Special Issue: Drug Trafficking Research Update || After San Antonio

After San AntonioAuthor(s): Bruce Michael BagleySource: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 3, Special Issue:Drug Trafficking Research Update (Autumn, 1992), pp. 1-12Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/165922 .

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After San Antonio

Bruce Michael Bagley

INTRODUCTION

IN AN EFFORT TO extend and accelerate regional cooperation and coordination in the "War on Drugs" in the Western

Hemisphere, President George Bush hosted a widely- publicized, regional, anti-drug presidential summit in San Antonio (Texas) on 26-27 February 1992.1 This cumbrewas conceived as an expanded sequel to the first "Andean" drug summit held in Cartagena (Colombia) on 15 February 1990. In addition to the original four-country participants in Cartagena I - the United States, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia - Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico attended Cartagena II as well.2

This essay endeavors, first, to set the San Antonio summit in historical and policy context by briefly reviewing the Reagan and Bush Administrations' execution of the "war" on drugs. In this area, special attention is focused on the 1990 Andean summit and its subsequent impact on regional drug trafficking during the 1990-92 period. It then undertakes to identify and clarify the key points of consensus and conflict that emerged during the San Antonio summit. The concluding section advances some basic criteria or benchmarks to assess the relative success or failure of San Antonio in terms of effective-

Bruce Michael Bagley is Associate Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), University of Miami, and Director of the North- South Center Drug Trafficking Task Force. He is co-editor (with Adrian Bonilla y Alexei Paez) of ECONOMIA POLITICA DEL NARCOTRAFICO EN EL ECUADOR (Quito: FLACSO, 1991) and editor of CONTADORA AND THE DIPLOMACY OF PEACE IN CENTRAL AMERICA (Westview, 1987). He is the author of numerous articles on the Latin American drug traffic, Colombian foreign policy, and inter-American relations, and has recently published a monograph on "Myths of Militarization: The Role of the Military in the War on Drugs in the Americas" (Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center, 1991).

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ness of drug control efforts in the Hemisphere over the next two to four years.

FROM REAGAN TO BUSH: AN OVERVIEW OF US DRUG CONTROL POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA (1981-1991)

ONFRONTED WITH RISING domestic pressure to do something about the burgeoning US drug "epidemic"

during his first year in office, in 1982 President Ronald Reagan dramatically declared "war" on drugs and unveiled his administration's plans to launch a "full-scale" attack against drug abuse and dealing at home, and against production, processing, and trafficking abroad. Strongly backing Reagan's proclamation of "war," bipartisan mjorities in the US Congress, in 1982 and thereafter, enthusiastically enacted tougher domestic anti-drug legislation, expanded federal drug enforcement bud- gets, widened the role of the US military in drug control efforts both at home and abroad, stepped up interdiction programs at the US borders and overseas, and increased levels of US assistance to Latin American and Caribbean source and transit countries, as requested by the Reagan administration.

Washington's progressively "tougher" anti-drug campaign in the 1980s was paralleled by intensifying US diplo- matic pressures and economic sanctions against Latin Ameri- can and Caribbean governments judged to be less than "fully" cooperative with the US-sponsored war on drugs. As result of this rapid escalation in the mid and late 1980s, US authorities could legitimately claim some victories had been won in the anti-drug fight. Federal cocaine seizures, for example, rose from just 2 tons in 1981 to 27 tons in 1986 and to almost 100 tons by 1989. Local and state agency confiscations in the United States also increased steadily over the decade. More- over, US foreign assistance programs clearly contributed to a substantial reduction in the flow of marijuana and heroin smuggled into the United States from Mexico during the early 1980s.



BAGLEY: AFTER SAN ANTONIO

Despite such certifiable advancement, however, overall the greatly expanded US drug control and interdiction efforts during the 1980s proved ineffective in stemming the explosive growth of drug consumption and trafficking in the United States. Alternative sources of supply and transshipment quickly emerged to meet rising US demand. The decline in Mexican marijuana production was, for example, quickly offset by a parallel boom in marijuana exports from Colombia, Belize, and Jamaica. Likewise, the "success" of the Reagan-sponsored South Florida Task Force's (a federal inter-agency coordinating body headed by then-Vice-President George Bush) mid-1980s interdiction campaign against marijuana and cocaine trafficking from Colombia through the Caribbean was offset by a resurgence of Mexican marijuana smuggling and the proliferation of alternate cocaine transportation routes through Central America and Mexico during the latter half of the decade.

