The Wisdom of Putting an End to the 'Drug War'

In his meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon this week, President-elect Barack Obama "underscored his interest in finding ways to work together to reduce drug-related violence" in Mexico, which last year caused 5,600 deaths, more than those sustained by the United States in nearly six years of war in Iraq.

Just a few blocks away and a day after another meeting of presidents highlighted a potential way forward. In the East Room of the White House, outgoing President Bush presented Colombian President Alvaro Uribe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on a civilian.

The country that some U.S. official feared would become a narco-state is a changed nation. Today in Colombia homicides are down 40 percent, kidnappings have dropped by more than 80 percent and terror attacks by more than 75 percent. "The forces of violence are on the defensive, and the people are reclaiming their country," Bush said.

During the ceremony Bush made no mention of hectares of coca eradicated or tons of cocaine confiscated and never once used the phrase "war on drugs." In other words, he didn't talk about Colombia's success in the terms that for so long justified U.S. policy and that framed Washington's initial support for the now nine-year, $6 billion support for Plan Colombia.

The reason is simple: the U.S. anti-drug strategy has not reduced supply from Colombia or Latin America in general, nor has it decreased U.S. demand. Illegal drugs continue to be consumed, produced and trafficked at levels such that former high-ranking U.S. officials, including former State Department top diplomats Thomas Pickering and Rand Beers, are on record calling U.S. anti-drug policies a failure.

A failure? Yes, by traditional measurements the war against a tremendously profitable commodity has progressed little. It is now far more evident that as long as there is demand for drugs there will be drug producers and traffickers to supply it.

But of course the average Colombian doesn't see what has happened there in recent years as a failure and current U.S. officials don't either. They see Plan Colombia as a huge success; hence the medal for its current champion.

This apparent contradiction is due to the simple fact that the "drug war" is not what is being fought in Colombia any more. Indeed the phrase "drug war" is a misnomer that obfuscates policy objectives and at the same time doesn't reflect the evolution of policy itself.

Back in 1999, an enormous effort went into defining a comprehensive long-term strategy to help Colombia. Through this process Washington began to understand Colombia's challenges beyond illegal drug trafficking -- no longer in terms of coca crops, drug labs and organized crime -- and as a struggle to regain control of territory, strengthen democratic institutions, and reduce poverty and despair.

Today, as part of this evolution in thinking, the odious U.S. drug certification process is history. In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. presidents were supposed to sanction or reward nations based on crops eradicated or shipments interdicted, an exercise ultimately so counterproductive that it became more political than cogent.

The new three-year, $1.6 billion aid package for Mexico and Central America, known as the Merida Initiative, represents a somewhat evolved thinking too at least in its acknowledgment of U.S. responsibility as principal drug consumer and weapons provider. Long gone seem the days back in 1996 when Washington's idea of cooperation arrived in Mexico in the form of a fleet of Vietnam-era helicopters that proved too old and costly to operate. Mexico returned them two years later.

But the old paradigm is not totally gone. Former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, who once embodied the hope for a winnable drug war, lamented in a recent interview the "cynical" loss of U.S. interest in his country. Quiroga said that now that Bolivia's drugs no longer find their way to U.S. markets, Washington behaves as if its mission has been accomplished there.

In the current context, with new global players emerging and U.S. influence and resources diminished, security experts advice against wasting time and money chasing unrealistic goals. Like Patrick Cronin, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, these experts suggest that the incoming Obama administration needs to redefine problems in more realistic and less ambitious terms. "In a quixotic search for definitive victory one is more apt to hasten exhaustion and failure," Cronin recently wrote in U.S. News and World Report.

A positive recalibration of U.S. policy toward Latin America would be one that once and for all ends the obsession with "drugs" and directs precious resources instead on bringing peace and stability to the region.