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Plan Colombia, US-backed anti-narcotics campaign, 2000
A US-trained 'jungle commando' disembarks from a Blackhawk helicopter, while a crop-spraying plane flies past, during an anti-drug operation in an illegal coca plantation, in 2000, under the US-backed, billion-dollar Plan Colombia. Photograph: Reuters/Eliana Aponte
A US-trained 'jungle commando' disembarks from a Blackhawk helicopter, while a crop-spraying plane flies past, during an anti-drug operation in an illegal coca plantation, in 2000, under the US-backed, billion-dollar Plan Colombia. Photograph: Reuters/Eliana Aponte

The only winner in the 'war on drugs'

This article is more than 13 years old
The real effect of militarising drugs policy in Latin America has been to cement the hegemony of the US Southern Command

One of the most interesting and challenging paradoxes of debate on the "war on drugs" is how little examination there has been of its major warrior: the military. In Latin America, that means the US Southern Command (SouthCom).

The story of the US military's involvement begins in the late 1970s and early 1980s with episodic counter-narcotics operations, but when the "war on drugs" became a national security issue, the difference between military and police activities became blurred. At first, there was a certain reluctance on the part of the military to being sucked into an unconventional, politically-driven fight against the illegal drug trade. But they were eventually won over to participation in anti-narcotics efforts – thanks, in part, to growing anti-drug budgets approved by Congress.

New objectives and more resources were the result: correspondingly, SouthCom grew and evolved into a crucial player in what became, by the mid 1990s, a low-intensity conflict being fought on a very broad front. As SouthCom's role became dominant, ideology came into play: the Miami-based command not only carried out anti-drug activities, but also defined a new enemy – "radical populism", in the words of former SouthCom Commander General James T Hill, to the House armed services committee in 2004. Yet, seldom was the US Southern Command's role in the region subjected to scrutiny.

After 9/11 and the rise of the so-called "new threats" (the supposed amalgamation of international terrorism, organised crime, drug trafficking and weapons of mass destruction), Washington ceased to observe a distinction between internal security and external defence. SouthCom experienced a "great leap forward": its role was already extensive, but now it developed into a more autonomous protagonist in the "war on drugs". Plan Colombia, first, and the Mérida Initiative, more recently, were emblematic of the core rationality of a coercive anti-drug strategy – a strategy that, by definition, placed the military centre-stage in a prohibitionist crusade in the Americas.

The strategy led to several developments from 1999 onwards: the establishment of new bases (called "security cooperative locations") in the region, as part of the American global military posture; the increase in non-combatant personnel in charge of Latin America at the Miami headquarters of the US Southern Command over the last decade (surpassing the number of Latin America-related government officials in all the departments located in Washington); the unprecedented, ambitious mission of this command as the "leading joint and interagency organisation seeking to support security, stability and prosperity in the Americas", according to the 2016 SouthCom Command Strategy 2016(pdf); the redeployment of the US 4th Fleet in 2008, which had been inactive since 1950; and the stationing by mid 2010 of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters and 46 warships to combat drugs in Costa Rica. All these developments are clear signs of the growing significance and autonomy of the US Southern Command in the "war on drugs".

What we are witnessing practically everywhere in the Americas is a coercive prohibition campaign that brings neither a partial nor a total solution to the drug question. Unless its premises are challenged, a permanent sense of a "clear and present danger" with regard to narcotics will be fostered both in the United States and in Latin America – which, in a circular way, will only serve to justify the existing repressive policies. The role of the US Southern Command in the Latin American front of the "war on drugs" is key to the prohibitionist paradigm.

The outcome of this militarisation of drugs policy has been overwhelmingly negative. Military involvement in such an irregular war was not only unrealistic, but has also proved counterproductive. Every once in a while, a momentous triumph is announced in one or another country. But within a few years, the proliferation of front lines in the "war on drugs" reveals that such "success" was, at best, a pyrrhic victory. Meanwhile, democracy deteriorates, national insecurity spreads and human rights violations worsen.

Instead of another state-led "coalition of the willing" to fight drugs in a new location, what is needed is a broad, social alliance with bold ideas that could lead beyond the current failed model of counter-narcotics. What is clear is that the current prohibitionist kulturkampf needs to be replaced. The answers will not come from SouthCom's Miami HQ, but from Latin America's civil societies.

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