Third World Quarterly

The War on Drugs: A New US National Security Doctrine?

Author(s): Waltraud Queiser Morales
Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 147-169
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3992623
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WALTRAUD QUEISER MORALES

The

war

national

on

drugs:
security

a new

US

doctrine?

During the twentieth century anticommunism has served effectively as

the cornerstone of US national security doctrines. Anticommunism has
functioned as an ideology and a secular religion which has legitimised
both legal and illegal, moral and immoral acts of foreign policy in the
cause of national survival-the protection of democracy and the American way of life. Decades before the enactment of the 1947 National
Security Act and associated legislation which legalised the harassment,
imprisonment and execution of 'leftists', 'radicals', 'communists' and
'fellow travellers', the fear of Bolshevism, anarchism and syndicalism
fuelled the witch hunt mentality that has plagued and dehumanised
mankind from Biblical times through the Middle Ages to the McCarthy
era of the 1950s.
By the 1980s, however, a problem had developed. Anticommunism
was losing its 'fear' potential. An increasing number of intellectuals,
academics, policy-makers and even the general public were questioning
the rhetoric in relation to the political reality. Rapprochement with the
PRC, the Vietnam War, and glasnost and perestroika in the USSR were
some of the unsettling international events which threatened the old
consensus. This scepticism was undermining the largely unimpeded control over foreign policy which the foreign policy m-anagershad exerted
until most recently, causing them to talk of 'the new nationalism' and
'the unitary institutional outlet for policy', euphemisms for presidentialism versus 'repluralisation'.I Vietnam and the 'Vietnam syndrome' had been one significant watershed.2 Americans had taken
seriously the official mythology of democracy and had exercised their
rights of public opinion and protest-on the streets, in Canada and
underground when necessary-to exert their influence over foreign
policy. The result was a growing movement towards the democratisation
of foreign policy, and the popular opposition to another Vietnam-style
I R J Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: America's confrontation with insurgent movements

around the world, New York: Meridian, 1968; and B A Rockman, 'Mobilizing Political Support',
in G C Edwards III and W E Walker (eds), National Security and the US Constitution: the impact of thepolitical system, Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, p 13.
2 M T Klare, Beyond the 'Vietnam Syndrome': US interventionismin the 1980s, Washington DC:
Institute for Policy Studies, 1981.
TWQ 11(3) July 1989/ISSN 0143-6597/89. $1.25

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147

THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

intervention expressed in the Liberal slogan, 'Never Again'.3 Conservatives interpreted the 'Vietnam syndrome' as a loss of nerve, and it
posed a fundamental problem for national security: credibility. How
could the USA remain the gang leader of the Western bloc against the
Soviets and the instability they inspired in the Third World if the threat
of intervention might no longer be believed?
Between 1980 and 1988 the Reagan administration sought to exorcise this erosion of control and crisis of credibility with carefully
orchestrated displays of 'public diplomacy', secrecy, and renewed militarism and intervention (the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the presence of
marines in Lebanon, the militarisation of El Salvador and Honduras,
the 'covert' war against Nicaragua, the Iran-Contra affair, and numerous military exercises and war games throughout the Western hemisphere and the Third World). The attempt was but a partial success.
Ironically an old US ally, General Noriega of Panama, demonstrated
the impotence and corruption of the declining North American empire.
The USA attempted to direct a potentially new national security doctrine at him: the war on drugs. But the strategy seemed to fail. The
aborted overthrow of the Panamanian dictator, now a political embarrassment, a source of internal instability and a threat to the entire Southern Command structure, exposed the crime, corruption and drug
involvement of the intelligence and military agents of US foreign policy.
Corruption and secrecy, inherent in these agencies from inception,
became more necessary as anticommunism ceased to serve as the automatic legitimating doctrine of the US national security state. There was
a desperate need for a new national security doctrine that would be
more persuasive than the war on communism, and a strong candidate
was the war on drugs. A CBS news poll found in March 1988 that
almost 50 per cent of the respondents believed drug trafficking to be
the most important foreign policy issue, even over terrorism and arms
control.4 A September 1988 'Americans Talk Security' opinion survey
3 E C Ravenal, Never Again: learningfrom America'sforeign policy failures, Philadelphia, Penn4

sylvania: Temple University Press, 1978.

B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred Years War? US national security and the war on drugs in
Latin America', Journal of InteramericanStudies and WorldAffairs 30 (1) spring 1988, p 161. A
WashingtonPost/ABC news poll in May 1988 found that 26 per cent of the respondents ranked
drugs as the most important problem facing the USA today versus 8 per cent for the runner-up
issues of the economy and budget deficit; C C Lawrence and S Gettinger, 'Experts skeptical of
Congress' anti-drug effort', Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 46 (26) 25 June 1988,
p 1713. The article also argued that it was unclear whether there had been an actual increase in
drug use in the 1980s since statistics were so unreliable, or whether the matter was 'exaggerated
for partisan advantage'

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

revealed that 44 per cent of the voters ranked international drug trafficking as an extremely serious threat, compared to 18 per cent for the
threat of Soviet military strength.5 Therefore, the question is whether
the drug war can serve as a new national security doctrine.

What is a national security doctrine?

Entering into general usage only after 1947, the concept of 'national
security' has no agreed definitions. As the meaning (and practice) of
national security expanded with the rise of the national security state,
the military-industrial complex and the conservative establishment
confused traditional (and relatively narrow) national security interests
with 'national security ideology', the self-serving, often unexamined rhetoric and rationales that disguise militarism and discourage democratic
scrutiny in the name of national security. As former president Lyndon
Johnson once bragged: 'I can arouse a great mass of people with a very
simple kind of appeal. I can wrap the flag around this policy, and use
patriotism as a club to silence the critics.'6
'National security', as defined by defence specialists, first entails defence in its narrowest concept-the protection of a nation's people and
territories from physical attack; and second, the more extensive concept
of the protection of political and economic interests considered essential
by those who exercise political power to the fundamental values and
the vitality of the state. In the last three decades, as US policy-makers
became increasingly involved in a more interdependent, chaotic and
threatening world, the concept became broader still, until foreign and
domestic policy almost completely overlapped. Thus 'national' security
became 'globalised' security encompassing not only real or alleged external military and defence concerns, but virtually unlimited interests
and 'threats' abroad. At home this unrealistically totalitarian concept
of national security encouraged elites to view internal dissent as yet
another threat to be suppressed, and to cloak ideologically all government actions, even illegal ones, with the US flag. Often more insidious
internal threats to the national well-being, such as racism, poverty, inequality and political corruption, were dismissed in preference for bogus
or exaggerated external dangers.
This expanded concept and usage of national security supported
5 See Americans Talk Security, National Survey No 8, 'Public evaluation of Pentagon waste and
US foreign aid policies', September 1988, Martilla & Kiley, pp 12, 56.
6 Quoted in A A Jordan and W J Taylor, Jr, American National Security: policy and process,
Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, p 45.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

