COLOMBIA DESERVES U.S. HELP

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The Clinton administration's proposal to provide $1.57
billion in aid to Colombia to help fight drugs has drawn opposition from
many of the same forces that opposed U.S. support to Central America during
the Reagan administration. A coterie of human-rights groups have warned of
abuses by paramilitary groups said to be working with the Colombian
military. Other critics say the aid package will encourage repression,
militarize a drug problem better dealt with through treatment and draw the
U.S. into a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Support for the package is, by contrast, quite tepid. House Republicans are
generally favorable to the administration's proposal; they have even tacked
on an additional $500 million. But there is very little genuine enthusiasm
for helping Colombia, and a good deal of partisan bickering continues over
the proposal's details. Particularly notable is the silence from
internationalists on both left and right who fervently supported U.S.
involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Functioning Democracy

This indifference is a mistake. Colombia is one of Latin America's oldest
continuously functioning democracies, and as such it deserves the same
support against the nihilistic forces consuming it as any other democratic
American ally during the Cold War, not to speak of nondemocratic proteges
like the Kosovars.

One reason Americans have misunderstood what is at stake in Colombia is
that the Clinton administration chooses to portray the struggle as part of
the "war on drugs"; its point man on Colombia is drug czar Barry McCaffrey
rather than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. But while Colombian coca
production has increased recently as producers were driven out of
neighboring Peru and Bolivia, the splashy war against the drug cartels in
Medellin and Cali has actually subsided.

It has been replaced by a dramatic escalation of one of the Cold War's last
remaining insurgencies, waged by two Marxist-Leninist groups, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym FARC)
and the National Liberation Army (ELN). These groups have been so isolated
in their southern jungle hideouts that they haven't heard of the collapse
of socialism. Yet this hasn't stopped them from finding a profitable source
of funding in a drug trade that has allowed them to control perhaps 40% of
Colombia's territory and to stage spectacular ambushes and kidnappings in
the outskirts of Bogota.

Back in Washington, some Democrats object to the U.S. "militarizing" the
war by outfitting two new counternarcotics battalions and providing
helicopters. In reality, that struggle has been militarized for some time.
And nothing -- neither development, nor greater democracy, nor a better
life for Colombians -- can proceed without first solving the security problem.

The stability of democratic institutions in Colombia has potential
consequences well beyond its borders. In the last generation, Latin America
has been making enormous strides in consolidating democratic institutions
and market economies. Economic liberalization started in Chile in the 1980s
and continued with the reforms instituted by Carlos Salinas in Mexico,
Carlos Menem in Argentina and Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil.

But a new and disturbing pattern has emerged in South America's northern,
Andean countries over the last three years. Ecuador saw one president
removed from office for mental incompetence and another deposed in a
military coup. The country's out-of-control central bank was effectively
shut down when the International Monetary Fund concluded it was dealing
with a country small enough to allow to fail. Venezuela, meanwhile, elected
as president Hugo Chavez, a former army colonel who had launched an
unsuccessful military coup against the government of Carlos Andres Perez in
1992.

While Mr. Chavez has acted with punctilious legality this time around, he
has also completely rewritten the Venezuelan constitution, denounced the
liberalizing reforms initiated by his predecessors and cozied up to the
region's old left -- including domestic communists, Fidel Castro and the
FARC. Thus, should guerillas and drug traffickers in Colombia undermine
legitimate institutions there, it will have direct spillover effects in the
Andes and might signal a broader trend away from democracy throughout Latin
America.

It is easy to see why many Americans are leery of involvement in Colombia.
There are numerous parallels to Vietnam:

We are being asked to help in a guerilla war fought in a tropical jungle;
the government we are supporting, while democratic, has been highly
corrupt; and our ally's military is poorly trained and demoralized. The
Colombian government has also been supported by unsavory paramilitary
units, one of whose leaders appeared on Colombian television recently and
explained that his group, like the FARC, receives a substantial portion of
its funding from the drug trade. Fear that a U.S. advisory mission will
expand into an active combat role leads critics like Ralph Peters to argue
against anything more than monetary support.

Yet the likelihood that a mission will expand is greatly overstated. We all
remember Vietnam and aren't likely to get similarly bogged down again. A
better precedent is U.S. aid for El Salvador in the early 1980s, where
Congress explicitly banned advisers from combat. This worked to the benefit
of all: The U.S. military was forced to think creatively about
counterinsurgency training rather than following its predilections for
overwhelming force, while the Salvadoran government got the clear message
that the war was its to lose.

The biggest questions today are whether the Colombian military, underfunded
and lacking in prestige, can be turned around with better training and
equipment, and whether it can distance itself adequately from the
paramilitaries. We won't know unless we try; we can always back out.

Troubled Democracy

Colombian democracy is far from perfect, but it is a lot better than any of
the alternatives. President Andres Pastrana's predecessor, Ernesto Samper,
was highly corrupt, having accepted money from cartels. But Mr. Pastrana,
elected in 1998, came to office with a clean record and a reformist
mandate. If anything, he has proved too well-intentioned, engaging the FARC
in what amounts to joint therapy sessions with Wall Streeters and European
parliamentarians. He has offered them plenty of carrots, but he still lacks
a stick. Still, it is not crazy to think that, suitably bolstered by a
military option, a political solution may some day be possible.

Americans must remember that we are responsible for many of Colombia's
horrific problems since we are the ones consuming all that cocaine. If we
are not willing to legalize drugs, we should not kid ourselves that we can
simply wash our hands of the problems of this troubled fellow democracy.