The call to arms that is the result of conceptualizing as a war efforts to stem the flow of drugs and to persuade our citizens to foreswear their use taps deeply-held emotions. Public opinion polls show that the drug issue has taken an unprecedented lead as an issue of concern for the American people. In a recent CBS News/ New York Times poll, for example, 64 percent of respondents thought that drugs constitute the most important problem facing the United States today.1 No other issue caused a remotely similar degree of alarm (the nearest being the economy, which five percent thought was the most important problem).

The poll revealed too that the American population is in a punitive mood, with significant majorities supporting a policy of prosecuting and treating as criminals occasional users of crack and cocaine. When asked if the current balance of two to one in favour of law enforcement over treatment in the federal drug budget is appropriate, 44 percent consider it is, with a further eight percent considering that too much is spent on treatment.2 Although a slight plurality of 47 percent resists the notion of sending U.S. troops to Colombia to fight drug trafficking if the Colombian Government requests it, 42 percent would support such a move (34 percent would support sending troops even if they may be there for a year or more).3

A martial approach to drug control is clearly consonant with the current ethos. At a minimum, the 'war on drugs' constitutes a powerful rhetorical device for mobilizing support for government policies, for justifying budget allocations and, one suspects without being overly cynical, for persuading a frightened, angry and increasingly desperate public that the government can at last produce actions which will make a significant impact on the problem. In their own right these consequences might be positive ones (although this is not necessarily the case). The serious policy analyst, however, must look beyond these effects to the larger and longer-term issues. Is the war on drugs really a war or is it merely a metaphor crafted primarily for political and propaganda purposes? If it is a war, who is the enemy and on what ground is the enemy to be engaged? What will be our strategy and tactics? What are our war goals? How are we going to measure success or defeat? If the war on drugs is merely a metaphor, is it the most appropriate or useful one or does its use have unintended negative consequences which make its employment undesirable?

A related concept which also bears some searching examination is that of drugs as a threat to national security. The April 1986 National Security Decision Directive issued by President Reagan authorized more Department of Defense involvement in drug interdiction on the grounds that national security was being undermined by drug use and its associated health, economic, political and social consequences.4

Few would argue with the litany of negative effects. High levels of drug-related crime. Epidemic levels of violence. Corruption of law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and various levels of government. Personal suffering and degradation. Health costs. Impact on education. Lost productivity. Distortion of the economy. The growing power of organized crime. Undermining of governments. Funding and fuelling of insurgencies. Poisoning of international relations. And so the list could go on. Given these effects it is easy to see how many view the drug traffic as a threat to national security. Thus, Congressmen Aspin and Nichols claim that:

In recent years it has become abundantly clear that international drug trafficking is a national security matter. It poses a grave threat to the fabric of our society and it destabilizes and corrupts the producing and trafficking nations — many of them the very nations — of this hemisphere with whom we hope to forge stronger ties and encourage stronger democratic institutions.5

For many, if not most, Americans this logic is unassailable and a direct consequence of accepting it is the equally ready acceptance of the desirability of involving the military in the effort to meet the threat.

There are, however, alternative views which do not see the situation as fitting such neat categories. First there is the view that whilst undeniably there are massive costs associated with illegal drug use, a large proportion of these are incurred by our increasingly repressive efforts to suppress this use rather than by the direct ill-effects (primarily of a health nature) of the use itself.6 Whatever one's view of the necessity of incurring these costs, it does seem strange to declare as a threat to national security those things which are largely a consequence of the execution of national policy.

A second view is that society can be confronted with major social problems, some of which may indeed threaten its internal cohesion or economic advancement, but which are inappropriately viewed as threats to national security; at least not if national security is defined primarily in military-strategic terms. Certainly it is not in the national interest for a nation to exhibit very high levels of use of intoxicants. Neither is it in the national interest for the nation to be characterized by high levels of illiteracy, poverty, racism, crime, urban decay, debt, poor nutrition and health, and any number of other things, some of which at the right levels can do real damage to the nation's economic, political and strategic well-being.

