UNDOING 'PLAN COLOMBIA'

Will Bush Declare End To Clinton's Flawed War On Drugs?

Dec. 27 - In a perverse way, the tragic nightmare unfolding in Colombia may
be a good thing - if it gets the incoming Bush Administration to look
seriously at what is happening in Latin America. This region is our largest
and fastest growing market and (with Canada) our closest neighbor, but the
Clinton foreign policy team could hardly have cared less. The challenges
there of drugs and development are reaching crisis level - in part, a
result of Clinton's indifference.

IF THE SON is at all like the father, and the son's political appointments
suggest that he is, the incoming foreign policy team should do better, not
least because Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell seems to be a sound
strategic thinker who is able to ascertain what genuine U.S. interests
exist in Latin America. What's more, Powell's roots are in the region and
he has the stature to promote those interests.

Here are the issues he faces: Figuring out what is important and what is
possible with the resources we have and are willing to commit.

For starters, that means minimizing the influence of partisan domestic
issues on foreign policy and avoiding such Quixotic and enormously
time-consuming adventures as the Clinton Administration's attempts to
"restore democracy" in Haiti. Active promotion of hemispheric trade through
the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an idea introduced in
1990 by the first President Bush. This will lead the agenda at the Third
Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada, in mid-April, where Bush
will first meet most Latin American leaders.

The Clinton Administration supported the FTAA verbally, but refused to
spend real political capital on it. If the new administration is serious,
it will press immediately for "fast track" authority to bypass the
perpetual inaction of Washington. Close cooperation with our nearest
neighbors and top trading partners, Canada and Mexico. The more problematic
relationship traditionally has been with the latter, though prospects have
never been better than now under Mexico's dynamic new president Vincente
Fox. Lifting the antiquated and counterproductive embargo on Cuba. A
majority of Americans now favor such a change; even 38 percent of
Cuban-Americans in the Miami area, according to a recent poll by Florida
International University. But here Bush may be hamstrung by domestic politics.

At the same time, Washington must keep an eye on Castro and his
self-appointed anti-American successor in Latin America, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, both of whom cultivate friends like Iraq's Saddam
Hussein. A critical reevaluation of the U.S. role in Colombia and of the
hopelessly failed U.S. "war on drugs." Suffering from this war in the
States has been nothing compared to its impact in Latin America, where the
toll has been tragic in the destruction of lives, democratic institutions,
social fabric, hope for the future and respect for the United States.

THE POWELL DOCTRINE

Will Colin Powell knock some sense into our foreign policy?

Powell must have noticed that the current large and war-oriented U.S. aid
package to Colombia flies in the face of his own famed doctrine: clarity of
objective, use of massive force, certainty of victory and exit strategy,
and public support.

Clinton's ill-advised "Plan Colombia" will not greatly reduce drug
deliveries to the United States, but will get us openendedly involved
militarily in Colombia's decades-old civil war. The strategy does not seek
to apply massive force.

But when more of the 500 American advisers now down there are killed and
the costs of further aid, and the replenishing of expensive destroyed
equipment, become clear, Americans will become much more perturbed about
our largely military involvement.

Narco-Neighborhood

Nowhere in the world are U.S. domestic and foreign affairs more intertwined
than in the drug war. As George Shultz, Milton Friedman and many others
have said, the war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse
itself, in the United States and abroad.

The resolution of many conflicts in Latin America, and hopes for political
and economic development, depend in large part upon removing the enormous
corrupting profit motive from the illegal production and sale of drugs.

At an absolute minimum, we should immediately end the arrogant and
hypocritical congressionally mandated annual "certification" of Latin
American countries by which we judge how well they are fighting our drug
use problem.