The Progressive Response
Volume 5, Number 39
November 21, 2001
The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)—a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.
Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) www.irc-online.org and co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
U.S. COLOMBIA POLICY: DRUGS AND TERRORISM
By Tom Barry
DOHA DREAMS
By John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center
II. Outside the U.S.
INDIA: THE NATURAL ALLY AND THE TACTICAL ALLY
By Ninan Koshy
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
U.S. COLOMBIA POLICY: DRUGS
AND TERRORISM
By Tom Barry
A new war--the "war against terrorism"--that the U.S. launched in response to the September 11 attacks now overshadows the other prolonged war in which the U.S. has officially been engaged since the 1970s: America's "War on Drugs." In its early years, the war against drug production, trafficking, and use was largely a metaphorical war. "Just Say No" was its call to battle. However, as drug flows increased and drug-related crime spread from the inner cities into America's heartland, the campaign against drugs became increasingly militarized.
On the U.S.-Mexico boundary, U.S. customs and border patrol officers armed themselves against drug runners and traffickers. Joining the new war on drugs in the borderlands, the U.S. military took charge of aerial surveillance and the U.S. National Guard established a military presence on the ground. South of the border, the Pentagon took on the drug war as part of its own mission. Initially, the U.S. government treated drug control mostly as a police and judicial effort, working mainly with national police and judiciaries in Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere throughout the hemisphere. Quickly, however, this police work was turned over to the armed forces, working in concert with U.S. military trainers and funded by U.S. military aid.
Today, America's war on drugs is much more than a metaphor. The U.S. is training and financially underwriting the armed forces in Latin American countries that produce and export illegal drugs, and U.S. military contractees and U.S. soldiers are involved (in training, logistical, and intelligence capacities) in wars against guerrilla forces in Colombia. More than seven of every ten dollars that goes to Colombia for drug control is earmarked for the country's security forces. Other declared U.S. foreign policy concerns, such as human rights, have been overshadowed by America's drug war. President Clinton, for example, invoked a "national security interest" waiver in his last year in office permitting U.S. military aid to Colombia despite the failure of the government to demonstrate improvements in human rights practices by the military.
It's too early to say how the new war on terrorism will affect the three-decade-long war on drugs. One clear danger, however, is that U.S. involvement in Colombia and the Andean region may be caught in a mixed metaphor--using the new language of the war on terrorism to bolster the failing war against illegal drugs.
The policy debate over the U.S. role in Colombia is already a messy one. That's because the executive branch has not been forthright about its deepening mission in the Andes--to what degree is U.S. involvement a drug war and to what degree are broader geopolitical and geoeconomic interests dictating escalating aid and intervention. Also complicating the policy debate is the sensitivity of skeptics or opponents of the current U.S. policies in the Andes to charges that they are soft on drugs. As a result, even some of those with strong reservations about the effectiveness of the drug war and about "mission creep" do not oppose new budget authorizations.
The lack of clarity about what really drives U.S. policy and how success will be measured make honest debate difficult. Peter Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international affairs, captured the fuzzy character of U.S. policy in Colombia in a recent press conference. When questioned by reporters about where U.S. policy was heading, he said: "I think we as a country are not quite sure where we're heading… I think there's a consensus that there's an important American interest, but there's not necessarily a consensus about what the right way to serve that interest is."
Skittish about criticisms of "mission creep," the Bush administration has carefully avoided defining its policies and programs in the Andes in the traditional language of geopolitics and geoeconomics. That's odd, because the Andes is a region--with Colombia at its center--that is beset with the kind of geopolitical and geoeconomic concerns that have previously guided U.S. interventionist policy in Latin America. A strong case could be made that drug-related and political violence in Colombia do threaten vital U.S. interests by endangering the political and economic stability in a region so close to home. The U.S. administration has stayed even farther away from articulating a nation-building argument for the U.S. presence--although that is exactly what some observers say the U.S. is doing with its programs to "professionalize" the security forces and strengthen the judiciary. Keeping to safer ground, the Bush administration has honed the official position that its aid packages are focused exclusively on stopping drug flows. However, the designation of the two leftwing guerrilla armies and the main rightwing paramilitary force as "terrorist" organizations now figure into the administration's appeals for continuing congressional and public support for its policy in the Andes.
