More than 800,000 Americans packed the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Monday to listen to President Obama deliver his second inaugural address, but many more were listening around the world. Here are a few interesting global reactions:

CHINA

In the Chinese media, Obama's promise to "try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully" and argument that "engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear" than military force was taken as a sign that the U.S.-China relationship will be at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the next four years. Of course, as the state-run Global Times notes, there's a bit of skepticism that the president will live up to his words:

"If the president really lives his words, he would agree that for the sake of the world's peace and prosperity, it is important for the United States and China to foster mutual trust, for trust is the cornerstone for every relationship, no matter between people or between nations...The words also show that he agrees that the two nations should properly solve their disputes, either economic or political."

News agency Xinhua was a little more positive, describing the overall approach Obama outlined in his Monday address as "balanced" and "decidedly progressive."

BRITAIN

One Guardian writer described Obama's speech as "urg[ing] Americans to reclaim from conservatives the spirit of the founding fathers" and as "more inspirational than 2009," praising Obama's strong support of climate change and gay rights. Another was more cautious in hispraise, maintaining that Obama's speech was less of a populist manifesto and more of a "to-do list [covering] what he has still to do to make good on the economic promises of his first term."

While Peter Foster of the more conservative Telegraph granted that Obama's speech was well-received by the spectators on the Mall, he reminded readers just how deeply divided the United States still is: "It was apparent," writes Foster, "that only half of the nation had showed up to listen to [Obama's] call...Overwhelmingly, the crowd of 800,000 people was filled with the faces of the young, female, urban, African-American coalition that ensured Mr. Obama's re-election for a second term last November. They were Obama's people, and they were there to celebrate their victory."

AUSTRALIA

In his article for the Australian, Troy Bramston praised Obama's rhetoric, but argued that Obama cannot rank amongst the truly great American presidents until he "translate[s] a presidency of promise into a presidency of action."

That may be hard to do, claims Janet Hook in another article for the Australian, in which she points out that Obama's speech made little effort to readch out to the GOP.

SAUDI ARABIA

After the inaugural address, the headline of Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat read "The decade of war is over," referencing a line from Obama's speech. Yet in an op-ed for the same paper, Abdul Rahman Rashed, though praising Obama's experience in Middle Eastern affairs, was not so sure about peace in the coming decade. "Obama's second term will possibly be reconciliatory, particularly after John Kerry and Chuck Hagel join his administration...but who can tell if the region will be in a reconciliatory mood?"

PALESTINE

In his article for Palestinian-run, London based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi (translated into English by the Times of Israel), Abdel Al-Bari Atwan writes that Obama "completely shut the door on any military intervention, stressing that a decade of wars has ended and that the only way to peace is dialogue." "President Obama's message is very clear," the article continued. "In short, he said that he does not intend to militarily intervene in Syria; will not wage a war on Iran, succumbing to Israeli pressure; and will focus on rescuing his country from its crippling economic crisis."

Atwan continues: "Obama disappointed many of his allies in the Middle East by neglecting to mention any of them in his speech." (Obama didn't mention any foreign countries by name in his address.)

MEXICO

Obama's equal opportunity rhetoric made news in Mexico. In its coverage of the inaugural address, El Universal highlighted Obama's commitment to immigrants, women, and gays. The article quoted Obama's statement promising immigration reform:

"Our trip (as a nation) will not be complete until we find a better way to welcome the hopeful, striving immigrants in the U.S. are still the land of opportunity, until the brightest students and engineers are listed on our strengths work instead of being expelled from our country."

The headline of the article read, in Spanish, "Obama calls for welcoming immigrants."

CANADA

The president's inaugural address was a chance for Canadians to pat themselves on the back, the Ottowa Citizen snarkily reports:

"On the key issues that President Barack Obama pledged to dedicate his second term to in his inaugural address, Canada has already made substantive progress: on supporting democracy around the world; on providing equal rights to gays and lesbians; on creating an aspirational immigration system."

It doesn't stop there either. The column went to on say that Canada has also beat Obama to the punch in securing a budget deal and repairing its economy.

When Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird hosted a largely American gathering at the Canadian embassy on Monday, he was more tactful. "This is not a time for long speeches," he said. "We have very different systems, so we don't exactly want to be bragging," a Canadian embassy spokesman said.

This week, the government was able to boast of one of its most significant victories so far with the arrest of Jesus Mendez (or "The Monkey"), who headed the powerful La Familia organization, which analysts say is one of the most violent in the country.

President Felipe Calderón tweeted that Mendez's capture is a "great blow by the Federal Police against organized crime."