the rise of the 'national security state' (NSS).7 Ironically, the NSS, which
is the product of the modern, technological, communications age, has
had to rely more heavily upon secrecy precisely because of the communications revolution that has made secrecy more difficult to achieve.
Moreover, despite and because of more stringent constitutional restrictions on war-making and intelligence operations, the NSS has created
a 'world of overt covert operations'. As a result, a credible national
security doctrine is especially essential to justify in moral terms to policy-makers and the public state actions which would be immoral if perpetrated by individuals.8
The concept of a 'national security doctrine' (NSD) has various meanings. The US Department of Defense defines a doctrine as the 'fundamental principles by which the military forces or elements thereof guide
their actions in support of national objectives'. One critic interprets this
to mean that 'doctrine represents the basic precepts that determine how
US forces are armed, trained and organised for the conduct of military
operations': it forms the middle ground between a nation's broad geopolitical objectives and the basic, day to day principles of war.9 Another
By means of military assistance and training the USA also exported national security state
models abroad. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky described these as 'Third World fascist
clones, directly controlled by military elites whose ideology combines elements of Nazism with
pre-Enlightenment notions of hierarchy and "natural inequality".' These military elites interpret
any challenge to the status quo as communist subversion of the state. Saul Landau traced the
historical roots of the US national security state to US expansionism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, which aspired to world power after World War I and to the establishment,
protection and expansion of a global empire after World War II. This 'reason of state' doctrine
(fascist in the fundamental sense of the word) was institutionally protected by the National
Security Act of 1947 (then secret) and later decrees which 'placed the governance of critical
foreign and defense policies in the hands of new institutions: a national security apparatus run
by national security managers'. E S Herman, The Real Terror Network: terrorism in fact and
propaganda, Boston: South End Press, 1982, p 3; N Chomsky and E S Herman, The Washington
Connectionand Third WorldFascism, Boston: South End Press, 1979, pp 252-63; and S Landau,
The Dangerous Doctrine: national security and US foreign policy, Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1988, p 4.
8 For example, the 'overt-covert' war in Nicaragua has become impossible to hide from powerful
news media. Moreover, the 'operation is deliberately overt in order to put maximum pressure
on the Sandinistas', but it is also covert to 'avoid the constitutional processes of deliberation'
on war-making. The mammoth modern national security state has 'totally transformed the
relationship of the citizen and the state', by appropriating to one man and his small clique of
advisers the power of war and peace. Under the national security state and the reigning national
security doctrine, the President has unprecedented power 'to censor, to conduct surveillance on
US citizens, and to circumvent the will of Congress-all in the name of "national security".'
R J Barnet, 'Losing moral ground, the foundations of US foreign policy', Sojournersreprint No
492, pp 2-3. See also R 0 Curry (ed), Freedom at Risk: secrecy, censorship,and repressionin the
1980s, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1988 (an excellent collection of
essays on the infringement of constitutional rights via national security).
9 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as quoted by Klare, 'The interventionist impulse: US military doctrine
for low-intensity warfare', in M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare, New York:
Pantheon Books, 1988, p 51.

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

views

NSD

as synonymous with the ideology of national security:

C.. . an unwillingness or inability on the part of US policy-makers and

party leaders to offer an honest choice to the public-imperialism or

republicanism-led to the rise of the doctrine of national security, the
unofficial and often 'higher' cause that has guided US policy for the
last forty years'. The NSD was the logical conclusion to a chain of events:
the 1947 National Security Act, organisation of the national security
state and its institutional apparatus, empowerment of national security
managers, and the creation of the doctrine of national security as the
'national security myth'.10
When the prevailing national security doctrine is credible it deflects
dissent as a direct threat to the state itself and the way of life of its
citizens. Doctrine functions like religious dogma, subject to a higher
morality whereby the end justifies the means; criticism becomes tantamount to heresy. The Reagan doctrine attempted to employ this mechanism to legitimise US intervention and hegemony in Central America:
'The national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America.
If we cannot defend ourselves there, we cannot expect to prevail elsewhere. Our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble,
and the safety of our homeland would be put at jeopardy.'11

National security doctrines:all for one and one for all

Since the 1970s the master doctrine of anticommunism has been
combined with various subsidiary NSDS which identify immediate dangers or specific enemies: Third World revolutions, resource and energy
wars and international terrorism. In 1981 the Brown doctrine of former
secretary of defence, Harold Brown, warned of counter-insurgency in a
turbulent and revolution-prone Third World, stating that military
strength may become the 'only recourse' of the USA 'in dealing with
the basic causes of disorder in this tumultuous world'. The Carter doctrine forecast 'energy wars' to achieve US energy security. Before a
joint session of Congress President Carter declared that any attempt by
an outside force 'to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be
regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States'. The
Haig doctrine propounded by former secretary of state, Alexander
10

S Landau, The Dangerous Doctrine, pp xiii, 2-4.

11 S Landau, The Dangerous Doctrine, p 142, quoting President Reagan's speech to a joint session

of Congress, 27 April 1983. While this was the origin of the Reagan doctrine, it was more fully
expressed in the President's 1985 State of the Union address which promised to aid anticommunist 'freedom fighters' on 'every continent'; M T Klare, Low Intensity Warfare,p 63.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Haig, focused on the struggle for scarce resources in the Third World
and asserted that 'resource wars' could threaten the vital national security of the USA by denying access to strategic minerals.12
In the 1980s the Reagan doctrine, which pledged support (short of
US combat forces) to anti-Soviet Third World 'freedom fighters' and
'friendly' anti-communist authoritarians, became preoccupied with Central America, particularly El Salvador and Nicaragua. In order to implement this political objective, a new strategic military doctrine-like the
earlier military doctrines of containment, rollback, massive retaliation,
flexible response and counterinsurgency-was formulated, known as
the doctrine of low intensity conflict (LIC). In 1985 the Pentagon defined
low intensity conflict as 'a limited politico-military struggle to achieve
political, social, economic, or psychological objectives' which may use
protracted struggle, terrorism and insurgency. Despite its name, LIC
actually represents total and interventionary war, wherein victory
involves winning 'three battles-in the field, in the media, and in Washington within the administration'.13
Recently, the war on drugs is emerging as a powerful new political
doctrine under the anti-communist ideology, the strategy of LIC and the
reassertion of covert action. Beginning with heroin, US intelligence
agents were instrumental in the establishment of the 'Golden Triangle'
supply system in Southeast Asia and the Marseilles 'French Connection', ostensibly in the interests of national security. Similarly the scandals of the Australian bank, Nugan Hand Ltd, co-founded by a former
CIA operative and steeped in a trail of drugs and money laundering,
12 M T Klare, Beyond the 'VietnamSyndrome',pp 16, 30, 50.
13 M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare,pp 53, 55-56; S Miles, 'The real war: low-

intensity conflict in Central America', NACLA

Report on the Americas 20 (2) April/May 1986, pp
17-48, and p 23 quote from Lewis Tambs, Reagan's Ambassador to Costa Rica; H Sklar, 'Lick
low intensity conflict doublespeak', Zeta Magazine 2 (3) March 1989, pp 42-51; S C Sarkesian,
'Low-intensity conflict: concepts, principles, and policy guidelines', Air University Review 26 (2)
1985, pp 2-11. The term LIC, based on a spectrum of conflict from high to low, assumes
perpetual war; that Soviet low-level conflict will be the immediate threat; and that the Third
World, not Europe, is the real battlefield. Specific missions are: counter-insurgency to assist
friendly governments resist insurgency; 'proinsurgency' to support anti-communist insurgencies
in the Third World; peacetime contingency operations; terrorism counteraction; antidrug operations using military resources; and peacekeeping operations. The LIC doctrine has set off a
heated debate within the military establishment between proponents who argue that it is classical
counter-insurgency doctrine used in Vietnam and those who describe it as a fundamentally new
strategy based on the lessons learned, and opponents who support conventional and/or nuclear
deterrence strategy. Similarly, radical critics dispute whether LIC is a new, more dangerous
doctrine or propaganda-'LICSPEAK'-for total war and overt or covert intervention. Sklar
argues that "'Low Intensity Conflict" is an effort to relegitimate and modernise US elites'
capacity to impose their will by violent means', by sanitising terms and pretending to renounce
intervention by US troops (p 48).

