LOOKING BEYOND PLAN COLOMBIA

The Bush administration has proposed a counternarcotics strategy for Latin
America that seems to reflect an understanding of the limitations of the
plan it inherited from Bill Clinton, which relies overwhelmingly on
military aid to Colombia. The Bush proposal wisely stresses a broader
regional approach along with economic development and crop substitution. If
that approach can lead to a genuine reorientation of drug policy, it will
deserve Congressional support.

Under current policy and budget allocations, Colombia is the primary
recipient of American anti-drug aid. Plan Colombia, as the Clinton
administration program was called, provides $1.3 billion in American
assistance over two years, most of it for military spending and coca
eradication efforts. The new package would provide $882 million to seven
countries over several years, divided equally between drug interdiction
efforts and economic assistance, which would address some of the social and
institutional problems underlying the drug production and political
violence in the region.

Colombia would still be the largest recipient of American aid, receiving 45
percent. Half of that would go to programs aimed at promoting judicial
reform, local government and crop substitution. The balance of the package
would provide aid to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela — longstanding
allies in the drug war — as well as to Brazil and Ecuador, which have
increasingly seen their border areas used by Colombian guerrillas and
traffickers.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration remains committed to Plan Colombia,
and money has already been provided for it. The danger of Plan Colombia
remains that it could entangle American military personnel in the
stalemated Colombian civil war. It also links the United States with an
ineffective and abusive Colombian army, which maintains extensive ties to
murderous paramilitary militias.

Though a more balanced regional approach to combating drugs would be
welcome, Washington should be under no illusions about the limitations of
such an effort. The United States has spent many billions of dollars on
counternarcotics programs abroad, yet the flow of drugs into this country
has scarcely abated, and both cocaine and heroin are cheaper and more
plentiful than ever. Even the best-designed efforts to stem the supply of
drugs abroad are bound to fail without a better-financed effort to curtail
demand for them at home.