Restrospective Consideration of United States relations with Latin America during the decade of the 1960s has centered on the Alliance for Progress and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The second of these has been analyzed and re-analyzed as a case study in decision making and as a critical point in the nuclear confrontation between the United States and the USSR. Recently, a series of meetings, both political and scholarly, was conducted with what amounts to a nostalgic atmosphere to reevaluate the crisis. All of the participants recalled the episode within the context of East-West relations. The fact that Cuba was a part of Latin America scarcely entered into their reconstructions of events. The scholars who took part in these meetings were specialists in national security issues, in Soviet affairs or in military affairs.

Governments, Like People, Function in ways that enhance their perceived self-interest. Effective narcotics control is in the best interest of the United States for at least three reasons.

First, reducing the available supply of illicit narcotics (potentially) can reduce the incidence and prevalence of abuse by US citizens. For example, by making drugs relatively hard to find and expensive to use, supply-reduction efforts might successfully discourage potential users from experimenting with drugs and risking future chronic, intensive involvement. Moreover, it can be argued that control measures may be an important deterrent in motivating current drug users to seek treatment and find gainful employment (Moore, 1988).

Second, reducing the supply of illicit narcotics may reduce the level of organized crime and lawlessness in the United States. An effective supply reduction program presumably can bring success in stopping trafficking organizations from supplying illegal goods and services; seizing their ill-gotten wealth; punishing their acts; prosecuting them for corrupt practices; and weakening or eliminating these groups as threatening criminal enterprises.

Once Blithely Dismissed as an Ill-Informed, inarticulate, and under-involved president, Dwight D. Eisenhower has come to be regarded with a great deal of admiration, particularly by historians whose ideological proclivities are considerably to Eisenhower's left. He governed in a time of prosperity; he ended one war and entered no other; he resisted pressures to increase dramatically the size of the defense budget and resurrected the summit as an instrument of diplomacy with the Soviet Union. Upon leaving office, he issued an historic warning about the perils of the military-industrial complex.

Mexico is Unique among the tyrannies friendly to the United States. Not only does it share a porous, 2000-mile border with the United States, but it is probably more interdependent with the United States on a host of issues — water resources, pollution, energy supplies, tourism, investment, trade, finances, migrant labor, debt, drugs, agriculture, to say nothing of politics and diplomacy — than any other country in the world. What happens in Mexico has profound implications for the United States and viceversa.

With But Few Exceptions (O'Donnell, 1984; Whitehead, 1986; Carleton and Stohl, 1987), the literature on regime change and consolidation has generally stressed the analysis of domestic variables in the larger countries (O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, 1986; Drake and Silva, 1986; Baloyra, 1987; Lopez and Stohl, 1987; and Malloy and Seligson, 1987). The adoption of this approach is understandable because most of the literature extant focuses on large countries in which the impact of international factors is, arguably, less salient. However, this is not necessarily true in all cases. Smaller countries, such as Paraguay, are bound to be strongly affected by external variables, and, therefore, their examination becomes a task both more urgent and of greater importance.

The Congress of The United States exerts greater influence over foreign policy than do its counterparts in other nations. This influence extends to formulation of US policy regarding control of the international narcotics trade, a subject on which the Congress has chosen to assume a leading role. The formal policymaking role of the Congress in this area is embodied in legislation on international narcotics (including appropriation of funds) and in oversight. The Congress also exercises its influence in an informal way through consultation, unofficial advice, public education, and legislative prodding in the drafting and conduct of that policy.

The congressional role in narcotics policymaking is notably affected by its committee structure, in which numerous committees may exercise some degree of jurisdiction over narcotics-related issues. As a result, not only has there been widespread involvement of the Congress in formulating narcotics policy, but there has also been considerable fragmentation of that policy as congressional initiatives have been compartmentalized within the jurisdictional domains of various committees.

A Lesson of the Reagan years is that a workable consensus between Congress and the presidency is essential to the execution of an effective and sustainable foreign policy. In a democracy, no consensus ever will be absolute; but if there is not at least general agreement on both the goals and the means to be employed, almost any policy is likely to fail. For instance, divisiveness undermined Reagan administration designs on Nicaragua. For a policy to succeed, a workable consensus must precede any long-term commitment of US resources, troops, or prestige.

Furthermore, even if a consensus is achieved, the goals and the means employed to attain them must be realistic. The experience of US policy in Panama exemplifies this. Uniting such diverse figures as neo-conservative Reagan administration official Elliott Abrams, ultra-conservative Senator Jesse Helms, and liberal Senator John Kerry, the US objective of ousting General Noriega enjoyed extensive bipartisan support.

The Process of Redemocratization, the “return” to democratically elected government, has been a major trend in much of the developing world in the 1980s. In particular, this trend has been strong in Latin America. The list of countries returning to the democratic fold is indeed impressive: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador and Peru. Even Haiti, in the Caribbean, witnessed the fall of the Duvalier regime and some initial movement, though halting, toward democracy. It appears in 1988 that Suriname could be rejoining the “democratic club” after several years of near-authoritarian rule, characterized by executions of opposition leaders, curtailment of press freedom, and a protracted insurrection.