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

prefigured the larger web of the Iran-Contra scandals.14 The intricate

plots and subplots cannot all be examined, but it seems worth arguing
first that US intelligence services have long had an intimate relationship
with the drug underworld, and second, that this intimacy could facilitate
the manipulation of the war against drugs in the interests of the national
security state.

The drug war as national security doctrine

The geographic, economic and social dimensions of the drug trade are
enormous and growing, but the statistics which document this meteoric
rise are difficult to acquire, vary widely, and are often suspect. One
source, based on 1988 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) figures, estimates 6 million habitual cocaine users and half a million heroin users
in the USA. It is believed that the wholesale value of all illegal drugs in
the USA may be $25 billion, and the retail value $150 billion. Worldwide
drug traffic may account for $300 billion, half of which is thought to
enter and remain in the USA.15 Major country suppliers are in Latin
America. In the absence of reliable repatriation studies, generally only
10 per cent of drug profits are thought to accrue to source or transit
countries. Colombia, the principal cocaine refiner (an estimated 75 per
cent), may have received $1-2 billion in foreign exchange from drug
profits (3 per cent of Colombia's GNP) in 1987. While no one really
knows how much the Medellin cartel earns, the value of cocaine and
marijuana exports probably exceeds $4 billion annually, of which less
than half may remain in the country. 16
In relation to the enormous profits, the US drug enforcement budget
remains woefully inadequate and there is much disagreement over how
J Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: a true tale of dope, dirty money, and the CIA, New York:
Touchstone, 1987, p 23; see special issue, 'The CIA and drugs', Covert Action InformationBulletin
28, summer 1987, pp 1-68; P Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1984, pp 63-168; and H Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: drugs, intelligence, and international
fascism, Boston: South End Press, 1980.
B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred Years War?'. Estimates vary widely; for example another
source cites that: the international drug trade is worth approximately $47 billion per annum;
there are an estimated 1.2 million addicts of illegal drugs in the USA, and US spending on drug
law enforcement increased from $800 million in fiscal 1981 to $2.5 billion in fiscal 1988. Foreign
Policy Association, A Citizen's Guide to US Foreign Policy: election '88, New York: Foreign
Policy Association, 1988, pp 57-58, 60.
6 R B Craig, 'Illicit Drug Traffic: implications for South America source countries', Journal of
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 29 (2) summer 1987, p 25; see also J G Tokatlian,
'National security and drugs: their impact on Colombia-US relations', Journal of Interamerican
Studies and World Affairs 30 (1) spring 1988, pp 146-159; B M Bagley, 'The new Hundred
Years War?', Journal of InteramericanStudies, pp 163-7.

14

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

to distribute the monies. The 1988 Omnibus Drug Bill authorised over
$2 billion in new spending for anti-drug activities, but because of legislated spending limits, only $500 million was appropriated in fiscal
1989.17 Of this, $101 million was authorised for international narcotics
control for fiscal 1989, providing $5.5 million for defence department
drug control training and weapons assistance.18 Members of Congress
have been frustrated with the Reagan administration's record in the
drug war. Two charges are common from legislative critics on both the
left and the right: preoccupation with communists, not drugs; and talk
about drugs, but little action.19
In the light of the problem, how does the threat of international
narcotics relate to US national security and its new national security
doctrine? The answer lies in the pronouncements and the actions of
policy-makers since the drug war heated up between 1986 and 1988. On
The Omnibus Drug Bill or 1988 Anti-Drug Bill, PL 100-690 (HR 5210), signed into law by
President Reagan on 18 November 1988, established in the executive office of the president the new
Office of National Drug Control Policy headed by a cabinet-level director to coordinate national
drug control efforts; he could advise the National Security Council (Nsc) and attend NSC meetings at the president's direction. President Bush appointed William Bennett as the first so-called
'drug czar'. The bill divided resources equally between drug-supply (interdiction and control)
and demand-reduction programmes (treatment, prevention and education). It also introduced
more stringent law-enforcement measures, such as the death penalty for major drug traffickers,
international banking and money-laundering restrictions, and regulation of the export of chemicals used in the manufacture of controlled substances. See 'Major provisions of the 1988 AntiDrug Bill', CongressionalQuarterly, Weekly Report 46 (44) 29 October 1988, pp 3146-51.
18 The Bill 'waives, for purposes of the anti-narcotics program, a controversial 1975 law that bars
US aid to foreign police agencies. However, the waiver is allowed only for countries that have
democratic governments and for police agencies that do not engage in a "consistent pattern of
gross violations" of human rights'; it also earmarks $2 million for defence department antinarcotics training of foreign police forces and $3.5 million in military assistance, see '1988 AntiDrug Bill', CongressionalQuarterly,ibid, p 3147. The Bush administration proposed $5.5 billion
in fiscal 1990 outlays for the anti-drug programme, a 21 per cent increase over comparable
fiscal 1989 programmes; total outlays proposed specifically for anti-drug enforcement are $3.9
billion, a 17 per cent increase over fiscal 1989; 'Budget', Congressional Quarterly 27 (6) 11
February 1989, p 252. For further background see US General Accounting Office 'Drug control:
issues surrounding increased use of the military in drug interdiction', April 1988, p 20; US
Department of State, 'International narcotics control strategy report', March 1988, Washington
DC: US Government Printing Office, p 20; US Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
'Role of the US military in narcotics control overseas', ninety-ninth congress, second session,
Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1986; and D C Morrison, 'The Pentagon's
Drug Wars', National Journal 18, 6 September 1986, pp 2104-9.
19 Senator John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts), chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, said: 'despite all of the talk
about a war on drugs, there has not been a real war. Drugs have not been the priority that
public officials said they were'; and Congressman Charles B Rangel (Democrat-New York),
chairman of the House Narcotics Committee, complained that administration officials 'don't
want to talk about drugs. They want to talk about arms and communists and terrorists ...
Communists aren't killing our kids, drugs and drug traffickers are'; quoted in M Mills, 'Hill
members turn up pressure in war on drugs', Congressional Quarterly 46 (15) 9 April 1988,
p 944.
7

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

the rhetorical level there was a conscious effort by the government to

convince the American public and the US Congress of the intimate
linkage between drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas.20The connection
was forcefully made after a large cocaine bust in 1984, when the US
Ambassador to Colombia, Lewis Tambs, charged that production facilities had been protected by communist insurgents or 'narcoguerrillas'.
On the practical level, President Reagan signed a secret directive in
April 1986 that identified the illegal traffic as a national security threat
and authorised the Department of Defence to engage in numerous antidrug operations. Other governmental agencies fighting the drug traffic
(such as the DEA and the State Department's Bureau of International
Narcotics Matters) acquired or expanded paramilitary and intelligence
capabilities.2