La Familia, one of six major cartels in Mexico, was known for the almost pseudo-religious devotion of its followers.

"This is a huge deal," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "There's a lot of reason to believe the cartel will splinter at this point."

Selee said that could mean more violence in the short term, as people fight over what remains of the cartel.

Here's where things stand with some of the other major drug kingpins.

Marisol Valles, a 20-year-old criminology student, has just been named police chief for the town of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, near the U.S. border. Reportedly, there wasn't a whole lot of competition for the job -- others members of the force have been abducted and killed by narcotraffickers in recent years:

The new police chief heads a force of just 13 agents, nine of them women, with one working patrol car, three automatic rifles and a pistol. Gunmen killed a local official and his son last weekend as Valles prepared to start her job.

"We are doing this for a new generation of people who don't want to be afraid anymore. Everyone is frightened - it is very natural," she told Mexican media. "My motive for being here is that one can do a lot for the town ... we are going to make changes and get rid of a little of the fear in every person."

Her force would focus on a non-violent role of promoting values and principles and preventing crime, she added.

Asked about her force's lack of firepower, Valles says, "The weapons we have are principles and values, which are the best weapons for prevention." 

Valles fully deserves the media coverage that has described her as the "bravest woman in Mexico" for taking the job. But of course, the cynical take on this story is that the town seems to have basically given up on combating traffickers. A small force devoted to promoting public welfare rather than making arrests seems a lot like like de facto legalization. It will be interesting to see if the model spreads. 

Gunmen shot a journalist dead last week, and wounded another, to express their displeasure with media coverage of their group. The murder added to the tens of journalists who have been killed in the country over the last four years. 

In response to this latest attack, the paper's editors wrote a front-page editorial with the headline: "What do you want from us?" Though they claimed it wasn't a surrender, it seemed clear that the media outlet had offered to limit its coverage, writing in the editorial that "no story is worth the life of anyone anymore."

But this isn't the Kabul Times. No, the newspaper highlighted above is El Diario de Juarez, of the not-an-insurgency Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Right around the time that Barack Obama was giving his prime time address to the nation, his counterpoint in Mexico, Felipe Calderon, was doing the same thing. The subjects were different, but the political stakes for both countries were equally high. While Obama talked about doing battle against the BP oil spill in the Gulf -- to "fight this spill with everything we’ve got," Calderon was talking about a far less metaphorical war: Against the country's drug cartels. The fate of both presidencies may well rest on their respective battlegrounds.

The drug war launched by Calderon's administration has been much analyzed, criticized, and picked apart for its efficacy, the wisdom of its undertaking, and the care with which it has been carried out. The criticisms are many: That the effort has made things worse, exacerbated social tensions, unleashed a human rights-violating military against the Mexican people, and all done little to stop the trafficking. (He addressed all these critiques in his speech to the nation.)

But no matter your opinion of how things have gone so far, it's hard to argue for the alternative of accomodation with the drug lords, something that persisted prior to Calderon's term. He clearly doesn't see that as an option either: "We have fought with force and determination against these criminal organziations. And we, the Federal Government, have done so not only because it is our obligation, but also because what hinges upon this fight is your well-being and the future of our children." (my translation).

The speech was notable for two other reasons, one rhetorical and one political. First, Calderon took a page from Obama's book by using the first half of his speech to explain how Mexico arrived at this point -- reminding listeners that, by the time he entered office, things were already a mess. This has been a tactic employed by Obama often on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he has reminded voters that these crises was not of his making. And so did Calderon: "It would have been easy to ignore this problem, as some have proposed, but it is the responsibility of the government to protect its people."

The second bit of note for an American audience was Calderon's clear linking of the escalation of Mexico's drug woes to the lifting of a U.S. ban on the sale of assault weapons in 2004. (Indeed, weapons sales over the border have grown into big business in recent years, arming cartels with more and better guns.) This issue has been a sticking point in relationship between Washington and Mexico City -- Calderon pleaded for the ban to  be re-established ban during his address to a joint-session of Congress last month.

Both speeches were more about convincing people than laying out concrete steps, but in many ways, that's the point. Calderon was explicit: "With your support, we will succeed." The negative is also true... Without it, Mexico won't.

Last month, FP highlighted five of the weirdest tax laws in the world. One of those five tax laws discussed was Ireland's artist tax exemption, under which rule artists are tax-free to help soften their often meagre earnings. USA Today reports that Mexico has a similar rule, though they've apparently copied the old feudal-model of taxation -- but instead of providing foodstuffs to their lords, artists are allowed to produce works for the government in lieu of income tax:

"It's really an amazing concept," says José San Cristóbal Larrea, director of the program. "We're helping out artists while building a cultural inheritance for the country."

