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Third World Quarterly
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WALTRA UD Q UEISER MORALES
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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
3 E C Ravenal, Never Again: learning from America's foreign policy failures, Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania: Temple University Press, 1978.
4 B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred Years War? US national security and the war on drugs in
Latin America', Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 30 (1) spring 1988, p 161. A
Washington Post/ABC news poll in May 1988 found that 26 per cent of the respondents ranked
drugs as the most important problem facing the USA today versus 8 per cent for the runner-up
issues of the economy and budget deficit; C C Lawrence and S Gettinger, 'Experts skeptical of
Congress' anti-drug effort', Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 46 (26) 25 June 1988,
p 1713. The article also argued that it was unclear whether there had been an actual increase in
drug use in the 1980s since statistics were so unreliable, or whether the matter was 'exaggerated
for partisan advantage'
148
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
revealed that 44 per cent of the voters ranked international drug traffick-
ing as an extremely serious threat, compared to 18 per cent for the
threat of Soviet military strength.5 Therefore, the question is whether
the drug war can serve as a new national security doctrine.
Entering into general usage only after 1947, the concept of 'national
security' has no agreed definitions. As the meaning (and practice) of
national security expanded with the rise of the national security state,
the military-industrial complex and the conservative establishment
confused traditional (and relatively narrow) national security interests
with 'national security ideology', the self-serving, often unexamined rhe-
toric and rationales that disguise militarism and discourage democratic
scrutiny in the name of national security. As former president Lyndon
Johnson once bragged: 'I can arouse a great mass of people with a very
simple kind of appeal. I can wrap the flag around this policy, and use
patriotism as a club to silence the critics.'6
'National security', as defined by defence specialists, first entails de-
fence in its narrowest concept-the protection of a nation's people and
territories from physical attack; and second, the more extensive concept
of the protection of political and economic interests considered essential
by those who exercise political power to the fundamental values and
the vitality of the state. In the last three decades, as US policy-makers
became increasingly involved in a more interdependent, chaotic and
threatening world, the concept became broader still, until foreign and
domestic policy almost completely overlapped. Thus 'national' security
became 'globalised' security encompassing not only real or alleged ex-
ternal military and defence concerns, but virtually unlimited interests
and 'threats' abroad. At home this unrealistically totalitarian concept
of national security encouraged elites to view internal dissent as yet
another threat to be suppressed, and to cloak ideologically all govern-
ment actions, even illegal ones, with the US flag. Often more insidious
internal threats to the national well-being, such as racism, poverty, in-
equality and political corruption, were dismissed in preference for bogus
or exaggerated external dangers.
This expanded concept and usage of national security supported
5 See Americans Talk Security, National Survey No 8, 'Public evaluation of Pentagon waste and
US foreign aid policies', September 1988, Martilla & Kiley, pp 12, 56.
6 Quoted in A A Jordan and W J Taylor, Jr, American National Security: policy and process,
Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, p 45.
149
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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
the rise of the 'national security state' (NSS).7 Ironically, the NSS, which
is the product of the modern, technological, communications age, has
had to rely more heavily upon secrecy precisely because of the com-
munications revolution that has made secrecy more difficult to achieve.
Moreover, despite and because of more stringent constitutional restric-
tions on war-making and intelligence operations, the NSS has created
a 'world of overt covert operations'. As a result, a credible national
security doctrine is especially essential to justify in moral terms to policy-
-makers and the public state actions which would be immoral if perpe-
trated by individuals.8
The concept of a 'national security doctrine' (NSD) has various mean-
ings. The US Department of Defense defines a doctrine as the 'funda-
mental principles by which the military forces or elements thereof guide
their actions in support of national objectives'. One critic interprets this
to mean that 'doctrine represents the basic precepts that determine how
US forces are armed, trained and organised for the conduct of military
operations': it forms the middle ground between a nation's broad geo-
political objectives and the basic, day to day principles of war.9 Another
By means of military assistance and training the USA also exported national security state
models abroad. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky described these as 'Third World fascist
clones, directly controlled by military elites whose ideology combines elements of Nazism with
pre-Enlightenment notions of hierarchy and "natural inequality".' These military elites interpret
any challenge to the status quo as communist subversion of the state. Saul Landau traced the
historical roots of the US national security state to US expansionism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, which aspired to world power after World War I and to the establishment,
protection and expansion of a global empire after World War II. This 'reason of state' doctrine
(fascist in the fundamental sense of the word) was institutionally protected by the National
Security Act of 1947 (then secret) and later decrees which 'placed the governance of critical
foreign and defense policies in the hands of new institutions: a national security apparatus run
by national security managers'. E S Herman, The Real Terror Network: terrorism in fact and
propaganda, Boston: South End Press, 1982, p 3; N Chomsky and E S Herman, The Washington
Connection and Third World Fascism, Boston: South End Press, 1979, pp 252-63; and S Landau,
The Dangerous Doctrine: national security and US foreign policy, Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1988, p 4.
