The War on Drugs:
Historical Analysis of the American Foreign Drug Policy in
Colombia during the Clinton Administration (1993-2001)
Thesis submitted for the master’s degree in International Relations and the title Master of Arts, specialization Global Order in Historical Perspective
Faculty of Humanities University Leiden
Name: Ruben Braamse
Supervisor: Dr W.M. Schmidli Word count:14.988
Index
Introduction ... 2
Research Design ... 4
The Intermestic and Triangulation ... 5
Primary sources ... 7
Chapter Division ... 9
Literature review ... 10
Chapter 1: Historical background and International Considerations ... 16
Start of the Clinton Presidency ... 16
The Samper Presidency (1994-1998) ... 19
The Colombian Conflict and Illegal Drugs ... 20
Chapter 2: Clinton’s first term (1993-1997) ... 24
The Congressional Election of 1994 and Narcotization ... 24
The Certification Process ... 28
Chapter 3: Clinton’s second term (1998-2001) ... 31
The Failure of Decertification ... 31
Plan Colombia ... 34
Conclusion ... 39
Bibliography ... 41
Primary sources ... 41
Introduction
In January 1988, the RAND cooperation, a non-profit global policy think tank, published a report titled ‘Sealing the Borders The Effects of Increased Military Participation in Drug Interdiction’. Based on extensive research, this report ‘does not conclude that the military should cease to support the drug interdiction program. It strongly suggests, though, that the services cannot be primary interdiction agencies and that a major increase in military support is unlikely to significantly reduce drug consumption in the United States’.1 In line with this
report’s outcome, the new Clinton administration concluded in 1993 that the drug interdiction programs at that time did not produce the desired results. As a result, for 1993, the planned budget for anti-drug efforts was nearly halved from $387 to $174 billion.2 RAND issued
another report on behalf of Clinton's administration in 1994, sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the United States Army. This time, the report made clear that domestic treatment is the cheapest way to combat the drug problem, in this case, cocaine, instead of law enforcement in source-countries.3 Taken together, these reports advised the
U.S. government to implement significant changes in drug policy.
At the start of the Clinton administration, the administration followed the advice from the reports, and the focus was more on the domestic demand side of the drug problem.4
However, when looking at the most significant manifestations of America's war against drugs, which is the signing into law of Plan Colombia near the end of Clinton's second term in 2000, this view is incorrect. The aid from Plan Colombia in the years 2000-2008 intended to tackle the supply side of drugs in Colombia. However, ranging between 70 and 80 percent of the U.S. aid from Plan Colombia was again military.5 So a big difference appeared between the
1 P. Reuter, G. Crawford, and J. Cave, Sealing the Borders: The Effects of Increased Military Participation in
Drug Interdiction (Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, 1988), i-155, at xiv,
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA213737.pdf (consulted August 25, 2020).
2 Russel Crandall, “Explicit Narcotization: U.S. Policy toward Colombia during the Samper Administration,”
Latin American Politics and Society vol.43, no.3 (Autumn 2001): 95-120, at 101.
3 C.P. Rydell, S.M. Everingham, and S.S. Everingham, Controlling Cocaine: Supply versus demand programs
(Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, 1988), i-120, at i-xix,
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a282676.pdf (consulted August 25, 2020).
4 Alexandra Guáqueta, “Change and Continuity in U.S.-Colombian Relations and the War Against Drugs,”
Journal of Drug Issues vol. 35, no. 1 (2005): 27-56, at 41.
5 U.S. Government Accountability Office, PLAN COLOMBIA
Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met, but Security Has Improved; U.S. Agencies Need More Detailed Plans for Reducing Assistance, October 2008, 15, 28, 47, https://www.gao.gov/assets/290/282511.pdf (consulted August 10, 2020).
ideas of solving the drug problem at the beginning of the Clinton administration and the practice at the end of Clinton's administration. This thesis attempts to explain this difference.
This thesis provides a historical analysis of America’s so-called ‘war on drugs’. Since I am a student of an International Relations Master, this thesis focuses on America’s foreign drug policy, specifically the case of Colombia. Nevertheless, as I will argue, foreign
policymaking and domestic politics cannot be separated from each other in the case of
American drug policy. RAND reports show that the militaristic approach to the foreign supply side of drugs, thus the ‘war’ aspect of the war on drugs, seems to be primarily responsible for American policy failure. Militaristic policies, RAND concluded, are not the best way to combat illegal drugs. However, the American government chose a militaristic policy and maintained it throughout the period under investigation.
Therefore this thesis’s central question is: ‘Why did the Clinton administration (1993-2001) use a militarized anti-drug policy in Colombia, while this military approach did not lead to a decrease in illegal drug use in the United States?’. This thesis will argue that the reason for this difference lies in Clinton’s relationship with conservative congressional Republicans and how the White House was forced to accommodate conservative Republicans’ demand for a militarized policy toward Colombia.
To answer the central question, I analyze primary sources on the war on drugs. By specifically looking at primary sources, I obtain new interpretations of America’s war on drugs.It is relevant to answer the central question because if the emergence of America's militaristic drug policy is better understood, this can be taken into account in future drug policy development. Since military aid is often associated with greater involvement in the receiving state’s political situation, this thesis can also contribute to the broader debate on American interventionism.However, above all, this thesis will show the far-reaching consequences of the polarization of America’s domestic politics that emerged in the 1990s.
Partly because of the size of this thesis, this research also has its limitations. By doing qualitative historical research, investigator bias and unwarranted selectivity in the choice of primary sources cannot be avoided.6 Besides, this research depends on the extent to which
U.S. government documents are open to the public. Nevertheless, I try to guarantee the sources reliability by using various sources and as many official government documents as possible. I now dive deeper into the research method, case selection, source selection, and the chapter division of this thesis.
6 Cameron G. Thies, “A Pragmatic Guide to Qualitative Historical Analysis in the Study of International
Research Design
For this thesis, I chose to do a qualitative analysis based on a close reading of primary sources to make an argument on the U.S.’ militaristic war on drugs policy in Colombia during
Clinton's presidency. According to historian Fredrik Logevall, scholars often ignore domestics politics when formulating national security strategies, as is the case for drugs. Logevall argues that they are comparable to American presidents, who also often miss domestics politics when formulating national security strategies. Logevall argues that when scholars take more account of domestic politics and study various primary sources, there will be a better understanding of America's world affairs position.7 So the first reason to do this
kind of analysis is that a historical analysis of the domestic influence on foreign drug policy is relatively underexposed in the literature on the war on drugs. In the second place, I have opted for a close reading of primary sources because I am a former bachelor’s student in history; thus, this method suits me best.