Mounting an effective opposition to Plan Colombia and the new Andean Regional Initiative has proved difficult--not only because U.S. policy is so ambiguous but also because there are no good models for an alternative policy approach. Nongovernmental advocacy organizations and the religious community--both of whom are closely connected to civil society organizations in the region--have successfully raised concerns about human rights abuses, environmental side-effects, and the fundamental failure of the drug war to halt drug exports to meet illegal U.S. demand. They have also played an important role in keeping the U.S. committed, at least rhetorically, to peace negotiations.
But policymakers who acknowledge the flaws and negative impacts of the current U.S. policy ask: what is the alternative? Clearly, the government cannot let illegal drug flows unimpeded into the United States. Moreover, can the U.S. government abandon Colombia and Colombians to the drug-related and political violence that threatens to destabilize a region so close to our own country? Without good answers to these questions, the focus of critics and skeptics has been to address the worst side-effects and shortcomings of U.S. policies--such as human rights abuses by the security forces, failure to vigorously condemn the rightwing paramilitary units, the human and environmental impacts of coca eradication programs, and, to some degree, the displacement of peasant farmers. To a limited extent, the U.S. government has addressed these critiques, and in its recent regional aid program has increased the soft side of its involvement--with new commitments to democracy strengthening, civil society assistance, and alternative development. But the military aid and training continue to be a major thrust of U.S. policy in the Andes, and the blood and drugs continue to flow.
Advancing an alternative policy in the Andes is no easy political task. At a minimum, it means declaring the war on drugs a failure and then persuading the public and policy community that demand-oriented approaches must be the centerpiece of a new drug policy. Such a policy must accept that use of narcotics and mind-altering drugs will always be with us. "Just Say No" programs have a place in drug education and prevention strategies, but these need to be complemented with a major new commitment to harm-reduction and treatment programs. Most observers now readily admit that the drug problem is mainly a demand rather than a supply problem. However, a serious demand-based strategy requires more than new demand-reduction and treatment programs. Decriminalization the personal use of illegal drugs--along with the necessary regulatory programs--is an essential part of the solution to the violence and corruption resulting from the high profits and costs that now characterize the international market in illegal drugs. Given prevailing public opinion and the current policy environment, serious consideration of drug decriminalization is considered a nonstarter inside the Beltway.
Recently, there have been signs that the public--seeing the failure of the drug war--is ready to consider proposals to decriminalize the personal use of drugs, especially when closely combined with education, harm-reduction, and medical treatment programs. Ending the war on drugs by eliminating the high profit margins of drug trafficking would go a long way to addressing the violence in Colombia and elsewhere in the Americas.
Even if the drug war were to succeed in stopping drug production and trafficking in Colombia, the U.S. government and foreign policy advocates would still face a crisis in the Andes that the U.S. must address as a hemispheric leader. Widespread political violence in Colombia did not start with drugs, and will not end with their elimination. Any alternative policy agenda must consider solutions to this persistent political violence and to related political problems resulting from the elite control of governance in Colombia. If political stability and broad economic progress are U.S. goals, then the U.S. must be prepared to commit itself to development solutions that directly address rural impoverishment and marginalization while narrowing the stark income-distribution disparities endemic to the region. Today's challenge is not unlike the political-economic ones unsuccessfully faced by the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s. Clearly, the development proposals favored by most governments in the hemisphere--mainly increased economic integration and trade preferences--are inadequate. But neither do policy reformers have a well-developed development agenda capable of attracting public and policy support.
At least to some extent, U.S. policy in the Andean region is a typical case of policy inertia--in which administration officials and lawmakers are parroting the political jargon that's in their briefing books. To some extent, they believe that this is a policy about drugs or that it will eventually work. Although many policymakers question the effectiveness of the drug war, they reluctantly approve new drug war budgets for lack of alternative strategies. Recently, even pro-aid congressional members have conceded that the government's "source-country" control strategy is not working as promised. The question before the American public and policymakers is just how long they will tolerate this policy inertia.
Colombia is a policy conundrum. There are no clear answers, but it's past time for an honest and thorough policy debate.
(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is codirector of the Global Affairs Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center.)
