Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
Where this falls apart is....... What use is Brownsville? The east gulf coast is where the refineries and ports are. Where they going to link up and take a honeymoon road trip along the Texas coast?
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Whether Army SGT is still lurking or ever comes back, I think this question is worth answering. What is the strategic objective of the Mexican action? The official reason—to save Mexican lives—is propaganda. The Mexican government would be glad to be rid of hungry mouths, many of whom will be First Nations people or malcontents fleeing ethnic cleansing and crackdowns at home in 1998. Some ordinary Mexicans obviously would be troubled by violence against Mexican nationals in the US.
I think there are a couple of plausible reasons, which I have explored previously. One reason is that a foreign adventure is good for distracting people from troubles at home. Another is that being seen to protect Mexican lives against those bad Americans can’t hurt. Then there’s the near certainty that Mexican oil refineries will be nuked by the Soviets to keep them out of American hands or by the French to make the Americans think the Soviets did it. The Soviets could play off nuking Mexican refineries as yet another act of Yankee imperialism. Knowing that Mexican oil would give Mexico a leg up in world, the Americans destroy Mexico’s oil to keep Mexico down. And then there’s the fact that 150 years prior the United States lopped off half of Mexico.
I think it’s quite possible that the Mexican senior leadership does not have a clear idea of what they are trying to achieve. Inflicting a defeat on the Americans obviously is a good thing. But what happens after the Mexican Army has won a few battles and captured some territory? Where is the stop line? In the short term, the foreign adventure is good for public morale. After a little while though, the absence of military units in the interior begins to cause problems on top of all the other problems the country is experiencing. What to do?
While I agree that rationally there is little chance that Mexico would invade the US under the circumstances that exist in 1998, I like the invasion thematically. I recognize that it borders on a deus ex machina for the purpose of expanding the Twilight: 2000 war zone to a whole new territory. Still, I think there’s an important theme at work. People do stupid things under stress. At many points in the chronology cooler heads might have prevailed and put an end to the war but didn’t. The Twilight War as a whole could have been avoided. A Mexican invasion of the US for ill-defined objectives fits the theme of absurd wastefulness quite nicely.