This thesis will cover Clinton’s presidency from January 20, 1993, until January 20, 2001. The period of Clinton’s presidency, as will be argued in the literature review, is a transition phase between the American anti-communism security doctrine, the war on drugs security doctrine, and the war on terror security doctrine. Besides, the institutionalization of American influence in Colombia is best represented by Plan Colombia at the end of Clinton’s presidency. This plan’s meaning and intentions have long been a topic for discussion, so Plan Colombia will also be discussed in this thesis, albeit with a different perspective. Namely, the focus will be more on events that eventually led to the signing into law of Plan Colombia rather than implementing the plan itself.8
The literature shows that American foreign policy and drug policy mainly influence each other regarding Central and South America; thus, this thesis’s focus will be on a South American case, namely Colombia. The choice for the Colombia case can be defended because Colombia was one of the largest in cocaine production in the period studied. Colombia also has a long history of American interference in domestic policy. ‘Colombia has played a surprisingly central role in U.S. strategic planning,’ writes the National Security Archive. ‘Although far less frequently in the headlines than other global trouble spots, the country’s
7 Fredrik Logevall, “Domestic Politics” In: Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, (Cambridge
University Press, 2016), 151-167, at 163.
vital location, along with its longstanding history of political violence, endemic human rights abuses, entrenched narcotics empires, and high-level corruption have made it the leading recipient of U.S. military assistance in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the top beneficiaries of American aid in the world’.9
The Intermestic and Triangulation
A term I use to help argue that the U.S.’ domestic political situation triggered the
militarization of drug policy in Colombia is the ‘intermestic’. The term ‘intermestic’ is a combination of the words 'international' and 'domestic,' and the intermestic involves those international issues whereby the domestic pollical considerations strongly influence foreign policy.10 Regarding drugs, it is better to speak about an intermestic issue, rather than only
domestic because ‘drug trade transcends national borders and involve different international and transnational actors’.11 I argue that the Clinton administration's foreign drug policy in
Colombia (international) is influenced by domestic political considerations, namely the pressure Congressional Republicans impose on Clinton (domestic). Thus in this thesis, drugs are seen as an intermestic issue.
The first person to introduce the concept of the intermestic was law professor Bayless Andrew Manning. In an article, he discusses the roles of the president, the executive branch, and the Congress in foreign affairs. Writing at the end of the 1970s, Manning argues that a change was soon to come in the way Congress and the executive work, going to work together on foreign policy matters because the changing international affairs agenda needed this change. Manning does not mean that the classic agenda of international relations, such as issues of borders, spheres of influence, power, and national security, will disappear by the changing agenda. Nevertheless, Manning does indicate that the international agenda is expanding to include social issues such as climate change and emphasizes that growing interdependence in the world economy is redistributing the international negotiating position
9 Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010,
https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/dnsa_cd/productfulldescdetail?accountid=12045 (consulted April 23, 2020).
10 Tom Long, “Coloso Fragmentado: The ‘Intermestic’ Agenda and Latin America Foreign Policy,” Centro de
Investigación y Docencia Económicas (October 2014): 1-31, at 6.
11 Tatiana Suárez, “The ‘Intermesticity’ of the US-Colombia Anti-Drug Strategy under Plan Colombia,” Regent's
of countries. Specifically for the U.S., according to Manning, this means that they cannot simply impose their will on other countries anymore. The new agenda had a much greater impact on the domestic interest of the U.S., the domestic consequences of the first oil crisis in 1973 was a good example of this. These new issues, the ones that are international and have a great influence on domestic interests, Manning calls intermestic issues. According to
Manning, the American system is not geared to dealing with intermestic issues. Both Congress and the executive branch are not organized for this, and there is no method yet to collaborate on these issues.12 Thus, this would help explain why the Clinton administration
continued to pursue a failed drug policy.
The president is one of the crucial factors in American drug policy, and given the size of this thesis, this research, therefore, focuses primarily on a single presidential
administration. According to Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates, the war on drugs is a presidential construct because presidents differ in their priority to the illegal drug trade. Whitford and Yates are stating that presidents have used the war on drugs to gain politically, and in doing so, have helped the meaning and content of American drug policy.13 Although
the president is an essential player in the shaping of foreign drug policy, at the same time, the president has less leeway in the case of intermestic issues. According to Tom Long, this is because Congress plays a more critical role in the domestic sphere of intermestic issues, while the president is more concerned with the international aspect.14
To get a good picture of an intermestic issue such as drugs, it is necessary to look at both the president and Congress. According to political scientist Ryan J. Barilleaux, the ultimate shape of intermestic policy reflects compromises between the president and Congress.15 Moreover, according to James M. Lindsay, intermestic issues, such as drugs,
global warming, and energy policy, are causing an increase in Congress’s influence, because these kinds of topics are traditionally covered by domestic policy. Members of Congress are expected to protect their institutional privileges and voters, will easily rewrite presidential proposals on intermestic issues without considering foreign policy.16 Also, Congress has the
power over finances and can authorize presidential initiatives and fund U.S. drug control
12 Bayless Manning, “The Congress, the Executive and Intermestic Affairs: Three Proposals,” Foreign Affairs
vol.55, no.2 (1977): 306-324, at 306-311.
13 Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda Constructing the War on
Drugs (Baltimore, 2009), 34-73.
14 Tom Long, “Coloso Fragmentado,” 6.
15 Ryan J. Barilleaux, “The President, ‘Intermestic’ Issues, and the Risks of Policy Leadership,” Presidential
Studies Quarterly vol.15, no.4 (1985): 754-767, at 764.
16 James M. Lindsay, "Congress and Foreign Policy: Why the Hill Matters," Political Science Quarterly vol.107,
strategies, which can be quite decisive in policymaking.17 So it is not enough to study
presidential primary sources, and it is also necessary to study congressional sources. Another useful term and one that is often associated with Clinton is 'triangulation'. Triangulation means that a politician presents his ideology as a middle ground between left and right within the political spectrum or even transcends it. Clinton's chief political adviser, Dick Morris, used the term to describe the strategy of getting Clinton reelected in 1996.18 The
advantage of triangulation is that by partly taking over ideas from the political opponents regarding some issues, these opponents’ critique can be prevented in advance. For this thesis, triangulation is comparable to the intermestic, since intermestic policies reflect compromises between the president and Congress. I will argue that the pressure from the Republicans in Congress forced Clinton to take a middle ground in the forming of drug policy, ultimately turning it out more militaristic than you would expect from the Democratic president. Both triangulation by Clinton and the intermesticity of drugs, therefore, play an essential role.
Primary sources
The primary sources that I use as the evidentiary foundation for this thesis vary between documents from the Executive Office of the President, the United States federal executive departments, and Congressional documents. Since the president is an important player in shaping drug policy, documents from the President’s Executive Office are beneficial for this thesis. In particular, documents from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the President’s Executive Office, provide a good picture of Clinton's administration’s drug policy. A good starting point for getting a picture of Clinton's foreign drugs policy is Presidential Decision Directive 14, dated November 3, 1993. In this document, Clinton discussed his counternarcotics policy for the Western Hemisphere. Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) was the name for a National Security Directive during the Clinton
17 Victor J. Hinojosa, Domestic Politics and International Narcotics Control: U.S. Relations with Mexico and
Colombia, 1989-2000 (New York & London: Routledge, 2007), 4.