(Editor's Note: From the beginning, the Bush administration warned that its war against terrorism wouldn't be restricted to Afghanistan. With the Taliban fleeing, and the manhunt for Osama bin Laden intensifying, the administration is laying the groundwork for phase two of a war that may span the globe. The administration's right-wing undersecretary for arms control, John Bolton, singled out Iraq and a few other countries as sponsoring germ warfare programs at an international conference on biological weapons, while the DOD's Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Rice also signaled that Iraq's Saddam Hussein may be the next U.S. target. As part of our new series of Frequently Asked Questions, FPIF editors raise concerns about this possible new target of the war on terrorism. For other FAQs, see http://www.fpif.org/faq/index.html.)
Will
Iraq Be the Next Target of the War on Terrorism?
There has been some pressure by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and others within the administration for a dramatic escalation in the ongoing air strikes against Iraq--and perhaps even a full-scale invasion to topple the government of Saddam Hussein. Despite leaks to the media about alleged evidence of contact between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the hijackers of the doomed airplanes, U.S. officials from Vice-President Cheney on down have consistently stated that there is no indication of any official Iraqi connection to the events of September 11. British and Israeli officials have reaffirmed that same position in recent days. Given the history of the decidedly secular Baathist regime's savage suppression of Islamists within Iraq, close links between Baghdad and bin Laden and his followers are extremely unlikely. State Department allegations of Iraq's "support for terrorism" have largely been limited to links between secular and mostly inactive Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and attacks on Iraqi dissidents abroad.
The deliberate spread of the deadly anthrax virus by unknown persons has led to speculation that Iraq could somehow be connected with these attacks. The United States exported the initial anthrax spores to Iraq during the 1980s as part of an approved, legal trade deal. Since that time, successive U.S. governments have expressed concerns that Iraq may be developing biological weapons. Unlike Iraq's chemical and nuclear potential, which was destroyed during the Gulf War and the subsequent inspections regime, biological weapons development is difficult to detect. There are conflicting reports regarding the level of sophistication necessary to process the anthrax, which was first detected in early October, but there is as yet no evidence to suggest that it has come from Iraq or any other foreign government.
Other FPIF analysis on Iraq:
Open-Ended War
By Michael Klare (October 9, 2001)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0110war.html
Why the U.S. Did Not Overthrow Saddam Hussein
By Stephen Zunes (November 2001)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111gulfwar.html
The Gulf War: Eight Myths
Stephen Zunes
http://www.fpif.org/papers/8myths/index.html
DOHA DREAMS
By John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111dohaconc.html.)
Desperate to prevent a repeat of the Seattle debacle two years ago, while also eager to show unity in the face of the September 11 attacks, the U.S., the European Union (EU), and the WTO Secretariat cobbled together an awkward agenda for the next two years of discussions and negotiations under the auspices of the WTO.
The "Doha Development Agenda," which resulted from the recent WTO ministerial meetings in the port city of Doha in Qatar, provides a "work program" for the WTO and its various working groups and committees until the next ministerial meeting in 2003. The Doha agenda is probably the last gasp for effective efforts by the so-called Quad (Canada, U.S., EU, and Japan) to dominate trade talks. This time the developing countries, and India in particular, fought harder than ever before. Next time China will be a full member of the WTO, and it might become even harder for the Quad to engage in its backroom deals and arm-twisting.
Some pro-liberalization media, such as the Economist, insist upon trumpeting Doha as a new round. If it is, it's not like any other. Previous trade rounds began with a clear set of inter-related issues and with a more or less clear set of objectives with regard to negotiating on those issues (namely, reducing barriers to trade, harmonizing technical standards, etc.). In contrast, there is no explicit linkage between issues in the Doha agenda--issues are moving on parallel tracks. Second, many of the decisions involve tweaking the agendas of ongoing agendas, such as agriculture and services, rather than launching into whole new areas of negotiations. Third, in many of the issue areas, there is a distinct lack of consensus with regard to the goals of the negotiations. In the statement on agriculture for example, the declaration commits to comprehensive negotiations on improving market access, reductions of export subsidies and cuts in trade-distorting domestic support programs, but all "without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations."
Negotiations on the relationship between WTO rules and multilateral environmental agreements and other trade-environment issues are also qualified as "without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations." The four new issues--investment, competition policy, government procurement, and trade facilitation--are scheduled to be a focus of a new round to be launched at the fifth ministerial in 2003, but only with a "written consensus" from member countries. These qualifiers indicate that Doha has just passed the buck on the most contentious and controversial issues to future negotiations. The Doha agenda is not an agenda of neoliberalism triumphant.
