Fretting over a scenario in which armed U.S. soldiers could be called to the border - or even over it - to hold back lawlessness and violence, Undersecretary of the Army Joseph Westphal invoked a contentious word to describe Mexico's problem with drug cartels:

He called it an "insurgency."

Speaking at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics on Monday, the second-highest ranking civilian official in the U.S. Army spent most of his lecture explaining the economic and bureaucratic obstacles faced by defense budget makers amid complicated challenges in the Middle East and South Asia.

But in response to a student's question about strategic blind spots in U.S. foreign policy, Westphal switched hemispheres.

"One of them in particular for me is Latin America and in particular Mexico," he said. "As all of you know, there is a form of insurgency in Mexico with the drug cartels that's right on our border."