Of course, some of these malaises have been the subject of previous 'wars' — notably the 'war on poverty'. In these cases, however, the use of terms such as 'war' was clearly metaphorical, a way of uniting and motivating people to support a common cause. It was a 'war', however, that some also criticized for employing inappropriate conceptualization. The basic criticism is that, in dealing with complex social or economic problems, pushing the military analogy too far tends to lead to simplistic thinking and an excess of government intervention as visible action becomes the yardstick by which progress is measured. Whilst the original problem may at some level constitute a 'threat' to the continued well-being or preeminence of the nation, it soon becomes apparent that operating in a war mode against it is difficult to sustain and focus. The obvious problems include defining the enemy, deciding upon objectives and applying the principles of war.

Perhaps above all, the problem inherent in analyzing social problems in military terms is that whilst potentially useful as a motivating and uniting influence, the analysis (or at least the rhetoric that accompanies it) tends to raise false or unrealistic expectations — notably those of easy solutions, quick victories, and absolute outcomes. Perhaps this is because those who sell the military model choose the conventional war analogy rather than the unconventional war one. Perhaps it is because they just do not think through the consequences of their conceptualization and are merely using the terminology as an easy focus for a newsbite. Whatever the case, the usual result is a public which is initially enthusiastic (although not, it should be noted, personally involved at any level — contrary to the position in most real wars), a government which initiates a raft of high-profile, high-impact projects expected to show short-term results and a good deal of mutual congratulation. It is also relevant that many of the programs have to start at high pitch on the day war is declared and consequently are cobbled together in some haste without extensive background research or on-theground consultation and often significantly tinged by one ideological bias or another.

The inevitable result of attempting to deal with social problems in this manner is frustration, confusion, failure and disillusionment. In large part I believe it is a fair charge to level at politicians and others to say that past uses of a military model, the declaration of war, in our efforts to confront complex social problems played a major part in their failure. Some matters are simply too complicated, too entrenched, too much subject to competing interests, too determined by historical experience and too expensive to expect that any major progress on them will be anything but long-term and partial. This is not a counsel of despair — rather it is a plea for realistic expectations. If the problem is complex then we must expect the solutions to be equally so and the progress towards them to be slow. Our experience ought also to alert us to the reality that there are, in fact, no solutions — if by solutions we mean a state of affairs which reduces the problem to very small levels indeed or eliminates it altogether. Rather than solutions there are outcomes, and the goal of policy must be to find the outcome which does the most good for the least damage.

Now this state of affairs is hard for many people to accept. In fact, many will refuse to accept it, arguing that finding solutions — acceptable ones if not absolute ones—is only a matter of national creativity and will. They may well be correct. The critical point, of course, is that of how to stimulate the required creativity and will. I suggest that rarely, if ever, will declaring war on a social problem be the appropriate way of doing so.

In the case of the drug situation we are faced with a somewhat different application of the military model than was true of the 'war on poverty' and other wars on social ills. Here the language of war is not only rhetorical or exhortatory. The consequences of drug misuse (indeed of drug use of any sort, even if it does not have an immediate ill-effect) and of the negative consequences which flow from the illegal status of some drugs are identified as actual threats to national security. A war on drugs is declared. Because the problem involves a national security threat and is declared to be a war, it is considered appropriate — in some quarters, imperative - that the resources of the Department of Defense be committed to the fight.7 Because of the emotion surrounding the drug issue and the political appeal of taking tough action, even those politicians who have misgivings about some of the proposals to use the military are reluctant to speak out too loudly for fear of being branded 'soft' on drugs.8 A further problem is the very obvious absence of a viable alternative set of strategies which promises easily quantified and public activity and successes (where successes are measured in arrests or seizures rather than declines in availability or
use).

There is, however, another reason why it has been easy to conceptualize the war on drugs as a 'real' war which should employ real troops in a way that was not possible with previous social wars. That reason, as has been noted by many Latin American commentators, is that since most of the supply of illegal drugs is produced outside of the United States the 'enemy' can be identified as an external one and the threat can be constructed as a national security one. That done, especially since one potential way of dealing with the problem is to physically prevent the substances from crossing the borders of the United States, it is a logical step to suggest that the military be used to stop the 'foreign invasion' of drugs (as ex-Mayor Koch of New York terms it).9 It is equally logical, and seemingly more appealing, to suggest that the military should be used to destroy the crops at the source. This is made to seem even more appropriately a military task by the extraordinary amounts of violence associated with growing and processing activities and by the numerous and complex links between those in the drug trade and various insurgent and terrorist organizations.10 Clearly taking these groups on in direct confrontation requires skills and resources more usually associated with the military rather than law enforcement.

