For more than a few years, governors on both sides of the border have regularly met to have their pictures snapped while they promise to look into this or talk more about that. The most recent such meeting between Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Sonora Governor Eduard Bours Castelo might prove a different kettle of fish. Announced Saturday were specific commitments to work hand-in-hand to share databases to take on gunrunners, find felons on the lam on either side of the border, and basically take a bite out of crime, organized and otherwise.

For more than a few years, governors on both sides of the border have regularly met to have their pictures snapped while they promise to look into this or talk more about that. The most recent such meeting between Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Sonora Governor Eduard Bours Castelo might prove a different kettle of fish. Announced Saturday were specific commitments to work hand-in-hand to share databases to take on gunrunners, find felons on the lam on either side of the border, and basically take a bite out of crime, organized and otherwise.

The states also will promise to work on improving border entry points and share more information to combat drug smuggling.

Other terms call for bolstering responses to border-spanning disasters and the development of digital maps to improve responses to emergencies.

 The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in the person of its head Arizona agent, was sufficiently to hope that the agreement would be a model for other border states.

 That enthusiasm is not limited to one fed. Only last week, the U.S. House of Representatives, embracing a deal worked out between President Bush and Mexican President Calderon, easily passed a $1.6 billion, 3-year aid package to aid Mexico in its war against the drug cartels.

 A raid on a Phoenix gun store last month previewed the benefit that could come from cooperation. From the Republic again:

 When Mexican authorities recovered the pistol of a cartel boss in one raid, an ATF weapons trace found it had been sold at X-Caliber. Other weapons found in Mexico led back to Phoenix.

 Ultimately, investigators raided the store, arrested the owners and accused them of selling hundreds of semi-automatic rifles to Mexican cartels.

 Until now, only Mexican federal agents have had access to the trace data. Under the new agreement, Sonora state police will have the same access, just as police throughout the United States.

 ATF agents will train Sonora state police on the trace system and how to identify unique weapons and recover tampered serial numbers.

 Arizona will form a task force involving the state Department of Public Safety, U.S. customs agents and police from border towns and regions.

Now you can be sure that some will view this agreement, filled with computer info jumping borders, handshaking politicians, and cops cooperating, as one more step in the conspiracy to build a North American Union. And while they’re wrong, they’re also right, for while there is no conspiracy, there are increasingly numbers of cross-borders ties and links that will bring us closer together, like it or not. And these ties and links will be personal and professional, individual and corporate, private and political, and, quite profoundly, governmental.

Governments are incompetent by nature, more interested in collecting power and protecting their privileges than in actually accomplishing anything. Conspiracies surely do exist, along with corruption of every variety, but they are rarely secret. For instance, we know Halliburton is reaping obscene profits feeding at the taxpayers’ trough. It’s a vile conspiracy to be sure, but hardly secret.

Same here, though without the evil context: No one has a master plan to create a new Arizona-Sonoran entity, never mind a new U.S.-Mexican state. The problems with the increasingly murderous cartels are too pressing to worry about anything other than how to stop them, now, and the local, state and federal Mexican governments have been too tardy and cumbersome, corrupt and stupid, in allowing this horror to grow under their very eyes. For our part, the spillover in crime on our soil, abetted by our mishandling of drugs and illegal immigration year after year, has forced us to wake up and try to help the Mexicans get their act together before it’s too late.

So forget the conspiracy, no matter what you hear shouted on the radio. If they were only that good, we might be in both better and worse shape.