Despite its name, the Doha Development Agenda does not foreground the demands of the developing countries--with the partial and limited exception of a stronger statement on the primacy of public health over patents for medicines. Developing countries had hoped to get stronger commitments on what they identify as "implementation issues." These include anything to do with the developing countries' commitments under the WTO to date: assessing the costs of liberalization on their economies, obtaining financial resources for covering the costs of complying with existing and future WTO provisions, as well as holding the OECD countries accountable for all of their commitments on market access in textiles and cuts in agricultural subsidies.
The failure of the Doha agenda to seriously address developing country concerns may create new opportunities for other fora, such as the meetings on UN Financing for Development and the Rio +10 meeting scheduled for next year, to provide spaces for new thinking on trade and development issues. Civil society groups, in a statement released at Doha, have targeted those summits as targets for initiating a "process that would lead to proper regulation of the global economy." The tactical alliance that emerged between civil society groups and developing countries over the TRIPs issues was a positive development that might be transferable to other issue areas.
In short, Doha "succeeded" by conventional measures if the metric is simply having a declaration that everyone signed, irrespective of the internal contradictions and qualifications within it. Doha largely failed to address effectively the ongoing development concerns of developing countries and failed to resolve the WTO's crisis of legitimacy that dates to the 1999 Seattle Ministerial. Doha's dreams may yet prove inadequate to the challenges the WTO faces.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is the co-director of the Global Affairs program of the Interhemispheric Resource center and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
II. Outside the U.S.
(Editor's Note: FPIF has a new component called "Outside the U.S.," which aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html.)
INDIA: THE NATURAL ALLY AND
THE TACTICAL ALLY
By Ninan Koshy
In the vaguely defined international coalition in the "war against terrorism" India and Pakistan occupy perhaps the most uncomfortable positions. Pakistan was an ally of the United States during the cold war, and India, a significant leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, was seen as an obstacle to U.S. goals and objectives. Throughout the 1990s U.S. relations with India warmed, while they cooled with Pakistan. Prior to September 11, Pakistan, an authoritarian regime, was one of three countries to recognize the Taliban, and its intelligence services had close ties to the Taliban. India, on the other hand, was a democracy, and had ties to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. By warming up to Pakistan in the aftermath of the attacks, the U.S. has reversed the tilt toward India for which it had assiduously worked for some three years, favoring its "tactical ally" (Pakistan) over its "natural ally" (India). The Indian government appears, however, to be sacrificing its traditions of non-alignment and support for international law in order to rebuild an alliance with the United States.
The Indian government appears to have been quite pleased when a senior U.S. official called India the U.S.'s "natural ally" on the eve of Indian Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee's visit to the U.S., echoing the sentimental phrase first coined by India itself. However it was disappointed that there was no specific reference to cross-border terrorism in Kashmir (read from Pakistan) in the joint statement issued on November 10th following the first ever summit between President George W. Bush and the Prime Minister. The Indian prime minister offered unsolicited and unlimited cooperation with U.S. military operations in the war against terrorism even though large numbers of Indians opposed such cooperation.
The Indian government's official position is that India has long been involved in fighting terrorism, especially of the Osama bin Laden variety, via Pakistan. For some time now India has been trying to convince the U.S. that the major continuing terrorist threat to both the U.S. and India emanates from the same or closely related sources--namely Islamist terrorism in Southwestern and Central Asia. In the official Indian view, the result of the September 11 attacks is that the U.S. has joined India in the struggle against terrorism, not the other way around. Indirectly endorsing Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis as he has done on several occasions, Prime Minister Vajpayee told the United Nations General Assembly on November 10th, "We in India know from our own bitter experience that terrorists develop global networks driven by religious extremism." Vajpayee was essentially repeating what he had told the U.S. Congress last year about religious wars: "In our neighborhood in this twenty-first century, religious war has not been fashioned into, it has been pushed to be an instrument of state policy." India seems to claim the copyright for the mission statement on terrorism.