8 For example, the 'overt-covert' war in Nicaragua has become impossible to hide from powerful
news media. Moreover, the 'operation is deliberately overt in order to put maximum pressure
on the Sandinistas', but it is also covert to 'avoid the constitutional processes of deliberation'
on war-making. The mammoth modern national security state has 'totally transformed the
relationship of the citizen and the state', by appropriating to one man and his small clique of
advisers the power of war and peace. Under the national security state and the reigning national
security doctrine, the President has unprecedented power 'to censor, to conduct surveillance on
US citizens, and to circumvent the will of Congress-all in the name of "national security".'
R J Barnet, 'Losing moral ground, the foundations of US foreign policy', Sojourners reprint No
492, pp 2-3. See also R 0 Curry (ed), Freedom at Risk: secrecy, censorship, and repression in the
1980s, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1988 (an excellent collection of
essays on the infringement of constitutional rights via national security).
9 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as quoted by Klare, 'The interventionist impulse: US military doctrine
for low-intensity warfare', in M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare, New York:
Pantheon Books, 1988, p 51.
150
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
National security doctrines: all for one and one for all
151
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Haig, focused on the struggle for scarce resources in the Third World
and asserted that 'resource wars' could threaten the vital national secur-
ity of the USA by denying access to strategic minerals. 12
In the 1980s the Reagan doctrine, which pledged support (short of
US combat forces) to anti-Soviet Third World 'freedom fighters' and
'friendly' anti-communist authoritarians, became preoccupied with Cen-
tral America, particularly El Salvador and Nicaragua. In order to imple-
ment this political objective, a new strategic military doctrine-like the
earlier military doctrines of containment, rollback, massive retaliation,
flexible response and counterinsurgency-was formulated, known as
the doctrine of low intensity conflict (LIC). In 1985 the Pentagon defined
low intensity conflict as 'a limited politico-military struggle to achieve
political, social, economic, or psychological objectives' which may use
protracted struggle, terrorism and insurgency. Despite its name, LIC
actually represents total and interventionary war, wherein victory
involves winning 'three battles-in the field, in the media, and in Wash-
ington within the administration'. 13
Recently, the war on drugs is emerging as a powerful new political
doctrine under the anti-communist ideology, the strategy of LIC and the
reassertion of covert action. Beginning with heroin, US intelligence
agents were instrumental in the establishment of the 'Golden Triangle'
supply system in Southeast Asia and the Marseilles 'French Connec-
tion', ostensibly in the interests of national security. Similarly the scan-
dals of the Australian bank, Nugan Hand Ltd, co-founded by a former
CIA operative and steeped in a trail of drugs and money laundering,
152
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
The geographic, economic and social dimensions of the drug trade are
enormous and growing, but the statistics which document this meteoric
rise are difficult to acquire, vary widely, and are often suspect. One
source, based on 1988 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) figures, esti-
mates 6 million habitual cocaine users and half a million heroin users
in the USA. It is believed that the wholesale value of all illegal drugs in
the USA may be $25 billion, and the retail value $150 billion. Worldwide
drug traffic may account for $300 billion, half of which is thought to
enter and remain in the USA.15 Major country suppliers are in Latin
America. In the absence of reliable repatriation studies, generally only
10 per cent of drug profits are thought to accrue to source or transit
countries. Colombia, the principal cocaine refiner (an estimated 75 per
cent), may have received $1-2 billion in foreign exchange from drug
profits (3 per cent of Colombia's GNP) in 1987. While no one really
knows how much the Medellin cartel earns, the value of cocaine and
marijuana exports probably exceeds $4 billion annually, of which less
than half may remain in the country. 16
In relation to the enormous profits, the US drug enforcement budget
remains woefully inadequate and there is much disagreement over how
14 J Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: a true tale of dope, dirty money, and the CIA, New York:
Touchstone, 1987, p 23; see special issue, 'The CIA and drugs', Covert Action Information Bulletin
28, summer 1987, pp 1-68; P Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1984, pp 63-168; and H Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: drugs, intelligence, and international
fascism, Boston: South End Press, 1980.