18 Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Getting Reelected Against All Odds (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books,
1999), 80.
presidency, and these documents were not available for the public at the time. So this directive gives a good insight into Clinton’s idea of America’s drug policy.
Since Colombia is a foreign case and the drug policy’s militarization is studied, documents from the United States federal executive departments, such as the State
Department and the Defense Department, are also useful. These documents are available at the ‘Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010’ database of the Digital National Security Archive. This archive traces more than 60 years of U.S. involvement in Colombia. It provides declassified documents from the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and other agencies. Therefore, it provides insight into American policy toward Colombia and the bilateral relations. This archive also offers the possibility for keyword-targeted searches so that the amount of source material remains manageable.19 I analyze, for example, documents from the
main decision-making body on drug policy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and documents from the State Department.
My argument is that the pressure from the conservative Republicans within Congress causes the militarization of U.S. drug policy in Colombia. As mentioned, Congress has more influence on policy making regarding intermestic issues, such as drugs. To support my argument, I analyze Congressional documents (hearings, bills, records) about the war on drugs in Colombia. In these documents, Congressional committees collect, analyze, and discuss information in the early stage of policymaking. Thus, these documents provide a clear picture of how Republicans putted pressure on the Clinton administration and influencing its policy. These documents are available at the site of Govinfo, a service of the United States Government Publishing Office. 20
19 Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010,
https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/dnsa_cd/socialsciences/fromDatabasesLayer?accountid=12045
(consulted August 12, 2020).
Chapter Division
To answer the central question: ‘Why did the Clinton administration (1993-2001) use a militarized anti-drug policy in Colombia, while this military approach did not lead to a decrease in illegal drug use in the United States?’, the case study is split up in three chapters. In the first chapter that serves as historical background, I will argue that the election of Ernesto Samper as President of Colombia in 1994 and the escalating Colombian conflict in the second half of the 1990s are the primary international considerations shaping Clinton's drug policy.
The second chapter covers the period of Clinton’s first term as president (1993-1997). The core argument of this chapter is that domestic considerations influence Clinton's foreign drug policy. By examining the domestic political climate of the 1990s and American
‘executive-legislative relations’, I will provide a good picture of the influence domestic considerations had on Clinton’s foreign drug policy in Colombia.21 I will argue, among other
things, that due to a combination of events in Colombia and internal pressure from the conservative Republicans in Congress on Clinton, the bilateral relationship became
‘narcotized’. This meant that almost everything in the U.S.-Colombian relationship depended on drug policies. I also show that for that same reason, the drug policy already became somewhat militarized.
The third chapter will cover the period of Clinton’s second term. To answer the main question, I want to know how the White House was forced to accommodate Republicans’ demand for a militarized policy. Therefore I focus on the largest manifestation and institutionalization of America’s drug policy in Colombia, namely Plan Colombia. Since intermestic policy reflects compromises between the president and Congress, I focus again on American executive-legislative relations. I will argue that also in this period, based on
congressional hearings, the conservative Republicans ultimately affected the executive branch of the U.S. government in the making of Plan Colombia. Before I move on to the case study I will first discuss the state of the academic field regarding the central question of this thesis.
Literature review
I am not the first to wonder why America or specifically the Clinton administration pursued a militaristic drug policy in Colombia. So the purpose of this literature review is to indicate the current status of the academic field concerning this question. Based on the current state of the academic field, I will argue that the leading cause for U.S. drug policy’s militarization is the ‘securitization’ of the war on drugs. Secondly, I argue that within this security framework, there is also room for other causes. For example, in the current literature, the pressure of the Republican-dominated Congress on the Clinton administration is also seen as a cause for American drug policy’s militarization. This thesis’s central argument that the Clinton administration was forced to accommodate Republicans' demand for a militarized policy toward Colombia is therefore not new in itself. The literature, however, lacks the cause of the Republican pressure on the Clinton administration.
In other literature that not necessarily focuses on the war on drugs, the American domestic political climate of the 1990s is described, including the Republican Revolution, culture war, increasing partisanship, and increasing conservatism.22 In the last section of this
literature review, I argue that current literature fails to link this domestic political climate to the pressure the Republicans exerted on Clinton. In the remainder of this thesis, I will argue that the domestic political climate of the U.S. in the 1990s causes the Republicans' demand for a militarized policy toward Colombia in an attempt to fill the gap in the excising literature.
The war on drugs started symbolically with a press conference on June 17, 1971, by President Nixon, when he called drugs ‘public enemy number one’. Nevertheless, according to Carolina C. Másmela and Arlene B. Tickner, already since the beginning of the twentieth century, the U.S. anti-drug policy has been based on two distinct but complementary
assumptions. The first assumption is that drugs are morally wrong, from a religious point of view. According to Másmela and Tickner, the United States has for itself a moral duty to act against the ‘evil’ of drugs and that drug consumption historically has been understood as a ‘depraved behaviour that is outside the limits of “normal” society’. Inside the U.S., it,
therefore, originates among undesirable social groups. Outside the U.S., on the other hand, the origins of the problem lie in drug-producing countries. It is unclear whether Másmela and Tickner think that these domestic and foreign domains mutually influence each other, so they
22 Kevin M. Kruse and E. Zelizer, Fault lines: A history of the United States since 1974 ( New York: WW
leave the concept of intermesticity out of consideration. According to Másmela and Tickner, the other assumption is that illicit drugs are seen as a security threat. Therefore the
representatives of the state have the right to use force as an emergency measure. According to Másmela and Tickner, by taking the drug problem out of the public sphere and turning it into a security problem, the democratic debate can be circumvented. The state, therefore, gets a monopoly on the treatment of the issue. It may well be that because of this monopoly, the long period of seeing drugs as a security problem has led to militarization, and thus a real war on drugs.23
Másmela and Tickner's article is relatively recent, but the presented link between security and the war on drugs is not new. In 1989, Waltraud Queiser Morales suggested that the war on drugs could serve as a new national security doctrine for America. According to Morales, '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 tanta-mount to heresy'.24
In the same period, Bruce Bullington and Alan A. Block argued that the war on drugs, already during the eighties, served to mask anti-communist security measures, such as the U.S. counterintelligence and paramilitary presence abroad. According to Bullington and Block, Reagan’s administration tried to present a long link between communism and drugs. Under the heading of drug enforcement, high technology weapons, advanced radar systems, and the stationing of U.S. naval, customs, and coast guard ships near important South American ports, were all in place to combat potential communist threats.25 Thus, during this
period, the war on drugs was not the primary threat to U.S. security but framed as part of a larger security threat, namely communism.