In late 1988, frustrated by the manifest ineffectiveness of the Reagan administration's "supply-side" anti-drug strategy and tactics - and faced with increasingly shrill public demands for Washington to "do more" to curb the US drug problem in advance of the November congressional and presidential elections - the US Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. While this law continued to underwrite the Reagan administration's supply-side programs, which included expanded eradication and crop substitution, enhanced law enforcement, and intensified interdiction efforts in source countries, it also focused more explicitly on "demand-side" programs than previous US anti-drug legislation. In a highly symbolic move, 50% of the federal funding for fiscal year 1990 (FY 1990) was earmarked (out of a total federal drug budget of US$ 9.3773 billion) for domestic demand control and enforcement programs (versus the standard 30% of the Reagan years). This shift was not merely cosmetic nor simply a function of election year politicking. It reflected widespread disillusion- ment in the US Congress with the ineffective, but increasingly costly, supply-side anti-drug policies that had been pursued by the Reagan administration during its two terms in office. In short, the shift was driven by failure.

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The heightened priority assigned to demand-side measures in the 1988 law and the accompanying FY 1989 budgetary authorizations hinted that a conceptual transition away from Washington's traditional supply-side myopia might be underway when President Bush took office inJanuary 1989. Nonetheless, the transition was at best embryonic and tenta- tive. The new legislation did not abandon existing US supply- side programs abroad but, rather, expanded them while simultaneously opening a second front directed at reducing demand in the United States.

In practice, however, the Bush administration's budget proposals continued to emphasize controlling the supply through interdiction (70%) over reducing the demand (only 30%). Given the substantial increases for all aspects of the war on drugs during the Bush presidency, however, the total funding allocated to demand-side programs by the US government rose substantially. The bulk of the increased federal resources for demand reduction during Bush's first term was dedicated primarily to domestic interdiction and law enforcement (70%), rather than to programs for prevention, education and treatment (30%).

MILITARIZATION OF THE WAR ON DRUGS AND THE ANDEAN STRATEGY

DESPITE HIGH-LEVEL Pentagon resistance to broadening the US military's role in the escalating war on drugs

observable during the Reagan presidency, on 19 September 1989, Bush's new Secretary of Defense, former Congressman Richard Cheney (R-Wyoming), publicly proclaimed that de- tecting and countering the production and trafficking of illegal drugs was a "high-priority, national security mission" for the Pentagon. In effect, this dramatic policy statement presaged the Bush administration's rapid expansion of the US military's involvement in drug control efforts at US borders and abroad. The same policy logic also led the Bush administration to step up US pressures on Latin American governments to expand the participation of their armed forces in the fight against drug



BAGLEY: AFIER SAN ANTONIO

production and trafficking region-wide. Between FY 1989 and FY 1990, funding for the US military's anti-drug activities almost doubled, rising to US$ 450 million. By FY 1992, it had reached US$ 1.2 billion.

The Bush administration's inclination to militarize the war on drugs in Latin America was reflected in the rapid expansion of drug-related military aid to cocaine-producing nations: from some US$ 5 million in 1988 to US$ 150 million in 1991. It was also underscored by Washington's 1989 decision to construct Vietnam-style fire-bases for operations of the US Drug Enforce- ment Administration (DEA) in Peru's Alto Huallaga valley; in Drug Czar William Bennet's statements that US Special Forces might be sent to the Andean coca-producing countries if requested; in the deployment of sophisticated US surveillance satellites over Mexican territory without Mexican authoriza- tion; in the administration's expressions of US support for the creation of an international strike force despite objections from virtually all Latin American leaders; and in its emphasis on military aid in the highly publicized "Andean Strategy" to combat cocaine trafficking, announced in September 1989.