There's a sliding scale: If you sell five artworks in a year, you must give the government one. Sell 21 pieces, the government gets six. A 10-member jury of artists ensures that no one tries to unload junk.

The rule has been in place since 1957, and has contributed to a flourishing Mexican art museum scene, with other pieces being loaned out for exhibitions worldwide. As one would expect, the creation story is plenty amusing:

The art program was the idea of two muralists, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Gerardo "Dr. Atl" Murillo. In 1957, an artist friend of theirs was about to go to jail over tax debts so the two men approached Mexico's tax director and talked him into an art-for-amnesty deal.

Soon the tax office was accepting original art on a regular basis. In 1975, the Payment in Kind Program became an official part of the tax code.

Sorry to all writers, filmmakers and musicians, but the provision is only for visual art.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went a little off-script yesterday and floated a novel solution for his state's overcrowded prison system:

"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. ... And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education.

About 19,000 of the state's 171,000 prisoners are illegal immigrants, according to the most recent statistics available online. The state spends more than $8 billion a year on the prison system.

Aaron McLear, spokesman for the governor, said later that Schwarzenegger's comments did not represent a concrete proposal, but "a concept somebody mentioned to him" and he could not say where the governor came up with the $1 billion figure.

Aside from the troubling fact that Schwarnegger seems to have just made up the $1 billion figure and not consulted anyone before bringing up this idea, his timing is a bit unfortunate given that just five days ago 23 Mexican inmates were killed in a prison riot in Durango. Two other riots last year killed at least 20 inmates each. Here's how the Los Angeles Times described the country's penal system:

Mexican prisons have grown more crowded and dangerous as the government carries out a war against cartels, with more than 67,000 drug arrests in three years. The increased incarcerations have often created an incendiary mix by jamming members of rival gangs inside the same walls.

The penal facilities also have seen dramatic breakout attempts as drug gangs seek to rescue captured members, sometimes with success. In May, a convoy of men dressed in what appeared to be police uniforms cruised into a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas and calmly led 53 inmates to freedom as surveillance cameras rolled. Authorities said it was an inside job.

Yes, definitely sounds like a place that could use another 19,000 prisoners. 

With more than 2,000 killings this year in Ciudad Juarez, pictures of gunshot victims strewn about the streets and bulletproof-vested shopkeepers attending terrified customers, potential paramilitiary group formation, calls for UN peacekeeping troops and dire predictions of the violence spreading north the United States-Mexico border is increasingly looking like an all out war zone.

Perhaps it is because of this that I was surprised this morning to attend a conference calling for recognition that the transborder region is increasingly more a region than a border. Speakers at "Rethinking the U.S.-Mexico Border," came from both sides of the border, but it's more accurate to see their flawless bilingualism as an expression that they truly do view the area as a region that must work as one in order to harness the potential of what is already a $300 billion economy.

Among the recommendations presented by one group, the "Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border," was the need to target demand for illicit drugs on both sides of the border (20 percent of drugs produced in Mexico are consumed there, most of the rest goes to the US), as well as the creation of parallel border agencies (such as the synergy between Canada and the US) facilitating coordination between the two countries. Importantly, they called for a reinstating of the American ban on assault weapons, and more work on preventing arms and cash smuggling south. They also advocate immigration reform in the US and more focus on development in Mexico to stem flows north. On the flip side, Mexico also needs to start taking illegal immigration seriously.

Given that NAFTA is now 15 years old, none of this should sound very surprising. But remembering that a lot of the talk about the border in recent years has involved walls (electrified or otherwise), vigilantes, and how to make everybody just stay put on their own side, this all sounded pretty good. As most of the speakers emphasized, it's not about philosophically agreeing with unilateral solutions or not, they simply don't seem to work.

Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images

A new bill approved by Mexico's congress would effectively decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Under the new law, treatment programs would be suggested for the first two offences and mandated for the third. Visiting U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske seems not quite sure how to feel about it:

"I guess if I was looking at it strictly from our viewpoint, the use of the government as a strong sanction is often pretty helpful in getting people into treatment," said Kerlikowske, who heads the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. "If the sanction becomes completely nonexistent I think that would be a concern, but I actually didn't read quite that level of de-facto (decriminalization) in the law."

"I would actually give this a bit of a wait and see attitude," said Kerlikowske. "I've always found about laws, whether they've been enacted by states or our own federal government, is that it is the application and the use of the law and how it's actually done" are key.

