nevertheless, the Syrian rebels are divided and hold no territory, and the toppling of pro-Iranian dictator Bashar al Assad might conceivably bring to power an austere Sunni regime equally averse to U.S. interests -- if not lead to sectarian chaos. In other words, all military intervention scenarios in Syria are fraught with extreme risk. Precisely for that reason, that the

U.S. foreign policy elite has continued for months to feverishly debate Syria, and in many cases advocate armed intervention, while utterly ignoring the vaster panorama

of violence next door in Mexico, speaks volumes about Washington's own obsessions and interests, which are not always aligned with the country's geopolitical interests. Syria matters and matters momentously to U.S. interests, but Mexico ultimately matters more , so one would think that there would be
at least some degree of parity in the amount written on these subjects. I am not demanding a switch in news coverage from one country to the other, just a bit more balance. Of course, it is easy for pundits to have a fervently interventionist view on Syria precisely because it is so far away, whereas miscalculation

in Mexico on America's part would carry far greater consequences. For example, what if the Mexican drug cartels took revenge on San Diego? Thus, one might even argue that the very noise in the media about Syria, coupled with the relative silence about Mexico, is proof that it is the latter issue that actually is too sensitive for loose talk. It may also be that cartel-wracked Mexico -- at some rude subconscious level -- connotes for East Coast elites a south
of the border, 7-Eleven store culture, reminiscent of the crime movie "Traffic," that holds no allure to people focused on ancient civilizations across the ocean. The concerns of Europe and the Middle East certainly seem closer to New York and Washington than does the southwestern United States. Indeed, Latin American bureaus and studies departments simply lack the cachet of Middle East and Asian ones in government and universities. Yet, the

fate of Mexico is the hinge on which the United States' cultural and demographic future rests. U.S. foreign policy emanates from the domestic condition of its society, and nothing will affect its society more than the dramatic movement of Latin history northward. By 2050, as much as a third of the American population could be Hispanic. Mexico and Central America constitute a growing demographic and economic powerhouse with which the United States has an inextricable relationship. In recent years Mexico's economic growth has outpaced that of its northern neighbor. Mexico's population of 111
million plus Central America's of more than 40 million equates to half the population of the United States. Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, 85 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States, even as half of Central America's trade is with the United States. While the median age of Americans is nearly 37, demonstrating the aging tendency of the U.S. population, the median age in Mexico is 25, and in Central America it is much lower (20 in Guatemala and Honduras, for example). In part because of young workers moving northward, the destiny of the United States could be north-south, rather than the east-west, seato-shining-sea of continental and patriotic myth. (This will be amplified by the scheduled 2014 widening of the Panama Canal, which will open the Greater Caribbean Basin to megaships from East Asia, leading to the further development of Gulf of Mexico port cities in the United States, from Texas to Florida.) Since 1940, Mexico's population has increased more than five-fold. Between 1970 and 1995 it nearly doubled. Between 1985 and 2000 it rose by more than a third. Mexico's population is now more than a third that of the United States and growing at a faster rate. And it is northern

Mexico that is crucial. That most of the drugrelated homicides in this current wave of violence that so much dwarfs Syria's have occurred in only six of Mexico's 32 states, mostly in the north, is a key indicator of how northern Mexico is being distinguished
from the rest of the country (though the violence in the city of Veracruz and the regions of Michoacan and Guerrero is also notable).

If the military-led offensive to crush the drug cartels launched by conservative President Felipe Calderon falters, as it seems to be doing, and Mexico City goes back to cutting deals with the cartels, then the capital may in a functional sense lose even further control of the north, with concrete implications for the southwestern United States. One might argue that with massive border controls, a functional and vibrantly nationalist
United States can coexist with a dysfunctional and somewhat chaotic northern Mexico. But that is mainly true in the short run. Looking deeper into the 21st century, as Arnold Toynbee notes in A Study of History (1946), a

border between a highly developed society and a less highly developed one will not attain an equilibrium but will advance in the more backward society's favor. Thus, helping to stabilize Mexico -- as limited as the United States' options may be, given the complexity and sensitivity of the relationship -- is a more urgent national interest than stabilizing societies in the Greater Middle East. If Mexico ever does reach coherent First World
status, then it will become less of a threat, and the healthy melding of the two societies will quicken to the benefit of both. Today,

helping to thwart drug cartels in rugged and remote terrain in the vicinity of the Mexican frontier and reaching southward from Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas) means a limited role for the U.S. military and other agencies -- working, of course, in full cooperation with the Mexican authorities. (Predator and Global Hawk drones fly deep over Mexico searching for drug production facilities.) But the legal
framework for cooperation with Mexico remains problematic in some cases because of strict interpretation of 19th century posse comitatus laws on the U.S. side. While the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to affect historical outcomes in Eurasia, its leaders and foreign policy mandarins are somewhat passive about what is happening to a country with which the United States shares a long land border, that verges on partial chaos in some of its northern sections, and whose population is close to double that of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Mexico , in addition to the obvious challenge of China as a rising great power,

will help write the American story in the 21st century. Mexico will partly determine what kind of society America will become, and what exactly will be its demographic and geographic character , especially in the Southwest. The U.S. relationship with China will matter more than any
other individual bilateral relationship in terms of determining the United States' place in the world, especially in the economically crucial Pacific.

If policymakers

in Washington

calculate U.S. interests properly regarding

those two

critical countries, then the United States will have power to spare so that its elites can continue to focus on serious moral questions in places that matter less.

Heg solves nuclear war Brooks et al 13

[Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University.William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment, Winter 2013, Vol. 37, No. 3, Pages 7-51, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107]
A core premise of deep

engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security

environment . For one thing, as noted above, the United States overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action . Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the American Pacifier is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture
most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasias security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses

is nonetheless a

weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasias major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point tosuch as democratic governance or dense institutional linkagesare either absent or weakly present . There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal.
Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a

Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabiamight take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the regions prospects without the

American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China . It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realisms sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realisms optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particularand highly restrictiveassumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from
and violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning

research across the social and other sciences , however, undermines

that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case.
77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices.

U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environmen t in at least some of the worlds key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis
To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage,

instability, nuclear proliferation , and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain
(and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly

including regional

great power war ). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and
security dilemmas in the worlds core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing

decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition , one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional pr oxy wars and arming of client statesall of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South
on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why

Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79
Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by

analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferationincluding the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of unforeseen crisis dynamics that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United

States, which has attained regional hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is : stay over the horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century.

offshore balancing

problem is that Chinas rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, The United States will have to play a key role in
The

countering China , because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves. 81 Therefore, unless Chinas rise the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive
stalls,

military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia just
what the United States is doing. 83 In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security

switching between offshore and onshore balancing could well be difficult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security competition in the worlds key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the United States formidable military
consequences as well as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover,

machine may deter entry by potential rivals.

Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows,

and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the focused enmity of the United States. 84 All of the worlds most modern militaries are U.S. allies (Americas alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85

Nations arent nice Kagan, 12 (Robert Kagan, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, Why the
World Needs America, February 11th, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html)//SDL With the outbreak of World War I, the age of settled peace and advancing liberalismof European civilization approaching its pinnaclecollapsed into an age of hyper-nationalism, despotism and economic calamity. The once-promising spread of democracy and liberalism halted and then reversed course, leaving a handful of outnumbered and besieged democracies living nervously in the shadow of fascist and totalitarian neighbors. T he collapse of the British and European orders in the 20th century did not produce a new dark agethough if Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had prevailed, it might havebut the horrific conflict that it produced was, in its own way, just as devastating. If the U.S. is unable to maintain its hegemony on the high seas, would other nations fill in the gaps?. Would the end of the present American-dominated
order have less dire consequences? A surprising number of American intellectuals, politicians and policy makers greet the prospect with equanimity. There is a general sense that the end of the era of American pre-eminence, if and when it comes, need not mean the end of the present international order, with its widespread freedom, unprecedented global prosperity (even amid the current economic crisis) and absence of war among the great powers. American power may diminish, the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argues, but "the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive." The commentator Fareed Zakaria believes that even as the balance shifts against the U.S., rising powers like China "will continue to live within the framework of the current international system." And there are elements across the political spectrumRepublicans who call for retrenchment, Democrats who put their faith in international law and institutionswho don't imagine that a "post-American world" would look very different from the American world. If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The

present world order was largely shaped by American power and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in the direction of other nations, the world order will change to suit their interests and preferences. Nor can we assume that all the great powers in a postAmerican world would agree on the benefits of preserving the present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to. Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of

power in the world has favored democratic governments. In

a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the great-power autocracies. Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a
new, multipolar world might be more favorable to democracy if some of the rising democraciesBrazil, India, Turkey, South Africa picked up the slack from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it. What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and other rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it. They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. A Romney Adviser Read by Democrats Robert Kagan's new book, "The World America Made," is finding an eager readership in the nation's capital, among prominent members of both political parties. Around the time of President Barack Obama's Jan. 24 State of the Union Address, Washington was abuzz with reports that the president had discussed a portion of the book with a group of news anchors. Mr. Kagan serves on the Foreign Policy Advisory Board of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but more notably, in this election season, he is a foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. The president's speech touched upon the debate over whether America is in decline, a central theme of Mr. Kagan's book. "America is back," he declared, referring to a range of recent U.S. actions on the world stage. "Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone

who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about," he continued. "America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairsand as long as I'm president, I intend to keep it that way." Says Mr. Kagan: "No president wants to preside over American decline, and it's good to see him repudiate the idea that his policy is built on the idea that American influence must fade." Unfortunately, they might not be able to help themselves. The creation and survival of a liberal economic order has depended, historically, on great powers that are both willing and able to support open trade and free markets, often with naval power. If a declining America is unable to maintain its long-standing hegemony on the high seas, would other nations take on the burdens and the expense of sustaining navies to fill in the gaps? Even if they did, would this produce an open global commonsor rising tension? China and India are building bigger navies, but the result so far has been greater competition, not greater security . As Mohan Malik has noted in this newspaper, their "maritime rivalry could spill into the open in a decade or two," when India deploys an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and China deploys one in the Indian Ocean. The move from Americandominated oceans to collective policing by several great powers could be a recipe for competition and conflict rather than for a liberal economic order. And do the Chinese really value an open economic system? The Chinese economy soon may become the largest in the world, but it will be far from the richest. Its size is a product of the country's enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany and Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the same level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per capita GDP by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are today. [ Multipolar systems have historically been neither particularly stable nor particularly peaceful. Nearly a
halfmillion combatants died in the Crimean War (depicted in "The Taking of Malakoff" by Horace Vernet, pictured here.) As Arvind Subramanian and other economists have pointed out, this

will make for a historically unique situation. In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been the richest. Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in a relatively unfettered economic system have less temptation to pursue protectionist measures and have more of an incentive to keep the system open. China's leaders, presiding over a poorer and still developing country, may prove less willing to open their economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely to close others in the future. Even optimists like Mr. Subramanian believe that the liberal economic order will require "some insurance" against a scenario in which "China exercises its dominance by either reversing its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected." American economic dominance has been welcomed by much of
the world because, like the mobster Hyman Roth in "The Godfather," the U.S. has always made money for its partners. Chinese economic dominance may get a different reception. Another problem is that China's form of capitalism is heavily dominated by the state, with the ultimate goal of preserving the rule of the Communist Party. Unlike the eras of British and American pre-eminence, when the leading economic powers were dominated largely by private individuals or companies, China's system is more like the

mercantilist arrangements of previous centuries. The government amasses wealth in order to secure its continued rule and to pay for armies and navies to compete with other great powers. Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could end up undermining it simply because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of wealth and the power that it brings. They might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they can't figure out how to keep both it and themselves alive. Finally, what

about the long peace that has held among the great powers for the better part of six decades? Would it survive in a post-American world? Most
commentators who welcome this scenario imagine that American predominance would be replaced by some kind of multipolar harmony. But multipolar

systems have historically been neither particularly stable nor particularly peaceful. Rough parity among powerful nations is a source of uncertainty that leads to miscalculation. Conflicts erupt as a result of fluctuations in the delicate power equation. War among the great powers was a common, if not constant, occurrence in the long periods of multipolarity from the 16th to the 18th
centuries, culminating in the series of enormously destructive Europe-wide wars that followed the French Revolution and ended with Napoleon's defeat in 1815. The 19th century was notable for two stretches of great-power peace of roughly four decades each, punctuated by major conflicts. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a mini-world war involving well over a million Russian, French, British and Turkish troops, as well as forces from nine other nations; it produced almost a half-million dead combatants and many more wounded. In the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the two nations together fielded close to two million troops, of whom nearly a half-million were killed or wounded. The peace that followed these conflicts was characterized by increasing tension and competition, numerous war scares and massive increases in armaments on both land and sea. Its climax was World War I, the most destructive and deadly conflict that mankind had known up to that point. As the political scientist Robert W. Tucker has observed, "Such stability and moderation as the balance brought rested ultimately on the threat or use of force. War remained the essential means for maintaining the balance of power." There

is little reason to believe that a return to multipolarity in the 21st century would bring greater peace and stability than it has in the past. The era of American predominance has shown that there is no better recipe for greatpower peace than certainty about who holds the upper hand. President Bill Clinton left office believing
that the key task for America was to "create the world we would like to live in when we are no longer the world's only superpower," to prepare for "a time when we would have to share the stage." It is an eminently sensible-sounding proposal. But can it be done? For particularly in matters of security, the

rules and institutions of international order rarely survive the decline of the nations that erected them. They are like scaffolding around a building: They don't hold the building up; the building holds them up. Many foreign-policy experts see the present
international order as the inevitable result of human progress, a combination of advancing science and technology, an increasingly global economy, strengthening international institutions, evolving "norms" of international behavior and the gradual but inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over other forms of governmentforces of change that transcend the actions of men and nations.

Americans certainly like to believe that our preferred order survives because it is right and justnot only for us but for everyone. We assume that the triumph of democracy is the triumph of a better idea, and the victory of market capitalism is the victory of a better system, and that both are irreversible. That is why Francis Fukuyama's thesis about "the end of history" was so attractive at the end of the Cold War and retains its appeal even now, after it has been discredited by events. The idea of inevitable evolution means that there is no requirement to impose a decent order. It will merely happen. But international order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over othersin America's case, the domination of free-market and democratic principles, together with an international system that supports them. The present order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it. There was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. No divine providence or
unfolding Hegelian dialectic required the triumph of democracy and capitalism, and there is no guarantee that their success will outlast the powerful nations that have fought for them. Democratic

progress and liberal economics have been

and can be reversed and undone. The ancient democracies of Greece and the republics of Rome and Venice all fell to
more powerful forces or through their own failings. The evolving liberal economic order of Europe collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s.

The better idea doesn't have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to champion it. If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms that American power has supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a guide, they may collapse altogether as we make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover then that the U.S. was essential to keeping the present world order together and that

the alternative to American power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophe which is what the world looked like right before the American order came into being.

