Armwisting Latin America
When it "decertifies" neighbors in the war on drugs,
The United States achieves more insult than effect

The news will surprise some of its members, but no one appointed the
Congress of the United States as God. No, nor even as lawmaker,
policeman, jury, judge and executioner to planet Earth. Not even the
American president, who at least heads, not just legislates for, the
planet's only superpower, can claim as much. Yet between themCongress
more, Mr. Clinton lessthey have been trying to play all these roles. And
in so doing they have antagonised their country's friends without notably
hurting its enemies.

Last year's folly was the HelmsBurton law against investment in Cuba.
This bit of extraterritorial arrogance has angered much of Europe and
Latin America, without destroying Fidel Castro. Similar, if less
contested, threats to those who have certain dealings with Iran and Libya
have not brought down, or even low, the ayatollahs or Colonel Qaddafi.

Last year brought also the 'decertification" of Colombia (and, very
nearly, of Paraguay, to that country's rage) in the war against drugs.
President Ernesto Samper, no less than his country's drug barons, was one
target of that American decision. Has he gone? Despite the best efforts
of some of those entitled to dispose of92himthe citizens of Colombia, not
the United States, or even its ambassador therehe has not.

This year Mr Clinton decertified Colombia again. He might have added
Mexico, had its drugs scandal erupted a little earlier; and, when he did
not, the lower house of Congress, happy to do the president's work for
him, blithely passed a resolution requiring that the Mexicans too be
decertified unless they met sundry tests of antidrug virtue written by
itself Wisely, the Senate showed more sense. So has Mr Clinton in not
applying to Colombia, as yet, the economic sanctions that decertification
can lead to. But, despite that, all that has been achieved is to make
Colombians and Mexicans alike angrily and publicly defensive of their
sovereignty.

True, Colombia and Mexico are awash with drugs and drugtraffickers. So,
as both governments point out, is the United Statesand with users too.
But even if that riposte were unjustified, no country, however mighty, is
entitled to write the laws of others. That, exactly, is what the United
States demands: they must alter their criminal codes and extradition
laws, even (in the Caribbean) open their territorial waters to American
coastguards. Or else risk public disgrace, like errant schoolboys, and
threats of economic sanctions.

And the price?

This is no way to treat neighbours. That a big country can armtwist
small ones is a fact of life; to make a yearly, codified, public display
of it ought not to be. And what does it achieve? It wounds friends. Latin
Americans have long memories of being shoved by Uncle Sam, and many
governments, privately or through bodies like the 14country Rio Group,
have joined the MexiColombian chorus of anger.

Does it also lessen the flow of drugs? Some Colombians say Mr Samper's
antidrug efforts would have been far less vigorous (and vigorous they
have been) but for the stick of decertification. Yet Mr Clinton's own
drugfighters have doubts about the process; his ambassador in Mexico
last week openly called it counterproductive. And for all the drug busts
south of its borders, experts in the United States detect no lessening of
the flow. Nor does the market. If supply shrinks, prices should rise.
They have fallen.