B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred Years War?'. Estimates vary widely; for example another
source cites that: the international drug trade is worth approximately $47 billion per annum;
there are an estimated 1.2 million addicts of illegal drugs in the USA, and US spending on drug
law enforcement increased from $800 million in fiscal 1981 to $2.5 billion in fiscal 1988. Foreign
Policy Association, A Citizen's Guide to US Foreign Policy: election '88, New York: Foreign
Policy Association, 1988, pp 57-58, 60.
6 R B Craig, 'Illicit Drug Traffic: implications for South America source countries', Journal of
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 29 (2) summer 1987, p 25; see also J G Tokatlian,
'National security and drugs: their impact on Colombia-US relations', Journal of Interamerican
Studies and World Affairs 30 (1) spring 1988, pp 146-159; B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred
Years War?', Journal of Interamerican Studies, pp 163-7.
153
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to distribute the monies. The 1988 Omnibus Drug Bill authorised over
$2 billion in new spending for anti-drug activities, but because of legis-
lated spending limits, only $500 million was appropriated in fiscal
1989.17 Of this, $101 million was authorised for international narcotics
control for fiscal 1989, providing $5.5 million for defence department
drug control training and weapons assistance.18 Members of Congress
have been frustrated with the Reagan administration's record in the
drug war. Two charges are common from legislative critics on both the
left and the right: preoccupation with communists, not drugs; and talk
about drugs, but little action. 19
In the light of the problem, how does the threat of international
narcotics relate to US national security and its new national security
doctrine? The answer lies in the pronouncements and the actions of
policy-makers since the drug war heated up between 1986 and 1988. On
7 The Omnibus Drug Bill or 1988 Anti-Drug Bill, PL 100-690 (HR 5210), signed into law by
President Reagan on 18 November 1988, established in the executive office of the president the new
Office of National Drug Control Policy headed by a cabinet-level director to coordinate national
drug control efforts; he could advise the National Security Council (Nsc) and attend NSC meet-
ings at the president's direction. President Bush appointed William Bennett as the first so-called
'drug czar'. The bill divided resources equally between drug-supply (interdiction and control)
and demand-reduction programmes (treatment, prevention and education). It also introduced
more stringent law-enforcement measures, such as the death penalty for major drug traffickers,
international banking and money-laundering restrictions, and regulation of the export of chem-
icals used in the manufacture of controlled substances. See 'Major provisions of the 1988 Anti-
Drug Bill', Congressional Quarterly, Weekly Report 46 (44) 29 October 1988, pp 3146-51.
18 The Bill 'waives, for purposes of the anti-narcotics program, a controversial 1975 law that bars
US aid to foreign police agencies. However, the waiver is allowed only for countries that have
democratic governments and for police agencies that do not engage in a "consistent pattern of
gross violations" of human rights'; it also earmarks $2 million for defence department anti-
narcotics training of foreign police forces and $3.5 million in military assistance, see '1988 Anti-
Drug Bill', Congressional Quarterly, ibid, p 3147. The Bush administration proposed $5.5 billion
in fiscal 1990 outlays for the anti-drug programme, a 21 per cent increase over comparable
fiscal 1989 programmes; total outlays proposed specifically for anti-drug enforcement are $3.9
billion, a 17 per cent increase over fiscal 1989; 'Budget', Congressional Quarterly 27 (6) 11
February 1989, p 252. For further background see US General Accounting Office 'Drug control:
issues surrounding increased use of the military in drug interdiction', April 1988, p 20; US
Department of State, 'International narcotics control strategy report', March 1988, Washington
DC: US Government Printing Office, p 20; US Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
'Role of the US military in narcotics control overseas', ninety-ninth congress, second session,
Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1986; and D C Morrison, 'The Pentagon's
Drug Wars', National Journal 18, 6 September 1986, pp 2104-9.