The escalation in the war on drugs in 1988 coincided with major foreign
policy setbacks in Latin America: 'the collapse of US counter-revolutionary strategy in Central America'; a 'new stage of crisis' in the
counter-insurgency against revolutionaries in Colombia and Peru; instability in Panama over the recalcitrant Noriega; and intractable drug
control problems in Bolivia, Mexico and Peru.22 Implementation of the
drug war doctrine assumed different (often contradictory) dimensions
in each case depending upon changing perceptions and priorities, such
as which national security interests were really being pursued as
opposed to those that were 'ideologised' or manipulated; and the mix
of domestic political constraints. The war on drugs also served multiple
agendas. For the supporters of LIC, militarised drug operations provided
a laboratory to project US power, train local militaries in the new
strategic doctrine, transfer military hardware and gather intelligence.
Congress saw the doctrine as a way to reassert influence and bipartisanism over foreign policy by being 'hard on drugs'. Both the Reagan
and Bush administrations could use the drug war national security doctrine to generate public support behind a resurgent, interventionist US
foreign policy in Latin America.
In cases where counter-revolution and counter-insurgency were paramount, such as Colombia, Peru and Honduras, prosecution of the
20

21
22

Colonel J D Waghelstein, 'A Latin-American insurgency status report', Military Review February 1987, pp 46-7, quoted by M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare, p 73, and
fn 89 p 229: 'There is an alliance between some drug traffickers and some insurgents'; and
'dollars accrued to the drug dealers find their way into some guerrilla coffers'; and calling for
'the necessary support to counter the guerrilla/narcotics terrorists in this hemisphere'.
M Rabine, 'The war on drugs', Zeta Magazine 2 (1) January 1989, p 94; M T Klare and P
Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare,pp 71-3.
Some points here from M Rabine, 'The war on drugs', Zeta, p 94.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

drug war often remained in the background and was manipulated to

win congressional and public support while fighting the 'real' war on
communism. In the absence of an immediate leftist threat-as in
Panama and Bolivia-the drug war was variously waged with vigour or
manipulated to legitimise US military intervention and secret strategic
designs. In Panama, drug corruption was initially overlooked for
broader so-called geopolitical and strategic concerns, and by 1980 to
fight the war on communism in Central America. When the exposure of
drug corruption became too explosive, however, Panama was treated
as a rogue dictatorship, like Bolivia. Generally, US Conservatives supported Latin military hardliners who opposed leftist forces and/or were
amenable to war games and LIC experiments under the guise of the
drug war.
Rogue dictators
In two cases of destabilisation against rightist military dictatorships the
war on drugs replaced anticommunism as a powerful propaganda and
control weapon. Bolivia was relatively easy because there were no other
overriding or contradictory security interests; indeed the rogue dictatorship itself was the greatest threat. In Panama the drug war doctrine
backfired, compromising other security interests and transforming the
unsavoury dictator into another Latin American 'hero' who thumbed
his nose at the USA. Ironically, US intimacy with military strongmen
in both countries for two decades helped create these rogue drug
dictatorships of the 1980s.23
Bolivia
One of the first cases in which the drug war doctrine was employed in
the interests of US foreign policy was in 1980 against the drug mafia
government of General Luis Garcia Meza in Bolivia. The general's coup
against the elected Bolivian government of Siles Zuazo 'joined together
cocaine and National Security State thuggery and terror'.24 The 'drug
23

24

The strongmen included Omar Torrijos in Panama and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer. In 1972 the
brother of then Panamanian ruler General Omar Torrijos was indicted in New York for smuggling heroin, but was saved from arrest because of national security interests; J Kwitny, 'An
inquiry: money, drugs and the contras', The Nation 245 (5) 29 August 1987, pp 145, 162-6. In
Bolivia from 1971-78 the government of General Hugo Banzer became involved with notorious
drug lords in Santa Cruz Department; M Linklater, I Hilton and N Ascherson, The Nazi
Legacy, Klaus Barbie and the International Fascist Connection, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1984, pp 266-84.
E S Herman, The Real TerrorNetwork, p 80.

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colonels' and their paramilitary forces, many former Nazis (such as

Klaus Barbie), or neo-fascists, were assisted by the 'security forces' of
Argentina's arch-conservative generals.25 Ultimately the drug-linked
regime became a liability for the Reagan administration which worked
to destabilise it by overt and covert pressures (as it later would with
Panama's Noriega). Going public, the USA withdrew its ambassador
from Bolivia. Even with a relatively vulnerable country such as Bolivia
the process took over a year.26
In 1986 the US military forces used Operation Blast Furnace to wipe
out the coca growing operations and cocaine paste production laboratories.27 Although drug activity ceased briefly, there were no major
busts and soon trafficking operations were bigger than ever, but antiAmerican feeling and opposition to the civilian democratic government
of President Siles Zuazo was stronger than ever.28 The venture had
been expensive and counter-productive as a drug operation, but perhaps
more successful as a projection of US military power in the region and
influence over the sometimes intransigent policies of the civilian Siles.
It was the 'Leopards' (a 300-man elite, paramilitary, anti-narcotics force
organised and funded by the USA, formally known as the Mobile Rural
Patrol Units, UMOPAR) that kidnapped President Siles Zuazo in an
aborted July 1984 coup.29 Although US Ambassador Edwin Corr
received credit for discouraging the ill-fated attempt, what could have
encouraged the mistaken idea in the first place? As one analyst
observed, a 'strategic military rationale to deal with the drug problem
25 For the notorious internationalist fascist connection between drugs and right-wing dictators in

Bolivia and Latin America see Linklater et al, The Nazi Legacy, especially pp 215-302; P
Lernoux, Cry of the People, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp 155-310; K Hermann, 'Klaus
Barbie's Bolivian coup', Covert Action InformationBulletin (25) winter 1986, pp 15-20; and R T
Naylor, Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, New York: The Linden Press/Simon Schuster,
1987, pp 165-85.
26 J Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: political struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1982, London: Verso,
1984, pp 292-344; E A Nadelmann, 'The DEA in Latin America: dealing with institutionalized
corruption', Journal of InteramericanStudies and WorldAffairs 29 (4) winter 1987/88, p 16.
27 This was the largest scale Pentagon participation in anti-drug operations to date and was the
model for future drug programmes in the region. Until 1982 the war on drugs was largely
rhetorical since the US military was prevented by law from participation, but in 1982 the law
was amended to allow Pentagon assistance and an April 1986 presidential directive sanctioned
direct military and intelligence participation; M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low-Intensity Warfare, pp 72-3; J A Kawell, 'Going to the source', and 'Under the flag of law enforcement', in
NACLAReport on the Americas 22 (6) March 1989, especially pp 19, 26. Also see my fn 28 for
background sources.
28 P Lernoux, 'The US in Bolivia, playing golf while drugs flow', The Nation 248 (6) 13 February
1989, pp 188-92; and J McCoy, 'Cocaine business booms in Bolivia and Peru despite US
eradication efforts', Latinamerica Press 29 (20) 10 September 1987, pp 5-6.
29 R T Naylor, Hot Money, pp 173-74.

