Dead-End Drug Wars

The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union have led to a fundamental reevaluation of U.S. security interests. In Latin America, the perceived security threat of the 1990s is not a revolutionary government or insurgency with alleged Soviet ties but a substance: illegal drugs. The spread of crack cocaine and the dramatic escalation of drug-related violence in the 1980s led first Ronald Reagan and then George Bush to declare on drugs. By the end of the decade, more Americans identified drugs as the number-one threat to the country than any other problem. In September 1989, President George Bush devoted his first nationally televised address to the drug problem, outlining a National Drug Control Strategy that called for an assault on every front. Efforts to curb the cocaine supply at the source of production were stepped up, and the cocaine-producing countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru became a first front in the U.S. drug war abroad. Under the $2.2 billion, five-year Andean Initiative, U.S. aid and advisers have poured into the region. Drug-related military aid jumped from approximately $5 million in 1988 to more than $140 million in 1990. The region has now replaced Central America as the leading recipient of U.S. military aid in the hemisphere. The Joint Chiefs of Staff's Military Net Assessment presented to Congress in March 1991 highlights the seriousness of the Pentagon's approach to the drug war: Counternarcotics leads the list of likely future conflicts

Dead end · Epistemology · Political science · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Philosophy

• National security implications of drug trafficking for the USA and Columbia

  Max G Manwaring•Small Wars and Insurgencies•1994

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• Explicit Narcotization

  Open Access•Russell Crandall•Latin American Politics and Society•2001

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• Nontraditional security and China's transnational narcotics control in northern Laos and Myanmar

  Open Access•Xiaobo Su•Political Geography•2015

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• The Drug War at the Supply End

  Open Access•Fernando García Argañarás•Latin American Perspectives•1997

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• Coca, Cocaine, and the Ethics of Fieldwork

  Open Access•Madeleine Barbara Léons•Anthropology of Work Review•1992

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