In The Face Of The Unsuccessful Efforts of law enforcement agencies (including the Coast Guard) to staunch the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, Congress and the public have been demanding that the military increase its role in the nation's anti-drug campaign. These demands vary in scope. The minimum demand is that the military provide more logistical support and intelligence data. Another, which was approved by Congress in 1988, is also to give military personnel powers of search, seizure, and arrest outside the land area of the United States. Some also advocate giving civilian police powers to the military to patrol the national borders, including ports of entry. In May 1988, the US House of Representatives voted to demand that the military “seal the borders” to drug traffic within 45 days, an effort which would require both naval and border interdiction, and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to expand the role of the military in the anti-drug campaign. The most extreme demand has come from Representative Arthur Ravenel, Jr. (R-SC) who has called for the military shoot-down, on sight, of any aircraft suspected of smuggling drugs.

The US Policymakers Working on the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act have clearly understood that going after the suppliers of narcotics is only part of the war on drugs; until US domestic demand is diminished, it will be difficult to bring this lucrative and illicit multinational business under control. There is, however, general agreement that something must be done about supply and that interdiction of drug shipments to the United States is only one means. The drug supply war's major focus is the growing, production, and shipment of narcotics within the Third World countries who are the suppliers, particularly in Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia head the list).

Although there have been occasional attempts to “Americanize” anti-drug operations in Latin America (with the US government assuming drug enforcement functions as it did in Bolivia with Operation Blast Furnace in 1986), the major US option is to support the build-up of the Latin American governments' own drug-fighting capabilities by supplying funds, training, and equipment.

Drug Trafficking has Become a central issue in Colombian- US relations. Washington has defined the phenomenon as a national security problem for the United States, and it has evolved, in practice, into a threat to both the regional and national security of Colombia.

This article examines the impact of the drug problem on the bilateral relationship between the two countries. First, it will present the divergent diagnoses which each country brings to this issue, based on the fact that each differs in its approach to the issue, in the thesis it has developed toward the drug question, and in its definition of the effect on national security.

Colombian Politics, by 1982, were characterized by stagnation, increased levels of violence, and diminished regime legitimacy. In the face of an active, though limited, guerrilla insurgency as well as nascent labor unrest and popular protest, the successive governments of the National Front had come to depend on the coercive powers of the state to preserve public order and political stability. Colombia's peace process, initiated during the government of Conservative President Belisario Betancur (1982- 1986), was a recognition of the limits, indeed the failure, of the military solution to the maintenance of public order.

“Rarely In History has an innovation in economic and financial policy caught on as quickly in as many different countries as privatization,” trumpeted the Financial Times (1987) recently. In Europe and the United States in the 1980s, victorious conservatives led an assault on the state (both its welfare and productive arms), but the movement included more than just conservative free marketeers. Spanish socialists were privatizing, and Communist party leaders in China and the Soviet Union introduced farreaching market reforms. Privatization also became a constant theme in policy debates in the Third World, though the ratio of discussion to implementation was low except in cases such as Chile and Togo.

When President Reagan Declared his “war on drugs” in the early 1980s, the United States entered a new era of drug diplomacy in its foreign policy toward Latin America.Control of drug trafficking currently ranks higher than immigration, foreign debt, and communist expansion in Central America as a priority issue in US-Latin American relations. In a March 1988 New York Times/CBS News poll, 48% of the respondents indicated that drug trafficking was the most important foreign policy issue facing the nation compared to Central America (22%), arms control (13%),terrorism (9%), and Palestinian unrest (4%). Equally revealing, when asked whether it was more important to stop the drug trafficking of Central American leaders or to support them in the fight against communism, 63% gave top priority to halting the drug traffic, compared to only 21% who felt that stopping communism was more important (Sciolino with Engelberg, 1988: 10y).

Drug Abuse and Attempts to Control the flow of illicit narcotics have come to pervade US relations with the Third World in recent years. The drug issue carries substantial potential for conflict and mutual recrimination between North and South. The main dmg-consuming countries are rich and industrialized; the main drug-producing countries are poor and predominantly agricultural. The drug trade generates a transfer of resources from North to South and has gained a powerful economic foothold in some Third World countries. Producing countries and consuming countries blame each other for the accelerating drug traffic and advocate, respectively, demand-side and supply-side solutions. US programs to control drug cultivation and production overseas often impinge on nationalist sensitivities. Moreover, political elites in some Third World countries view anti-drug crusades as imposing significant economic and social costs as well as creating new and formidable political challenges.

Long Wracked by Civil strife and turbulence which seemingly defy resolution by either political or military methods, Colombia also has suffered economic setbacks through a series of guerrilla attacks on its main petroleum pipeline. During the first half of 1988, more than 6 million barrels were lost, at an estimated cost of one-quarter billion dollars. Recognizing its inability to curb the attacks — largely the work of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) — the government in Bogotá in early June proposed construction of a new pipeline with Venezuela. According to Minister of Mines Oscar Mejia, it would carry Colombian crude across the border well to the south of ELN territory, thence to be shipped to Venezuelan seaports for export to international markets.

Polttical Conflicts between Bolivia and its peasantry over the production and distribution of the coca leaf during the 1980s is the focus of this essay. The first section describes several of Bolivia's comparative disadvantages (among Andean producer nations) for waging effective coca leaf control programs. Following is an analysis of the interplay and results of specific statepeasant conflicts during the 1982-1988 period of civilian democratic rule. To give a Bolivian contextual backdrop to these conflicts, aspects of the national political culture which shape the terms and conditions of the struggle over controversial drug-related issues are explained. A final section presents a brief analysis of the Chapare region's prospects for a successful coca leaf eradication program.

Explanations for the Bolivian government's ineffectual campaign against the coca leaf and cocaine industry range from its status as a weak state to its fragile and deteriorating economy (Healy, 1986). Bolivia's political system holds the world record for changes in government by way of the coup d'etat.