Morales predicted that because anti-communism lost its ‘fear’ potential after the Cold War, a new war on drugs security doctrine could replace the old anti-communism security doctrine. Morales argued that if the war on drugs eventually really became the new security doctrine, the U.S. still got a ‘subterfuge’ for intervention or trying to obtain hegemony in
23 Carolina C. Másmela and Arlene B. Tickner, “Desecuritizing the ‘War on Drugs’,” In: Suarez M., Villa R.,
Weiffen B. eds., Power dynamics and regional security in Latin America (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 295-318, at 296-298.
24 W.Q. Morales, “The War on Drugs: A New US National Security Doctrine?,” Third World Quarterly vol. 11,
no. 3 (November 1989): 147-169, at 151.
25 Bruce Bullington, and Alan A. Block, “A Trojan horse: Anti-communism and the war on drugs,”
Latin America.26 In a more recent article, Rafael Duarte Villa, Thiago Rodrigues, and
Fabrício Chagas Bast argue that at the beginning of the 1990s, Latin America no longer played a significant role in U.S. security concerns. Despite this, America was concerned about the drug trade. Because the U.S. has a long and strong tradition of prohibition and repression of drug dealers and consumers, it was easy to maintain the military approach that the U.S. used to the old communist security problem.27 So, according to them, the war on drug security
doctrine predicted by Morales became a reality. They add further that this doctrine gained importance after the 9/11 attacks. South American guerrillas, who were also involved in the drug trade, could now also be equated as terrorists. Thus, the war on drugs became critical because it overlapped with the interests of America's new security doctrine, namely the war on terror. According to Villa, Rodrigues, and Bastos, both threats justify the U.S. intelligence and military presence in South America.28
According to Emily Crick, the international relations theory of ‘securitization’
explains why this security discourse is still leading drug policy today, despite the criticisms.29
Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde, theorists associated with the Copenhagen School of security studies, have theorized the concept called ‘securitization’. According to K.M. Fierke, the ‘process of securitization by which naming a threat as a security threat elevates it above others’. ‘In this elevation the identification of an existential threat, that is, a threat to the survival of a community, justifies a suspension of the normal rules of politics, allowing elites to take extraordinary measures’.30 According to Másmela and Tickner, ‘The
fact that drugs are interpreted as a universal evil that threatens moral purity also exerts a restraining influence on public debate, namely, the rejection and disavowal of those analyses that are framed in different terms’. Desecuritizing the war on drugs, through a form of decriminalization or legalization of some drugs, is thus difficult, according to Másmela and Tickner.31
In their recent evaluation of the war on drugs concept, Arkadiy Alekseevich Eremin and Oleg Konstantinovich Petrovich-Belkin sum up the current consensus well. In the first place, the war on drugs fails to stop drug trafficking and drug use, mainly because of its
force-26 W.Q. Morales, “The War on Drugs,” 147-169.
27 R.D. Villa, T. Rodrigues, and F.C. Bastos, “South America in the Post-Cold War Era: war on drugs and the
reshaping of the US security agenda,” Revista da Escola de Guerra Naval vol.21, no.1 (2015): 33-61, at 55.
28 Ibidem, 42-47.
29 Emily Crick, “Drugs as an existential threat: An analysis of the international securitization of drugs,”
International Journal of Drug Policy vol 23, no.5 (2012): 407-414, at 407.
30 K.M. Fireke, “Constructivism,” in: Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith eds., International Relations
Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 187-204, at 200.
oriented approach. Secondly, political elites misuse the war on drugs to meet personal agendas. Like Másmela and Tickner and Crick, they argue that a change in drug policy has been blocked by the legacy of the war on drugs. They even go a step further by arguing that the war’s detrimental legacy even today blocks new developments against drug distribution in the Western Hemisphere.32
Within this security framework, there is also room for other causes for American drug policy’s militarization. According to David Campbell, an important aspect of the war on drugs is that the threat of drugs to the ethical boundaries of America's identity is formulated as a threat to the physical borders of the American state. According to Campbell, this involves a transfer from differences within a state to differences between states. In this particular case, drugs are seen as a threat to the stability of the Colombian state. An unstable Colombian state threatens the survival of the American state. According to Campbell, this is similar to the way the communist threat was framed in the 1950s. Although Campbell does not use this wording, the war on drugs is seen by him as an intermestic issue, namely domestic considerations that influence international relations.33
According to Crandall, the Congressional elections of 1994 resulted in an unexpected and major Republican victory since they got a majority in both Congress houses, which would continue for the rest of Clinton's presidency. According to Crandall, the Republicans in
Congress had a more ‘hawkish’ approach towards the drug issue than Clinton's
administration. Because they dominated both houses, they could put pressure on Clinton.34
According to William Avilés, the adverse effects of drugs on domestic crime are often emphasized for calls for counter-narcotics aid to countries like Colombia. According to Avilés, this point is used by scholars to argue that the militaristic nature of Plan Colombia is a response by a Democratic president to the call of the Republican-dominated Congress for a harsh drug approach.35 Thus, both Crandall and Avilés point to the pressure the Republicans
exerted on Clinton but fail to explain why the Republicans exerted this pressure.
Tatiana Suárez also combines the security framework with an intermestic perspective. She argues that the armed groups involved in the drug trade in Colombia in the second half of
32 Arkadiy A. Ermine, and Oleg Konstantinovich Petrovich-Belkin, "The 'War on Drugs' Concept as the Basis
for Combating Drugs in the Western Hemisphere," Central European Journal of International & Security
Studies vol.13, no.2 (2019): 31-47.
33 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 185.
34 Russel Crandall, “Explicit Narcotization,” 101.
35 William Avilés, “US Intervention in Colombia: The Role of Transnational Relations,” Bulletin of Latin
the 1990s formed a threat to Colombia's sovereignty, the international component. According to Suárez, the increasing amount of drugs from these groups entering the U.S. was seen as a national security concern, the domestic component. Another example Suaréz gives is the cause of the militaristic base of Plan Colombia. According to Suárez, a tougher drug approach in Colombia by the Clinton administration could win votes for the Democrats in the 2000 presidential elections. ‘The fact that pre-election partisan concerns had repercussions on the administration's policy approach towards Colombia represents another example of
intermesticity, namely, domestic issues spilling over into international ones’.36 The point that
partisanship played a role in the eventual militaristic drug policy in Colombia is interesting. Although Suárez mentions this, she does not elaborate on it. Besides, this is only about Plan Colombia’s formation and not about the foreign drug policy during Clinton's full presidency.
I argue that current literature fails to link the American domestic political climate to the pressure the Republicans exerted on Clinton. In other literature that not necessarily focuses on the war on drugs, the American domestic political climate of the 1990s is described, including the Republican Revolution, culture war, increasing partisanship, and increasing conservatism.37 In an attempt to fill the gap in the excising literature, I will argue in
the remainder of this thesis that the domestic political climate of the U.S. in the 1990s causes the Republicans' demand for a militarized policy toward Colombia.