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leads ... to an interventionist attitude and policy which places national

sovereignty in great jeopardy'.30 The drug war also served as a convenient cover for the 1987 plans to stage US rapid deployment forces in
the centre of South America (a geopolitical idea that was also favoured
by Che Guevara).3
Panama
In Panama's case the security implications of the drug war were more
developed. When former military strongman Omar Torrijos (mastermind of the Panama Canal Treaties) died in a plane crash in 1981, US
relations became cosy with his successor and head of the Panamanian
Defence Forces, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had associations with the CIA, the DEA and the Southern Command (Southcom,
which housed over 14,000 US troops in Panama at fourteen US military
bases worth approximately $5 billion). After the Sandinista victory in
1979, Panama (like Honduras) became central in regional security planning. This gave General Noriega a special role to play in Washington's
drama. Noriega's long-term involvement with the Colombian drug
cartel, well-known to US embassy officials, the DEA, Southcom and the
CIA as early as 1983 or 1984 (and 'softer' information even earlier), did
not seem to be a problem.32 Rather the former chief of Southcom,
General Paul Gorman, insisted that Noriega 'was a major contributor
to American efforts to do something about narcotics trafficking'.33
Indeed, evidence indicates that Noriega's drug profiteering occurred
principally from 1980-84 and was then cut back. Noriega used the
black market network, whereby Torrijos had supplied arms first to the
Sandinistas in their struggle against Somoza and later to the Salvadoran
guerrillas, for his personal enrichment. At the height of these activities
in 1984 a cocaine processing factory in Panama's remote Darien Province was raided. The opportunistic Noriega then concentrated on low30

31

32

33

J G Tokatlian, 'National security and drugs'; this observation was made about Colombia and
similar military actions in Mexico (Operation Intercept, 1969, and Operation Condor, 1975).
P Lernoux, 'The US in Bolivia', who also argues that the US Southern Command hopes 'to
establish a permanent military presence in South America for the first time since World War II';
and S Blixen, 'US, Latin America sign secret defense plan', National Catholic Reporter 16
December 1988, p 21.
Former US ambassador to Panama, Everett Ellis Briggs, stated that George Bush was briefed
of General Noriega's drug activities in December 1985 and then seemingly retracted this position, while President Bush denied knowing of Noriega's drug involvement until his indictment
in February 1988; 'Bush denies being told of Noriega Drug Activities', New York Times 15
May 1988, p 11.
'A brewing storm: Panama's crisis in perspective', Central America Bulletin 7 (5) April 1988, pp
1-3, 6-7; quote on p 6.

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risk money laundering operations and collaboration with both the

Colombian cartel and the DEA. The result was a file of letters of commendation to Noriega from the DEA. When the opposition newspaper
in Panama first reported General Noriega's links with a Peruvian trafficker, it was the resident DEA agent who provided the disclaimer printed
in the pro-government press the next day.34 The Justice Department
described Noriega's cooperation as 'superb' as late as May 1987.35 At
that time Noriega had given full assistance to 'Operation Pisces', a
joint investigation into drug money laundering made through Panama's
large international banking network.36
Despite nearly a decade of US protection, in February 1988 two
federal indictments were handed down in Florida against Noriega. In
March anti-Noriega riots and an unsuccessful coup attempt rocked
Panama, caused largely by a massive US economic destabilisation programme. In public statements Reagan talked of an end to 'the illegitimate Noriega regime' and a return to 'a democratically stable and prosperous Panama'.37 The Reagan administration had surprisingly turned
against its old conspirator, ostensibly in the name of democracy and the
war against drugs. But first the Reagan administration attempted to
exploit anticommunist phobia. An 'anonymous' administration official
revealedto the media that two Panamanian air force pilots who defected to
the USA in March 1988claimed that Noriega had recently received sixteen
tons of military equipment from Cuba.38 The press quoted anti-Noriega
Panamanian ambassador, Juan Sosa, as saying: 'We have been warning
everybody that Panama is on the verge of becoming a communist
country.'39 But these unsubstantiated charges were simply not credible.
Panama's Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations anticipated a different
thrust and expressed as much to a gathering of Latin diplomats, claiming that 'suppressing drug trafficking might be the Reagan administration's excuse for an invasion'.40 Soon a media campaign promoting
Noriega as the evil drug-running dictator caught the imagination and
ire of the American public. Senator Bob Graham (Democrat-Florida)
34
3
36

37
38

39

40

E A Nadelman, 'The DEA in Latin America', Journal of InteramericanStudies, p 20.

J Dinges, 'General coke?' NACLA, p 22.
R T Naylor, Hot Money, especially pp 186-95; and more generally, P Lernoux, In Banks We
Trust.
'Reagan tags Noriega rule "illegitimate"', Orlando Sentinel 12 March 1988, pp A- I 1, A- I 1.
'Noriega gets tough on dissent', Orlando Sentinel 19 March 1988, pp A-1 and A-8; 'Shultz:
Noriega's military regime "cracking"', Orlando Sentinel 21 March 1988, p A-5; 'Two defectors
say Noriega is playing for time, will stay', Miami Herald 24 March 1988, p 18-A.
'US considered creating Delvalle haven in Panama', Orlando Sentinel, 3 April 1988, p A-20.
'Panama cites signs of imminent US invasion', Latinamerica Press 20 (26) 14 July 1988, pp 1-2.

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expressed the growing convergence between drugs and national security

before the Senate hearing on International Narcotics Control: 'There's
a tendency to think that drug trafficking and national security are separate issues . . . The two in fact are synonymous.'41 Proving the point in a
way Graham had not intended, the Reagan administration, after all the
fuss, offered Noriega amnesty from drug prosecution if he fled to a
third country.42
The more interesting question is why the Reagan administration
turned against Noriega, especially as evidence surfaced of his CIA involvement. In February 1988 witnesses before a Senate foreign relations
subcommittee confirmed that Noriega and high military officials of the
government had laundered millions in drug money and facilitated drug
smuggling.43 The testimony pointed to the complicity of the DEA, Southcom and the CIA. Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a Cuban-born Miami accountant who admitted laundering $11 billion for the Colombia cartel,
charged that large sums of money were diverted from these drug operations through the CIA to the Nicaraguan contras. Since 1966 Noriega,
later head of Panamanian military intelligence (G-2), became involved
with the CIA and may have been on its payroll. Investigations disclosed
a tangle of alleged relationships-with former CIA director, William
Casey, and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Reportedly Noriega was
to be instrumental in the various invasion and destabilisation plans
against Nicaragua.44
Indeed the most likely explanation for the anti-Noriega campaign
was the general's failure to be an effective 'stooge'. This theory suggests
that the Reagan policy-makers believed that they could easily destabilise
Noriega and install in his place a more pliant and 'clean' right-wing
commander of the defence forces.45 There are also rumours that the far
right constituency of the Reagan administration may have leaked Noriega's record in an attempt to revoke the Panama Canal Treaties unilaterally. Noriega's drug involvement was exposed in order to create the
larger-than-life demon of 'the drug-dealing Latin dictator', a powerful
41
42

43
44
45

'Prosecutor gets ready for Noriega', OrlandoSentinel, 16 March 1988, p A-1.

Thus Reagan proved he would negotiate with drug figures as well as terrorists. At the time
George Bush had vowed: 'I will never bargain with drug dealers on US or foreign soil'. See L
Lifschultz, 'Bush, drugs and Pakistan: inside the kingdom of heroin', The Nation 247 (14) 14
November 1988, p 1 (quote), and pp 492-6 for another arms-drugs-cIA pipeline to the Afghan
rebels through Pakistan's former ruler. Also see the various articles in the special issue, 'The CIA
and drugs', Covert Action.
M Mills, 'Hill members turn up pressure in war on drugs', CongressionalQuarterly,p 945.
'Brewing storm', Central AmericanBulletin, pp 6-7.
J Weeks, 'Of puppets and heroes', NACLA, p 18.

