Militarization of the U.S. Drug Control Program

By Peter Zirnite

At a time when fledgling civilian governments in Latin America are struggling to keep security forces in check, the U.S. has enlisted the region's militaries as its pivotal partners in international drug control. This militarization, which begins at the U.S.-Mexico border, is undermining recent trends toward greater democratization and respect for human rights, while doing little to stanch the flow of drugs into the United States.

Washington's militarization of its anti-drug efforts is the product of a U.S. drug-control strategy that historically has emphasized reducing the supply of illegal narcotics rather than addressing the demand for drugs. In 1971, three years after the first declared "war on drugs," President Richard Nixon took a crucial step toward militarization by proclaiming drug trafficking a national security threat. "Protecting the national security" has remained the rallying cry for providing more money and firepower to wage the war on drugs. Since the 1970s, U.S. spending on the drug war has risen from less than $1 billion to more than $16 billion annually.

In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan raised the curtain on a rapid expansion of U.S. anti-drug efforts, justifying the expansion, in part, by developing the narco-guerrilla theory by positing ties between the Colombian cartels and Cuba, leftist guerrillas in Colombia, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The purported guerrilla-drug link has been used to legitimize the Pentagon’s gradual shift in Latin America from the cold war against communism to the drug war against communist-linked guerrillas.

The National Defense Authorization Act of 1989 designated the Pentagon as the "single lead agency" for the detection and monitoring of illicit drug shipments into the United States. Soon after, President George Bush announced his Andean Initiative, to stop the cocaine trade at its source. This opened the door to a dramatic expansion of this role and to a significant infusion of U.S. assistance to police and military forces in the region.

U.S. policymakers view local militaries as the most capable and reliable allies in the war on drugs. Although counternarcotics operations are a law enforcement function reserved in most democracies for civilian police, the U.S. prefers to use military forces. When Washington does recruit police, it provides them with heavy arms and with training in combat tactics that are inappropriate to the role that police should pay in a civilian society.

The militarization of counternarcotics efforts in Latin America not only undermines efforts to promote human rights and democracy, it also threatens regional security. In Colombia, where the line between fighting drug trafficking and combating insurgents is blurred, Washington risks becoming mired in the hemisphere's longest-running guerrilla war, possibly widening that conflict into neighboring countries. In Mexico, U.S. helicopters supplied for anti-drug work were used to ferry troops to quell the rebellion in Chiapas. Such dangers are likely to be heightened regionwide by a disturbing trend—an increasing amount of U.S. aid is being provided under Pentagon programs that are exempt from civilian oversight and human rights legislation.

During the Clinton administration, the vast majority of the Pentagon's international drug spending has still gone to detection and monitoring operations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico transit zones. In late 1993, President Clinton shifted the emphasis of military operations, at least in terms of energy, if not spending, from interdicting cocaine as it moved through the transit zones into the U.S to dismantling the so-called "air bridge" that connects coca growers and coca paste manufacturers in Peru and Bolivia with Colombian refiners and distributors. As a result, drug traffickers quickly abandoned air routes in favor of the region's labyrinth of waterways.

Today, the bulk of Washington's international anti-narcotics spending goes to Latin America and the Caribbean, where thousands of U.S. troops are annually deployed in support of the drug war, operating ground-based radar, flying monitoring aircraft, providing operation and intelligence support, and training host-nation security forces.

Ironically, the decision to engage armed forces as its principal allies in the drug war has meant that the Pentagon is now providing counternarcotics assistance to militaries implicated in both human rights violations and drug-related corruption, including those in Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Despite this militarization and the massive funding for Washington's drug war, illegal drugs still flood the United States. In fact, illegal drugs are more readily available now, at a higher purity and lower cost, than they were when the drug war was launched.

That militarization of anti-drug efforts continues apace underscores a critical point: the Clinton administration lacks a broad, clearly defined strategy for strengthening civilian governments and reducing the role of the armed forces in the region. Given the problems and risks associated with Washington's militarization of its anti-narcotics programs in Latin America, the U.S. government should cease financial and political support for Latin American military involvement in drug control operations. But Washington lawmakers, fearful of being labeled "soft" on drugs, are moving in the wrong direction.

It is time that Washington recognize that its war on drugs has been a failure, at home and abroad. An alternative approach requires redefining drugs and drug policy in terms of public health rather than national security. Such a redefinition would focus on the domestic roots of the problem—consumer demand. Reducing demand for drugs requires greater attention to treatment, education, and prevention—all more cost effective, the research suggests, than law enforcement. A domestic-based strategy does not require abandoning all international efforts. The U.S. should put greater controls on money laundering, precursor chemicals, and firearms, as well as on development alternatives for the poor at both ends of the drug network—in the growing regions of Latin America, as well as the inner cities and border regions of the U.S..

Peter Zirnite is a Washington, DC-based free lance writer. His research for this brief was supported by the Washington Office on Latin America.