Content area
Full Text
"The worldview that has molded Washington's twin wars on drugs and terrorism constitutes an extremely narrow framework through which to address the complex problems Colombia faces. National security, defined exclusively in military terms, has taken precedence over equally significant political, economic, and social considerations."
During the past several years, United States foreign policy toward Colombia has undergone significant transformations. Long considered a faithful ally in the fight against drugs, as well as showcasing Washington's achievements in this camp, Colombia became widely identified as an international pariah in the mid-1990s during the administration of Ernesto Samper because of the scandal surrounding the president's electoral campaign, which was said to have been funded by drug money. Although the inauguration in 1998 of President Andres Pastrana-a man untainted by drugs-marked the official return to friendly relations with the United States, Colombia came to be viewed as a problem nation in which the spillover effects of the country's guerrilla war threatened regional stability. The events of September 11, combined with the definitive rupture of the Colombian government's peace process with the rebels in February 2002, have converted this country into the primary theater of United States counterterrorist operations in the Western Hemisphere today.
THE PERVERSE EFFECTS OF THE "WAR ON DRUGS"
Any discussion of United States policy in Colombia must begin with drugs. Since the mid-1980s, when illicit narcotics were declared a lethal threat to America's national security, the drug issue has been central to relations with Colombia. Washington's counternarcotics policies have been based on repressive, prohibitionist, and hard-line language and on strategies that have changed little in the last few decades. The manner in which Colombia itself has addressed the drug problem derives substantially from the United States approach, with most of Bogota's measures to fight the drug trade the result of bilateral agreements or the unilateral imposition of specific strategies designed in Washington.1 These American-guided efforts to combat illegal drugs "at the source" have produced countless negative consequences for Colombia, aggravating the armed conflict that continues to consume the country and forcing urgent national problems such as the strengthening of democracy, the defense of human rights, the reduction of poverty, and the preservation of the environment to become secondary to countering the drug trade.
Perhaps the...