The works discussed show that America had deeper intentions with its war on drugs policy or at least faced several unintended consequences. So it is vital to keep in mind for the rest of this thesis that the war on drugs is much more than a policy to reduce drug use and drug supply. Traditionally, drug issues are in the domestic domain. This review showed, however, that the focus in recent years has been on the entanglement between American drug control and security threats. Scholars see a historical transition from the association of the war on drugs with the communist security threat in the 1980s towards an association that sees illegal drugs itself as a threat to U.S. national security in the 1990s. Eventually, after 9/11 the war on drugs became an important part of the terrorism security doctrine. Overarching all periods is that the war on drugs was (mis-)used to justify the U.S. intelligence and military presence abroad.
All the literature seems to have in common is that they criticize the securitization of the U.S. because it misses its main goal, namely the reduction of supply and demand for drugs. Perhaps a more important criticism is that the securitization has many negative
36 Tatiana Suárez, “The ‘Intermesticity’ of,” 5.
consequences, including the militarization of the war on drugs. This thesis will try to continue and refine that criticism in contribution to the ‘desecuritization’ of the war on drugs.
Therefore, this thesis will focus on the underexposed domestic domain. This thesis does not place the war on drugs outside the security framework but rather zooms in on a specific part of it. Scholars recognize that domestic considerations influence the forming of foreign drug policy, which characterizes intermestic issues. However, they fail to provide a comprehensive picture of these domestic considerations. Therefore the following chapters will show the far-reaching consequences of the polarization of American domestic politics during Clinton’s presidency.
Chapter 1: Historical background and International Considerations
In the first section of this chapter, I will argue that it appears that Clinton is breaking with the militaristic drug policies of his predecessors. I will substantiate this argument by sketching a good picture of the foreign drug policy at the start of Clinton's presidency. Although I focus on the domestic domain in this thesis, I will then briefly provide a picture of Colombia’s political situation in this period because international considerations also determine
intermestic drug policy. In the second section, I argue that the election of the controversial Colombian president Ernesto Samper is particularly decisive for the bilateral relations in Clinton’s first term. As Samper's presidency ended in 1998 and Clinton’s second term started, the internal conflict increasingly burdened Colombia. So at the end of this chapter, I claim that the escalating conflict is the main foreign consideration influencing U.S. drug policy in Colombia during Clinton’s second term. Warring factions in Colombia, from both the left and right of the political spectrum, became deeper involved in the drug trade. So I will contend that Clinton had to change his drug policy due to the intertwining of the Colombian conflict and the drugs issue.
Start of the Clinton Presidency
Before the 1980s, the American war on drugs was waged primarily within the United States. However, in the late 1980s, the U.S. began to move the drug war agenda into the international arena and focused on fighting drugs at their source, namely in drug-producing countries. This new agenda was perhaps best embodied in George H.W. Bush’s campaign speech in 1988 emphasizing interdiction programs in drug-producing countries.38 This changing agenda
coincided with violence and increasing drug cultivation in Colombia. Latin Americanist Russel Crandall rightly notes that ‘since approximately 90 percent of the world’s cocaine is produced in Colombia, this country became ground zero in the U.S. war on drugs’.39 Besides,
38 Russel Crandall, “Explicit Narcotization,” 100.
39 Russel Crandall, Driven by Drugs: US Policy Toward Colombia ( Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008),
the end of the Cold War meant that U.S. government agencies could shift their focus from fighting communists to fighting drugs. In the literature review, we saw a transition from a communist security doctrine to a security doctrine based on drugs. Alexandra Guáqueta shows in her article that the war on drugs security doctrine could be very pervasive. She shows that in the case of the U.S.-Colombian relationship, the doctrine ‘led to the United States’ enmeshment in Colombian affairs as diverse as trade policy, institutional design in the justice sector, criminal policy, drug policy, defense sector reform, conflict management, and demobilization’.40 In this way, the U.S.’s urge to fight drug use domestically turned in the late
1980s into an American war on drugs in Colombia, a country already lost in a complex civil war.
That drugs were seen as a national security threat at the start of Clinton's presidency in 1993 and therefore played an important role in American foreign policy is evident from a memorandum dated November 9, 1993. In the memorandum from Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Department of State R. Grant Smith addressed to Secretary of State Warren
Christopher, the new international counternarcotics policy under Clinton is summarized and discussed. The memorandum’s first key point stated that ‘narcotics constitutes a national security threat to the United States. This provides legal justification to draw on the recourses of the national defense and intelligence communities in our international counternarcotics efforts’.41 In other words, drugs are a security threat, so they legitimize the militarization of
the drug policy.
However, when Clinton took office in January earlier that year, support for combating drugs in Latin America decreased instead of increased. The Clinton administration concluded after an investigation that the programs did not produce the desired results. As a result, for 1993, the planned budget for anti-drug efforts in Andean countries was more than halved from $ 387 to $ 174 billion.42 Clinton also initially seems to place more emphasis on the
domestic demand for drugs. When in an interview on May 3, 1994, a Colombian journalist asked Clinton about America's anti-drug policy in the U.S. and Colombia. Although he touches on the supply-side of the problem of Colombia, he says about America that, ‘obviously, we want drugs more than some other places’. 'There are things unique to the United States, that we cannot blame on Colombia or Mexico or anyplace else, that we have to
40 Alexandra Guáqueta, "Change and Continuity," 50.
41 R. Grant Smith to Warren Christopher, Information Memorandum, November 09, 1993, in Colombia and the
United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/docview/1679070637?accountid=12045 (consulted December 7, 2020).
deal with'.43 So while Clinton insists on tackling the supply side of the drug problem, he also
holds the U.S. accountable for the problem’s demand side.
There is no emphasis on the domestic problem in the most concrete document of Clinton's drug policy. In Presidential Decision Directive 14 (PDD 14) of November 3, 1993, Clinton outlined his international counternarcotics policy for the Western Hemisphere. According to Clinton, ‘Counternarcotics programs are fundamentally essential to
strengthening democratic institutions and defending them against one of the most insidious threats to representative government, free-market economies, human rights, and
environmental protection’. While interdiction remains one of the pillars of drug policy, Clinton took a more balanced approach by adding two pillars: 'Assisting Institutions in Other Nations' and 'Destroying Narco-Trafficking Organizations'. According to Clinton, ‘The most effective long term solution to the problem of narcotics production and trafficking has been shown to be broad-based economic growth with equity’.44 Based on this source, you would
expect that U.S. international drug policy under Clinton would shift away from interdiction towards institution building in countries like Colombia.