Kerlikowske was much more enthusiastic about Mexican President Felipe Calderon's tougher proposal, which would mandate treatment for first offenders through special drug courts. Still, the fact that a U.S. drug czar is this open to any decriminalization program from its drug-war ally, does seem significant. The United States publicly criticized a similar bill in 2006.

Kerlikowske disappointed marijuana legalization advocates last week by saying, "Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine." But Kerlikowske has previously explained that he does not in any way support legalization, but favors a treatment model over a law-enforcement approach. 

The question is whether the drug czar is going to back up his rhetoric with any real reform, especially at a time when the Obama administration has little political capital to spare. His measured response to the Mexican bill and presence at the release of a UN report, which praises Portugal's decriminalization program, may indicate that he's dipping his toe into this debate while making it very clear that legalization is out of the question. 

For now, drug law reform advocates will probably have to take a "wait and see attitude" toward him as well. 

UIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is the latest Latin American leader to advocate the legalization of marijuana (or at least open the debate) in an interview with CNN's Jim Clancy, comparing Mexico's current war on drugs to prohibition in the United States during the 1920s:

His predecessor Ernesto Zedillo, along with former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso also recently advocated decriminalization. 

Cardoso explained his position to FP in February. Our editor in chief, Moisés Naím, makes his case for a more rational debate on drugs in the most recent print issue.

Horrific drug violence, the financial crisis, a deadly epidemic, and now an earthquake. You can't really blame Mexico City residents for being in an apocalyptic frame of mind:

"I'm scared," said Sarai Luna Pajas, a 22-year-old social services worker standing outside her office building moments after it hit. "We Mexicans are not used to living with so much fear, but all that is happening — the economic crisis, the illnesses and now this — it feels like the Apocalypse."

Co-worker Harold Gutierrez, 21, said the country was taking comfort from its religious faith, but he too was gripped by the sensation that the world might be coming to an end.

"If it is, it is God's plan," Gutierrez said, speaking over a green mask he wore to ward off swine flu.

ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images

In an interview with the BBC before the G-20 summit last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon responded to charges that his country is becoming a failed state.

The president cautiously admitted that there is a drug problem, but placed most of the blame on his country's geographic proximity to the world's largest drug market: the United States. More blame falls on the U.S. as well: for allowing weapons to flow across the border. And Calderon theorizes that U.S. corruption is also partly to blame. He theorizes that if corruption allows drugs on the Mexican side of the border, it also must be true that corruption in the U.S. has something to do with the continuing passage of narcotics into that country. Hmm. Does he have a point?

For all those pondering the much-talked-of question of Mexico's stability, it's a must watch.

Good for Hillary Clinton for stating the blatantly obvious fact that Americans' "insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade" and is exacerbating the violence in Mexico. But if the Obama administration is acknowledging that the drug trade is largely a demand-side issue, why is it still pursuing a supply-side solution?

Washington on Tuesday said it plans to ramp up border security with a $184 million program to add 360 security agents to border posts and step up searches for smuggled drugs, guns and cash.

The Obama administration plans to provide more than $80 million to buy Black Hawk helicopters to go after drug traffickers, Clinton said.

What was that about "insatiable demand"?

The new spending shows that the administration is taking the problem seriously, but I'll take the power of supply-and-demand over security agents and helicopters any day. (See Blake's take-down of William Saletan's "high-tech" solution for smuggling in Gaza.) The U.S. has spent over $6 billion on a military solution to Colombia's drug production and all we have to show for it is a 15 percent increase in cocaine cultivation.

Maybe it's time for some more out-of-the-box ideas.

John Moore/Getty Images

Unsettling violence in Mexico over the past year and a half has understandably provoked the question: is Mexico becoming a failed state? In our current edition of Foreign Policy, Sam Quinones argues that -- with more deaths due to drug violence than all U.S. deaths in Iraq since 2003 -- Mexico's chaos is spiraling out of control.

But in the New York Times today, top public intellectual Enrique Krauze says he is certain that Mexico will not fall apart. He decries the "failed" portrayal of his country:

While we bear responsibility for our problems, the caricature of Mexico being propagated in the United States only increases the despair on both sides of the Rio Grande. It is also profoundly hypocritical. America is the world's largest market for illegal narcotics. The United States is the source for the majority of the guns used in Mexico's drug cartel war, according to law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.  

Back in October, Krauze told Foreign Policy much the same thing. While he worried about Mexico becoming a narco-state, he maintained that the government was in control:

There are many municipalities that are clearly under the rule of the drug traffickers, and that’s frightening because of course they kill the journalists and they corrupt everything. There is a danger [of Mexico becoming a narco state], but it’s still an embryo. 

Read FP's the full interview with Krauze, as well as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Michael Sanders, here.