Latin American scholars, among others, have identified some important features of the national security/war approach, however, which both undermine the effectiveness of many of the resulting strategies and serve to poison relationships between the United States and her southern neighbors. Tokatlian,11 for example, has listed a number of these, including the following:

1. Drug use is conceptualized as a malignant phenomenon whose nature is best explained by external factors and variables. This malady — perverse and polymorphous — comes from abroad....12

The emphasis is on the external dimension of the issue. It is on the traffic in drugs, rather than on their consumption. It is on supply, rather than on demand.13

2. The debate has a politico/strategic logic which has colored the analysis of and response to the drug problem. This tends to understate the economic-commercial basis of the traffic and replace it with a language high in moral content which is used to motivate participation in a war on drugs. Tokatlian is stinging in his criticism of this emphasis:

In diagnosing the causes and effects of narcotics, ideology has come to prevail over pragmatism. Thus, proposed solutions focus on the war against drugs and its results. The latter, judged in the light of a civilizing crusade, appear to be unrealistic, incoherent, and — unfortunately — ineffective.14

3. The perception that the danger to the United States is from the immense supply of drugs (as opposed to a huge internal demand) drives the logic behind waging war on the source. The concept of war guarantees that the primary policy instruments will be coercive in nature. Tokatlian suggests that the consequence of this logic is to transfer the costs of the war from the consuming to the producing and transit countries. He argues that defining the problem of one of demand and consumption would force the United States to implement repressive measures at home which would be socially divisive and unacceptable. 15

In fact increased levels of domestic control are very much at the center of the new National Drug Control Strategy. It does remain to be seen, however, just how far these measures will be vigorously and comprehensively implemented and just how much control the American public will allow in the name of the war on drugs. To the extent that the internal campaign is less vigorous and martial than the external one, however, groups in the producing countries will be able to claim that the United States is imposing the onus for solving its own problems on other nations.

4. The waging of an anti-drug crusade is held to be difficult through multilateral fora, so that it is assumed that the United States, wanting to impose its own version of a solution, prefers unilateral and bilateral mechanisms over which it has more control. When working through multilateral mechanisms, the United States attempts to concentrate international cooperation almost exclusively on supply reduction and to impose a rigid uniformity of views on how to achieve it. The problem, as viewed from Latin America is that:

The concerted efforts focused on external factors must not be allowed to affect domestic U.S. management of the issue: that is where joint action ends. In other works, U.S. policy seeks to internationalize the efforts to repress the supply — but not the demand. Hence, a disparity appears in the measures employed to implement possible international actions against drugs.16

5. The war against drug trafficking has come to be perceived in the United States as a vital interest, with drug use defined as a threat to security on the social, economic and military levels (as opposed to the public health, criminal justice and productivity levels). The major consequence of this perception is the legitimation of intervention by the armed forces (as long as that intervention is not directed at American citizens).

6. There is a striking inconsistency in the application of the strategic concerns, with their emphasis in some cases and de-emphasis in others. Of particular note is the abuse heaped on groups or countries said to be involved with the drug trade but with whom the United States has other ideological or political differences, while those who seem equally implicated but are seen as having strategic value to the United States are subject to little or no such disapprobation and diplomatic pressure. The result of these inconsistencies and revelations of self-interest is, according to Tokatlian, to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of much action against the drug threat. Certainly, the apparent double standard makes it more di 'arc at 6 o6tain a tray Mternaffonal consensus and provides a convenient excuse for inaction or independent action on the part of some countries at times suiting their agendas.

7. The viewing of drugs as a national security issue and its subsequent assignment as (often) the first priority in foreign policy considerations has led to the linking of the issue to bilateral relations in a way that many nations (and a number of American foreign policy specialists) see as overbearing and insulting and failing to take account of their own difficult circumstances. By focusing on 'negative' policies, such as imposing conditions on foreign aid -and taking retaliatory actions against countries which fail to meet U.S.-deter mined eradication quotas, the opportunity is lost to develop a "positive" linkage capable of producing a permanent structural solution to basic problems faced by the developing countries.17

Whether or not one accepts Tokatlian's analysis in its entirety (or, indeed, at all), his views represent a substantial section of Latin American opinion and pose formidable practical and political impediments to the implementation of current U.S. policy. There are two reasons why such views need be given serious consideration by American policy-makers. The first is that, to the extent that they are valid (and I believe that broadly speaking they are) they indicate a need for a fundamental re-assessment of the view that it is useful to conceptualize the drug problem as a national security threat and to proceed from there to construct solutions which are based primarily on military and strategic logics.

