U.S. PLAN TO FIGHT DRUGS IN MEXICO BOUND TO FALTER WITHOUT CHANGES

On June 30, President Bush signed into law an initiative called Plan
Merida, a $465 million program designed to help Mexico deal with the
unchecked drug trafficking and violence that have recently turned
much of the U.S.-Mexican border into a war zone. The initiative is
the most recent chapter in the long history of attempts to regulate
activity along America's southern frontier. It is bold and ambitious
- and it probably won't work.

Plan Merida dwarfs previous U.S. counter-narcotics assistance to
Mexico, and the Bush administration has touted the aid package as a
major step forward in the fight against the drug trade. As currently
designed, however, Plan Merida stands little chance of producing
meaningful long-term results. Why? Because at its core, Plan Merida
represents the same flawed ideas that have long bedeviled U.S. drug
policy. If not modified substantially, this program will go down as
simply another failed offensive in the war on drugs.

The trouble with Plan Merida is the same problem that has
traditionally plagued U.S. efforts to halt the flow of illegal
narcotics from Latin America: It overemphasizes security and military
issues to the exclusion of social and economic questions. The $465
million devoted to Plan Merida is slanted heavily toward Mexico's
military and security forces, with other initiatives - most notably
economic development and the protection of human rights - meriting
only a small fraction of American aid.

This approach is certainly understandable; drug-related violence has
claimed more than 1,500 lives in Mexico over the last two years, and
well-armed gangs like Los Zetas are ruthlessly terrorizing Nuevo
Laredo and other border communities.

In the past, though, security-first strategies have typically
provided no more than a palliative for the problems associated with
the drug trade. Since 2000, the United States has poured several
billion dollars into Plan Colombia, the counter-narcotics program
upon which Plan Merida is modeled. Roughly 80 percent of this money
has gone to military assistance and coca eradication projects, with
far less directed to spurring rural economic growth and alleviating
the desperate poverty that so often drives farmers to participate in
the drug industry.

Accordingly, the results of Plan Colombia have been mixed at best.
U.S. assistance has been undeniably effective in reducing internal
violence in Colombia and weakening the rebel groups that only six
years ago controlled 40 percent of the country. But economic
development programs have lagged badly, ensuring that coca
cultivation remains the most profitable way for poor farmers to
support their families.

Coca farming has actually increased since 2000, and cocaine shipments
to the United States continue apace. Just as the brutal
counter-insurgencies waged in Latin America during the Cold War
generally left the root causes of internal unrest untreated, so too
has U.S. drug policy achieved only superficial success.

There's no reason to expect that Plan Merida will fare any better. In
Mexico as in Colombia, the obstacles to combating the drug trade go
well beyond a simple lack of security. The Mexican police and armed
forces have a sorry history (going back more than a century) of human
rights violations, which in many cases undermine their ability to
work effectively with the local population. More broadly, the
corruption that abets the Mexican narcotics trade is in large measure
a product of persistent poverty and underdevelopment.

These problems are not susceptible to a solution based predominantly
on military assistance. Overcoming them requires a better-rounded and
more complete approach to combating the drug trade.

From a U.S. perspective, this means integrating the necessary
security components of Plan Merida with the often-slighted, "softer"
side of counter-narcotics. The Bush administration and its successors
must allocate a greater chunk of U.S. aid dollars to improving the
human rights practices of the police and military, as well as
measures (such as professional exchanges and judicial reform) that
will help lessen corruption within these institutions. Most important
of all, the United States must channel considerably more assistance
into economic development, which represents the only long-term hope
for improving the lot of Mexico's poor and thereby undermining the
financial allure of the drug trade.

For too long, U.S. counter-narcotics strategy has privileged
security-related programs at the expense of more sustainable solutions.

If American policy-makers can seize on the launching of Plan Merida
to achieve a more equitable balance between security, development and
human rights, they may well make real progress in curbing the drug
trade. If not, they will simply pass this problem along to future generations.