PEMEX solvency and reform are critical to battling drug cartels in Mexico
OSullivan 12 professor of international affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (Meghan, served on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007, and was deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, Mexican Oil Reforms Are Vital on Both Sides of the Border, reprinted from CFR at Bloomberg, 7-30-2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/201207-30/mexican-oil-reforms-are-vital-on-both-sides-of-the-border.html) In recent days a coalition of Mexican advocacy groups has been protesting in front of Televisa, the countrys largest TV network, to contest the legitimacy of President-elect Enrique Pena Nietos July 1 victory. These protests are the second in a string of such demonstrations scheduled before Pena Nieto takes office in December. They bode ill for Mexicos near-term political future, pointing to a rocky transition at a time when the challenges facing the country are anything but modest. Americans might assume that tackling the drug trade that has resulted in more than 47,000 deaths since 2006 would top the agenda. But a strong case can be made that energy reforms are at least as urgent, for if Mexico cant stem its sharply deteriorating energy situation, its ability to tackle other systemic problems will be severely compromised. Despite some recent progress in diversifying its economy, Mexico still relies on oil for 30 percent of its fiscal revenue. Yet oil production has plummeted from 3.4 million barrels a day in 2004 to 2.5 million in 2011, with most experts predicting a continuing decline over the next decade.
Absent changes, Mexico could be a net importer of oil by 2020, ceasing exports to the U.S. altogether.

Drug cartels instability will spill over throughout Latin America

Bonner 10 senior principal of the Sentinel HS Group (Robert C., former administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, The New Cocaine Cowboys, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2010, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66472/robert-c-bonner/the-new-cocaine-cowboys) The recent headlines from Mexico are disturbing: U.S. consular official gunned down in broad daylight; Rancher murdered by Mexican drug smuggler; Bomb tossed at U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo. This wave of violence is eerily reminiscent of the carnage that plagued Colombia 20 years ago, and it is getting Washington's attention. Mexico is in the throes of a battle against powerful drug cartels, the outcome of which will determine who controls the country's law enforcement, judicial, and political institutions. It will decide whether the state will destroy the cartels and put an end to the culture of impunity they have created. Mexico could become a first-world country one day, but it will never achieve that status until it breaks the grip these criminal organizations have over all levels of government and strengthens its law enforcement and judicial institutions. It
cannot do one without doing the other. Destroying the drug cartels is not an impossible task. Two decades ago, Colombia was faced with a similar -- and in many ways more daunting -- struggle. In the early 1990s, many Colombians, including police officers, judges, presidential candidates, and journalists, were assassinated by the most powerful and fearsome drug-trafficking organizations the world has ever seen: the Cali and Medelln cartels. Yet within a decade, the Colombian government defeated them, with Washington's help. The United States played a vital role in supporting the Colombian government, and it should do the same for Mexico. The

stakes in Mexico are high. If the cartels win, these criminal enterprises will continue to operate outside the state and the rule of law, undermining Mexico's democracy. The outcome matters for the United States as well -- if the drug cartels succeed, the United States will share a 2,000-mile border with a narcostate controlled by powerful transnational drug cartels that threaten the stability of Central and South America.

LATIN AMERICAN INSTABILITY FIND CARD Independently, plan sets a precedent -- solves resilient US-Mexico energy cooperation
Wood 12 senior associate in the Americas program at CSIS (Duncan, also director of the international relations program at Mexicos Autonomous Institute of Technology, Global Insider: U.S.-Mexico Energy Deal Sets Important Precedent, World Politics Review, 4-24-2012, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/11880/globalinsider-u-s-mexico-energy-deal-sets-important-precedent) WPR: What is the history of energy cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico? Duncan Wood: Since the nationalization of Mexican oil in 1938, the relationship between the two countries in energy matters has been sensitive, to put it mildly. Whereas Mexico has been one of the United States largest crude oil suppliers, and the U.S. in turn is far and away Mexico's largest market for oil, open collaboration between the NAFTA partners beyond exports has been restricted. This is largely due to Mexican sensitivities over sovereignty, the contentious history of U.S. oil firms' involvement in Mexico prior to
nationalization and the constitutionally mandated monopoly in oil production in Mexico granted to the state-owned energy company Pemex. Any public statement by a United States government official or oil executive has traditionally been greeted with charges of foreign interference by Mexican leftists and nationalists. There have, however, been a number of examples of cooperation over the years. In the 1990s, Pemex and Shell went into business together in the United States, sharing the ownership and operation of a refinery in Deer Park, Texas. This boosted Pemex's refining capacity and enabled it to collaborate with a large international oil company (IOC) outside of Mexican territory. Within Mexico, Pemex has long used important contractors such as Halliburton and Schlumberger to help discover and extract oil without surrendering ownership. In gas, Mexico is an important supplier of natural gas to the United States through crossborder pipelines. In the 1990s and 2000s, close cooperation among the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. research labs and the Mexican government led to progress in renewable energy development in Mexico, and there is currently a bilateral working group negotiating the question of crossborder electricity transmission. During the existence of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, Mexico, the United States and Canada discussed energy issues in the North American Energy Working Group, but this initiative fizzled out with the demise of the partnership. WPR: What brought about the recent agreement between the U.S. and Mexico to cooperate on energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico? Wood: The history of this agreement goes back to the 1970s. After negotiations in the United Nations over the International Law of the Sea, the two countries came together to determine ownership of resources found in the border region of the Gulf of Mexico that were beyond their respective 200-mile exclusion zones but entirely surrounded by them (thereby not qualifying as international waters). In the late-1990s the two countries agreed to a 10-year moratorium on exploration and drilling in order to allow the negotiation of a settlement. Mexico's 2008 energy reform legislation called on the Calderon administration to seek a solution to the issue, and when the 10-year deal expired in 2009 the two governments agreed to work toward a binding deal. In

the first year of the talks, the parties engaged in a process of information exchange, discussing standards, emergency-management procedures and existing seismic data. This data exchange, it is vital to recognize, was not aimed at establishing what resources might exist in the region, but rather what geological structures might exist, thereby giving clues to potential oil fields. In 2010, Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon committed to a negotiated transboundary agreement, and both sides agreed on an extension of the 1999 moratorium for four more years. Official negotiations were concluded in December, and the treaty was signed on Feb. 20, 2012. WPR: What is the likely political and economic impact of increased U.S.-Mexico energy cooperation? Wood: The transboundary agreement is an exciting new departure for Pemex and for U.S.-Mexico cooperation. First, it gives Pemex access to much-needed oil reserves in the border region that were previously restricted. These reserves are estimated to be upward of 9 billion barrels. Second, it allows Pemex to work directly in partnership with the private sector, foreign firms and particularly IOCs to extract the oil -- arrangements prohibited to date. Third, the agreement sets a precedent for further transboundary talks with Cuba in the eastern section of the gulf, where Mexico again shares potential reserves. For U.S.-Mexico cooperation, the deal is highly significant, less for the oil involved than for the precedent it sets.
Rather than rivals,

in

this area the United States and Mexico are partners in oil exploration and production . The

lack of political opposition to the deal within Mexico demonstrates that the traditionally inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric of political forces on the Mexican left has diminished in recent years, as a consensus emerges over the pressing need to reform the oil sector.

