COULD COLOMBIA BE VIETNAM ALL OVER AGAIN?

LONDON-- It is customary, when Washington says "Jump," for British
governments to ask "How high?" When they don't jump, their failure to
comply should be treated with the same alarm as when one of the old "pit
canaries," kept in coal mines to detect the build-up of carbon monoxide,
topples quietly off its perch.

The last time a British government resisted Washington's demands to sign up
for some foredoomed American enterprise in the Third World was in the
1960s, when former Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to commit British
troops to Vietnam. He was right, of course, but it is still remarkable that
current Prime Minister Tony Blair is showing such resistance to letting
Britain get drawn into Washington's adventure in Colombia.

Mr. Blair has refused to buy into "Plan Columbia." Recently, he let a
senior minister in his government condemn the U.S. plan.

British Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam, was scathing about U.S.
President Bill Clinton's recent decision to waive Congressional human
rights conditions and hand over $1.3 billion to Colombia anyway. European
countries, she said, were refusing "across the board" to send aid that
would be used for the military suppression of the drug trade until the
Colombian military forces ended their human rights abuses.

The first target of Plan Colombia's helicopter-borne assault troops will be
the region of Putumayo in southern Colombia, right next to Peru and
Ecuador. So that's where the refugees will go, that's where FARC will
retreat to -- and that's where the drug-producers will move their coca
plantations. Next on the list will be Venezuela, once Plan Colombia turns
its attention to the coca plantations of Norte de Santander.

From the point of view of ordinary Colombians, Plan Colombia is likely to
end the hope of a negotiated peace after almost 40 years of civil war.

From the point of view of Colombia's neighbors, it will give them a huge
refugee problem, and may move the fighting onto their territory.

Worse, it will shift the mafias who control large-scale cocaine production
onto their territories, thus corrupting their societies and destabilizing
their governments as Colombia has already been corrupted and destabilized.

And from the U.S. view, it offers the distant but plausible possibility
that Colombia could turn into the next Vietnam. What it does not do is
offer any prospect of halting or even slowing the flow of cocaine to the
vastly lucrative American domestic market which is the foundation of the
whole industry. That won't happen so long as the market is there: If they
mash southern Colombia, the coca plantations will just move next door.

There is an alternative approach. Colombian Congressman Julio Angel
Restrepo raised it this week in Ottawa, when he asked that the question of
legalizing narcotic drugs be put on the agenda of a new forum of North and
South American countries whose inaugural meeting takes place in Canada next
year.

"We believe the time has come to broach this subject," said Mr. Angel
Restrepo, pointing out that the old, failed approach was about to destroy
his country without doing anything to alleviate the drug habits of American
consumers. He's quite right, but several more countries will probably have
to be destroyed before American politicians are willing to consider ending
drug prohibition.

In the context of U.S. domestic politics, this does not matter very much so
long as the United States is not harmed. The odds are that the destruction
of Colombia will not entail any such costs for the United States, but
nothing is certain in these matters. It never occurred to Jack Kennedy, you
will recall, that his carefully limited offer of US "advisers," weapons,
and money to Vietnam could ever escalate into a commitment of over half a
million troops.

He was safely dead for several years before it happened. And whatever
happens in Colombia, President Clinton will be safely out of office for
several years before we know about that, too.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.