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image which provided 'a nasty consensus in favor of a return to baldfaced intervention as a proper tool of US policy'.46

Narco-terrorismversus narco-imperialism?
In Honduras, Colombia and Peru the battle against drug trafficking
proved to be a dangerous and complicated doctrine in a multi-party
war played out by counter-revolutionaries, the military, paramilitary
forces, death squads, guerrillas and a host of US actors, all involved
with drugs.47 In Colombia and Peru the US coined the myth of the
'narco-guerrillas', or, as a State Defence Department report explained,
an 'alliance between drug smugglers and arms dealers in support of
terrorists and guerrillas'.48 However, the real enemy was US 'narcoimperialism', a militarised reassertion of US hegemony in the region
via the drug war.

Honduras
In Honduras evidence mounted of the complicity of the armed forces
in regional drug trafficking. The DEA announced that Honduras, with
over 200 isolated airstrips and 350 miles of unwatched coastline, rivalled
Panama as a major trans-shipment point for South American cocaine
on its way north. In April 1988 the US-instigated arrest of the Robin
Hood-like drug figure, Ramon Matta, backfired. Angry mobs stormed
the US embassy in Tegucigalpa while the Honduran police seemed slow
to respond (the police chief was reportedly a friend of Matta). Since
Matta's legitimate business interests employed some 4,000 Hondurans,
he was something of a local hero. In May 1988 the Honduran ambassador to Panama, Rigoberto Regalado (friend of Panama's Noriega
and stepbrother of General Humberto Regalado, chief of the Honduran
armed forces), was arrested in Miami with twenty-five pounds of cocaine in his bags. The USA reportedly has a list of a dozen top military
46
47

48

'Panama', NACLA, p 11.

Tokatlian explains the policy contradiction or double standard as follows: 'The "maps" of
strategic security and of the anti-narcotics war are superimposed on several vertices. Washington
finds it important to combine these maps in some cases, and to separate them in others. For
example, countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria and Afghanistan are perceived as presenting
a double threat to US strategic security interests through a mixture of drug-trafficking, terrorism
and Soviet penetration.' But in allied, friendly nations (Turkey, Pakistan, Philippines) the drug
production/trafficking is played down because of strategic importance to US security. J G
Tokatlian, 'National security and drugs'.
M Collett, 'An internation story, the myth of the "narco-guerrillas"', 247 (4) 13/20 August
1988, p 113 (quote), 130-4.

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officials involved in the drug traffic and has threatened to release it

from time to time in order to pressure drug compliance. In February
1989 the State Department implicated the minister of defence, the chief
of military intelligence, the chief of the navy and others.
Was this policy a ploy to deflect attention from the fact that the
Honduran military were running arms for the contras and that the
contras were involved in drug trafficking? In Honduras a warehouse
used for arms and drugs shipments implicated top military officers and
the state-run customs company; Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 uncovered a trail leading to arms merchants believed to be connected with
the CIA and Oliver North.49 The trafficking problem sharply divided
the Honduran government and the army, and created an atmosphere
of suspicion and uncertainty. It was less and less clear who was using
whom, or whether US national security managers were not creating
another 'rogue government' like Panama or Bolivia. One senior Honduran political leader felt that the country was so poor, and politicians
and army officers so corrupt, 'that the drug dealers coud probably buy
the officers and most of the National Assembly over the next five
years'.50
The question is whether this situation arose by design or as a result
of conflicting agendas. What did US security managers hope to achieve?
Perhaps the same ends as all the participants-an independent source
of money and power. The various allegations in the Iran-Contra hearings linking the contras, the CIA and Oliver North reveal an insidious
symbiotic relationship between the US intelligence agencies, the DEA and
the drug gangs-a relationship in which it is practically impossible to
sort out the users and the used.51 Thus Oliver North would not have
been shocked when a memorandum from his operative, Robert Owen, in
April 1985 described some contra leaders as drug runners, nor dismayed
when the drug profits of George Morales provided over one-quarter
49 The Iran-Contra hearings mention the warehouse and its creation by 'high officials of the

Honduran armed forces, arms traffickers and Israeli security agents'. In fact another company, Puertas de Castilla, operating out of this state-run warehouse, was reported to be implicated in November 1987 for shipping $1.4 billion in cocaine to Florida; 'Honduras: mounting
evidence implicates armed forces in cocaine trafficking', Latinamerica Press 20 (21) 9 June
1988, p 5.
50 'Drug allegations divide Honduran military and congress', Washington Report on the Hemisphere 8 (20) 6 July 1988, pp 1, 7.
51 P Agee (and Kwitny) has traced this relationship to 1947 and the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles
and to the Golden Triangle opium ring important in the fight against both Mao Zedong and
Ho Chi-minh. Agee insists that Bush was known to have met head of contra resupply operations,
Felix Rodriguez, in Honduras on several occasions. Indeed Agee questions whether the national

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million dollars to the contra supply system. A massive conspiracy or

vast shadow government 'supported by drug dealing and illegal arms
sales since the 1950s' does not necessarily provide the explanation for
these events.52 In the fields of intelligence and narcotics control, as in
crime and drug dealing, standard operating procedure holds that the
end justifies the means; it is eminently logical for those who believe
themselves to be above the law to use and be used by those outside it.
The same modi operandi are common to all four activities. 53
Colombia
The power of drug traffickers is staggering in Colombia, where the
illegal and violent trade may bring in $1.5 billion per annum and the
murder rate is the highest in the world for a country not at war. Sectors
of the military, the business community and the civilian government
are not only being corrupted by drug money but murdered by the drug
mafia. The Colombians have a term for this coercive collaboration:
plomo o plata, silver or the bullet. Drug power contracted marriages of
convenience between some 150 right-wing anticommunist death squads
and the six left-wing Marxist guerrilla armies. The death squads massacre peasants, union leaders, leftists, guerrillas and other 'undesirables'
such as homosexuals and drug addicts; the guerrillas (for example M19, the April 19th Movement) kidnap the wealthy, including drug traffickers, and prey on establishment political leaders. Drug lords in turn
use the guerrillas (for example the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC) to protect their jungle laboratories, and the death
squads, which are linked with the army, to suppress labour unrest and

52

53

security managers really want to stop the drug traffic, or are using it for their own ends; see L
Dicaprio, 'An interview with Philip Agee', Zeta Magazine 1 (11) November 1988, pp 109-12;
110, for argument. The Nation, citing L Cockburn, Out of Control: the story of the Reagan
administration'ssecret war in Nicaragua, the illegal arms pipeline, and the contra drug connection
(New York, 1987), writes that "'the anti-Castro CIA team in Florida were already drawing
attention to their drug-smuggling activities by 1963", and that it was Felix Rodriguez, the CIA
"ialumnuswho wore Che Guevara's watch and counted George Bush among his friends", who
allegedly coordinated a $10 million payment to the contras by the Colombian cocaine cartel'.
See The Nation 247 (2) 16/23 July 1988, p 42. Similar charges of CIA manipulation of the drug
trade to destabilise or pressure recalcitrant Latin and Third World governments are found in
R T Naylor, Hot Money; H Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup; and J Kwitny, The Crimes of
Patriots.
'These charges are discussed in J Kwitny, 'An inquiry: money', Nation, pp 162-6; see also
criticism of the Christic Institute's conspiracy of the 'secret team', in D Corn, 'Christic's lawsuit:
is there really a "secret team"?' The Nation 247 (1) 2/9 July 1988, pp 10-14.
See E A Nadelman, 'The DEA in Latin America', for specific examples of how corruption can be
'worked with' to gain US ends; and L K Johnson, 'Covert action and accountability: decisionmaking for America's secret foreign policy', International Studies Quarterly 33 (1) March 1989,
pp 81-109.

