“Our message to the drug cartels is
this,” George Bush told the nation last
September when he unveiled his ad-
ministration’s drug control strategy.
“The rules have changed.” For “the
first time,” the U.S. military would be
sent abroad to fight the drug war. By the
end of the year, the Pentagon had an-
nounced plans (currently on hold) to
station aircraft carriers off the coast of
Colombia, and more than 20,000 U.S.
soldiers had been sent to Panama. Are
these actions-widely applauded in the
United States and roundly denounced
throughout Latin America-signs that
the Bush administration really has
changed the “rules” of the drug war?
In fact, Bush’s drug policy is largely
a continuation of his predecessor’s.
Reagan, not Bush, changed the “rules”
in 1986, when he signed a secret direc-
tive establishing international drug traf-
ficking as a national security threat.
Until then, drug control was considered
the job of law enforcement agencies;
the directive opened the way for large-
scale military involvement. Despite
Bush’s claim to be first, the Reagan
administration had already sent 160 U.S.
soldiers to Bolivia in July 1986 for an
anti-drug effort dubbed Operation Blast
Furnace.
Jo Ann Kawell is a freelance jour-
nalist and author of “Coca: The Real
Green Revolution” (NACLA Report
on the Americas, March 1989).
One important change has occurred
during the Bush administration. Re-
agan’s Pentagon chiefs were reluctant
to get involved, insisting that the drug
war would draw manpower and re-
sources away from what they perceived
as greater national security threats. The
new secretary of defense, Richard
Cheney, seems far more enthusiastic.
At a press conference two weeks after
the president’s speech, Cheney called
drug control a “high priority” mission
and said, “I believe that our military
forces have the capability to make a
substantial contribution toward drug
interdiction.”
The reason for the Pentagon’s new
can-do attitude isn’t hard to find: Re-
cent changes in Eastern Europe make
the Soviet threat far less convincing as
a justification for high military budg-
ets. The drug war provides a new mis-
sion and real action-opportunities for
testing soldiers and strategies in com-
bat. This represents at least a partial
victory for national security strategists
who for a generation have argued that
the United States should direct more
attention to fighting “security threats”
emanating from the Third World, among
them communist insurgency and inter-
national drug trafficking.
Bush and other administration offi-
cials went out of their way to portray the
Panama invasion as a blow against a
fiendish drug trafficker and yet another
victory for democracy. But such high-
VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990)
K
I
S 5D
N
9profile actions are hardly typical of the
Pentagon’s involvement in the drug war
in Latin America, especially in the
cocaine-producing Andean region. U.S.
Special Forces advisers have worked
with Bolivia’s drug police since 1986,
and the Bush administration has quietly
expanded the military’s advisory role
in the region. Bush dispatched a group
of instructors to work with Peruvian
police in mid-1989 and sent advisers to
Colombia in the wake of the assassina-
tion of presidential candidate Luis
Carlos Galin in August.
Last year, Bush signed a national
security directive permitting military
advisers to work in the drug-producing
zones-a move that would put them on
the drug war’s front lines. Up until now,
Drug Enforcement Administration and
civilian contract employees have been
the only U.S. personnel to take a direct
role in drug raids. Moreover, total U.S.
military expenditures for the Andean
region, though not specifically ear-
marked for the drug war, have dramati-
cally increased. Bolivia and Peru re-
ceived a mere $400,000 each in mili-
tary aid in 1988. According to figures
compiled by the Congressional Re-
search Service, these countries can
anticipate $53.5 million and $46.9
million respectively for 1990. Colom-
bia’s highly publicized drug war is to be
underwritten by $76.2 million in mili-
tary assistance, up from $4 million two
years ago. The Bush administration has
downplayed, though not abandoned,
coca eradication, as ineffective and dan-
gerous for eradication workers. This
key tenet of past U.S. strategy, says
Donald Hamilton of the White House’s
Drug Control Policy Office, “can also
be self-defeating, driving farmers into
the ranks of the insurgents.”