PDD 14 was a response to an interagency review by the National Security Council (NSC). In this review, according to Mathea Falco, it is concluded that traditional interdiction programs near the U.S. border did not decrease the flow of cocaine into the U.S. This
research, according to Falco, had the same outcome as previous studies done by the General Accounting Office, also known as the Congressional watchdog. According to Falco, the Clinton administration responded to these studies by increasing the budget for source-country programs. However these fundings were blocked by the then Democratic-controlled Congress since the budget rise was too much devoted to militaristic recourses.45
PDD14 also reflected the Democratic block. According to Clinton, ‘U.S.
counternarcotics assistance holds the potential to assist us in reducing U.S. drug consumption. Nonetheless, many departments and agencies have experienced Congressional reductions in the funding levels for crucial international counternarcotics programs’. Furthermore, PDD 14 directs all counternarcotic foreign assistance to be combined into a single account.46 Smith
argued to Christopher that ‘If we do our job well, this [the combination into a single account]
43 William J. Clinton, Interview on CNN's "Global Forum With President Clinton" Online by Gerhard Peters and
John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/219373.
44 Presidential Decision Directive No. 14, (November 03, 1993),
https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/docview/1679071071?accountid=12045 (consulted December 7, 2020).
45 M. Falco, “U.S. drug policy: Addicted to failure,” Foreign Policy no.102 (Spring 1996): 120-133, at 122-123. 46 Presidential Decision Directive No. 14, (November 03,1993).
should make it easier for us to identify, justify, and defend our international counternarcotics budget request on the Hill in the years ahead’.47 Both sources clearly show that the executive
branch must take into account the will of Congress.
The start of Clinton's presidency promised a balanced approach to the foreign drug problem and recognized the domestic demand side of the problem. The halving of the anti-drug budget for Andean countries is the clearest example of Clinton’s more domestic and less hard drugs approach at the beginning of his presidency. He also puts more emphasis on stopping drug production in source countries instead of at the US border. The sources show that the emphasis here is mainly on institution building instead of a militaristic approach such as interdiction. Also, militaristic aid was held back by the Democratic-controlled Congress. When Clinton took office, the drug policy seemed to break with the militaristic drugs approach, but as argued in the rest of this thesis, this became more difficult in practice.
The Samper Presidency (1994-1998)
The election of Ernesto Samper as president of Colombia was a crucial international
consideration in forming America's drug policy for Colombia during Clinton's first term. Even before Samper took office as president in August 1994, there were rumors that he had
accepted drug money as a campaign leader in the 1982 elections. Suspicion grew in 1984 after the arrest of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, one of the key figures of the Cali cartel, because Samper's private phone number appeared in Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela's address book. Also, Samper had openly advocated drug legalization in the 1980s. However, the most decisive for relations with the Samper administration would be when a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent leaked tapes to the Colombian press just after Samper's narrow victory in the elections in June 1994. These tapes revealed how Miguel Rodígruez, Cali Cartel leader at the time, and Gilberto's brother, said he had supported Samper's campaign with $ 3.5 million. This led to large-scale investigations and prosecutions of Colombian officials associated with drug traffickers, known as Proceso 8000. The moment U.S. government
officials became acquainted with Samper, it was immediately made clear that there could be no normal relationship with the U.S. if there were no cooperation on the drug problem.48
According to Crandall, the U.S. government constantly tried to undermine Samper's legitimacy, by threatening with sanctions or bypassing him by working directly with anti-drug allies within the Colombian army and police. In this way, according to Crandall, the U.S. managed to exploit Samper's image and compel him to do more for the drug battle than he normally would have done. So, although the diplomatic relationship with the Samper
administration was poor, culminating in the taking of Samper's visa in June 1996, this did not hinder the execution of U.S. foreign drug policy in Colombia.49 The U.S.’ aggressive response
to the with drugs associated Samper shows again that drugs were seen as an international threat to U.S. national security.
The Colombian Conflict and Illegal Drugs
Although this thesis emphasizes the influence of domestic consideration, international
considerations have also been instrumental in shaping the militaristic drug policy in Colombia during Clinton's second term. The primary international consideration was the escalating Colombian conflict during this period. For more than 60 years, various armed parties, both legal and illegal, have been fighting for control of strategic areas, natural resources, and illicit drug trafficking in Colombia. The complexity of the conflict lies in the many warring parties. Despite frantic attempts to make peace, and multiple ceasefires, such as the recently
announced ceasefire by the National Liberation Army (ELN) during the Corona pandemic, the conflict persists.50 For this thesis, it is necessary to briefly discuss the conflict because
especially during the 1990s, the war on drugs has a major role in the conflict and the other way around.
The start of the current Colombian conflict situates in 1964 with the founding of multiple far-left insurgencies and far-right paramilitary groups. According to political scientist Peter Dale Scott, the violence reflects the country's near-feudal social structure. A rich upper-class population used violent tactics to displace farmers and oppress plantation
48 Russel Crandall, “Explicit Narcotization,” 102-103. 49 Russel Crandall, Driven by Drugs, 2-6.
workers.51 Although it may be an oversimplification, the Colombian conflict is thus based on
uneven land distribution and social inequality. According to Scott, America, which saw a potential Cold War playing field in Colombia, assisted the Colombian government with counterinsurgency techniques during the early 1960s, causing small local groups of revolutionary force to unite in organized national movements.52
On both sides, groups became more or less involved in the drug trade. The most identifiable left-wing insurgencies during Clinton’s presidency were the Ejército de
Liberarción Nacional (ELN) and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
(FARC). The most important right-wing paramilitary organization was the Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia (AUC). This group was created after the unification of most of the loose
paramilitary groups. I will limit myself to discussing the FARC and the AUC because they were most involved in the drug trade.53
The FARC is a Marxist-oriented organization and is Colombia's largest non-state armed group. After the arrival of the National Front, the disaffected insurgents founded several ‘independent’ peasant republics. In 1964 the Colombian army waged a major military operation against the largest of these republics. The FARC was founded by 45 remaining peasant leaders, who fled into the jungle and recruited displaced peasants for a revolutionary army. According to Susan Virginia Norman, the FARC played a relatively minor role over the next two decades. A turning point was the increasing drug cultivation in Colombia in the early 1980s. The FARC was opposed to drug trafficking until the 1980s because of their political ideology. This standpoint changed due to the increase in coca cultivation among the local population of FARC-controlled areas. Norman distinguishes two periods of FARCS involvement in the drug trade, namely a phase of regulation (1982-1991) and a vertical integration phase (1991-present).54
In the regulation phase, the FARC wanted to take advantage of coca production without actually participating itself. They did this by setting up institutions in their controlled
51 Peter Dale Scott, Drugs Oil and War: The United States un Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham,
Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 76.
52 Ibidem, 76-77.
53 Ingrid J. Bolívar, Local Dimensions of the Colombian Conflict: Order and Security in Drug Trafficking (The
Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, 2003), 1-37, at 11,
https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20030700_cru_working_paper_15.pdf (consulted October 28, 2020).