Thats key to move U.S. companies away from corn ethanol to Mexican biofuels
Wood 10 senior associate in the Americas program at CSIS (Duncan, also director of the international relations program at Mexicos Autonomous Institute of Technology, Environment, Development and Growth: U.S.-Mexico Cooperation in Renewable Energies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, December 2010, http://wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Renewable%20Energy%20report.pdf) To date, however, there has been only minor cooperation between the United States and Mexico at the governmental level. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has worked with SAGARPA on a number of technical issues, and prepared a report on the Mexican biofuels sector in 2009 that pointed to the potential for growth in the market and to the changing regulatory landscape for biofuels in Mexico. This report highlighted the prospect of higher levels of demand for biodiesel thanks to the setting of a national goal to introduce at least 5 percent of biodiesel in the transportation sector by 2012. But the main interest has come from the U.S. private sector, which is looking to invest in biofuels production in Mexico with an eye to exporting the product either back to the United States or to Europe. With small-scale projects popping up across the country, U.S. firms have begun to evaluate the potential for large-scale production of biofuels. Global Clean Energy (GCE), a Los Angelesbased firm that specializes in feedstocks for the production of biofuels, has recently invested in two jatropha farms in Mexico and one in Belize. Jatropha, a hardy shrub that produces a nut with very high oil content that can be processed into biodiesel, is seen by many as a perfect biofuel feedstock for Mexico. Native to the Mesoamerican region, the

plant grows on marginal land, is not edible either for humans or animals, and thus does not generate a foodvs.-fuel controversy, and can be planted on land that is also used for grazing goats or sheep. In addition to being a feedstock for
biofuels, the harvest can be used as a source of biomass for producing energy and the nuts themselves can be detoxified and processed for animal feed after their oil has been expressed. GCE has 5,000 acres under cultivation in Yucatan, and has adopted a sustainable business model that has resulted in jobs, fair wages and community development in the local area.52 This is

one of the dimensions of the biofuels industry that is only infrequently mentioned but that is important to note. It is increasingly common for businesses focusing on biofuels production to develop a model that emphasizes both profitability and sustainable development. Pioneer
Global Renewables, a U.S. firm from San Francisco that has already invested in jatropha plantations in the Dominican Republic, is also looking to expand into Mexico and has a similar model to GCE, focusing on local community development, fair prices for harvests, and minimal negative impact on the environment. Jatropha, however, is only one of a multitude of biofuels that has potential in Mexico. Sugar,

a long depressed industry in the country, could receive a significant boost if large scale ethanol production were contemplated. A161616 e number of sugar mills are currently
lying dormant, and could be retrofitted relatively cheaply to produce ethanol. For example: According to the Mexican Sugarcane Producers Association, only

two mills have the capability of producing ethanol with the technical requirements specified by PEMEX, equating to about 10 million liters per year. If these mills upgraded their facilities and operated at full capacity and efficiency, it is calculated that total production capacity
for ethanol could reach 170 million liters peryear.53 The sugarcane-to-ethanol industry will also have to overcome labor and taxation issues if it is to become commercially viable in Mexico. At present ethanol is subject to a luxury tax of 50 percent, which makes the production of ethanol for fuel uncompetitive at the moment. Another option exists in the incipient algae to ethanol industry, which is receiving considerable attention because of the potential for using algae cultivations as a way to capture carbon dioxide, and can be located in almost any climate. U.S. firms that possess the technology to increase efficiency in this field, such as Phyco2, a California-based firm, are already looking into the possibility of bringing their product to market in Mexico.54 Biofuels

innovations indigenous to Mexico will also be of interest to U.S. firms. Recent research into the potential of succulents and, in particular, agave show enormous promise. The agave plant has very high concentrations of sugar and produces more sugar per acre planted than sugarcane. A
research team working at the Universidad Autonoma de Chapingo has estimated that the variety Agavetequilanaweber can yield up to 2,000 gallons of distilled ethanol per acre per year and from 12,000-18,000 gallons per acre per year if their cellulose is included, whereas: Corn ethanol, for example, has an energy balance ratio of 1.3 and produces approximately 300-400 gallons of

ethanol per acre. Soybean biodiesel, with an energy balance of 2.5, typically can yield 60 gallons of biodiesel per acre while an acre of sugarcane can produce 600-800 gallons of ethanol with an energy balance of 8.0. An acre of poplar trees can yield more than 1,500 gallons of cellulosic ethanol with an energy balance of 12.0, according to a National Geographic study published in October 2007.55 In addition to the impressive potential for producing ethanol, agave is an attractive crop as it can grow in harsh environments, requires relatively little water, can be used to produce a wide variety of products, such as paper, textiles, and rope, and is common across Mexico.

Biofuel production using corn is the largest cause of global food price increases Klapper, 8 (Bradley S. Klapper, Associated Press Staff Writer. September 10, 2008. UN
expert faults US, EU biofuel use in food crisis, http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/biofuel/UNfaultsUSbiofuel091008.htm)//SDL GENEVA (AP) - A United Nations expert said Wednesday that recent studies indicate that U.S. and European Union targets for biofuel production by their grain farmers have been the biggest cause of the world food crisis. Olivier de Schutter, a Belgian professor, also said an international monitor may be needed to supervise the production of energy sources such as ethanol, which may end up being less beneficial to the environment than expected, even as they cause global food prices to rise. Citing various reports, he said said biofuel production targets outlined by the United States and European Union have led to increased speculation on agricultural land and commodities, and diverted cropland and feed away from food production. He said the International Monetary Fund estimated that 70 percent of the rise in corn prices was due to biofuels, with 40 percent for soybeans. The World Bank, de Schutter added, concluded that biofuels from grains
and oilseed in the U.S. and EU were responsible for up to 75 percent of changes in commodity prices. "There is a consensus that

these initiatives have had a significant impact," said de Schutter, who reports to the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights
Council. His message to Washington and Brussels: "They should without further delay revise their policies."

That causes extinction

Trudell 5 (Robert H., Fall, Trudell, J.D. Candidate 2006, Food Security Emergencies And The Power Of Eminent Domain: A Domestic Legal Tool To Treat A Global Problem, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. and Com. 277, Lexis)
2. But, Is It Really an Emergency? In his study on environmental change and security, J.R. McNeill dismisses the scenario where environmental degradation destabilizes an area so much that "security problems and .. . resource scarcity may lead to war.""^' McNeill finds such a proposition to be a weak one, largely because history has shown society is always able to stay ahead of widespread calamity due, in part, to the slow pace of any major environmental change.'"^ This may be so. However, as the events in Rwanda illustrated, the

environment can breakdown quite rapidly almost before one's eyes when food insecurity drives people to overextend their cropland and to use outmoded agricultural practices.'"^ Furthermore, as Andre and Platteau documented in their study of Rwandan society, overpopulation and land scarcity can contribute to a breakdown of society itself.'"" Mr. McNeill's assertion closely resembles those of many critics of Malthus."^^ The general argument is: whatever issue we face (e.g., environmental change or overpopulation), it will be infroduced at such a pace that we can face the problem long before any calamity sets in.'"^ This wait-and-see view relies on many factors, not least of which are a frinctioning society and innovations in agricultural productivity. But, today, with up to 300,000 child soldiers fighting in confiicts or wars, and perpetrating terrorist acts, the very fabric of society is under increasing world-wide pressure.'"^ Genocide, anarchy, dictatorships, and war are endemic
throughout Africa; it is a troubled continent whose problems threaten global security and challenge all of humanity.'"^ 106. Compare McNeill, supra note 101, at 185 ("until

recent centuries major environmental changes happened so infrequently and proceeded so slowly that they normally gave societies ample time to adapt,") with JULIAN L. SIMON, THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE (1981). "Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in ftiture years." Juan Somavia, secretary general of the World Social Summit, said: " We've replaced the threat of the nuclear bomb with the threat of a social bomb."'"^ Food insecurity is part of the fuse

buming to set that bomb off It is an emergency and we must put that fuse out before it is too late.