19 Senator John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts), chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcom-
mittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, said: 'despite all of the talk
about a war on drugs, there has not been a real war. Drugs have not been the priority that
public officials said they were'; and Congressman Charles B Rangel (Democrat-New York),
chairman of the House Narcotics Committee, complained that administration officials 'don't
want to talk about drugs. They want to talk about arms and communists and terrorists ...
Communists aren't killing our kids, drugs and drug traffickers are'; quoted in M Mills, 'Hill
members turn up pressure in war on drugs', Congressional Quarterly 46 (15) 9 April 1988,
p 944.
154
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155
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Rogue dictators
Bolivia
One of the first cases in which the drug war doctrine was employed in
the interests of US foreign policy was in 1980 against the drug mafia
government of General Luis Garcia Meza in Bolivia. The general's coup
against the elected Bolivian government of Siles Zuazo 'joined together
cocaine and National Security State thuggery and terror'.24 The 'drug
23 The strongmen included Omar Torrijos in Panama and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer. In 1972 the
brother of then Panamanian ruler General Omar Torrijos was indicted in New York for smuggl-
ing heroin, but was saved from arrest because of national security interests; J Kwitny, 'An
inquiry: money, drugs and the contras', The Nation 245 (5) 29 August 1987, pp 145, 162-6. In
Bolivia from 1971-78 the government of General Hugo Banzer became involved with notorious
drug lords in Santa Cruz Department; M Linklater, I Hilton and N Ascherson, The Nazi
Legacy, Klaus Barbie and the International Fascist Connection, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1984, pp 266-84.
24 E S Herman, The Real Terror Network, p 80.
156
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
25 For the notorious internationalist fascist connection between drugs and right-wing dictators in
Bolivia and Latin America see Linklater et al, The Nazi Legacy, especially pp 215-302; P
Lernoux, Cry of the People, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp 155-310; K Hermann, 'Klaus
Barbie's Bolivian coup', Covert Action Information Bulletin (25) winter 1986, pp 15-20; and R T
Naylor, Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, New York: The Linden Press/Simon Schuster,
1987, pp 165-85.
26 J Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: political struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1982, London: Verso,
1984, pp 292-344; E A Nadelmann, 'The DEA in Latin America: dealing with institutionalized
corruption', Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 29 (4) winter 1987/88, p 16.
27 This was the largest scale Pentagon participation in anti-drug operations to date and was the
model for future drug programmes in the region. Until 1982 the war on drugs was largely
rhetorical since the US military was prevented by law from participation, but in 1982 the law
was amended to allow Pentagon assistance and an April 1986 presidential directive sanctioned
direct military and intelligence participation; M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low-Intensity War-
fare, pp 72-3; J A Kawell, 'Going to the source', and 'Under the flag of law enforcement', in
NACLA Report on the Americas 22 (6) March 1989, especially pp 19, 26. Also see my fn 28 for
background sources.
28 P Lernoux, 'The US in Bolivia, playing golf while drugs flow', The Nation 248 (6) 13 February
1989, pp 188-92; and J McCoy, 'Cocaine business booms in Bolivia and Peru despite US
eradication efforts', Latinamerica Press 29 (20) 10 September 1987, pp 5-6.
29 R T Naylor, Hot Money, pp 173-74.
157
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Panama
In Panama's case the security implications of the drug war were more
developed. When former military strongman Omar Torrijos (master-
mind of the Panama Canal Treaties) died in a plane crash in 1981, US
relations became cosy with his successor and head of the Panamanian
Defence Forces, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had associa-
tions with the CIA, the DEA and the Southern Command (Southcom,
which housed over 14,000 US troops in Panama at fourteen US military
bases worth approximately $5 billion). After the Sandinista victory in
1979, Panama (like Honduras) became central in regional security plan-
ning. This gave General Noriega a special role to play in Washington's
drama. Noriega's long-term involvement with the Colombian drug
cartel, well-known to US embassy officials, the DEA, Southcom and the
CIA as early as 1983 or 1984 (and 'softer' information even earlier), did
not seem to be a problem.32 Rather the former chief of Southcom,
General Paul Gorman, insisted that Noriega 'was a major contributor
to American efforts to do something about narcotics trafficking'.33
Indeed, evidence indicates that Noriega's drug profiteering occurred
principally from 1980-84 and was then cut back. Noriega used the
black market network, whereby Torrijos had supplied arms first to the
Sandinistas in their struggle against Somoza and later to the Salvadoran
guerrillas, for his personal enrichment. At the height of these activities
in 1984 a cocaine processing factory in Panama's remote Darien Pro-
vince was raided. The opportunistic Noriega then concentrated on low-
30 J G Tokatlian, 'National security and drugs'; this observation was made about Colombia and
similar military actions in Mexico (Operation Intercept, 1969, and Operation Condor, 1975).
