Politics & Power Quote by Barry McCaffrey

“Trapped” is the operative word: a blunt, soldierly verb that turns geography into fate. Barry McCaffrey isn’t describing neighborly interdependence; he’s warning that the U.S. and Mexico share a single problem-set whether they admit it or not. The line works because it strips away the comforting fantasy that borders solve what markets, media, and illicit supply chains constantly erase. “In the same continent” sounds obvious, almost banal, but that’s the point: he’s invoking physical reality as a rebuke to political theater.

The construction is a careful stacking of arenas - “economically, culturally, politically and because of drug crime” - a rhetorical sweep meant to close off escape routes. If you want to treat drug violence as Mexico’s issue, he drags in economics. If you want to treat migration as a policy nuisance, he reminds you of culture. If you want to pretend trade is separate from security, he welds them together. It’s a preemptive argument against compartmentalization, the way governments silo agencies and voters silo moral responsibility.

Context matters: McCaffrey speaks from the late-20th/early-21st century national security mindset, when NAFTA-era integration and post-9/11 border politics collided with the rise of cartel power. The subtext is also American self-implication. “Drug crime” isn’t an exotic contagion drifting north; it’s a bilateral ecosystem driven by U.S. demand, U.S. guns, and shared financial systems. The sentence is less a lament than a strategic framing: if you’re trapped together, you either coordinate or you both bleed.