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guard against kidnapping.54 In the midst of this violence-for-hire, the

USA has seemed either unable or unwilling to delink the struggle
against drug trafficking from counter-insurgency. One Colombian
official argued that 'it is one thing to fight drugs and another thing to
use drugs to fight communism, and that is what the United States is
doing'.55
There is a 'dirty war' between drug traffickers and guerrillas (like the
war between the nazi fascists and communists) which the USA
exploits.56 The FARC, which functions along the lines of an armed trade
union on behalf of the peasant coca workers, ensuring minimum wages
and exacting a 10 per cent transit tax on drug shipments by cartel
middlemen, is manipulating drug activities, not protecting cocaine laboratories as charged by the US embassy and a 1988 State Department
report.57 When the guerrilla's tribute became uneconomic after the drop
in demand and price of cocaine, the 'narcs' retaliated in order to protect
their profits. They formed, and for a time operated a drug mafia death
squad, Muerte a Secuestradoresor 'Death to Kidnappers' (MAS), whereby they struck back against guerrilla kidnappings. According to certain
evidence, active duty military and counter-insurgency experts joined
the ranks of MAS creating a narco-military convergence or 'triangle of
terror' which has operated as a clandestine, three-way, anticommunist
alliance between the drug mafia, the military and the reactionary

elites.5 8
In short, anticommunist myopia and opportunism were two reasons
why the US anti-drug effort was not going well in Colombia. As one
specialist noted, 'the US government has rarely, if ever, accorded the
54 T Rosenberg, 'Colombia, murder city', The Atlantic 262 (5) November 1988, pp 20-30. Also

R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic', and R B Craig 'Colombian narcotics and US-Colombian relations', Journal of InteramericanStudies 23 (3) August 1981, pp 243-70; B M Bagley, 'Colombia
and the war on drugs', Foreign Affairs 67 (1) autumn 1988, pp 70-92; P Lernoux, 'The politics
of drugs', Zeta, and P Lernoux, 'A country under siege: Colombia can't kick drugs alone', The
Nation 246 (9) 5 March 1988, pp 1, 306-8; and R Jimeno and S Volk, 'Colombia: whose
country is this, anyway?' NACLA
Report on the Americas 7 (3) May/June 1983, pp 2-35.
5 'Profile: Washington sees a communist behind every bush', Washington Report on the Hemisphere 9 (4) 9 November 1988, p 2.
56 Linklater et al, The Nazi Legacy.
5 R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic' argues differently: 'Ties between terrorist groups and drug
smugglers would appear to be mutually beneficial ... Roughly half of FARC'S 33 "fronts" are
active in marijuana and coca growing areas where its cadres collect tribute for protecting illegal
plots, cocaine laboratories, and landing strips.' Compare with B M Bagley, 'Colombia and the
War on Drugs', Foreign Affairs, p 84, which states: 'The goals of the guerrillas and the traffickers
are fundamentally incompatible: the guerrillas are revolutionaries who seek to overthrow the
Colombian system; the traffickers are robber-baron capitalists who seek to protect their illgotten gains and assure themselves immunity from prosecution.'
58 Collett, 'The myth of"Narco-Guerrillas"', Nation, pp 132, 134.

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drug control objective such priority that it has been willing to sacrifice all other objectives'.59 The drug war rhetoric which equated
narco-terrorism with the communist threat in Latin America was
whipped up largely for the benefit of the US public. Nevertheless,
the political tide directing the war on drugs has become so powerful
that a truly serious anti-drug enforcement programme risks being 'captured by its own rhetoric and effectively immunised from critical
examination'.60

Peru
Coca cultivation in Peru has soared in the last fifteen years from under
50,000 acres to half a million today (some estimates put it closer to one
million) despite various US eradication programmes. The trade is
believed to generate over $800 million per annum for the country,
equivalent to about 30 per cent of its legal export earnings. The severe
economic crisis and national debt has debilitated the Garcia government's enforcement efforts. Over 200,000 peasants have flooded the
Upper Huallaga Valley where coca cultivation is concentrated and
where the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path guerrilla movement) established its base of operations in 1984.
The enemy in Peru has been characterised in the US press as narcoterrorism or narco-guerrillas: peasants, guerrillas and drug dealers in
'the combination of subversion and cocaine trafficking'.61 Peruvian
politicians agreed that 'so brutal are trafficker assaults on government
representatives in the region that they qualify de facto as terroristic.
Narco thugs and guerrilla cadres are tactically so similar in the (Upper
Huallaga) Valley that most distinctions between the two have become
speculative'.62 The threat in Peru, from the Pentagon's perspective, was
ripe for the application of low-intensity conflict (LIC) strategies understood as 'the short-term rapid projection or employment of forces in
conditions short of conventional war'. Lic is an all-embracing military
agents routinely tolerated powerful drug 'untouchables' who in turn manipulated enforcement agents to eliminate their competition and better monopolise the drug trade. The DEA itself
justified the 'limited strategy' of cooperating with major drug traffickers as a waiting game until
they could crack down. E A Nadelman, 'The DEA in Latin America', p 16 (quote), 19. Nor did
most Colombians take the US anti-drug programme seriously. The popular view was that the
USA was using the traffickers like everyone else; T Rosenberg, 'Colombia, murder city'.
60 Collett, 'The Myth of "Narco-Guerrillas"'; and E A Nadelmann, 'US drug policy: a bad export',
Foreign Policy (70) spring 1988, p 83.
61 'US hopes to really rock cocaine cradle', Orlando Sentinel, p A-4; also Kawell, 'Going to the
source', pp 13-21; and R Gonzalez, 'Coca's Shining Path', NACLAReport on the Americas 22 (6)
March 1989, pp 22-4.
62 R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic'.
59

DEA

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response to general lawlessness in the Third World, 'to curb "terrorists", outlaws and drug-pushers'.63
Extensive US-Peruvian military exercises, LIC operations such as the
Operation Condor series, have been justified by being classed as antinarcotics control programmes, but the primaryagenda has been counterinsurgency against the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas. In the highly
publicised Operation Condor IV, the Peruvian air force dropped 500
pound bombs on drug landing strips in the jungle. And Operation Condor
VI in July 1987 involved a stepped up US role (DEA agents and US contract
pilots) which clearly demonstrated how closely drug control efforts had
become linked with counter-insurgency. The assault was ostensibly on the
drug traffickingcentre of Tocache, which was also a town controlled at the
time by Sendero guerrillas.The drug enforcement results of the operation
were modest and the State Department admitted that trafficking 'continued relatively unimpeded'. However, Sendero was temporarily routed
from the town in a counter-insurgency operation using US funds, equipment and personnel.64 Although the Shining Path provided the peasants
with a shield to protect them from the eradication effort and abuse by
drug cartel middlemen, the main threat from the perspective of US
national security managers was described as strategic.65 The war may
appear to be a drug war, but in reality it is primarily an anticommunist
counter-insurgency action legitimised by the drug war doctrine. The
recent controversy over the use of the herbicide Tebuthiuron, or 'spike',
to eradicate coca fields raises not only serious ecological questions, but
also the question of whether the programme is a disguised attempt to
dry up guerrilla support. In treated areas, spike will destroy the lowlying rainforest that provides both cover and food for the guerrillas.66
63

