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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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