NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8636

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: REVIEW: Clear and Present Dangers
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/** wri.news: 541.0 **/
** Topic: REVIEW: Clear and Present Dangers **
** Written 11:45 pm  Oct 26, 1992 by gn:peacenews in cdp:wri.news **
     Clear and Present Dangers: the US military and the war on
     drugs in the Andes Washington Office on Latin America 1991.
     $12 from WOLA, 100 Maryland Ave NE, Washington DC 20002 USA.
     Reviewed by JOHN LINDSAY-POLAND.

*** This carefully researched and written report documents the
development and implications of the George Bush administration's
five-year "Andean strategy" which transformed the struggle against
cocaine trafficking into a military operation.

The report begins with the fact that Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia
have now supplanted Central America as the region with the largest
share of US military assistance in Latin America. The reasons for
this are multiple: negotiated settlements to the Central American
conflicts; domestic pressure to "do something" about the drug
problem; and the end of the Cold War as a rationale for military
programmes. Through extensive interviews with US Southern Command
officials in Panama and other documentation, the authors show how
the drug war is wedded to the counterinsurgency or "low intensity
conflict" strategies developed by the Pentagon in the '80s.

The report also gives compelling reasons why the Andean strategy
will not be successful in stemming the spread of cocaine
availability or addiction, and why it is likely to worsen the abuse
of human rights, corruption, and the military's hold on power in
the Andean countries. The reasons why governments in the region
participate in the drug war are very different from those of the
USA: they are badly in need of outside funding to pay foreign
debts, and in the case of Colombia and Peru also require military
aid for expensive anti-guerrilla operations.

Clear and Present Dangers is full of data and analysis useful to
activists working to end US domination in Latin America. The
Central American solidarity movement could put this, and the
lessons learned during the '80s, to good use in working for a
different drug policy.

My one misgiving is that this report does not go far enough in its
recommendations for change. It calls for more resources to deal
with the sources of demand for drugs and a demilitarisation of
anti-narcotics policy. But it does not address the fundamental
imbalance of economic power which allows banks and governments in
the North to determine trade and export policy for countries of the
South, such as Bolivia and Peru, which are struggling to earn
enough foreign exchange to service unpayable debts. Until that
injustice is addressed, the US Southern Command and the State
Department will have the final say in what happens in the Andes,
and the poor in these countries will be driven to marginal economic
activities such as coca growing.

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* Reprinted from _Peace News_ 2360 (November 1992).      Please  *
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** End of text from cdp:wri.news **