31 P Lernoux, 'The US in Bolivia', who also argues that the US Southern Command hopes 'to
establish a permanent military presence in South America for the first time since World War II';
and S Blixen, 'US, Latin America sign secret defense plan', National Catholic Reporter 16
December 1988, p 21.
32 Former US ambassador to Panama, Everett Ellis Briggs, stated that George Bush was briefed
of General Noriega's drug activities in December 1985 and then seemingly retracted this posi-
tion, while President Bush denied knowing of Noriega's drug involvement until his indictment
in February 1988; 'Bush denies being told of Noriega Drug Activities', New York Times 15
May 1988, p 11.
33 'A brewing storm: Panama's crisis in perspective', Central America Bulletin 7 (5) April 1988, pp
1-3, 6-7; quote on p 6.
158
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159
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41 'Prosecutor gets ready for Noriega', Orlando Sentinel, 16 March 1988, p A-1.
42 Thus Reagan proved he would negotiate with drug figures as well as terrorists. At the time
George Bush had vowed: 'I will never bargain with drug dealers on US or foreign soil'. See L
Lifschultz, 'Bush, drugs and Pakistan: inside the kingdom of heroin', The Nation 247 (14) 14
November 1988, p 1 (quote), and pp 492-6 for another arms-drugs-cIA pipeline to the Afghan
rebels through Pakistan's former ruler. Also see the various articles in the special issue, 'The CIA
and drugs', Covert Action.
43 M Mills, 'Hill members turn up pressure in war on drugs', Congressional Quarterly, p 945.
44 'Brewing storm', Central American Bulletin, pp 6-7.
45 J Weeks, 'Of puppets and heroes', NACLA, p 18.
160
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Honduras
In Honduras evidence mounted of the complicity of the armed forces
in regional drug trafficking. The DEA announced that Honduras, with
over 200 isolated airstrips and 350 miles of unwatched coastline, rivalled
Panama as a major trans-shipment point for South American cocaine
on its way north. In April 1988 the US-instigated arrest of the Robin
Hood-like drug figure, Ramon Matta, backfired. Angry mobs stormed
the US embassy in Tegucigalpa while the Honduran police seemed slow
to respond (the police chief was reportedly a friend of Matta). Since
Matta's legitimate business interests employed some 4,000 Hondurans,
he was something of a local hero. In May 1988 the Honduran ambas-
sador to Panama, Rigoberto Regalado (friend of Panama's Noriega
and stepbrother of General Humberto Regalado, chief of the Honduran
armed forces), was arrested in Miami with twenty-five pounds of co-
caine in his bags. The USA reportedly has a list of a dozen top military
161
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49 The Iran-Contra hearings mention the warehouse and its creation by 'high officials of the
Honduran armed forces, arms traffickers and Israeli security agents'. In fact another com-
pany, Puertas de Castilla, operating out of this state-run warehouse, was reported to be impli-
cated in November 1987 for shipping $1.4 billion in cocaine to Florida; 'Honduras: mounting
evidence implicates armed forces in cocaine trafficking', Latinamerica Press 20 (21) 9 June
1988, p 5.
50 'Drug allegations divide Honduran military and congress', Washington Report on the Hemi-
sphere 8 (20) 6 July 1988, pp 1, 7.