54 Susan V. Norman, “Narcotization as Dilemma: The FARC and Drug Trade in Colombia,” Studies in Conflict
areas to control the illegal market in coca-growing regions. For example, coca farmers and drug traffickers had to pay taxes in exchange for protection.55
The phase of vertical integration started in the early nineties, and in this phase, the FARC directly involved in the drug trade. So the prediction in the CIA assessment was correct. One of Norman's main arguments is that the FARC became increasingly involved in the drug trade because relationships with drug traffickers deteriorated and the following collaboration between some drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries. Drug traffickers were not happy with the taxes they had to pay to insurgencies. Besides, over the years, wealthy drug lords had become large landowners, making them targets of kidnapping by insurgencies. The drug traffickers did not accept that and therefore started to form
paramilitaries. Medellin Cartel leaders founded one of the first paramilitary organizations , namely Muerte a los Secuestadores (MAS, Death to the Kidnappers).56
Colombian law allowed paramilitary organizations from 1968 to 1989 to support the regular army in the fight against the insurgencies. The paramilitaries’ violence and the violation of human rights made them illegal in 1989, but the paramilitaries persisted, and not all connections with the Colombian army disappeared.57 The U.S. relationship with the
paramilitaries is shadowy. According to Scott, however, research by Human Rights Watch showed that the U.S. had supported the paramilitaries with the supply of weapons and information.58
Although there were several paramilitary groups, since 1996, most of the groups were organized in a federation, namely the AUC. The AUC was set up by Carlos Castaño Gil, drug boss, and leader of the paramilitary ACCU (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá), whose father had been kidnapped and murdered by the FARC. Not only was the group led primarily by drug lords, but its leaders have also acknowledged several times that the drug trades funds the group. The AUC was against multiple peace talks between the Colombian government and different insurgencies during the nineties. According to the AUC, the guerrillas are not out for peace, and the government falls short in providing security. However, the AUC's interpretation of security has led to multiple massacres.59
55 Ibidem, 644-649. 56 Ibidem, 646-654.
57 Jennifer S. Holmes, Sheila Amin Gutiérrez De Piñeres, and Kevin M. Curtin, Guns, drugs, and development in
Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 58-63.
58 Scott, Drugs Oil and War, 77-78.
According to Norman the collapse of both the Medellín and Cali cartel changed the Colombian drug trafficking structure in the 1990s. The small autonomous networks that emerged after the two dominant cartels’ collapse could easily join the AUC. As part of the AUC, the drug trafficking networks had access to private armies, which allowed them to supplant the FARC's protection and taxation system. As a result, drug trafficking was vertically integrated by the FARC. According to Norman, by participating directly in the production and smuggling of drugs, the FARC protected itself by not contacting drug criminals with possible paramilitary connections.60
This section showed the complexity of the Colombian drug industry and its entanglement with the Colombian conflict. It is important to note that because of this entanglement, the U.S. could not wage war against drugs in Colombia without also being involved in the conflict. The course of this conflict and its actor’s involvement in drug trafficking is, therefore, Clinton’s most important international consideration in shaping U.S. drug policy in the second half of the 1990s.
Chapter 2: Clinton’s first term (1993-1997)
In this second chapter, I will zoom in on the difference between the U.S. drug policy in Colombia at the start of Clinton's presidency in 1993 and the drug policy at the end of Clinton's first term in 1997. I argue that the Clinton administration’s domestic political considerations are the main cause of the hardening of America’s foreign drug policy in Colombia during his first term. At the heart of this chapter, I use the Republican Revolution of 1994 as an example of a domestic consideration that influenced American foreign drug policy. I will argue that with the Republican takeover of both chambers in Congress,
executive-legislative relations changed. Congress’s influence is increasing when intermestic issues such as drugs are in play. From 1994, onwards Republican pressure from Congress forced Clinton to pursue a tougher drug policy in Colombia, which meant that the diplomatic relationship with Colombia revolved almost exclusively around the drug problem. Finally, I will argue that Clinton’s decision to decertify Colombia as cooperating in the American fight against drug trafficking for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 was part of Clinton's triangulation policy for the 1996 presidential election.
The Congressional Election of 1994 and Narcotization
In the same year as Samper took office in Colombia, the Republican Revolution took place in the U.S. The Republican Revolution refers to the Republican victory in both houses of
Congress in the 1994 Congressional election. In this section, I argue that this victory was a turning point for the hardening of Clinton’s drug policy in Colombia, resulting in the
narcotization of the bilateral relations.
According to Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, Clinton wanted to start his presidency with quickly solving several economic problems, but instead got caught up in topics of the culture wars of the 1990s, including recreational drug use. In America, ‘culture war’ refers to the conflict between those with conservative ideas and those with liberal ideas. While the position was not necessarily determined by political affiliation, the Republicans are more conservative/traditional and the Democrats more liberal/progressive. According to Kruse and Zelizer, in the 1990s, American politics was entirely dominated by partisan warfare
between the Democrats and Republicans. According to Kruse and Zelizer, any starting president would have trouble finding a middle ground in this political climate, but especially Clinton. For the conservatives, Clinton embodied the revolutions of the 1960s, among other thing, he had admitted to experimenting with drugs. Also, small scandals plagued the Clinton administration right from the start.61
Clinton envisioned a new drug policy, but the difficult start of his administration hampered this. This rocky start was ideal for a relatively new force within the Republican party, the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) led by Newt Gingrich. According to Kruse and Zelizer, ‘COS members had three goals: (1) tear down the Democrats; (2) advance a bold new agenda for the Republicans; and then (3) take control of the Republican Party itself’. The first opportunity to challenge the Democrats was the 1994 congressional elections. According to Kruse and Zelizer, Gingrich emphasized negatively attacking his Democratic opponents. Democrats had to be described as 'sick', 'destructive' and 'traitors', among other things. This strategy ultimately led to the Republican victory and is therefore also called the Gingrich Revolution. According to Kruse and Zelizer, after the election, Gingrich said Clinton would be stupid to oppose a conservative agenda.62 The Republicans used Gingrich's
strategy during Clinton's full presidency, forcing the Democrats to defend themselves, resulting in a strongly polarized politics.
One point on this conservative agenda was a harder drug approach. Important themes within Republican counternarcotics claims were, according to Winifred Tate, 'the “cultural war” emphasis on childhood, a nostalgic past, and the possibility of absolute victory through technology'.63 Many congressional documents regarding Colombia during Clinton’s first term
reflect these Republican claims and push for a harder drug approach. For example, a 1995 Congressional bill calls for national emergency sanctions against Colombia concerning illegal drugs and drug trafficking.64 Later that year, a message from Clinton to Congress showed that
he was responding to the call from Congress. He said in this message: 'I have exercised my statutory authority to declare a national emergency in response to the unusual and
61 Kevin M. Kruse and E. Zelizer, Fault lines, 206-212. 62 Ibidem, 212-217.
63 Winifred Tate, “Congressional ‘drug warriors’ and US policy towards Colombia,” Critique of anthropology
vol. 33, no. 2 (2013): 214-233, at 227.