The first phase of Bush's Andean strategy (the US$ 65 million aid package sent to Colombia in late September 1989 to support President Virgilio Barco's August 18 declaration of "total war" against Colombia's drug cartels) provided mostly conventional military arms, even though the Barco government had requested mainly police equipment, electronic intelligence-gathering devices, and technical assistance for Colombia's debilitated judicial system. The second phase (the FY 1990 budgetary request for US$ 261 million in anti-drug assistance programs for Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia) funded Andean military and police activities almost exclusively. Presi- dent Bush's unilateral decision (20 December 1989) to send US troops into Panama to topple the Noriega government and bring him to the United States for trial on drug trafficking and money-laundering charges similarly highlighted his inclination to use US military power to prosecute the war on drug trafficking in the Hemisphere.

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THE ANDEAN SUMMIT

O DEFUSE THE WIDESPREAD, albeit relatively short- lived, condemnations of the US military intervention in

Panama voiced by most Latin American governments in January 1990, the Bush administration proclaimed its commit- ment to greater multilateral regional cooperation on drug control issues in the Hemisphere. To dramatize this commit- ment, President Bush reaffirmed his promise to attend the upcoming "Andean Drug Summit," in Cartagena (15 February) despite extensive media speculation regarding the potential security risks posed by Colombia's narcoterrorists and statements from Peru's Alan Garcia that he would boycott the meeting to protest the US "occupation" of Panama.

To persuade Garcia to reconsider, President Bush announced that US forces would begin a phased withdrawal from Panama prior to the Andean summit. To soften regional criticism of the US Andean Strategy's excessive emphasis on

military tactics, the Bush administration publicized its plans to deliver US$ 2.2 billion in economic development funds to the Andean nations to ease their passage though a 1991-1995 "transition period" in which they would move away from coca cultivation and trafficking. Finally, to ensure a closing communique acceptable to the Andean presidents, in the weeks prior to the summit US and Andean negotiators pains- takingly hammered out a compromise document that signifi- cantly modified the original US proposals regarding the role of the Andean militaries in drug control operations and acceded to Andean demands that the United States give a higher priority to reducing its demand for drugs at home.

At the Cartagena I summit itself, President Bush did not publicly press the Andean leaders on the sensitive issues of foreign and domestic military involvement in their countries' anti-drug campaigns. Moreover, he explicitly recognized that US consumption was a key factor fueling the Hemispheric drug trade, which had to be controlled, and he publicly pledged that his administration would step up demand-reduction programs in the United States. In short, President Bush went to consid-




erable lengths, both before and during Cartagena I, to reassure the regional leaders that Washington sought cooperation, not conflict; that it was aware of the economic and social costs of Andean anti-drug efforts; and that it would provide not only police and military assistance, but also development aid to help ameliorate the disruptive effects of suppressing the cocaine trade in the Andes.

Within weeks, however, the cordiality and cooperative spirit projected during the summit began to fade. The Colom- bians, for example, were deeply offended by the US Navy's seizure of two Colombian freighters (March 1990) within the country's 200-mile maritime boundary without previous con- sultation. They also expressed resentment regarding the Bush administration's failure to heed its promise to help make up for the income lost by Colombia owing to the US-driven dissolu- tion of the International Coffee Agreement in mid-1989 and its decision to invoke additional countervailing duties on Colom- bian cut-flower exports. In July 1989, Colombia's president- elect, Cesar Gaviria, had sharply criticized Washington's protectionist trade policies vis-a-vis the Andean nations and pointed out that his country wanted expanded "trade, not aid" to underwrite its war against drug trafficking.

In August 1990, President Jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia protested bitterly that Washington's "Andean Strategy" aid for his country was inadequate and misguided. It was inadequate because the US$ 80-90 million promised was insufficient to promote alternative economic development opportunities for Bolivia's 150-200,000 peasant coca farmers. Paz Zamora set his country's needs at closer to US$ 1 billion annually. It was misguided because US assistance was conditioned on his acceptance of an expanded role for the Bolivian armed forces in the drug fight. In his view, expanded military involvement could pose serious dangers to democratic stability. President Alberto Fujimori of Peru also decried Washington's aid pro- gram for his nation on similar grounds: it overemphasized military repression and short-changed development assistance. Although both Paz (in FY 1990) and Fujimori (in FY 1991) ultimately acceded to Washington's "conditionality,"

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resentments and frictions concerning the insufficiency of development aid seriously constrained subsequent implemen- tation of anti-drug programs in both countries.

