U.S. Policy Toward Colombia During the Samper Administration.
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Suspecting that his electoral campaign had received contributions from the Cali drug cartel, the U.S. government considered Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994-98) an enemy in the drug war. U.S. antidrug policy accordingly targeted not just illicit crop cultivation, traffickers, and money laundering but also the democratically elected president himself. In many ways, U.S. policy became obsessed with bringing down Samper, an “explicit narcotization” that had severe consequences for the two countries’ relationship. This case study analyzes the often complex interactions between dominant and subordinate states, especially when the dominant state’s involvement in the subordinate state is driven by domestic political concerns. In the summer of 2000, the U.S. government approved a $1.3 billion supplemental assistance package for Colombia, consisting mainly of counternarcotics-related aid. [1] This sum was actually greater than what the Clinton administration had originally requested; at the last minute, Congress tacked on some additional counternarcotics funding. The size of this package reveals that the Clinton White House considered Colombian president Andres Pastrana to be a strong regional ally, above all in the fight against drugs. Even more important, the consensus in Congress and the executive branch surrounding the assistance package strongly suggested that narcotics-related issues would continue to dominate U.S. policy toward Colombia for the foreseeable future. The United States was willing to invest such a sum to bolster the Pastrana administration’s efforts to deal with Colombia’s myriad problems, drug cultivation and trafficking in particular. This was a far cry from the acerbic and strained relationship between Washington and Bogota during the tenure of Pastrana’s predecessor, Ernesto Samper (1994-98). Indeed, during those years, the bilateral relationship was deeply strained. That era provides critical lessons for the current state of U.S. policy toward Colombia, which has become a key foreign policy issue for the United States. The story of U.S.-Colombian relations during the Samper years reveals a highly interventionist style of foreign policy on the U.S. part, driven overwhelmingly by the unyielding U.S. focus on the drug war and on isolating Samper. For the first time since the war on drugs began in earnest in the mid-1980s, the United States shifted its counternarcotics strategies from arresting drug kingpins and interdicting drug traffic to aggressively–and publicly–attempting to bring down the scandal-ridden but democratically elected president of Colombia. The strategy even extended to revoking Samper’s visa in July 1996, making him only the second head of state to receive this dubious recognition. [2] This conflict made the relationship between the United States and the Samper administration one of the most abrasive episodes in U.S.-Latin American relations since the end of the Cold War. Although it initially achieved many of its drug-related goals, this policy served to weaken the Colombian state at a crucial time when both leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries were increasing their activity throughout the Colombian countryside. Only at the end of Samper’s term did the U.S. government realize the counterproductive nature of its policy. Then the Clinton administration reversed its policy of isolation and replaced it with aggressive support, especially financial, for Pastrana’s government. Yet the new Clinton Colombia policy was in many ways business as usual; the U.S. obsession with fighting drugs still placed other issues, such as trade, investment, and the peace process, on the back burner. At first glance, the notion of such a vitriolic stance might seem strange, because throughout the twentieth century, Colombia had maintained unusually close ties with the United States. Most of these warm ties, however, were enjoyed before the advent of the U.S. drug war in the 1980s, which targeted the Andean region, and above all Colombia, as the place to stop the shipment of illicit drugs that eventually would enter the United States. The war on drugs, moreover, was and is considered to be a vital U.S. national interest. This helps to explain why the United States was willing to go to such lengths to win that war, even if it meant infringing the sovereignty of one of its most trusted regional allies. Paradoxically, although U.S.-Colombian relations were at their lowest during this period, the United States could still carry out its Colombia policy–which by this time had become almost indistinguishable from U.S. drug policy toward Colombia–relatively unhindered. Suspected of having drug connections, Samper lacked credibility and therefore had little choice but to cooperate with the U.S. counternarcotics efforts. Ironically, Samper carried out Washington’s wishes on the antidrug front with more vigor and success than any of his predecessors, including Cesar Gaviria (1990-94), whom many in Washington saw as the archetype of a reliable antidrug ally. Because the bilateral relationship became so polarized during Samper’s tenure, furthermore, the United States could often circumvent Samper and work directly with what it believed were trusted counternarcotics allies in the Colombian armed forces, specifically the National Police. Consequently, the United States was free to pursue its foreign policy goals both inside and outside the Samper administration. More : accessmylibrary.com |