In the context of the war in Afghanistan, the hostility between India and Pakistan will be played out on three main fronts. One of course is Kashmir. The obsession of both governments with the militancy in Kashmir hides the fact that the Kashmir problem is basically one of democracy and human rights, and has a history that pre-dates the emergence of the armed insurgency against Indian rule in 1989. The hostility between India and Pakistan has increased since September 11 and saber rattling has reached new levels on both sides. Both use the same jargon to describe their military postures: "highest alert" and "readiness to meet any eventuality." While India is keen to get cross-border terrorism in Kashmir on the international agenda, it still argues against "internationalizing the Kashmir problem"--i.e., holding international discussions on the demands for self-determination on the part of Muslims living in Kashmir. Meanwhile, Pakistan calls guerillas in Kashmir freedom fighters and accuses India of state terrorism. There is no movement in the debate as it repeats the classic refrain relating terrorism and political violence: "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter."
Another front is Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Pakistan is worried that Israel is now increasing intelligence and military cooperation with India. Interestingly, India's Defense Minister George Fernandes has given a "safety certificate" for Pakistan's nuclear weapons saying that those in charge are all responsible people. Until recently, Indian officials had hinted that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were not safe.
Finally, the rivalry between the two countries also will come to the fore in the hard negotiations regarding post-Taliban Afghanistan whenever that emerges. Pakistan is keen to exclude India from the negotiations and points out that India is not among the "Six Plus Two" established in 1997 to support UN peace efforts. The forum includes six of Afghanistan's neighbors--China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--as well as Russia and China.
Pakistan is concerned about India's relationship with the Northern Alliance, as it fears it will be used as a proxy to promote India's interests in Afghanistan. India has actively supported the Alliance for the past few years, along with Iran and Russia. Although the Indian government firmly denies allegations that its army officials joined the U.S. army in aiding the Northern Alliance, its senior officials have visited the area several times. It is a safe guess that any intelligence gathered from these trips has been shared with the U.S. military following the September 11 attacks. While India's role in the present war is obviously limited, the Bush administration is keen to have a long-term military alliance with India. The Indian government, while refusing to use the term "military alliance," concedes that there are proposals on a "new strategic framework" and "expanded defense cooperation."
Pakistan's predicament is understandable. It had no choice but to join America's war. Otherwise it would have been indicted along with the Taliban. But India's case was different. It could have supported efforts to bring the perpetrators of the September 11 terror to justice under a framework of international law. But it was absolutely unnecessary for India to have offered unconditional support to the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan. In keeping with its tradition and on the basis of a careful assessment of the situation, it had a responsibility to give leadership to nations and peoples who wanted to avert this catastrophic war. It had a chance to stand up for peace and it blew it.
(Ninan Koshy <knkoshy@vsnl.com>, an Indian analyst, is the former director of International Affairs, World Council of Churches and visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School.)
III. Letters and Comments
I believe the U.S. has a history of jumping into bed with whomever we feel we can use, and our Allies are left without support when we up and leave. We are not a good nation to be an ally with and have not been since WWII. When we are through in Afghanistan, we will walk away and leave them in chaos; it is our national policy nature. This is sad, but true, and while we want to focus on "highjinks" of past presidents, where is the accountability of the Bush administration. I much prefer Clinton's dirty little sexcapades to what the current administration is doing, both at home and abroad. Where are you now, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, who will speak for us, the American people?
- Dave Pruett
"Asking Why" (at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0109why.html) is a most interesting article and probably 40% on target as to the real reason for the attack on New York, but I hold the opinion that the never-ending support by the USA of Israel in spite of their blatant disregard for the UN resolutions and their continued occupation of all lands adjacent to their designated territory, coupled with the constant USA veto of any UN attempt to get Israel to withdraw and curb the building of Jewish settlements on forcefully occupied Arab land is the root cause for the attack on the USA. Regarding the undemocratic Arab states, I have never seen or heard of any dissent from Arab people that they are dissatisfied with the system they live under apart from the Taliban system. Most people in the oil-producing countries enjoy a better education and health system than we do ourselves. Pity that Israel has the USA by the short and curlies.
- Alan Currie <alancurrie@lineone.net>
I was trying to find out more about the reasons behind the terrorist attacks for a class debate in college, and nowhere explained it to me better than "Asking Why" by Michael Klare (at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0109why.html) ! Straight-forward, easy to understand, and very thought provoking. And no biased slant either. Well done and thanks a lot. Keep up the good work.
- Jennifer Menzies <jennifer.menzies@btinternet.com>
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