Gulf Advantage
Deepwater oil accident inevitable in the Gulf of Mexico Shields, 12 (David, independent energy consultant. QandA: Is Mexico Prepared for
Deepwater Drilling in the Gulf?, Inter-American Dialogues Latin American Energy Advisor, 2/20/2012, http://repository.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/20477/Is%20Mexico%20Prepared%20for%2 0Deepwater%20Drilling%20in%20the%20Gulf.pdf?sequence=1)//SDL "They say that if a country does not defend its borders, then others will not respect those borders . That is probably how we should understand Pemex's decision to drill the Maximino-1 well in 3,000 meters of water in the Perdido Fold Belt, right next to the shared maritime boundary with the United States. It is a decision that does not make sense in terms of competitiveness or production goals. It is about defending the final frontier of national sovereignty and sticking the Mexican flag on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to advise U.S. companies that they have no right to drill for oil in the ultradeep waters on the Mexican side. The recently signed deepwater agreement obliges both countries to work
together and share the spoils of the development of transboundary reservoirs, if they actually exist. For now, Pemex, in line with constitutional restrictions, is going alone on the Mexican side. Safety is a major concern as Pemex and its contractors have no experience in such harsh environments. In fact, Pemex

has never produced oil commercially anywhere in deep water. It does not have an insurance policy for worst-case scenarios nor does it have emergency measures in place to deal with a major spill. It does not fully abide by existing Mexican regulation of its deepwater activity, which cannot be enforced. On the U.S. side, prohibition of ultradeepwater drilling, enacted after the Deepwater Horizon spill, has come and gone. The next disaster is just waiting to happen."

Gulfs ecosystems on the brinkplan key to solve another accident Craig, 11 (Robert Kundis Craig, Attorneys Title Professor of Law and Associate Dean for
Environmental Programs at Florida State University. Legal Remedies for Deep Marine Oil Spills and Long-Term Ecological Resilience: A Match Made in Hell, Brigham Young University Law Review, 2011, http://lawreview.byu.edu/articles/1326405133_03craig.fin.pdf)//SDL These results suggest that we should be very concerned for the Gulf ecosystems affected by the Macondo well blowout. First, and as this Article has emphasized throughout, unlike the Exxon Valdez spill, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred at great depth, and the oil behaved unusually compared to oil released on the surface. Second, considerably more toxic dispersants were used in connection with the Gulf oil spill than the Alaska oil spill.164 Third, humans could intervene almost immediately to begin cleaning the rocky substrate in Prince William Sound, but human intervention for many of the important affected Gulf ecosystems, especially the deepwater ones (but even for shallower coral reefs), remains impossible. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Prince William Sound was and remains a far less stressed ecosystem than the Gulf of Mexico. In 2008, for example, NOAA stated that *d]espite the remaining impacts of the [still then] largest oil spill in U.S. history, Prince William Sound remains a relatively pristine, productive and biologically rich ecosystem.165 To be sure, the Sound was not completely unstressed, and *w+hen the Exxon
Valdez spill occurred in March 1989, the Prince William Sound ecosystem was also responding to at least three notable events in its past: an unusually cold winter in 198889; growing populations of reintroduced sea otters; and a 1964 earthquake.166 Nevertheless, the

Gulf of Mexico is besieged by environmental stressors at another order of magnitude (or two), reducing its resilience to disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

As the Deepwater Horizon Commission detailed at length, the Gulf faces an array of longterm threats, from the loss of protective and productive wetlands along the coast to hurricanes to a growing dead zone (hypoxic zone) to sediment starvation to sealevel rise to damaging channeling to continual (if smaller) oil releases from the thousands of drilling operations.167 In the face of this plethora of stressors, even the Commission championed a kind of resilience thinking, recognizing that responding to the oil spill alone was not enough. It equated restoration of the Gulf to restored resilience, arguing that it represents an effort to sustain these diverse, interdependent activities [fisheries, energy, and tourism] and the environment on which they depend for future generations.168 A number of commentators have
catalogued the failure of the legal and regulatory systems governing the Deepwater Horizon platform and the Macondo well operations.169 The Deepwater Horizon Commission similarly noted that the Deepwater Horizons demise signals the conflicted evolutionand severe shortcomings of federal regulation of offshore oil drilling in the United States.170 In its opinion, *t]he

Deepwater Horizon blowout, explosion, and oil spill did not have to happen.171 The Commissions overall conclusion was two-fold. First, *t+he record shows that without effective government oversight, the offshore oil and gas industry will not adequately reduce the risk of accidents, nor prepare effectively to respond in emergencies.172 Second, government oversight, alone, cannot reduce those risks to the full extent possible. Government oversight . . . must be accompanied by the oil and gas industrys internal reinvention: sweeping reforms that accomplish no less than a fundamental transformation of its safety culture.173

The plan solves - the THA leads to safety coordination between the U.S. and Mexico Broder and Krauss, 12 business correspondents at the New York Times
(John M. Broder and Clifford Krauss, U.S. in Accord With Mexico on Drilling, The New York Times, 2-20-2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/americas/mexico-and-us-agreeon-oil-and-gas-development-in-gulf.html?_r=1andref=americas)
WASHINGTON The United States and Mexico reached agreement on Monday on regulating oil and gas development along their maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico, ending years of negotiations and potentially opening more than a million acres to deepwater drilling. The

agreement, if ratified by Mexican and American lawmakers, would for the first time provide for joint inspection of the two countries rigs in the gulf. Until now, neither was authorized to oversee the environmental and safety practices of the other, even though oil spills do not respect international borders. Each of the nations will maintain sovereignty and their own regulatory systems, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, said from Los Cabos, Mexico, where the agreement was completed. But what this signifies, and what may be the most significant part of the agreement, is that were moving forward jointly with Mexico to ensure we have a common set of safety protocols. As the Mexicans move into deepwater development, Mr. Salazar said, we want to make sure its done in a way that protects the environment and is as safe as possible. The Transboundary Agreement, as it is called, will make up to 1.5 million
acres of offshore territory claimed by the United States available for leasing as early as June, though the leases will not become active until a pact is ratified. The Interior Department estimates that the area contains as much as 172 million barrels of oil and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas, relatively modest amounts by the oil-rich gulfs standards. Mexicos

oil production has been a major source for the United States for more than 25 years, and it is the single most important revenue-raiser for the Mexican government. But its output has been in sharp decline in the last
decade, as energy demand by its growing middle class has risen, forcing a decline in exports and raising the possibility that Mexico could become a net oil importer by the end of the decade. Photo Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, left, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa of Mexico after signing the Transboundary Agreement on Monday. Fernando Castillo/Agence France-Presse Getty Images In response, Mexicos

national oil company, Petrleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex, has started a deepwater drilling program in recent years despite concerns that it is not sufficiently experienced for the task. Under the Mexican Constitution, Pemex cannot bring in a foreign partner like Royal Dutch Shell or Exxon Mobil

to develop the gulf reserves, even though those companies have much more expertise in drilling in challenging waters. Pemex has drilled more than a dozen exploratory deepwater wells since 2002, but the
results have been mixed. It plans to drill six more wells this year, including two at depths of more than 6,000 feet, where well pressure is customarily high and the possibility of a blowout is greater than in shallower wells. The program has been controversial in Mexico, especially after the BP accident two years ago. Juan Carlos Zepeda, Mexicos chief oil regulator, has warned that Pemex

is not prepared to control a possible leak from the two deepest wells it is planning this year and
that the National Hydrocarbons Commission, the three-year-old agency Mr. Zepeda oversees, may be overmatched when it comes to regulating deepwater drilling. With a staff of 60, little logistical capability and a budget of only $7 million, it has had minimal say in how Pemex operates. In 1979, a blowout at one of Pemexs shallow-water wells called Ixtoc I in the Bay of Campeche resulted in the largest oil spill ever in the gulf until the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. The issue of sharing oil and gas reserves in gulf border waters dates from the 1970s. The two countries negotiated a treaty that would define their exploratory rights in border zones, but the United States Senate declined to ratify it in 1980. Presidents Obama and Felipe Caldern agreed to extend a drilling moratorium in the area until they could negotiate a final accord. The zones are near areas being drilled successfully, but they are in water depths reaching 10,000 feet and are considered vulnerable to hurricanes. Mexico

doesnt have the resources

to combat a major oil spill, and the United States does, said Jorge Pion, a former president of Amoco Oil Latin America and a current research fellow at the University of Texas. Coordination and sharing communications, training, personnel, equipment and technology are essential for safe and productive drilling. Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Republicans have blamed the administration for being slow to approve more domestic drilling. With the new agreement, coming at a time when the White House is moving
closer to approving drilling in Alaskan Arctic waters, Mr. Obama was expected to argue that his policies have led to a surge in domestic production.

