TIME FOR THE U.S. TO AVOID THE VIETNAM SYNDROME IN COLOMBIA

PARIS There was a better case in 1961 for fighting a war in Vietnam,
which proved a disaster, than the Clinton administration has made for
intervening today in Colombia. The arrival of the Bush administration
offers Washington a chance to back off. It could be the last chance.

The authors of the Colombian intervention have convinced themselves
that illegal drug production can be repressed in Colombia - a country
largely unsettled and without roads, and some of it incompletely
mapped - to a degree that would significantly reduce the supply of
cocaine for sale in the United States.

They reject a fundamental principle of capitalism, which states that
markets will find suppliers. And they don't acknowledge that even if
the Colombian government - with U.S. support - could suppress local
drug production, the most that would happen on North American streets
would be a brief rise in the price of cocaine until alternative lines
of supply were established.

Forty years ago, critics of the Vietnam involvement who were seriously
acquainted with Southeast Asia, international communism and political
warfare understood that Vietnam's war was, literally, Vietnam's war.
The conflict had nothing intrinsically to do with the United States.
It had to do with Vietnam. It was a national tragedy, but it was
Washington's unfortunate fantasy that victory in Vietnam would block
world communism. U.S. intervention merely turned a small war into a
hugely destructive one for all concerned.

The war in Colombia is already a big war imposed on a small war, but
in this respect, it is a war the United States has imposed on
Colombia. U.S. drug users are responsible for this. They provide an
irresistibly profitable market for cocaine and heroin, wherever it is
produced.

It is convenient to produce the raw drugs in the inaccessible regions
of Colombia, in the sheltering political circumstances of a civil
struggle that has allowed warring factions on both left and right to
establish effective control over sizable regions of the country. These
groups receive financial support from the drug cartels, in exchange
for protection.

The war over political control of the nation remains, nonetheless,
Colombia's own war. It has been going on in one way or another since
1948, for reasons specific to Colombia. Intervention now by the United
States can only enlarge it, making it worse, and more destructive, for
all concerned. Yet the United States has already committed $1.3
billion to a military solution in Colombia. It plans to expand this
campaign to the countries bordering Colombia, since under military
pressure, the drug producers and shippers, and the left-wing
insurgents, are likely to move into neighboring countries.

According to The New York Times, "Latin American diplomats expect
American aid in coming years to dwarf the $180 million regional aid
approved by Congress in 2000." Countries from Panama to Peru, and
possibly beyond, are involved. Colombia itself is now the world's
third-largest recipient of U.S. aid, coming just after Israel and Egypt.

Colombia's neighboring countries do not want to be part of this.
Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, a populist critic of the United
States, has closed Venezuelan airspace to American military aircraft.
And Panama's ambassador to the United States says, "Panama does not
want to get involved in the internal problems of Colombia. We've been
shying away from that in every way." Panama has refused to allow the
United States to reoccupy the Panamanian military bases it gave up a
year ago.

Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, the member of the U.S.
civilian bureaucracy most committed to the program, sees it as a
response to linked political and narco-criminal threats to American
interests. "I think in future years," he says, "there will be a
broader regional aspect to this as we plan and propose to the Congress
new budgets for this kind of activity."

Bernard Aronson, who was assistant secretary of state for Latin
America under the first President Bush, says the situation calls for
the same level of regional and international engagement as Kosovo and
the Middle East.

That international support is unlikely to come. U.S. officials
complain to the press that "European and Japanese donors have failed
to come through with funds" for agricultural development and civil
infrastructure programs to support what is called Plan Colombia. They
object to the predominantly military character Washington has given to
the program.

The only apparent hope for halting this program lies in the fact that
it defies all of the criteria the incoming administration and the new
secretary of state have said they will respect concerning U.S.
interventions abroad: There is no clarity to the objective, no
convincing program for success, no safeguard against escalation and no
exit strategy.

Will that be enough to change the policy?