by Noam Chomsky
Traditional US programs, and the current Colombia Plan as well, primarily support the social forces that control the government and the military/paramilitary system, and that have largely created the problems by their rapacity and violence. The targets are the usual victims.
There are other factors that operate to increase coca production. Colombia was once a major wheat producer. That was undermined in the 1950s by “Food for Peace” aid, a program that provided taxpayer subsidies to US agribusiness and induced other countries to “become dependent on us for food” (Senator Hubert Humphrey, representing Midwest agricultural exporters), with counterpart funds for US client states, which they commonly used for military spending and counterinsurgency. A year before President Bush announced the “drug war” with great fanfare (once again), the international coffee agreement was suspended under US pressure, on grounds of “fair trade violations.” The result was a fall of prices of more than 40 percent within two months for Colombia’s leading legal export.33
Related factors are discussed by political economist Susan Strange.34 In the 1960s, the G77 governments (now 133, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s population) initiated a call for a “new international economic order” in which the needs of the large majority of people of the world would be a prominent concern. Specific proposals were formulated by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which was established in 1964 “to create an international trading system consistent with the promotion of economic and social development.” The UNCTAD proposals were summarily dismissed by the great powers, along with the call for a “new international order” generally; the US, in particular, insists that “development is not a right,” and that it is “preposterous” and a “dangerous incitement” to hold otherwise in accord with the socioeconomic provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the US rejects.35 The world did move—or more accurately, was moved—towards a new international economic order, but along a different course, catering to the needs of a different sector, namely its designers—hardly a surprise, any more than one should be surprised that in standard doctrine the instituted form of “globalization” should be depicted as an inexorable process to which “there is no alternative” (TINA), as Margaret Thatcher thoughtfully declared.
One early UNCTAD proposal was a program for stabilizing commodity prices, routine practice within the industrial countries by means of public subsidy, though it was threatened briefly in the US when Congress was taken over in 1994 by right-wing elements that seemed to believe their own rhetoric, much to the consternation of business leaders who understand that market discipline is for the defenseless, not for them. The upstart free-market ideologues were soon taught better manners or dispatched back home, but not before Congress passed the 1996 “Freedom to Farm Act” to liberate American agriculture from the “East German socialist programs of the New Deal,” as Newt Gingrich put it, ending market-distorting subsidies—which quickly tripled, reaching a record $23 billion in 1999, and are scheduled to increase. The market has worked its magic, however: the taxpayer subsidies go disproportionately to large agribusiness and the “corporate oligopolies” that dominate the input and output side, Nicholas Kristof observed. Those with market power in the food chain (from energy corporations to retailers) are enjoying great profits while the agricultural crisis, which is real, is concentrated in the middle of the chain, among smaller farmers, who produce the food.36
One of the leading principles of modern economic history is that the devices used by the rich and powerful to ensure that they are protected by the nanny state are not to be available to the poor. Accordingly, the UNCTAD initiative to stabilize commodity prices was quickly shot down; the organization itself has been largely marginalized and tamed, along with others that reflect, to some extent at least, the interests of the global majority.37 Reviewing these events, Strange observes that farmers were therefore compelled to tum to crops for which there is a stable market. Large-scale agribusiness can tolerate fluctuation of commodity prices, compensating for temporary losses elsewhere. Poor peasants cannot tell their children: “don’t worry, maybe you’ll have something to eat next year.” The result, Strange continues, was that drug entrepreneurs could easily “find farmers eager to grow coca, cannabis, or opium,” for which there is always a ready market in the rich societies.
Other programs of the US and the global institutions it dominates magnify these effects. The current Clinton plan for Colombia includes only token funding for alternative crops, and none at all for areas under guerrilla control, though FARC leaders have repeatedly expressed their hope that alternatives will be provided so that peasants will not be compelled to grow coca to survive. “By the end of 1999, the United States had spent a grand total of $750,000 on alternative development programs,” the Center for International Policy reports, “all of it in heroin poppy-growing areas far from the southern plains” that are targeted in the Colombia Plan, which does, however, call for “assistance to civilians to be displaced by the push into southern Colombia,” a section of the plan that the Center finds “especially disturbing.” The Clinton administration also insists—over the objections of the Colombian government—that any peace agreement must permit crop destruction measures.38 Constructive approaches are not barred, but they are someone else’s business. The US will concentrate on military operations—which, incidentally, happen to benefit the high-tech industries that produce military equipment and are engaged in “extensive lobbying” for the Colombia Plan, along with Occidental Petroleum, which has large investments in Colombia, and other corporations.39
Furthermore, IMF-World Bank programs demand that countries open their borders to a flood of (heavily subsidized) agricultural products from the rich countries, with the obvious effect of undermining local production. Those displaced are either driven to urban slums (thus lowering wage rates for foreign investors) or instructed to become “rational peasants,” producing for the export market and seeking the highest prices—which translates as “coca, cannabis, opium.” Having learned their lessons properly, they are rewarded by attack by military gunships while their fields are destroyed by chemical and biological warfare, courtesy of Washington.
