Coercion and compliance in Nixon’s war on drugs: U.S. Leverage in Turkey and Mexico

OpenAlex English

This article explains why comparable United States supply control pressure during the Nixon administration produced different policy responses in Turkey and Mexico. United States officials linked domestic heroin panic and battlefield drug use to foreign supply and pursued upstream control by pressuring key producers and transit states. Turkey announced a comprehensive poppy cultivation ban in 1971 and reversed it in 1974. In 1969, Mexico, confronted with the Operation Intercept and its unilateral border disruption, shifted toward negotiated Operation Cooperation and thereafter delivered uneven, politically managed enforcement rather than durable legal conversion. The argument is that United States leverage is most effective and compliance most durable when coercive signals align with target state domestic political incentives and institutional receptivity. Building on coercive diplomacy, hierarchy, and two-level bargaining, the article separates compliance onset from compliance durability. Methodologically, it combines a structured, focused comparison with within-case process tracing. It triangulates declassified United States diplomatic records with Turkish and Mexican sources, including parliamentary debate, contemporary press, and regionally grounded scholarship, to reduce hegemonic source bias. The evidence shows that Turkey’s 1971 ban was enabled by a short governing configuration that concentrated decision authority and accepted side payments, but it unraveled once competitive politics and agrarian interests continued prohibition electorally costly. Mexico’s cooperation remained shallower because PRI elites could credibly limit external intrusion, mobilize sovereignty narratives, and selectively appropriate United States initiatives for domestic legitimacy and security management. The findings refine coercive diplomacy by specifying when strong threats generate short-lived concessions rather than sustained policy conversion.