64 To provide for the imposition of sanctions against Colombia with respect to illegal drugs and drug trafficking,
S. 681, 104th Cong. (1995), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-104s681is/pdf/BILLS-104s681is.pdf
extraordinary threat posed to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States by the actions of significant foreign narcotics traffickers centered in Colombia’.65
So while Clinton said he would do more, a Congressional Record from January 25, 1996, shows that he was not doing enough in the eyes of the Republicans. According to Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, Clinton did express his concerns about the drug problem but had done ‘nothing’ about the drug problem for the past three years. Furthermore, Inhofe hoped that General Barry McCaffrey would be appointed as The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and will come out with a ‘very aggressive drug program’.66
Advocacy for a general as director and an aggressive drugs approach both points to a more militaristic drug policy.
In a House report from 1996 with an extensive review on the drug war status, Clinton was criticized for his 'weak' drug policy. Among other things, it is cited that ‘“last year, the Clinton administration directed the U.S. Military to stop providing radar tracking or cocaine-trafficker aircraft to Colombia and Peru,” a policy “Congress again had to reverse”’.67
Congress reversing this decision reflects the Republican claim that victory was possible through technology. The U.S. had started providing information on suspected drug flights to the Colombian government. When the Colombian government announced it would shoot suspected planes from the sky, this support was stopped by Clinton’s Defense Department in May 1994. The United States did not want to be held responsible for civilian planes shot down using their information. However, Congress responded by granting official immunity to U.S. personnel assisting in these aircraft interdiction operations. The result was that from the beginning of 1995, the U.S. army supported Colombia with advanced radar systems.68
In a Congressional Record dated March 14, 1996, Republican Representative John Mica referred to the review as 'a trail of failure'. In this Record, Mica was very critical of Clinton's drug policy. For example, he pointed out that drug use among American children was on the rise because of Clinton's weak drug policy. He also found it 'outrageous' that drug legalization was considered within Clinton's administration. Finally, he said Colombia was
65 William J. Clinton, H.R. Doc. No. 104-129, at 1-4 (1995),
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-104hdoc129/pdf/CDOC-104hdoc129.pdf (consulted December 7, 2020).
66 142 Cong. Rec. S365-366 (January 25,1996) (statement of Sen. Inhofe),
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1996-01-25/html/CREC-1996-01-25-pt1-PgS365-2.htm (consulted January 2, 2021).
67 Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, H.R. Rep. No. 104-486, at 22 (1996),
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-104hrpt486/pdf/CRPT-104hrpt486.pdf (consulted December 7, 2020).
68 Peter Zirnite, “The Militarization of the Drug War in Latin America,“ Current History 97 (April 1998):
'betrayed' by the administration’s reversal of the practice of intelligence sharing and radar equipment to attack narco-terrorist planes.69 In a Record dated April 30, 1996, Mica repeated
the same points in response to Clinton's new national drug control strategy. He called this strategy a 'repackaging in sort of a slick cover some of the same approaches that have proven so ineffective during the past 3 \ 1/2 \ years’ and ‘another policy for disaster'.70
The wording the Republicans used in these sources reflect the polarization of America's domestic politics during this period. Therefore, these sources show the consequences of the polarization of U.S. domestic politics on foreign drug policy in
Colombia. Although Clinton shows goodwill through a tougher drug approach, the approach was never harsh enough, and the Republicans in Congress kept on pushing.
The term often associated with the new (forced) policy focus after the 1994 midterm elections is narcotization. This meant that ‘virtually all aspects of U.S. involvement in Colombia were somehow linked to drugs’. According to Crandall, this means in practice that in the bilateral relationship with Colombia, the U.S.'s position on issues such as human rights, economic ties, and peace negotiations with guerrillas and paramilitary groups depended on the drug problem. This policy, according to Crandall, was not static but depended on the extent to which Colombia met Washington's expectations in solving the drug problem. In this way, policies could range from isolation to cooperation, but because Colombia relied heavily on U.S. aid, they often could do little else than try to meet Washington's standards.71
Clinton's answer to a reporter's question on June 13, 1996, clearly shows that
diplomatic relations between Colombia and the U.S. were narcotized. The reporter asks what Clinton thinks of Samper's exoneration after his suspected connection with the Cali cartel. Clinton answers that ‘they have to vote on matters as they see fit. But we will judge our relationship with a country based on their level of cooperation with us in the fight against narcotics’.72
Finally, pressure from Congress affected other parts of the Executive Branch as well. According to Crandall, characteristics of intermestic cases such as Colombia are a
69 142 Cong. Rec. H2308-2309 (March 14, 1996) ( statement of H.R. Mica),
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1996-03-14/html/CREC-1996-03-14-pt1-PgH2308-5.htm
(consulted January 2, 2021).
70 142 Cong. Rec. H4165 (April 30, 1996) (statement of H.R. Mica),
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1996-04-30/html/CREC-1996-04-30-pt1-PgH4165.htm (consulted January 2, 2021).
71 Crandall, Driven by Drugs, 2.
72 William J. Clinton, Exchange With Reporters Prior to Discussions With President Mary Robinson of Ireland
Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project,
competition between involved American government agencies. Because the Republican-controlled Congress pushed for a harsh approach to the drug issue, a harsh stance on the drug issue could lead to a better position. Drug budget had to be shared among many agencies, so competition grew between these agencies, blurring the focus on necessary reforms in drug strategy.73
The Certification Process
In this section, I will argue that the administration’s foreign drug policy in Colombia in 1995 and 1996 was part of Clinton's triangulation policy. After the defeat in the Congressional election, Clinton had to look for a way to be still reelected in the 1996 presidential election. Dick Morris advised him a triangulation policy. This meant that Clinton had to distance himself from both the liberals in his party and the conservative Republicans in Congress. Clinton followed this advice in 1995 and 1996. According to Kruse and Zelizer, managed to steal the momentum from the Republicans on the conservative issues of the culture wars, including drugs. So he did this by pursuing a more conservative policy than he would
otherwise have done.74 An example that shows that this triangulation effected the drug policy
in Colombia is the certification process.
Even before the run-up to the elections, Republican’s pressure on Clinton to take a harder stance on Colombia increased. For example, the Senate unanimously voted that all U.S. aid to Colombia should be cut if no direct action was taken against the Colombian drug cartels, and a corruption investigation into Samper was launched.75 So this source suggests
that the cut of U.S. aid was a harsh measure. So one way for Clinton to show that he had a more conservative tough drug approach was to stop aid for Colombia. The certification process provided a solution.
In 1986 an act was passed that included an annual certification process. This meant that the U.S. Congress had a mandate that required the president to certify whether a country fully cooperated in the U.S.'s fight against drug trafficking. Decertification could mean that a
73 Russel Crandall, Driven by Drugs, 3-6.
74 Kevin M. Kruse and E. Zelizer, Fault lines, 217-218.
75 An Act making appropriations for foreign operations, export financing, and related programs for the fiscal
year ending September 30, 1995, H.R. 4426, 103rd Cong. (1994),