Much the same is true throughout the Andean region. The issues broke through briefly to the public eye just as the Colombia Plan was being debated in Washington. On April 8, 2000, the government of Bolivia declared a state of emergency after widespread protests closed down the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest. The protests were over the privatization of the public water system and the sharp increase in water rates to a level beyond the reach of much of the population. In the background is an economic crisis attributed in part to the neoliberal policies that culminate in the drug war, which has destroyed more than half of the country’s coca-leaf production, leaving the “rational peasants” destitute. A week later, farmers blockaded a highway near the capital city of La Paz to protest the eradication of coca leaf, the only mode of survival left to them under the “reforms,” as actually implemented.
Reporting on the protests over water prices and the eradication programs, the Financial Times observes that “the World Bank and the IMF saw Bolivia as something of a model,” one of the great success stories of the “Washington consensus,” but the April protests reveal that “the success of eradication programs in Peru and Bolivia has carried a high social cost.” The journal quotes a European diplomat in Bolivia who says that “until a couple of weeks ago, Bolivia was regarded as a success story”—by those who “regard” a country while disregarding its people. But now, he continues, “the international community has to recognize that the economic reforms have not really done anything to solve the growing problems of poverty”; they may well have deepened it. The secretary of the Bolivian bishops’ conference, which mediated an agreement to end the crisis, described the protest movement as “the result of dire poverty. The demands of the rural population must be listened to if we want lasting peace.”40
&nb
sp; The Cochabamba protests were aimed at the World Bank and the San Francisco/London-based Bechtel corporation, the main financial power behind the transnational conglomerate that bought the public water system amidst serious charges of corruption and give-away, then doubled rates for many poor customers. Under Bank pressure, Bolivia has sold major assets to private (almost always foreign) corporations. The sale of the public water system and rate increases set off months of protest culminating in the demonstration that paralyzed the city. Government policies adhered to World Bank recommendations that “no subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba”; all users, including the very poor, must pay full costs. Using the internet, activists in Bolivia called for international protests, which had a significant impact, presumably amplified by the Washington protests over World Bank-IMF policies then underway. Bechtel backed off, and the government rescinded the sale.41 But a long and difficult struggle lies ahead.
As martial law was declared in Bolivia, a report from southern Colombia described the spreading fears that fumigation planes were coming to “drop their poison on the coca fields, which would also kill the farmers’ subsistence crops, cause massive social disruption, and stir up the ever-present threat of violence.” The pervasive fear and anger reflect “the level of dread and confusion in this part of Colombia.”42
Another question lurks not too far in the background. Just what right does the US have to carry out military operations and chemical-biological warfare in other countries to destroy a crop it doesn’t like? We can put aside the cynical response that the governments requested this “assistance”; or else. We therefore must ask whether others have the same extraterritorial right to violence and destruction that the US demands.
The number of Colombians who die from US-produced lethal drugs exceeds the number of North Americans who die from cocaine, and is far greater relative to population. In East and Southeast Asia, US-produced lethal drugs contribute to millions of deaths. These countries are compelled not only to accept the products but also advertising for them, under threat of trade sanctions. The effects of “aggressive marketing and advertising by American firms is, in a good measure, responsible for . . . a sizeable increase in smoking rates for women and youth in Asian countries where doors were forced open by threat of severe US trade sanctions,” public health researchers conclude.43 The Colombian cartels, in contrast, are not permitted to run huge advertising campaigns in which a Joe Camel counterpart extols the wonders of cocaine.
Thanks to the US passion for “free trade” and “freedom of speech” for advertisers of murderous substances, global cigarette exports have expanded sharply, with a fivefold increase from 1975 to 1996,44 a dramatic illustration of some of the welfare outcomes of the fanatic political theology that elevates “trade” to the highest rank among human values—”trade” in quotes, because of the highly ideological construction of the concept.
We are therefore entitled, indeed, morally obligated, to ask whether Colombia, Thailand, China, and other targets of US trade policies and aggressive promotion of lethal exports have the right to conduct military, chemical, and biological warfare in North Carolina. And if not, why not?
