A few weeks ago I mentioned the Shared Partnership for Prosperity (SPP) in a post. The main point was that it was in effect an instrument of security integration between the United States and Mexico. A serious issue for Mexican sovereignty. Anyway that went by the wayside in 2009 to be exhumed a few months ago in the form of the ''High Level Regulatory Cooperation Council (HLRCC),''. Dana Gabriel's piece suggests that this institutional framework contains the same regulatory approach to security that the SPP had.

So it appears that the US's wider strategy of the entire region is still on track. While some talk of how the State department has no real policy for the whole region, while Clinton sidelinedArturo Valenzuela for two of the regions Ambassadors, Brazil & Mexico, this only continues to reaffirm the comment made Ambassador Brownfield as a congressional hearing earlier this year that US policy was focusing on reacting to the balloon effect by expanding its interdiction efforts to the whole region comprising, Central America, the Caribbean and the Andes.