SECOND ONLY TO SOUTH AMERICA AS A SOURCE FOR ILLEGAL DRUGS

Second only to south america as a source for illegal drugs, the Iron
Triangle region of Southeast Asia may soon become the second front in the
war on drugs.

While first appearances would indicate that international cooperation in
the war on drugs is a good thing, involvement, particularly from the United
States, could quickly become another bone in the growing list of
contentions between this nation and China.

Among the countries calling for help in an effort to stem the flow of drugs
from the region is longtime U.S. ally Thailand. In a recent meeting of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 10- nation group,
including the United States, agreed to look for ways to stop illegal
narcotics and arms trafficking in the region.

Any "allied" effort in that region would be second only to the
multibillion-dollar effort under way in South America and would almost
certainly include increased U.S. military involvement - a development
Beijing would find unacceptable in its perceived competition for regional
hegemony.

It may come as a surprise to many that nearly 60 percent of the heroin
entering the United States comes from Myanmar. For that reason, the U.S.
government has been increasing its involvement in Southeast Asia's
anti-drug efforts. Unlike the South American effort, the second front lies
along the southern border of China, a nation in contention with, if not
openly hostile to, any increase in U.S. influence in the region.

To its credit, Thailand has paced regional and international efforts to
slow the drug and arms trafficking problem in Southeast Asia, especially in
the poppy-rich Golden Triangle. Thailand has reportedly signed an agreement
with Cambodia to strengthen military cooperation to fight cross-border
crimes. Vietnam, as well as other nations in the region, may soon
participate in cooperative police and military operations along their
shared borders.

Myanmar's communist government, very likely backed by Beijing, has not
cooperated. As recently as April, tensions between Myanmar and Vietnam
reached a point where each massed troops, placing their armies on the
highest alert in decades.

Of immediate concern to Americans should be the potential for increased
involvement by the U.S. military and police agencies due to a sharp
reduction of opium crops in other global drug production centers. The
Taliban has shut down poppy production in Afghanistan. China is
successfully cracking down in its own border regions. A major multinational
campaign is continuing in Colombia.

Under the Bush administration, U.S.-Thailand cooperative efforts will
become more military oriented. That includes, at Thailand's request, some
40 or so Army Special Forces on hand to train the Thai military in
counter-narcotics operations in the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai -
dangerously close to the border with Myanmar.

With Myanmar, China's closest ally in the region, the target for many of
the anti-drug/arms operations, the potential for an "incident" with China
increases each day. Some anti-drug agents consider the government-allied
United Wa State Army force as one of the largest and best-armed drug
organizations in the world, consisting of 5,000 ethnic tribesmen in
Myanmar's eastern Shan state, allied with Myanmar's rulers, supplied by China.

In exchange, the United Wa is helping construct a network of roads that
could enable Beijing to gain land access to ports in Myanmar. This could
lead to the Chinese navy gaining access to the Indian Ocean for the first
time, a situation certain to cause consternation in India.

The ability to influence maritime operations on both sides of the Straits
of Malacca, not just in the South China Sea, has long been a goal of the
Chinese and would be a setback to U.S. efforts to surround China with
friendly nations, many of them small, but with highly- trained and
U.S.-equipped military forces.

What appears at first glance to be a noble effort - to slow the trafficking
of weapons and drugs in the region - is looking more and more like it could
become another important geopolitical test of American diplomacy in the New
World Order.