Plan solves shortfalls in Mexico drilling safety resources Philbin, 12 (John P. Philbin, director of crisis management at Regester Larkin Energy.
QandA: Is Mexico Prepared for Deepwater Drilling in the Gulf?, Inter-American Dialogues Latin American Energy Advisor, 2/20/2012, http://repository.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/20477/Is%20Mexico%20Prepared%20for%2 0Deepwater%20Drilling%20in%20the%20Gulf.pdf?sequence=1)//SDL Pemex is not prepared for risks such as a spill or other serious accident that could happen as it plans to drill two wells in ultradeep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, said Juan Carlos Zepeda, the head of Mexico's National Hydrocarbons Commission, in a Feb. 15 interview with The Wall Street Journal. According to Zepeda, his agency's resources amount to about 2 percent the size of its U.S. counterpart's budget. Pemex officials, however, say that the company is capable of carrying out its plans safely. How
prepared is Mexico to deal with a serious accident in the Gulf of Mexico? Is the company sacrificing safety in its bid to improve competitiveness and meet production goals? A: John P. Philbin, director of crisis management at Regester Larkin Energy: "Among the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon incident, two are fundamental in determining response preparedness. First is the importance of having a consistent national doctrine at federal, state and local levels. Significant gaps surfaced during the Macondo blowout response because the U.S. Coast Guard operated under the United States' National Contingency Plan (NCP), which uses a top-down approach to manage the response, while state, local and elected officials operated under the Stafford Act, which is a bottom-up approach. The second fundamental concern is awareness and knowledge of the doctrine for those with any role in preparedness and response. Response

plans and procedures developed from national doctrine must account for the complexity that will ensue, involving many jurisdictions and response elements. Adequate resources and pre-agreed collaboration mechanisms among resource providers are equally important. Note that the U.S. Coast Guard deployed some 60 boats and 2 aircraft
to assist in Macondo response efforts, along with over 3,000 other boats and 127 surveillance aircraft and hundreds of individuals involved in the command and control structure. Mexico's

navy, with some 200 ships total, would be severely taxed to respond to an incident, despite having some doctrine in place to deal with a spill and despite some simulations. The fact that the United States and Mexico signed an agreement this week to collaborate on safety and response mechanisms in the Gulf of Mexico is a critical step toward safer Gulf operationsfor both Mexico and the United States."

Joint inspection solves oversight --- key to safety even if theres no Western Gap development Padilla, 12 (John D. Padilla, managing director at IPD Latin America. QandA: Is Mexico
Prepared for Deepwater Drilling in the Gulf?, Inter-American Dialogues Latin American Energy Advisor, 2/20/2012, http://repository.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/20477/Is%20Mexico%20Prepared%20for%2 0Deepwater%20Drilling%20in%20the%20Gulf.pdf?sequence=1)//SDL "The plan at issue is Pemex's intent to drill in the Perdido Foldbelt area, which abuts the U.S.- Mexico maritime border. Although the bulk of Pemex's offshore infrastructure is located in the southern Gulf of Mexico (i.e. near Cantarell and Ku-Maloob-Zaap), Perdido represents the company's most promising near-term commercial crude oil prospect. The 18 other deepwater wells Pemex has drilled have either been principally natural gas or heavy oil; those that will be brought online still await commercialization. Complicating the equation, Pemex is saddled with four latest- generation semisubmersible rigs that cost $500,000 per day. Because the company has been unable to drill in Perdido's ultra-deepwater, the rigs have been relegated to drilling in shallower waterwork that less sophisticated technology could accomplish. Ongoing concerns over deepwater drilling in the wake of the Macondo incident, combined with memories of Pemex's less-than-aggressive response to its 1979 Ixtoc spill, have given authorities on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border pause. An archaic constitutional ban that prevents the company from providing the proper balance of risk-reward incentives, coupled with declining production, leave Pemex few large-scale, near-term alternativesother than forging into Perdido on its own. The accord signed by U.S. and Mexican authorities on Monday offers an elegant way to calm fears on both sides of the border. Whether joint ventures materialize or not, the accord would permit joint inspection teams the right to ensure compliance with safety and environmental laws.Will Mexico's Senate approve the accord?"

Plan spills over past the border to environmental standardization in the entire Gulf of Mexico Velarde, 12 (Rogelio Lopez Velarde, attorney and counselor-at-law, held various positions at
Pemex during 1988-1993, including that of Financial Advisor to the Finance Department, InHouse Counsel in Houston, Texas, In-House Counsel in New York, and Head of the International Legal Department of Pemex. He was honored with the Most Distinguished Attorney Award of Pemex for the period 1990-1991, former Chairman of the Energy Committee of the Mexican Bar Association, and currently he is the President for the Latin America Chapter of the Association of the International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN), as Visiting Professor of Judicial Process on the Mexican Legal Studies Program at the University of Houston Law Center, and he is currently the director of the Energy Law Seminar organized between the Universidad Iberoamericana and the Mexican Bar Association. US-Mexican treaty on Gulf of Mexico transboundary reservoirs, International Law Office, 3-19-2012, http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/detail.aspx?g=b9326bf8-f27f-43ff-b45a1b2b70ccb217)//SDL Pemex has indicated that it has no information to confirm the existence of a transboundary field. However, it is unlikely that both countries would take the step of concluding such a treaty without having geological information to suggest the existence of such a field. One of the covenants included in the treaty is particularly significant in this context. It requires the two federal governments to adopt common norms and standards concerning safety and environmental protection for the "activity contemplated under this agreement". Effectively, this means a harmonised system of offshore technical standards for exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico - it seems

highly unlikely that the relevant authorities in the United States(1) and Mexico(2) would agree to harmonise applicable standards only in respect of transboundary reservoirs.

Redundant inspection teams solve ---- US doesnt need environmental regulations Baker, 12 (George, publisher of Mexico Energy Intelligence. QandA: Is Mexico Prepared for
Deepwater Drilling in the Gulf?, Inter-American Dialogues Latin American Energy Advisor, 2/20/2012, http://repository.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/20477/Is%20Mexico%20Prepared%20for%2 0Deepwater%20Drilling%20in%20the%20Gulf.pdf?sequence=1) "The serious issues of corporate governance and regulation in the shadow of the Macondo incident have not yet been addressed in the many post-accident studies that have been released. On April 20, 2010, a joint BP-Transocean safety audit team boarded the Deepwater Horizon for an inspection of the safety practices of the crew and the condition of the facilities. The nominal objective of the inspection was to identify issues and conditions that could result in damage to lives, facilities and the environment. Within hours after the safety audit team flew off by helicopter, the Macondo well blew out. How is it that this team of senior safety auditors missed all the evidence that a catastrophe was unfolding beneath their feet? This is a question on the level of seriousness as that of the integrity of the cement that failed. The facile answer to the question is that safety, as a discipline and a concern, is divided into two parts: occupational safety, dealing with the slips and falls of employees, and process, or industrial, safety, dealing with conditions that could put the entire crew and facilities at risk. What happened on the Deepwater Horizon is that members of the safety audit team focused their attention on the feelgood issues of occupational safety, chit-chatting with crew members, while they ignored the fact that a cement bond log had not been run, and that proof of cement integrity was problematic at best. One measure to avoid a repetition of his situation would be to order, as a matter of regulation, safety audits of industrial safety and occupational safety to be carried out separately, by different teams."