64
65

66

M T Klare, 'Policing the Third World: a blueprint for endless interventions', The Nation 247 (3)
30 July/6 August 1988, p 95. See also M T Klare and P Kornbluh, Low Intensity Warfare;
'Low-intensity conflict: a debate', which includes two articles: A Nairn, 'Low-intensity conflict:
one hit, two misses', pp 4-7, and P Kornbluh and J Hacket, 'Low-intensity conflict, is it live or
is it memorex?', pp 8-11, in NACLAReport on the Americas 20 (3) June 1986, pp 4-11; and see
my fn 22.
Kawell, 'Going to the source', p 17, and R Gonzalez, 'Coca's Shining Path', pp 22-4, NACLA.
Collett, 'Myth of the "Narco-Guerrillas" ', Nation, p 134. According to FBI records the DEA
used the CIA personnel 'to "help us prepare a better product"', and the 'DEA produces both
strategic and tactical/operational intelligence. Of the total strategic product approximately 25
per cent is provided by the CIA'. The DEA also provided agents to Colonel North's operations,
'CIA and drugs', Covert Action, pp 26-7.
Similar charges have been raised in Guatemala where the spraying of chemicals, ostensibly to
eradicate marijuana and poppies, is seen by some analysts as 'a counter-insurgency tool: destroying corn it suspects is being fed to guerrillas and defoliating rebel-occupied forests'. Critics
argue that drug traffic is minor in Guatemala (producing only 2 per cent of marijuana worldwide) and that DEA activity is completely unrelated to drug activity, 'Environmentalists challenge
chemical use', WashingtonReport on the Hemisphere 8 (14) 13 April 1988, p 5.

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

The Peruvian army's occupation of the Upper Huallagua Valley

proved successful as an antiterrorist campaign, but was generally a failure as an antidrug operation. Not only was the army 'narco-corrupted',
but it replaced the role of the Sendero guerrillas as the friend and
protector of the coca farmers in dealing with the traffickers and the
government narcotics control forces (UMOPAR). The army did exactly
what the guerrillas had done, forming 'a loose confederation, an uncomfortable marriage of convenience' between the narco-trafficker and
the coca farmer.67In short, Peruvian authorities, motivated by the traditional anticommunist national security doctrine of US advisers, defined
the real enemy as the Marxist guerrilla insurgents, not the drug traffickers, and merely employed the drug war doctrine as a rationale for
extensive LIC counter-insurgency operations.

Conclusions
Although the 'war on drugs' has apparently failed to serve as an effective legitimising principle for US intervention and destabilisation of the
Noriega regime, it is prematureto suggest that antidrug campaigns cannot
become a future rallying point and propaganda instrument to draw US
public opinion into line with the foreign policies of the national security
state. Although clearly not yet a new national security doctrine in its own
right, the drug war strategy has variously assisted or competed with the
dominant anticommunist national security doctrine. If seen as a new
national security doctrine, however, various problems arise.
First, the war on drugs has been most effective as a principle of
public legitimation within the USA. The average US citizen, whether
he has accepted the official ideological linkage of drugs with terrorism
as a global communist conspiracy or as a valid national security threat
in its own right, is mobilised against international drug trafficking. The
frustration of the public over US impotence before the Medellin cartel
or a drug tainted Noriega is akin to hatred of Qaddafi's Libyan or
Khomeini's Iranian terrorism. The 'evil empire of drugs' has the potential to evoke that fear of the enemy so basic and powerful in the
doctrine of anticommunism. The danger therefore is that one more
generation of US foreign policy will be rooted in hatred of a mythical
enemy, in conspiracy not democracy, and in ideological doctrines of
national security.
67

R B Craig, 'Illicit drug traffic', pp 16-18, quote on p 17.

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THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

Second, the drug war doctrine should not obscure the central dilemma of twentieth century US foreign policy. Washington remains caught
in the reformulation of an old catch-22, one expression of which was
Kennedy's dilemma of having to choose between democracy and
counter-revolution. 'There are three possibilities in descending order of
preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo
regime or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we really
can't renounce the second until we are sure we can avoid the third.'68
The choice today is between narcocracy and counter-revolution, and
the belief that the pursuit of one at the expense of the other can succeed
reformulates a classic fallacy. Fascism was once believed to be a bulwark protecting against the spread of communism, but it proved to be
its very cause. One critic observed that the 'coke and communism conspiracy' is not the point: 'Instead, it is the modus operandi of the two
camps, their tactics which render cocaine capos and guerrillas kindred
spirits. Both are terrorists because they use violent strategies and
tactics.' 69 This caveat is especially appropriate for US national security
managers, lest they be known by their tactics as well.70
The allure of political manipulation in the drug war poses a third
problem. As a new national security doctrine let loose in Latin America,
the drug war is potentially as dangerous as anticommunism. Intervention, even if 'legitimised' by the drug war national security
doctrine no matter how convincing or real the drug crisis may be-still
provokes the wrath of nationalism. The lesson of Panama, said one
political observer, is that although 'electoral fraud, murder and drug
trafficking are crimes in Panama as elsewhere, and most Panamanians
believe Manuel Noriega is guilty of all of them', the greater crime in
Panama is collaboration with the USA. 'Even if the US government
had deposed Noriega, its policy would have failed, discrediting the conservative opposition it sought to bring back to power and further fanning the flames of Panamanian nationalism.'71
It will be interesting to observe whether these lessons have been
68
69
70

71

A M Schlesinger Jr, A ThousandDays, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, p 769.

R B Craig, 'Illicit Drug Traffic', p 30.
Narco-imperialism has not been shy to employ a 'guns for dope' relationship in the contra
affair, the very charges levelled against narco-guerrillas. The confusion of the operations of the
CIA, the DEA and the National Security Agency (NSA) is a threat to future US policy. A primary
source of evidence of high-level drug corruption has been telephone, electronic and satellite
intercepts by the CIA and NSA. This highly classified information has constituted both a curse
and a 'blessing'. It is not usable in public and provides a secret 'Sword of Damocles' to threaten
other leaders and governments. E A Nadelmann, 'The DEA in Latin America', pp 17-18.
'Of Puppets and Heroes', NACLA.

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THE WAR ON DRUGS

learned by the managers of the national security state. The 'war on

drugs' has potentially dangerous implications as a national security doctrine in Honduras, where many similarities to the Panamanian campaign exist, and in Colombia and Peru where the militarised battle
against 'narco-guerrillas' has mobilised and radicalised dispossessed
peoples into broad, populist, anti-US movements. Joint anti-drug enforcement programmes have been a convenient subterfuge for renewed
hegemony and intervention; the sovereignties of Bolivia and Peru have
already suffered from such exercises. If the drug war doctrine, like
earlier US national security doctrines, serves to create and cultivate
fascist military elites as North American puppets, then little will have
changed.

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