Colombia – Part Two of Two By Noam Chomsky The sharp increase in arms shipped to Colombia is officially justified in terms of the "drug war," a claim taken seriously by few competent analysts, even apart from the instructive historical pattern, barely sampled here. As many have observed, the military themselves are heavily involved in narcotrafficking, and their paramilitary associates -- who openly proclaim their reliance on narcotrafficking -- are not the targets of the planned operations. The targets are guerrilla forces based on the peasantry and calling for internal social change, which would interfere with integration of Colombia into the global system on the terms that the US demands, dominated by elite elements linked to US power interests that are accorded free access to Colombia's valuable resources, including oil. But let us put these matters aside and consider a few other questions. Why do peasants in Colombia grow cocaine, not other crops? Colombia was once a major wheat producer. That was undermined in the 1950s by US "Food for Peace" aid, a program that provided taxpayer subsidies to US agribusiness and counterpart funds for US client states, used commonly 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% within two months for Colombia's leading legal export. Further background is discussed by the late political economist Susan Strange in her last book. In the 1960s, the G77 governments of the Third World (now over 130, accounting for 80% of the world's population) initiated a call for a "new international economic order" in which the concerns of the large majority of people of the world would be addressed. Specific proposals were formulated by UNCTAD, established by the UN to address such concerns. But these plans scarcely even had to be dismissed. Official "globalization" is designed to cater to the needs of a different sector, namely its designers -- hardly a surprise, any more than the fact that in standard dogma "globalization" is depicted as an inexorable process to which "there is no alternative." One early UNCTAD proposal was a program for stabilizing commodity prices, a practice that is standard within the industrial countries by one or another form of subsidy. In 1996, Congress passed the "Freedom to Farm Act" to liberate American agriculture from the "East German socialist programs of the New Deal," as Newt Gingrich put it. Subsidies quickly tripled, reaching a record $23 billion in 1999. The market does work its magic, however: the taxpayer subsidies go disproportionately to large agribusiness and the "corporate oligopolies" that dominate the input and output side, as Nicholas Kristof correctly observed in the _NY Times_. Those with market power in the food chain (from energy corporations to restaurant chains) are enjoying great profits while the "agricultural crisis," which is real, is concentrated among smaller farmers in the middle of the chain, who produce the food. But the devices used by the rich to ensure that they are protected by the nanny state are not available to the poor. The UNCTAD initiative was quickly shot down, and the organization has been largely marginalized and tamed, along with others that reflect the interests of the global majority to some extent. Reviewing these events, Strange observes that farmers were therefore compelled to turn 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 be able 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. The programs of the US and the global institutions it dominates are constructed to magnify these effects. The current Clinton plan for Colombia includes only token funding for alternative crops; others are to take care of constructive approaches, while the US concentrates on military operations -- which, incidentally, happen to benefit the high-tech industries that produce military equipment and have been lobbying for the escalation. Furthermore, IMF-World Bank programs demand that countries open their borders to a flood of (massively subsidized) agricultural products from the rich countries, with the obvious effect of undermining local production. And peasants are instructed to become "rational," producing for the export market and seeking the highest prices -- which translates as "coca, cannibis, 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. Another question lurks not too far in the background. Just what right does the US have to carry out these operations in other countries to destroy a crop it doesn't like? We can put aside the cynical response that the governments requested this "assistance"; if they hadn't, they wouldn't be the governments for long. 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 the populations. In East Asia, US-produced lethal drugs are causing millions of deaths. These countries are compelled not only to accept the products but also advertising for them, under threat of severe trade sanctions; the Colombian cartels, in contrast, are not permitted to fund huge advertising campaigns in which a Joe Camel counterpart extols the wonders of cocaine. Does China, then, have the right to carry out military, chemical, and biological warfare in North Carolina? If not, why not? Yet another question has to do with the alleged concern over drug use. The seriousness of that concern was illustrated when a House Committee was considering the Clinton proposals. It rejected an amendment proposed by California Democrat Nancy Pelosi calling for funding of drug demand reduction services. It is well known that these are far more effective than forceful measures. A Rand study funded by the US Army and the government drug control agencies 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. But that path will not be followed. Rather, the "drug war" targets poor peasants abroad and poor people at home; by the use of force, not constructive measures to alleviate problems at a fraction of the cost. 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. The next question is: why the "drug war," in its specific form? An answer is implicit in an observation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the few Senators to pay close attention to social statistics. By adopting these measures, he observed, "we are choosing to have an intense crime problem concentrated among minorities." And why should that choice be made in a period when a domestic form of "structural adjustment" is being imposed? Answers do not seem too hard to find.