US-Mexican Relations at the Present Stage

Nowadays the US-Mexican relations are considered to be an unusual phenomena of the World’s politics, when two countries with different level of economic development and political influence, dissimilar cultural features and languages have to interact and even cooperate, due to the close geographical location. This final qualification work is dedicated to the evolution of US-Mexican relations at the present stage. The paper describes the key reasons of mutual interest to cooperate and the most important historical events, which have made a significant impact on the current US-Mexican relations. The author aims to provide a full analysis of the economic cooperation: in this case, the paper identifies the role of the neo-liberal reforms, which were implemented in Mexico in 1980s; analyzes the background and specific factors which contributed to the creation of NAFTA. In particular, the author puts emphasis on the integration processes in Latin America, cultural and ideological influence of the USA on Mexico and, finally, the role of the Mexican lobby. Moreover, the work identifies the key advantages and disadvantages of the countries, which they have received during the time they have been the member-states of NAFTA. A separate chapter of the work is dedicated to analysis of the problems of national security, in particular, to such negative aspects of the US-Mexican relations as drug trafficking, illegal arms trade and the uncontrolled flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico to the United States. Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that in all the aforesaid spheres the US-Mexican relations are extremely contradictory and asymmetric, however, geographical proximity, as well as the historically formed interdependence, force countries to follow the path of cooperation.