The effectiveness of US drug-control assistance in all three Andean countries was also undercut by the deep-seated, drug- related corruption that permeates their national political insti- tutions, including military and police forces. US military aid and training may have brought about some marginal improvement in the performance of the various Andean military and police forces involved in anti-drug operations, but, absent funda- mental economic, social, and political reforms within these countries, they have not engendered meaningful increases in the Andean governments' will or ability to control drug production, processing, and trafficking within either their respective national territories or the region as a whole. Indeed, realistic assessments of the situation suggest that the cost-effectiveness of US military assistance programs in the Andean region will be very low.

In light of the higher priority that the Andean armed forces have traditionally accorded to the preservation of internal order and suppression of "communist" or revolutionary insur- gencies, the likelihood that they will dedicate significant portions of their limited resources or manpower to drug control efforts is very small for the foreseeable future. In fact, US military aid is far more likely to be used to combat rebel forces than drug traffickers. In the process, there is a real danger of heightened human rights abuses by the armed forces of the region (e.g. Peru) and of military threats to civilian authority and democratic political stability.

THE SAN ANTONIO SUMMIT

HE DRAFT PROPOSAL distributed by the Bush administration in January 1992 to the Latin American governments

invited to the San Antonio summit contained no major shifts in the basic premises or priorities underlying Washington's approach to regional drug control.3 Of the 30 points put forward




in the US draft, 14, or just under half, dealt with questions of interdiction and law enforcement, 9 focused on alternative development issues, 4 on demand reduction, and only 2 on multilateral cooperation. Overall, the document strongly suggested that the US administration intended to press its Latin American counterparts at the San Antonio meeting to re-affirm and intensify their individual and collective interdiction and law-enforcement activities.

The highest priority item on the US agenda was a recommendation for the formal creation of regional mechanisms to coordinate anti-drug policy. Two specific bodies were suggested: a Regional Examination Conference and a Regional Action Group. Both were to meet regularly every six months. Cartagena I had endorsed the idea of regular evaluations but failed to activate a workable system.

It is probable that the Latin Americans will agree to the formation of a new regional anti-drug coordinating body. They will, however, most certainly insist on the need for less unilateralism, or more multilateral mechanisms. It is also quite likely that some (e.g. Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador) will seek increased economic and development aid from Washington. Most, if not all, will also push for expanded access to US markets for their exports and for greater equity and reciprocity during the transition to free trade agreements (especially in areas like intellectual property, textiles, and agricultural quo- tas).

Due to the current US recession, surging protectionist sentiments in the US Congress, and the exigencies of the US presidential campaign, President Bush will find it difficult to respond to these demands satisfactorily, for the potential for heightened friction and recriminations is considerable. The Latin American leaders should also be expected to highlight the necessity for further reduction of consumption in the United States. They may well seek to link their progress on the supply- side to corresponding US progress on the demand-side.

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ASSESSING SUCCESS AND FAILURE

HE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S attempts to elicit fuller and more effective cooperation from the Latin American gov-

ernments after Cartagena I were largely unsuccessful. US strategies and tactics will have to be redirected and the overall strategy must seek a better balance between demand and supply side priorities. Washington's tactics must move away from unilateral pressures and sanctions to multilateral cooperation.

The basic reason for his disappointing failure is that the drug trade in the Americas epitomizes the type of issue (environmental problems are another) that simply cannot be resolved through unilateral or bilateral approaches alone. Indeed, rather than curtailing regional drug trafficking in the 1980s and early 1990s, US unilateral, supply-side policies often exacerbated drug-related violence and instability and under- mined multilateral cooperation on drug control issues.

