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Simply because? No, unless you're counting warlords who want more stuff. But gangs and terrorists find poor places fertile breeding ground. If you have nothing, what are you supposed to do about them? And it's easier for the cartel to recruit a poor kid from the street than a middle class child. Life is all about contributing factors.
It does though? Are you going to tell me you aren't nicer to someone who gives you stuff? It's no magic bullet, but it helps. That what soft power is - influence.
And again I will point out the value of preventing disease outbreaks.
My point is that anger over lack of material comforts is usually directed at the internal government, not a distant foreign government. Do the people in Brazil's favelas blame China for their poverty? No, they blame the government of Brazil. Do the untouchables in India blame the US for their situation? No, if anything they blame the caste system in India. No terrorists or gangs blame obvious outsiders unless those outsiders are clearly meddling in the internal politics of their country - like the US does with NGOs and various aid programs. Poor people, including poor radicalised extremists, do not necessarily lay blame to wealthy foreigners who are minding their own business in their own country. Normal trade relations are not meddling but "free" aid always comes with strings attached and so people are rightfully suspicious.
And I don't know how to explain it, but soft power isn't gained by just giving things away for free. Maybe someone smarter than me can explain soft power better, but I think it's a form of respect that you can't just buy with resources or money.
Blame has nothing to do with it. The cartels don't sell drugs out of some blame for America. They want money and selling drugs gets them money. If your other options are shit jobs for shit pay, the less scrupulous choose the path they see to success. Maybe we can stop some percentage of them from contributing to the drug trade in America by making Mexico not a shithole. Is it "unfair" to bail them out for failing? If you want to look at it that way I suppose. But criminals have a way of making their problems everyone else's problems, and butterfly effect still reaches America.
Soft power isn't a straightforward conversion of money to influence, but it always ends with money. Another country has a natural disaster and you show up to offer help? That's respect. But you know what disaster support is? It's money. Treating diseases in other countries? Money. Trade? Money.
Even if Mexico was not a shithole, drugs would still flow to the US because it's a lucrative business. No amount of US taxpayer funded pampering and charity will stop the flow of recruits to the drug trade. This is because when there is money laying on the ground, eventually someone will stoop to pick it up, even if they already have all their needs met. Nobody in the cartel grew up so lacking in material comforts that they decided to leave a half dozen severed heads on public roads to intimidate their enemies. It's a predisposition to human dismemberment that no amount of charity will fix.
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