As the U.S.'s top intelligence official reiterated that Mexico is not teetering on collapse yesterday [1], Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) backed his state's request for additional National Guardsmen [2] for border security as worries mount Mexican drug cartel violence will spill more widely onto U.S. soil.

Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, said the drug cartels' escalating violence is a product of their weakening state not their strength.

"Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state. [Let me] repeat that. Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state. The violence we see now is the result of Mexico taking action against the drug cartels. So it is in fact the result of positive moves, which the Mexican government has taken to break the baneful influence that many of these cartels have had on many aspects of Mexican government and Mexican life," Blair said.

Launched at the end of 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed 40,000 troops inside Mexico [3] to take the fight to the country's drug cartels. Mexican and U.S. officials say that the offensive has led to the recent upsurge in violence as the cartels fight each other over the drug market as well as the soldiers and police officers pursuing them. Over the last 15 months, approximately 7,000 people have died in Mexico's drug war [4], many in cities like Cuidad Juarez, which border the United States.

Blair's comments came two days after the Obama administration unveiled its southwest border security initiative that will send over 500 additional federal agents and new technologies to the Mexican border to address security concerns.

In the United States, a recent rash of kidnappings and home invasions in cities like Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, as well as killings in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, have been blamed on Mexican drug cartels' reach into the United States.

In response, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wants National Guard troops deployed to her state's border with Mexico. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has also requested National Guardsmen to bolster border security. McCain agrees.

"We do not have sufficient personnel down there. So I agree with the governors of Arizona and Texas in their request for more help with enforcement, at least until we get sufficient trained personnel sent down there," McCain told The Arizona Republic.