51 P Agee (and Kwitny) has traced this relationship to 1947 and the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles
and to the Golden Triangle opium ring important in the fight against both Mao Zedong and
Ho Chi-minh. Agee insists that Bush was known to have met head of contra resupply operations,
Felix Rodriguez, in Honduras on several occasions. Indeed Agee questions whether the national
162
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
Colombia
The power of drug traffickers is staggering in Colombia, where the
illegal and violent trade may bring in $1.5 billion per annum and the
murder rate is the highest in the world for a country not at war. Sectors
of the military, the business community and the civilian government
are not only being corrupted by drug money but murdered by the drug
mafia. The Colombians have a term for this coercive collaboration:
plomo o plata, silver or the bullet. Drug power contracted marriages of
convenience between some 150 right-wing anticommunist death squads
and the six left-wing Marxist guerrilla armies. The death squads mas-
sacre peasants, union leaders, leftists, guerrillas and other 'undesirables'
such as homosexuals and drug addicts; the guerrillas (for example M-
19, the April 19th Movement) kidnap the wealthy, including drug traf-
fickers, and prey on establishment political leaders. Drug lords in turn
use the guerrillas (for example the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC) to protect their jungle laboratories, and the death
squads, which are linked with the army, to suppress labour unrest and
security managers really want to stop the drug traffic, or are using it for their own ends; see L
Dicaprio, 'An interview with Philip Agee', Zeta Magazine 1 (11) November 1988, pp 109-12;
110, for argument. The Nation, citing L Cockburn, Out of Control: the story of the Reagan
administration's secret war in Nicaragua, the illegal arms pipeline, and the contra drug connection
(New York, 1987), writes that "'the anti-Castro CIA team in Florida were already drawing
attention to their drug-smuggling activities by 1963", and that it was Felix Rodriguez, the CIA
"ialumnus who wore Che Guevara's watch and counted George Bush among his friends", who
allegedly coordinated a $10 million payment to the contras by the Colombian cocaine cartel'.
See The Nation 247 (2) 16/23 July 1988, p 42. Similar charges of CIA manipulation of the drug
trade to destabilise or pressure recalcitrant Latin and Third World governments are found in
R T Naylor, Hot Money; H Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup; and J Kwitny, The Crimes of
Patriots.
52 'These charges are discussed in J Kwitny, 'An inquiry: money', Nation, pp 162-6; see also
criticism of the Christic Institute's conspiracy of the 'secret team', in D Corn, 'Christic's lawsuit:
is there really a "secret team"?' The Nation 247 (1) 2/9 July 1988, pp 10-14.
53 See E A Nadelman, 'The DEA in Latin America', for specific examples of how corruption can be
'worked with' to gain US ends; and L K Johnson, 'Covert action and accountability: decision-
making for America's secret foreign policy', International Studies Quarterly 33 (1) March 1989,
pp 81-109.
163
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54 T Rosenberg, 'Colombia, murder city', The Atlantic 262 (5) November 1988, pp 20-30. Also
R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic', and R B Craig 'Colombian narcotics and US-Colombian rela-
tions', Journal of Interamerican Studies 23 (3) August 1981, pp 243-70; B M Bagley, 'Colombia
and the war on drugs', Foreign Affairs 67 (1) autumn 1988, pp 70-92; P Lernoux, 'The politics
of drugs', Zeta, and P Lernoux, 'A country under siege: Colombia can't kick drugs alone', The
Nation 246 (9) 5 March 1988, pp 1, 306-8; and R Jimeno and S Volk, 'Colombia: whose
country is this, anyway?' NACLA Report on the Americas 7 (3) May/June 1983, pp 2-35.
5 'Profile: Washington sees a communist behind every bush', Washington Report on the Hemi-
sphere 9 (4) 9 November 1988, p 2.
56 Linklater et al, The Nazi Legacy.
5 R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic' argues differently: 'Ties between terrorist groups and drug
smugglers would appear to be mutually beneficial ... Roughly half of FARC'S 33 "fronts" are
active in marijuana and coca growing areas where its cadres collect tribute for protecting illegal
plots, cocaine laboratories, and landing strips.' Compare with B M Bagley, 'Colombia and the
War on Drugs', Foreign Affairs, p 84, which states: 'The goals of the guerrillas and the traffickers
are fundamentally incompatible: the guerrillas are revolutionaries who seek to overthrow the
Colombian system; the traffickers are robber-baron capitalists who seek to protect their ill-
gotten gains and assure themselves immunity from prosecution.'