Low-Intensity Conflict
The Sendero Luminoso guerrillas
have organized farmers and hold politi-
cal control of most of Peru’s Huallaga
Valley, the largest coca-growing zone
in the world. Last year, U.S. officials
citing “security concerns,” pulled DEA
agents and other U.S. personnel out of
Tingo Maria, the valley’s largest town,
halting drug control operations for more
than five months until a heavily-forti-
fied base near the town of Santa Lucia
could be completed.
While the situation in Peru was on
the minds of officials who drafted the
Bush strategy released in September,
according to Washington sources some
of them were also influenced by recent
theories of low-intensity conflict-the
amorphous post-Vietnam guide to bat-
tling “low-level” conflicts and insur-
gencies in the Third World, which
emphasizes the value of small units,
light equipment, guerrilla-style tactics
and an indirect role for the United States.
During the Reagan administration, the
Pentagon’s Center on Low-Intensity
Conflict worked with the Drug Enforce-
ment Administration to draw up plans
for DEA’s Operation Snowcap-the
rubric under which the Agency has
conducted anti-cocaine activities in 12
Latin American countries since 1987.
This does not mean that LIC doc-
trine, in any version, has become a
blueprint for the drug war. There is
hardly universal agreement within the
welter of government agencies-among
them the Pentagon, the State Depart-
ment and the Drug Enforcement
Administration-about what shape drug
policy should take. Says one source
familiar with the debate over strategy,
some officials who consider LIC a useful
theoretical framework are still leery of
putting its precepts to the test in the
Andean region. These officials, says
the source, want to “keep control of the
‘cowboys’ [extreme LIC enthusiasts
within their own ranks] so they don’t
run amok in the drug war.”
Although LIC theory can lead to its
own excesses, its proponents argue that
it is a way of avoiding the appearance of
another Vietnam by precluding the use
of large numbers of U.S. combat troops.
“We can and must accomplish [our]
objectives with a minimum of direct
involvement by U.S. personnel,” the
September drug strategy report states.
“The countries of the area must carry
the principal burden themselves.”
Theoretically, drug control operations
in zones like the Huallaga could disrupt
the cocaine industry through frequent,
commando-style attacks against targets
like paste pits, where coca leaves are
steeped in chemicals to form a cocaine
precursor, and against the landing strips
where small planes pick up the paste to
transport it to large labs.
However, it is impossible to design
these actions as surgical strikes that
leave most citizens unaffected. In Peru
and Bolivia, paste pits and landing sites
are often located near towns or other
populated areas. Coca production and
related activities are the mainstay of
economic life in these regions, and they
employ hundreds of thousands of area
residents. In the Huallaga Valley, tar-
geting “drug centers” has often meant
occupying towns, and arresting dozens
or even hundreds of people.
Drug control operations resemble
counterinsurgency in many respects and
they can also fuel actual insurgencies,
as many U.S. officials now recognize
happened in the Huallaga. These offi-
cials talk much more openly than a year
ago about the threat Sendero presents
to the anti-drug program, and they admit
that it can not be conducted in its pres-
ent form unless the guerrillas are
brought under control-a task they
maintain should fall to Peru’s military.
The United States has, however,
quietly offered to provide military aid
and advice to Peru’s counterinsurgency
forces. Both sides seem to have agreed
that a small, low-profile U.S. presence
is acceptable. According to an Em-
bassy cable, in mid-1989 a U.S. mili-
tary team trained Peru’s special counter-
insurgency police unit, the Sinchis, as
well as local anti-drug police forces. In
the past, U.S. policy in Latin America
seemed aimed at a single goal: Con-
fronting “the communist threat.” Now,
many national security strategists
-among them prominent adherents of
LIC doctrine-argue that communism
should be viewed along with interna-
tional drug trafficking and terrorism as
interlinked threats.
The Bush drug control strategy
echoes this thinking: “Cocaine traf-
ficking, moreover, is but one threat in
the Andean region. Economic instabil-
ity and political insurgencies also pres-
ent serious challenges to democratic
institutions and stability in the area.
The three are interrelated; addressing
one without also addressing the others
is unlikely to achieve reduced cocaine
supply.” As the “Soviet threat” fades,
LIC proponents are preparing to wade
into the complex conflict underway in
the Andes. While their unconventional
analysis and prescription for fighting
may keep it from looking like Vietnam,
they may turn the region into the Bush
administration’s Central America.
Menu