We might also ask why there are no Delta Force raids on US banks and chemical corporations, though it is no secret that they too are engaged in the narcotrafficking business. We might ask further why the Pentagon is not gearing up to attack Canada, now displacing Colombia and Mexico as a supplier of marijuana; high-potency varieties have become British Columbia’s most valuable agricultural product and one of the most important sectors of the economy (in Quebec and Manitoba as well), with a tenfold increase in the past two years. Or to attack the United States, a major producer of marijuana with production rapidly expanding, including hydroponic groweries, and long the center of manufacture of high-tech illicit drugs (ATS, amphetamine-type stimulants), the fastest-growing sector of drug abuse, with 30 million users worldwide, probably surpassing heroin and cocaine.45
There is no need to review in detail the lethal effects of US drugs. The Supreme Court recently concluded that it has been “amply demonstrated” that tobacco use is “perhaps the single most significant threat to public health in the United States,” responsible for more than 400,000 deaths a year, more than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides, illegal drugs, suicides, and fires combined; the Court virtually called on Congress to legislate controls. As use of this lethal substance has declined in the US, and producers have been compelled to pay substantial indemnities to victims, they have shifted to markets abroad, another standard practice. The death toll is incalculable. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimated that in China alone, among children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, a substantial number because of highly selective US “free trade” doctrine.46
In comparison to the 400,000 deaths caused by tobacco every year in the United States, drug-related deaths reached a record 16,000 in 1997. Furthermore, only 4 out of 10 addicts who needed treatment received it, according to a White House report.47 These facts raise further questions about the motives for the drug war. The seriousness of concern over use of drugs was illustrated again when a House Committee was considering the Clinton Colombia Plan. It rejected an amendment proposed by California Democrat Nancy Pelosi calling for funding of drug demand-reduction services. It is well known that treatment and prevention are far more effective than forceful measures. A widely cited Rand Corporation study sponsored by the US Army and Office of National Drug Control Policy found that funds spent on domestic drug treatment were 23 times as effective as “source country control” (Clinton’s Colombia Plan), 11 times as effective as interdiction, and 7 times as effective as domestic law enforcement.48
But the inexpensive and effective path will not be followed. Rather, the “drug war” is crafted to target poor peasants abroad and poor people at home; by the use of force, not constructive measures to alleviate the problems that allegedly motivate it, at a fraction of the cost.
While Clinton’s Colombia Plan was being formulated, senior administration officials discussed a proposal by the Office of Management and Budget to take $100 million from the $1.3 billion then planned for Colombia, to be used for treatment for US addicts. There was near-unanimous opposition, particularly from “drug czar” General Barry McCaffrey, and the proposal was dropped. In contrast, when Richard Nixon—in many respects the last liberal president—declared a drug war in 1971, two-thirds of the funding went to treatment, which reached record numbers of addicts; there was a sharp drop in drug-related arrests and the number of federal prison inmates. Since 1980, however, “the war on drugs has shifted to punishing offenders, border surveillance, and fighting production at the source countries.”49 One consequence is an enormous increase in drug-related (often victimless) crimes and an explosion in the prison population, reaching levels far beyond that in any industrial country and possibly a world record, with no detectable effect on availability or price of drugs.
Such observations, hardly obscure, raise the question of what the drug war is all about. It is recognized widely that it fails to achieve its stated ends, and the failed methods are then pursued more vigorously, while effective ways to reach the stated goals are rejected. It is therefore only reasonable to conclude that the “drug war,” cast in the harshly punitive form implemented in the past 20 years, is achieving its goals, not failing. What are these goals? A plausible answer is implicit in a comment by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the few senators to pay close attention to social statistics, as the latest phase of the “drug war” was declared. By adopting these measures, he observed, “we are choosing to have an intense crime problem concentrated among minorities.” Criminologist Michael Tonry concludes that “the war’s planners knew exactly what they were doing.” What they were doing is, first, getting rid of the “superfluous population,” the “disposable people”—“desechables,” as they are called in Colombia, where they are eliminat
ed by “social cleansing”; and second, frightening everyone else, not an unimportant task in a period when a domestic form of “structural adjustment” is being imposed, with significant costs for the majority of the population.50
“While the War on Drugs only occasionally serves and more often degrades public health and safety,” a well-informed and insightful review concludes, “it regularly serves the interests of private wealth: interests revealed by the pattern of winners and losers, targets and non-targets, well-funded and underfunded,” in accord with “the main interests of US foreign and domestic policy generally” and the private sector that “has overriding influence on policy.”51
One may debate the motivations, but the consequences in the US and abroad seem reasonably clear.
6
Cuba and the US Government: David vs. Goliath
Cuba and the United States have quite a curious—in fact, unique—status in international relations. There is no similar case of such a sustained assault by one power against another—in this case the greatest superpower against a poor, Third World country—for 40 years of terror and economic warfare.
In fact, the fanaticism of this attack goes back a long, long time. From the first days of the American Revolution the eyes of the founding fathers were on Cuba. They were quite open about it. It was John Quincy Adams, when he was secretary of state, who said our taking Cuba is “of transcendent importance” to the political and commercial future of the United States. Others said that the future of the world depended on our taking Cuba. It was a matter “of transcendent importance” from the beginning of US history, and it remains so. The need to possess Cuba is the oldest issue in US foreign policy.