America's Next 'Nam

The U.S. Entered South East Asia With 10 Helicopters; Clinton's About
To Send 60 To Colombia

It is customary, when Washington says "jump," for British governments
to ask "How high?" When they don't jump at all, their failure to
comply should be treated with the same alarm as when one of those 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 '60s, 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.

Blair has said nothing in public against Plan Colombia, but he has
refused to buy into it, as have most of his European colleagues. And
last week, he let a senior minister openly condemn the U.S. plan.

British Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam, visiting Bogota last week,
was scathing about U.S. President Bill Clinton's recent decision to
waive Congressional human-rights conditions and hand over $1.3 billion
US 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.

Mowlam also condemned the spraying of fungal herbicides on
drug-producing regions, with the high probability of poisoning local
peasants, that is a major part of the U.S. strategy. It would only be
acceptable, she said, if the sole targets were vast coca plantations
with nobody living near them.

Even so, Mowlam was much more tactful than the leaders of the
countries that have common borders with Colombia. Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, for example, recently said: "That's how Vietnam started.
First 10 helicopters, then another 10." (The U.S. is actually
providing 60 helicopters to Colombia, just for openers.)

Similarly, Alberto Fujimori, who has just resigned as president of
Peru, warned last month that an escalation of the fighting in Colombia
"could generate a wider conflict, one in which the FARC (the
Marxist-led Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces that are deeply
involved in the cocaine trade) retreats into Peruvian territory."

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 peace after almost 40 years of civil war, kill tens
of thousands of people who would otherwise not have died, and drive
hundreds of thousands of people across Colombia's borders with
Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela as refugees.

From the point of view of Colombia's neighbours, 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. point of 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
that is the foundation of the whole industry. That will never 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 (with a membership
identical to the Organization of American States, but including
opposition parties as well as governments) whose inaugural meeting
takes place in Canada next year.

"We believe the time has come to broach this subject," said Angel
Restrepo, pointing out that the old, failed approach is 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 U.S. itself 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
U.S. "advisers," weapons and money to Vietnam could ever escalate into
a commitment of more than half-a-million troops.

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