Gulf ecosystems are critical biodiversity hotspots and have a key effect on the worlds oceans Brenner, 8 (Jorge Brenner, Guarding the Gulf of Mexicos valuable resources, SciDevNet, 314-2008, http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/guarding-the-gulf-of-mexico-s-valuableresources.html)//SDL The Gulf of Mexico is rich in biodiversity and unique habitats, and hosts the only known nesting beach of Kemp's Ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle. The Gulf's circulation pattern gives it biological and socioeconomic importance: water from the Caribbean enters from the south through the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico and, after warming in the basin, leaves through the northern Florida Strait between the United States and Cuba to form the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic that helps to regulate the climate of western Europe.

Ocean biodiversity key to survival Craig, 3 (Robin Kundis Craig, Attorneys Title Professor of Law and Associate Dean for
Environmental Programs at Florida State University. ARTICLE: Taking Steps Toward Marine

Wilderness Protection? Fishing and Coral Reef Marine Reserves in Florida and Hawaii, McGeorge Law Review, Winter 2003, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155)//SDL
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values the

most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the reefs value for food production. n856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. n857 More generally, ocean ecosystems play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but necessary elements. n858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planets ability to support life. Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems.
Current evidence shows that, in general, an ecosystems ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable. n859 Coral

reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on their biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system . n860 Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have
been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit. n862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea and about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The

United States has traditionally failed to protect marine ecosystems because it was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can especially when the United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world.

Resiliency is wrong specifically for the Gulf of Mexicoany shock can be the tipping point Craig, 11 Attorneys Title Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs
at Florida State University (Robin Kundis, Legal Remedies for Deep Marine Oil Spills and Long-Term Ecological Resilience: A Match Made in Hell, Brigham Young University Law Review, 2011, http://lawreview.byu.edu/articles/1326405133_03craig.fin.pdf) Ecological resilience and resilience theory acknowledge that ecosystems are dynamicnot, as prior theories had assumed, inherently stable systems tending toward an equilibrium.142 Resilience
theory recognizes that there are at least three different ways in which ecosystems experience and respond to change and perturbationthree different aspects of resilience.143 The first and most common understanding of resilience refers to an ecosystems ability to absorb change and persist in function and relationships.144 This sense of resilience refers

to the rate or speed of recovery of a system following a shock.145 As a practical matter in the law of natural resource management, the law tends to expect that ecosystems will be resilient in this first sensethat is,

the law assumes that ecosystems will generally successfully absorb any human-induced perturbations of the system. As a result, natural resources law is what I will term first sense resilience dependence,
but that dependence reflects a truncated understanding of ecosystems resilience and capacity for change. Importantly, however, the second aspect of resilience theory acknowledges that ecosystems

can exist in multiple states rather than stabilizing around a single equilibrium state; as a result, changes and disturbances can push ecosystems over thresholds from one ecosystem state to another.146 This second sense of resilience assumes multiple states (or regimes) and is defined as the magnitude of a disturbance that triggers a shift between alternative states.147 For example, the boreal forests of Canada can exist in at
least two states with respect to spruce budworms: a no outbreak state characterized by low numbers of budworm and young, fastgrowing trees, and an outbreak state characterized by high numbers of budworm and old, senescent trees.148 The shift between the two appears to relate to an increase in canopy volume, which in turn affects bird populations and the birds ability to control the pest.149 Regime-shift models can also help to explain outbreaks of some human diseases.150 However, natural

resources law and policy generally do not acknowledge this second sense of resilience, and, as a result, it generally does not incorporate mechanisms for acknowledging, responding to, or even trying to avoid ecological regime shifts. Finally, resilience theory also acknowledges the surprising and discontinuous nature of change, such as the collapse of fish stock or the sudden outbreak of spruce budworms in forests.151 In other words, the long-time persistence of an ecosystem (or collection of multiple ecosystems) like the Gulf of Mexico in an apparently stable, productive ecosystem state is absolutely no guarantee that humans can continue to disturb and abuse the system and expect only a gradual or linear response. As was true for the second sense of resilience, natural resource law in general and marine resources law in particular do not deal well with the possibility of sudden and dramatic ecosystem changes. Nevertheless, such regime shifts have been
documented for a number of marine ecosystems. For example, In Jamaica, the effects of overfishing, hurricane damage, and disease have combined to destroy most corals, whose abundance has declined from more than 50 percent in the late 1970s to less than 5 percent today. A dramatic phase shift has occurred, producing a system dominated by fleshy macroalgae (more than 90 percent cover). Immediate implementation of management procedures is necessary to avoid further catastrophic damage.152 Similarly, the presence or absence of sea otters can significantly influence the structure and function of Alaskan kelp forests because the otters, when present, control sea urchin populations, allowing for more extensive coral growth.153 In some locations, moreover, sea urchin population changes in response to sea otter predation were rapid and extreme and could result in short-term changes in kelp density.154 The

current law, policy, and remedy regime for offshore oil drilling effectively presumes that marine ecosystems have virtually unlimited first-sense resilience with respect to oil spillsin crudest terms, that restoration will always be possible, and perhaps even through entirely natural means.155 Our experience with the last large oil spill in U.S. waters, however, suggests otherwise.

Plan
The United States Federal Government should ratify the Agreement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States concerning Transboundary Hydrocarbon Reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Solvency
THA was just negotiated between the U.S. and Mexicoit just needs ratification on both sides Danish et al, 12
(KYLE, SHELLEY FIDLER, TOMS CARBONELL, KAITLIN GREGG, HAROLD BULGER, TRACY NAGELBUSH, Climate, Energy, and Air Weekly Update Feb 20-24 2012, VanNess Feldman LLP, 2-27-2012, http://www.vnf.com/news-policyupdates-683.html)//SDL US, Mexico Reach Agreement on Regulation of Cross-Boundary Offshore Drilling. A new Transboundary Agreement between the United States and Mexico, signed February 20, provides for shared regulation of offshore oil and gas production in deposits that extend across the waters of both countries. Under the agreement, joint teams of inspectors from the United States and Mexico will oversee exploration and development activities in cross-boundary deposits to ensure that they comply with applicable environmental requirements. Regulatory agencies from both countries will also have an opportunity to review plans for oil and gas production in cross-boundary deposits before any drilling activity begin. Lastly, the agreement provides a framework for U.S. companies and Mexicos state-owned oil company, Pemex, to enter into voluntary agreements for joint exploration and development activities. If ratified by both countries, the Transboundary Agreement will remove a legal obstacle to oil and gas production in approximately 1.5 million acres of offshore deposits containing an estimated 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Oil and gas production in these waters is presently prohibited under an agreement between the two countries that was due to expire in 2014.

The Mexican Senate has already ratified the THAits effectiveness is only a question of U.S. ratification Velarde, 12 (Rogelio Lopez Velarde, attorney and counselor-at-law, held various positions at
Pemex during 1988-1993, including that of Financial Advisor to the Finance Department, InHouse Counsel in Houston, Texas, In-House Counsel in New York, and Head of the International Legal Department of Pemex. He was honored with the Most Distinguished Attorney Award of Pemex for the period 1990-1991, former Chairman of the Energy Committee of the Mexican Bar Association, and currently he is the President for the Latin America Chapter of the Association of the International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN), as Visiting Professor of Judicial Process on the Mexican Legal Studies Program at the University of Houston Law Center, and he is currently the director of the Energy Law Seminar organized between the Universidad Iberoamericana and the Mexican Bar Association. US-Mexican treaty on Gulf of Mexico transboundary reservoirs, International Law Office, 3-19-2012, http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/Detail.aspx?g=b9326bf8-f27f-43ff-b45a1b2b70ccb217andredir=1) The treaty will become effective 60 days after the last notification of approval has been made by Mexico or the United States. In this regard, the Mexican Senate ratified the treaty in April 2012; therefore, the treaty's effectiveness is subject to approval and publication by the United States, which to date has neither ratified nor published the treaty.

