It is a significant development that should not be lost on policymakers in Jamaica and its Caribbean Community (Caricom) partners.

In Mexico this week, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted that the smuggling of drugs into the United States from its southern neighbour and its attendant violence form a two-way street. Demand in America fuels business that has expanded into a transnational enterprise where the players compete violently - literally - for market share. Largely, it is American money that pays for the guns, purchased mostly in the United States, that killed the estimated 6,000 people in Mexico's drug wars last year.

"We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico," Mrs Clinton said on Wednesday after a meeting with the Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa.

Shared responsibility

Essentially, the secretary of state echoed the sentiments of her boss, President Barack Obama, who has been accepting the shared responsibility for Mexico's problems. Part of the reason for this, of course, is that with several million Mexicans already living in the United States, the Obama administration does not wish to entertain the possibility of a failed state on its southern border - which is what some American commentators are already proffering as the emerging Mexican scenario.

But that security concern doesn't stop at America's border regions, but penetrates deep into the United States. Indeed, Mexican drug gangs operate in an estimated 200 US cities.

It makes sense, therefore, that the US Congress has approved a US$1.4 billion security aid package for Mexico, and that Washington is supplying the Mexicans with Black Hawk helicopters to combat the traffickers. The United States in also pouring federal agents into border regions - and even into Mexico itself - to help detect and indict the smugglers. But very critically, as President Obama himself has underlined, the United States is placing a premium on the smuggling of guns across the border into Mexico.

Jamaica's murder rate

This development is important to Jamaica and its regional partners. The killings, in absolute terms, may not be staggering as in Mexico, but Jamaica has a murder rate substantially higher than Mexico's, and mostly with guns that find their way into the island from the USA. And much of the mayhem here, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, is driven by drug-related gangs. Indeed, there are some who talk of Jamaica, if exaggeratedly, in the context of a failing state.

This newspaper has in the past complained of the insufficiency of the effort of the United States, at its borders, to stem the flow of guns to Jamaica, and it being a signatory of the UN treaty on trade in small arms. Perhaps the absence of a contiguous land border limits America's vision of the security threat posed by instability in this region. We, therefore, remind the Obama administration of the heyday in the United States of the Jamaican drug gang, the Shower Posse. Moreover, social and economic failure in these islands will only drive migrants to America.

Armed with Washington's Mexican initiative, Caricom has the basis for a new security conversation with the United States.

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