Soon after being sworn in as defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld
made headlines by delicately questioning current national drug
policies. Much to the delight of drug-war critics both in and out of
government, Rumsfeld told Congress that “the drug problem in the
United States is overwhelmingly a demand problem, and to the extent
that demand is there and it’s powerful, it is going to find ways to
get drugs in this country, to our detriment.” He also indicated he
would be examining the U.S. role in Colombia, where a shooting war
is taking place between drug cartels and the Colombian government.
Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington, and a military historian, cautions that it’s too soon to
predict whether the Bush administration will make any significant
changes in national drug policy. “Rumsfeld’s statement was one of
the most enlightened views to come out of the federal government in
years. ... I’ve talked to many active-duty military personnel in
private, and they are the ones who are most passionate against this
‘war,’ believing that it is a policy action that will lose in the
end. They don’t want their beloved institutions tarnished in this
disastrous effort.”
Defense Department officials, policy experts and military
analysts interviewed for this article agreed that, despite some
recent successes by the U.S. government in seizing large shipments
of drugs and capturing smugglers, there is an uneasiness associated
with military and defense industry involvement in a war whose cause
is decidedly domestic in nature.
In 2001, the White House office of national drug control policy
will spend roughly $18 billion, of which approximately $2 billion to
$3 billion will be for the Pentagon’s activities in the conflict.
Another $20 billion will be spent by U.S. states and localities.
“There is a definite food chain in all of this”, said a defense
industry official. “If you could somehow track one single dollar
through this whole process, you’d probably find it travels through
the military, defense industry, law enforcement, public health and
commercial banks, all of which have a mission or money interest in
all this. Everyone is involved in some way.”
There are constitutional and organizational reasons why the war
on drugs has been “detrimental to military readiness and an
inappropriate use of the democratic system,” said former Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger in a recent interview. In 1988,
Weinberger became one of the first high-ranking government officials
to publicly warn the nation about the problems of involving the
military in what he viewed as a domestic law-enforcement problem.
In an editorial published in the Washington Post, he warned that
cries for the use of the military made for “hot and exciting
rhetoric, but would make for terrible national security policy, poor
politics and guaranteed failure in the campaign against drugs.”
Nonetheless, Weinberger said, “Something has to be done, and we
can’t give up because it’s a difficult task. Just because you can’t
stop bank robbers doesn’t mean you legalize them, but I would not
expand the military’s role any further than it is in civilian law
enforcement.
“My preference would be for the Coast Guard to have primary
responsibility for drug interdiction and, where appropriate,
cooperate with military elements. But I do think one-half of our
funds should go to supply reduction and one-half to demand
reduction.”
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Tom Conroy described the drug war as a
“steady-state war in which the U.S. is buying time until demand
reduces. We have to do something. We can’t do nothing.”
That viewpoint infuriates Timothy Lynch, a drug policy expert at
the Cato Institute, and editor of “After Prohibition,” a publication
focusing on national drug policy. According to Lynch, the political
and military leadership should have heeded Weinberger’s advice 14
years ago. “The military needs to be ‘detoxed’ from its current
role, which is entirely inappropriate. One of the most dangerous
things is that there are now so many loopholes in Posse Comitatus
that it is little more than an assemblage of words.”
The drug policies and programs now in place, said Lynch, “have a
life of their own. ... I get so tired of hearing that ‘something
must be done,’ or ‘we are doing the best we can.’ You should never
underestimate the power of inertia here in Washington.
“Who in government is going to stand up and say, ‘We need to
change direction,’ or what agency is going to turn down funding for
this? This should have been a public health issue, not a military
issue.”
Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel and a military analyst for NBC
News, told National Defense that the current national drug policy
seems destined to get the nation mired in a Vietnam-like conflict,
only this time closer to home, in Colombia. He sees parallels
between the political-military thought process that got the United
States into Vietnam and the thinking that drives U.S. policy on
Colombia. In both instances, contractors, advisors and special
forces were dispatched. “It’s formulaic,” he said.
“We can’t wait to do something stupid,” said Allard. “Before we
deploy, let’s ask some intelligent questions,” he said. “Our
[special operations] soldiers are extremely capable, but the other
guys—the guerillas and drug producers—have an exit strategy, and we
don’t.”
Special operations forces, he added, are “too easy to commit.
Drugs are not [their] primary mission.” In terms of civilian
involvement, he noted, “I believe that drugs both corrupt the
political process and the criminal justice process. That has to be
taken into account.”
A senior government official with the White House drug policy
office agreed with Allard that there are problems inherent with
military involvement in the drug war, particularly the public
perception that it’s a military driven project. “It is a mistake to
view this as solely a military problem. ... Our policy is more akin
to treating a cancer than fighting a war. Our number-one goal is to
prevent abuse, and our goal is a mix of attacking both supply and
demand.”
The uniformed services are involved in air, land and sea
anti-drug support operations. The Navy and the Coast Guard work the
waterways, and Air Force pilots in F-16s fly in hot pursuit of
drug-smuggling pilots in their Cessnas. Special operations forces
are on the ground in Central and South America, advising host
government forces on counterinsurgency techniques. They also are
active within U.S. borders. According to Brian Sheridan, principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations, they
play a support role in making “America’s citizens safe by
substantially reducing drug-related crime and violence.”
In a statement to Congress, Sheridan indicated that $95 million
was spent in 1999 supporting domestic law enforcement with excess
military equipment and foreign-language translators. The Defense
Department funded schoolhouse-training programs provided to domestic
law enforcement personnel.
The U.S. National Guard has 126 rotary and fixed-wing aircraft
dedicated to fighting in the drug war. A National Guard official who
requested anonymity indicated that, “We have 116 OH-58 helicopters
and 10 C-26 fixed-wing aircraft, which are the Guard’s counter-drug
assets.” They are deployed in 32 states across the United States for
counter-drug operations. The Guard also is looking at new
technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles to use in domestic
drug operations.