To reverse the counter-productive aspects of past policies and develop more promising drug control efforts in the region, the potential pay-offs from a shift to multilateralism could be substantial. Such a shift would signal to the Latin American and Caribbean governments that their interests and needs will be taken into account. It would pave the way for the adoption of more rational and equitable formulas for cost-sharing and resource allocation in regional drug control programs. It would provide a mechanism for attracting and distributing support from extra-Hemispheric governments (e.g. the Europeans and Japanese). Finally, it would allow for the design and implemen- tation of more consensual, and thus workable, drug control efforts in the Hemisphere.

There are, of course, limits to effective national and regional action in this issue area, whether such actions are undertaken unilaterally or collectively. It is unrealistic to expect, for example, that the Hemisphere drug trade will be curbed in the short or even medium-term, no matter what approach, or combination of approaches, are adopted. On the demand side, consumption reduction will unquestionably be a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process under even




the most optimistic scenario. On the supply side, given that even such advanced capitalist-country governments as the United States or Italy have proven unable to eliminate orga- nized crime in their societies, despite repeated attempts to do so over the 20th century, the less developed and institutional- ized nation-states of Latin America and the Caribbean cannot realistically be expected to do so, especially against the immensely wealthy and well-armed international drug trafficking rings they presently face.

"Progress" in the realm of drug control need not imply complete fulfillment of utopian goals such as total victory or a "drug-free" society. Measurable movement toward the more modest and feasible objectives of effective containment and gradual reversal of the negative economic, social, and political ramifications of drug trafficking and consumption in the region would certainly constitute real "progress." From this perspec- tive, rather than evaluating the effectiveness of Cartagena II in terms of its ability to "win" the "war on drugs" or to "end" the region's drug "scourge" once and for all, the criteria should be more pragmatic and realistic. Incremental progress constitutes a more realistic scale against which to measure the effectiveness of drug control efforts in the Western Hemisphere.

First, will Cartagena II allow political leaders in the Hemisphere to move away from the counterproductive cycles of rhetorical denunciations and periodic tensions that charac- terized US-Latin American narcodiplomacy during the 1980s? Second, will it contribute to the development of the policy coordination mechanisms necessary to address the Hemisphere's multi-faceted drug problems seriously? Third, will the US government - still the regional hegemon - prove willing and able to mobilize the leadership and resources required to reduce US drug consumption and attendant violence, to reduce US-based money laundering, chemical exports, and arms trafficking? Fourth, will the Latin American and Caribbean governments in source and transit countries prove willing and able to strengthen their legal systems and law enforcement agencies, reduce their endemic institutional corruption, and lower their economic dependence on drug exports? Fifth, will

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the international community provide the levels of economic and technical assistance that the nation-states of Latin America and the Caribbean require to initiate and sustain economic and institutional reforms needed to control the powerful and corrosive effects of the region's illicit drug trade on their social and governmental structures?

If President Bush and his counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean make even modest progress in these five

areas, they will justifiably be able to claim that they have achieved

progress in the Hemisphere's war on drugs for they will at least have the foundation of a more functional, and effective, regional anti-drug regime. Conversely, setbacks in these areas would suggest failure in the Hemisphere's war on drugs.

NOTES

1. This summit was originally scheduled to be held in Miami (Florida) but was moved, at the request of the Bolivian and Mexican delegations, to San Antonio (Texas) in late January 1992 because of their fears of disruptive demonstrations by anti-Castro Cubans in that city.

2. US President Bush and Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora had represented their respective countries at Cartagena I and did so again at Cartagena II. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori had succeeded President Alan Garcia in July 1989 and thus had not attended Cartagena I. Neither Ecuador's Rodrigo Borja nor Mexico's Carlos Salinas de Gortari had been invited to the first conclave but did represent their nations at San Antonio. Venezuela's Carlos Andres Perez did not attend Cartagena I either, but he did receive an invitation to Cartagena II. After an attempted military coup nearly toppled his government early in February 1992, however, he decided not to attend personally but, rather, to send Foreign Minister Armando Duran to represent Venezuela.

3. In early January 1992, US Under-Secretary of State Robert Gelbart visited the six Latin American participants in Cartagena II and distributed US proposals for the summit's agenda, and a meeting to discuss the US proposals was held in Quito (Ecuador) the first week in February.



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Special Issue: Drug Trafficking Research Update || After San Antonio