Mexico Stability Add-on

Mexican instability spills over to the US, sparking civil war. Steven David, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, January/February 1999, Foreign Affairs, p. lexis CONFLICTS FOUGHT within the borders of a single state send shock waves far beyond their AND might take sides in the fighting, sparking violence within the United States.

Extinction Pinkerton, 3 (James Pinkerton, fellow at the New America Foundation, 2003, Freedom and
Survival, p. http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/freedom_and_survival)//SDL Historically, the only way that the slow bureaucratic creep of government is reversed is through revolution or war. And that could happen. But there's a problem: the next American revolution won't be fought with muskets. It could well be waged with proliferated wonder-weapons. That is, about the time that American yeopersons decide to resist the encroachment of the United Nations, or the European Union -- or the United States government -- the level of destructive power in a future conflict could remove the choice expressed by Patrick Henry in his ringing cry, "Give me liberty, or give me death." The next big war could kill everybody, free and unfree alike.

AT: Disclosure Conflict

Courts vacated the rule, SEC wont appeal, and THA exemption solves Blunt et al. 7/15 Amanda Blunt, Rachel Miras Fiorill, Carrie Kroll, and Lindsay Meyer are all practicing lawyers at Venable LLP, and members of their respective BAR associations (7/15/2013, United States: DC Court Strikes SEC Rule Requiring Extractive Industries Reporting Of Payments To Foreign Governments, http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/250944/international+trade+investment/DC+Court+St rikes+SEC+Rule+Requiring+Extractive+Industries+Reporting+of+Payments+to+Foreign+Governm ents) xJADx On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring oil, gas and mining companies to report payments in excess of $100,000 to foreign governments. The rule originated as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act's (Dodd-Frank) amendments to the Securities Exchange Act of 1943, 157 U.S.C. 78m(q). The rule was advanced largely by human rights and anti-corruption interests targeting corruption in developing countries with significant oil and mining resources and proved a costly compliance burden for extractive companies with global operations. Indeed, a coalition of oil industry associations led by the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Council filed the lawsuit challenging the rule, American Petroleum Institute v SEC, No. 12-1668 (D.D.C.). The lawsuit asserted that the SEC misinterpreted Dodd-Frank by forcing public disclosure of detailed data on payments, and failed to consider associated competitive effects, including risks associated with revealing trade secrets and pricing strategies. The Court agreed. Finding that the SEC misread Section 1504 of Dodd-Frank to mandate public disclosure of all taxes, fees, royalties, production entitlements, bonuses, dividends, and infrastructure improvements, Judge John Bates remanded the case back to the SEC for further action. The Court also agreed with the Plaintiffs that the SEC erred by denying exemptions for countries with laws prohibiting payment disclosure, such as China and Qatar, characterizing the SEC's decision as "arbitrary and capricious." Section 1504 of Dodd-Frank directs the SEC to implement rules requiring firms to report payments made to foreign officials. The SEC rule had broadly defined "commercial development" to include all exploration, extraction, processing, export, and the requisite acquisition of licenses. The rule, which was set to take effect on September 30, 2013, will now be reexamined by the SEC pursuant to the Court's remand order. It is unlikely that the SEC will appeal the ruling because legislation that passed the House of Representatives last week and is currently pending in the Senate would implement lesser disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 1504. H.R. 1613, the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act, narrows the scope of the reporting requirement by creating an exemption for "actions taken by a public company in accordance with any transboundary hydrocarbon agreement." During the SEC rulemaking process preceding issuance of the final rule in August 2012, industry stakeholders had advocated that the SEC issue an anonymous compilation report of company disclosures rather than companyand country-specific disclosures. While the immediate reporting requirement may have passed, it is expected that the SEC may come back with proposed rules that attempt to reach a middle ground so stay tuned.

THA solves Dodd-Franknew provision

Hastings 6/27 Chairman, House Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. R-WA (Doc, 6/27/2013, Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act (H.R. 1613), http://naturalresources.house.gov/legislation/hr1613/) xJADx Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act (H.R. 1613) Status: Passed the House on June 27, 2013 with a bipartisan vote of 256-171. Awaits consideration by the Senate. H.R. 1613, the
Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act, sponsored by Representatives Jeff Duncan (SC03), Doc Hastings (WA-04), and Matt Salmon (AZ-05), would enact the terms of an agreement signed by the Obama Administration and Mexico to govern how to explore, develop, and share revenue from oil and natural gas resources along the maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill would expand U.S. energy production, create new American jobs, and grow our economy by opening new areas to oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the U.S. State Department, these areas are estimated to contain 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas. It would give American job-creators and workers the certainty to move forward with exploration and development along the maritime border. These areas are ready to be explored and developed; activity will begin there as soon as the agreement is enacted. Enacting H.R. 1613 would put Americans to work and generate tens of millions of dollars in new revenue. Currently, there are 67 active lease blocks held by nine companies on the U.S. portion of this area. This means roughly 20 percent of the available acreage in this area is under lease and awaiting certainty in order to move forward with exploration and development. The bill would protect U.S. jobs and provide greater regulatory certainty to U.S. companies. The agreement signed by the Obama Administration and Mexico specifically provides what royalty payments Mexico would receive from energy developers. However, under current U.S. law (section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) companies that commercially develop oil, natural gas or minerals are required to disclose payments made to a foreign government. This could create a potential conflict because Mexico has yet to decide how they will collect royalties and could potentially set regulatory measures that prohibit disclosure of payments. The

bill includes a provision that would waive the Dodd-Frank requirement in order to help protect American jobs and American-made energy. Without it, foreign-controlled energy companies could develop this American energy resource and the royalty payments to Mexico would still be undisclosed and kept private. The bill would also put into place an important and transparent framework for future implementation of similar transboundary hydrocarbon agreements with other nations.

T-Stuff
THA is not a treaty definitionally in the text of the law
HR 1613 13 (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1613eh/pdf/BILLS-113hr1613eh.pdf) SEC. 32. TRANSBOUNDARY HYDROCARBON AGREEMENTS. 14 (a) AUTHORIZATION.After the date of enactment 15 of the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydro16 carbon Agreements Authorization Act, the Secretary may 17 implement the terms of any transboundary hydrocarbon 18 agreement for the management of transboundary hydro19 carbon reservoirs entered into by the President and ap20 proved by Congress. In implementing such an agreement, 21 the Secretary shall protect the interests of the United 22 States to promote domestic job creation and ensure the 23 expeditious and orderly development and conservation of 24 domestic mineral resources in accordance with all applica25 ble United States laws governing the exploration, develop-3 1 ment, and production of hydrocarbon resources on the 2 outer Continental Shelf. 3 (b) SUBMISSION TO CONGRESS. 4 (1) IN GENERAL.No later than 180 days 5 after all parties to a transboundary hydrocarbon 6 agreement have agreed to its terms, a transboundary 7 hydrocarbon agreement that does not constitute a 8 treaty in the judgment of the President shall be sub9 mitted by the Secretary to 10 (A) the Speaker of the House of Rep11 resentatives; 12 (B) the Majority Leader of the Senate; 13 (C) the Chair of the Committee on Nat14 ural Resources of the House of Representatives; 15 and 16 (D) the Chair of the Committee on En17 ergy and Natural Resources of the Senate.