58 Collett, 'The myth of"Narco-Guerrillas"', Nation, pp 132, 134.
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
drug control objective such priority that it has been willing to sacri-
fice all other objectives'.59 The drug war rhetoric which equated
narco-terrorism with the communist threat in Latin America was
whipped up largely for the benefit of the US public. Nevertheless,
the political tide directing the war on drugs has become so powerful
that a truly serious anti-drug enforcement programme risks being 'cap-
tured by its own rhetoric and effectively immunised from critical
examination'.60
Peru
Coca cultivation in Peru has soared in the last fifteen years from under
50,000 acres to half a million today (some estimates put it closer to one
million) despite various US eradication programmes. The trade is
believed to generate over $800 million per annum for the country,
equivalent to about 30 per cent of its legal export earnings. The severe
economic crisis and national debt has debilitated the Garcia govern-
ment's enforcement efforts. Over 200,000 peasants have flooded the
Upper Huallaga Valley where coca cultivation is concentrated and
where the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path guerrilla movement) estab-
lished its base of operations in 1984.
The enemy in Peru has been characterised in the US press as narco-
terrorism or narco-guerrillas: peasants, guerrillas and drug dealers in
'the combination of subversion and cocaine trafficking'.61 Peruvian
politicians agreed that 'so brutal are trafficker assaults on government
representatives in the region that they qualify de facto as terroristic.
Narco thugs and guerrilla cadres are tactically so similar in the (Upper
Huallaga) Valley that most distinctions between the two have become
speculative'.62 The threat in Peru, from the Pentagon's perspective, was
ripe for the application of low-intensity conflict (LIC) strategies under-
stood as 'the short-term rapid projection or employment of forces in
conditions short of conventional war'. Lic is an all-embracing military
59 DEA agents routinely tolerated powerful drug 'untouchables' who in turn manipulated enforce-
ment agents to eliminate their competition and better monopolise the drug trade. The DEA itself
justified the 'limited strategy' of cooperating with major drug traffickers as a waiting game until
they could crack down. E A Nadelman, 'The DEA in Latin America', p 16 (quote), 19. Nor did
most Colombians take the US anti-drug programme seriously. The popular view was that the
USA was using the traffickers like everyone else; T Rosenberg, 'Colombia, murder city'.
60 Collett, 'The Myth of "Narco-Guerrillas"'; and E A Nadelmann, 'US drug policy: a bad export',
Foreign Policy (70) spring 1988, p 83.
61 'US hopes to really rock cocaine cradle', Orlando Sentinel, p A-4; also Kawell, 'Going to the
source', pp 13-21; and R Gonzalez, 'Coca's Shining Path', NACLA Report on the Americas 22 (6)
March 1989, pp 22-4.
62 R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic'.
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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
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Conclusions
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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
Second, the drug war doctrine should not obscure the central dilem-
ma of twentieth century US foreign policy. Washington remains caught
in the reformulation of an old catch-22, one expression of which was
Kennedy's dilemma of having to choose between democracy and
counter-revolution. 'There are three possibilities in descending order of
preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo
regime or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we really
can't renounce the second until we are sure we can avoid the third.'68
The choice today is between narcocracy and counter-revolution, and
the belief that the pursuit of one at the expense of the other can succeed
reformulates a classic fallacy. Fascism was once believed to be a bul-
wark protecting against the spread of communism, but it proved to be
its very cause. One critic observed that the 'coke and communism con-
spiracy' is not the point: 'Instead, it is the modus operandi of the two
camps, their tactics which render cocaine capos and guerrillas kindred
spirits. Both are terrorists because they use violent strategies and
tactics.' 69 This caveat is especially appropriate for US national security
managers, lest they be known by their tactics as well.70
The allure of political manipulation in the drug war poses a third
problem. As a new national security doctrine let loose in Latin America,
the drug war is potentially as dangerous as anticommunism. Inter-
vention, even if 'legitimised' by the drug war national security
doctrine no matter how convincing or real the drug crisis may be-still
provokes the wrath of nationalism. The lesson of Panama, said one
political observer, is that although 'electoral fraud, murder and drug
trafficking are crimes in Panama as elsewhere, and most Panamanians
believe Manuel Noriega is guilty of all of them', the greater crime in
Panama is collaboration with the USA. 'Even if the US government
had deposed Noriega, its policy would have failed, discrediting the con-
servative opposition it sought to bring back to power and further fan-
ning the flames of Panamanian nationalism.' 71
It will be interesting to observe whether these lessons have been
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THE WAR ON DRUGS
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