-Caveat Lector-
{Well, we can hope. AKE}
Undoing 'Plan Colombia'
Will Bush declare end to Clinton's flawed war on drugs?
U.S. Marines carry the casket of one of five U.S. soldiers killed in July.
when their reconnaisance plane crashed into a mountainside in southern
Colombia, The Bush Administration will have to decide whether to continue
U.S. intervention there.
By William Ratliff
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Dec. 27 - In a perverse way, the tragic nightmare unfolding in Colombia may
be a good thing - if it gets the incoming Bush Administration to look
seriously at what is happening in Latin America. This region is our largest
and fastest growing market and (with Canada) our closest neighbor, but the
Clinton foreign policy team could hardly have cared less. The challenges
there of drugs and development are reaching crisis level - in part, a result
of Clinton's indifference.
Should the Bush Administration declare an end to the Clinton
Administration's war on drugs?
Yes. Military aid has created more problems than drug abuse itself. Spend
the money on treating addicts at home.
No. The United States must treat the drug problem at its source: the
countries that produce illegal drugs.
Should the Bush Administration declare an end to the Clinton
Administration's war on drugs?
* 1864 responses
Yes. Military aid has created more problems than drug abuse itself. Spend
the money on treating addicts at home.
74%
No. The United States must treat the drug problem at its source: the
countries that produce illegal drugs.
26%
Survey results tallied every
60 seconds. Live Votes
reflect respondents' views
and are not scientifically
valid surveys.
IF THE SON is at all like the father, and the son's political
appointments suggest that he is, the incoming foreign policy team should do
better, not least because Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell seems to
be a sound strategic thinker who is able to ascertain what genuine U.S.
interests exist in Latin America. What's more, Powell's roots are in the
region and he has the stature to promote those interests.
Here are the issues he faces:
Figuring out what is important and what is possible with the resources we
have and are willing to commit. For starters, that means minimizing the
influence of partisan domestic issues on foreign policy and avoiding such
Quixotic and enormously time-consuming adventures as the Clinton
Administration's attempts to "restore democracy" in Haiti.
Active promotion of hemispheric trade through the proposed Free Trade Area
of the Americas (FTAA), an idea introduced in 1990 by the first President
Bush. This will lead the agenda at the Third Summit of the Americas in
Quebec City, Canada, in mid-April, where Bush will first meet most Latin
American leaders. The Clinton Administration supported the FTAA verbally,
but refused to spend real political capital on it. If the new administration
is serious, it will press immediately for "fast track" authority to bypass
the perpetual inaction of Washington.
Close cooperation with our nearest neighbors and top trading partners,
Canada and Mexico. The more problematic relationship traditionally has been
with the latter, though prospects have never been better than now under
Mexico's dynamic new president Vincente Fox.
Lifting the antiquated and counterproductive embargo on Cuba. A majority of
Americans now favor such a change; even 38 percent of Cuban-Americans in the
Miami area, according to a recent poll by Florida International University.
But here Bush may be hamstrung by domestic politics. At the same time,
Washington must keep an eye on Castro and his self-appointed anti-American
successor in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, both of whom
cultivate friends like Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
A critical reevaluation of the U.S. role in Colombia and of the hopelessly
failed U.S. "war on drugs." Suffering from this war in the States has been
nothing compared to its impact in Latin America, where the toll has been
tragic in the destruction of lives, democratic institutions, social fabric,
hope for the future and respect for the United States.
THE POWELL DOCTRINE
Will Colin Powell knock some sense into our foreign policy?
Powell must have noticed that the current large and war-oriented
U.S. aid package to Colombia flies in the face of his own famed doctrine:
clarity of objective, use of massive force, certainty of victory and exit
strategy, and public support. Clinton's ill-advised "Plan Colombia" will not
greatly reduce drug deliveries to the United States, but will get us
open-endedly involved militarily in Colombia's decades-old civil war. The
strategy does not seek to apply massive force. But when more of the 500
American advisers now down there are killed and the costs of further aid,
and the replenishing of expensive destroyed equipment, become clear,
Americans will become much more perturbed about our largely military
involvement.
Nowhere in the world are U.S. domestic and foreign affairs more
intertwined than in the drug war. As George Shultz, Milton Friedman and many
others have said, the war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse
itself, in the United States and abroad. The resolution of many conflicts in
Latin America, and hopes for political and economic development, depend in
large part upon removing the enormous corrupting profit motive from the
illegal production and sale of drugs. At an absolute minimum, we should
immediately end the arrogant and hypocritical congressionally mandated
annual "certification" of Latin American countries by which we judge how
well they are fighting our drug use problem.
The contrast between non-committal Clinton administration policies
and what we need was projected clearly in the latest senatorial election in
California, when Republican Tom Campbell thought creatively and demonstrated
political courage dealing with intractable foreign policy issues like the
drug war and Cuba. Democrat Dianne Feinstein was the epitome of a
Clintonesque conventional politician, and was overwhelming re-elected. The
lesson here for "politicians" may be "don't rock the boat," but for
diplomats with U.S. and regional interests in mind the lesson is to search
creatively for viable responses to tough problems.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
William Ratliff is a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
Institution. His latest book, with Edgardo Buscaglia, is "Law and Economics
in Developing Countries."
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