Dyncorp, a government contractor, in Reston, Va., provides the
State and Justice Departments with a one-stop-shop, counter-drug
support expertise. The company supports drug-war operations at both
the front and back ends—from airborne crop-dusting in Colombia, to
asset forfeiture experts who work at 385 Justice Department sites in
the United States.
Dyncorp operates in obscure places such as the Peruvian naval
base in Pucalpa and the jungles of Colombia—where the drugs are
produced and shipped. The company is working currently under a $316
million contract for assistance and management of the Justice
Department’s “asset forfeiture program.” According to a Dyncorp
spokesman, most of the 1,000 staff members in the program hold
“secret” clearances and have been involved in more than 60,000 asset
seizures in the United States. Among other things, they provide
“criminal-intelligence collection and analysis, forensic support and
asset identification and tracking.”
Contractors such as Dyncorp and MPRI (based in Alexandria, Va.)
frequently are caricatured by the news media as “mercenaries” run
amok in the war on drugs. In a recent interview, a senior U.S. State
Department official bemoaned the fact that, “Dyncorp and the State
Department have unfairly become a stalking horse for criticism of
Plan Colombia. ... All I can say is that most of the Dyncorp
employees down there in Colombia are from Colombia and very few are
American. For their security, [all I can say is that] this is a
nuts-and-bolts support contract, nothing more.”
“Everyone calls us mercenaries, but not one person at MPRI
carries a gun, “ said Ed Soyster, a retired Army general and MPRI
spokesman. “The lieutenant general with a mission has a hell of a
lot more latitude than we do. We are held to the letter of the law
and, besides, we want to get paid. If we don’t meet contract terms,
we don’t get paid. The contract is the failsafe for abuses. In
addition, we are able to do many things that free up the guys in
uniform.” For example, MPRI manages the Army’s ROTC program at 217
universities in the United States.
MPRI is seeking new business opportunities from domestic law
enforcement agencies, said Soyster. “Law enforcement guys like to
talk to ‘cops’, not generals.” The company is assembling retired and
second-career law enforcement officials, such as police chiefs and
ex-drug enforcement agents, to develop “change strategies” for the
drug war.
For every step forward in the drug war, there seems to be an
equivalent step backward, officials said. The total tonnage of
illicit drugs interdicted must be measured against gross amounts
that make it into the country. According to Coast Guard Adm. Terry
Cross, the intelligence community provides classified estimates of
total drug flow into the United States. “We interdicted 11 percent
of the total amount of cocaine in 2000, which was about 60 metric
tons,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of percentage
of the total, but measured in street value, it’s a lot of money.”
Drug seizure statistics provided by the U.S. government should be
viewed carefully, said Tree, the military historian. “They capture
those who are dumb enough to get caught. After three decades of
this, we are worse off according to all public health indicators and
statistics than we’ve ever been. If you argue with their numbers or
want to change the paradigm from law enforcement to public health,
they label you as a ‘legalizer.’”
One questionable U.S. policy, according to Lynch, is the practice
that encourages a U.S. Navy warship to hoist the Coast Guard flag
before firing on a craft suspected of carrying drugs—with the
rationale that a Navy ship flying the Coast Guard flag has
transformed into a Coast Guard vessel for purposes of meeting the
limitations of Posse Comitatus. It comes perilously close to the
military making arrests,” said Lynch. “These drug policies have
generated so many obscure rules on the books that dangerous games
like this can be played.” He also questioned why the Coast Guard is
operating in waters that are far away from U.S. borders.
Coast Guard cutters operate off the coast of South America, said
Cross. Two-thirds of the cocaine is transported through Mexico, and
“our very best chance is to get it before it makes its way into
Mexico. That dictates that you make that effort a long way from your
border. No matter what we do, some drugs will get through, but you
have to send a signal that there will be a price to pay for
producing and transporting drugs and using them.”
About one-half of all cocaine seizures in 2000 were made with the
help of Navy warships, along with Dutch and British vessels. If
Defense Department assets and the military services were not
committed to this mission, said Cross, “we would not be successful
by any measure.”
Meanwhile, the White House drug policy office recently announced
that roughly 26,000 hectares of illicit drug crops were successfully
sprayed and destroyed in Colombia. Allard’s reaction is “What does
that mean?” The side effects of that operation are refugees spilling
over into bordering countries, and new coca plantations are moving
from Colombia and appearing in the northwest corner of Brazil.
According to eyewitness accounts and the United Nations Global
Internally Displaced People Project, Colombia ranks second behind
Sudan, with 2 to 3 million refugees crossing over into neighboring
countries as the direct result of both the long standing Colombia
civil war and the U.S. drug war.
“I just returned from a trip to Colombia,” said Tree. “Our
policies are causing huge displacements of people. These people are
incredibly impoverished. If their crops are ruined, they have few
options. The soil is too acidic for the types of crops we are
forcing them to grow. They either go to the city for handouts, move
into Brazil and chop down a few acres of rain forest to grow new
crops, or they turn to the number one and two employers around: the
guerillas and the paramilitaries. Our policy is incredibly
flawed.”
He traveled to a remote area, about 10 kilometers from the border
with Ecuador. It is a bleak picture, said Tree. “There’s no sign of
the state or any organized economy. There’s no infrastructure, no
newspapers, no radio. ... The first contact that these people—who
have been chewing coca leaves as part of their culture for hundreds
of years—have with the state is with fumigation planes, helicopters,
contractors and advisors telling them to destroy their crops. They
don’t understand why we are attacking
them.” | 
This Month in National Defense