The second is that if the holding of such views leads, as it undoubtedly does, to the undermining of approaches based on these logics, then the outcomes will simply not be the desired ones, regardless of the merits of the American analysis and proposed solutions. Put bluntly, the war on drugs will fail because it will not be fought with adequate forces or determination. The consequence for U.S. policy is that either the critics must be won over or the governments involved must be overridden. The first will be difficult and the second will involve much greater and longer term strategic consequences than we are considering here.

There are many good reasons to suppose that a more militarized approach to controlling the supply of illegal drugs will fail in its ultimate objective of significantly reducing the use of those drugs. It will fail because of the enormity of the task, because of the opportunities which smuggfers have for adaptation, but principally because of the political and strategic realities which will intervene to limit the application of force. If the drug policy debate and the strategies emanating from it are to be rational and to do more good than harm, then the terms of the debate have to be re-directed away from an increasing reliance upon such concepts as national security threats and military strategy.

 Two points need to be stressed here. The first is that suggesting a redirection of thinking in no way minimizes the seriousness of the drug problem and the many ill consequences that flow from it. There may even be strategic consequences of aspects of the problem or of ways in which we have attempted to deal with it, but that does not automatically make the problem itself a national security issue. Regardless of the efforts being made currently on the demand side, there is no doubt in my mind that defining the drug problem as a national security issue and attempting to involve the military on a significant scale both generates and reinforces a mindset characterized by an emphasis on supply-side strategies, placing 'blame' on other countries, unilateral actions and high technology solutions. In my view, each of these characteristics demonstrates either a failure to understand the structure and dynamics of drug markets, an over-abundance of ethnocentrism, a political response which is designed principally to cater to domestic public opinion, or a naive belief in the ability of technology and dollars to cope with complex social problems. These comments are not meant to belittle or disparage the efforts of either the policy-makers or the drug enforcement professionals of the United States. The former are, I believe, making a sincere effort to cope with a problem of immense magnitude and significance. The latter are a dedicated and often, brave group of men and women who are doing their best to do the job that we have assigned them. The difficulty, as I see it, is that both are caught in a conceptual and policy straitjacket which limits the options they can or will consider and the directions they can or will take. I am not talking here of considering radical options such as legalization, but rather questions of basic philosophy and emphasis within the borders of the current wisdom.18 An important part of the strait-jacket is the view that drugs present the United States with a national security threat and which leads inexorably to the consideration and adoption of martial solutions. The national security view is, I know, strongly held in the United States, but it is a view which needs to be re-examined from a policy-analytic rather than emotional/ideological standpoint in any serious evaluation of U.S. policy. Clearly, a critical analysis of the meaning and implications of the national security view should be a starting point for any detailed consideration of the potential contribution of the Department of Defense to the drug war.

A second point to stress is that if the analysis of the national security threat approach indicates that alternative formulations might be more helpful in crafting a balanced and positive drug control strategy, this by no means excludes from consideration the use of Department of Defense assets. Depending on the priority assigned to various interdiction strategies, it may still be appropriate to involve the military in some forms of assistance. Certainly there is a role for the intelligence community, although it will be different in emphasis from most of what is currently considered highly desirable. The important point to grasp is that the logic of the analysis will no longer dictate that military assistance must be given a high profile because it is the military which faces national security threats. Rather the military would be tasked because of some unique capability and because a decision had been taken that it was reasonable to believe that the action would have a substantial or long-term impact on the drug market.

It could be argued that even if the above arguments were accepted within the Department of Defense they would carry no weight in the current policy environment. The Department has already come under fire from critics who claim that it is an unwilling warrior in the drug war and there has been a tendency during the past few months for the military to speak much more enthusiastically about the drug mission and reportedly to have proposed specific large-scale operations.19 It is a reasonable assumption that this change does not represent a fundamental re-assessment of the military contribution and a resulting belief that operations have been identified which are truly appropriate, overcome the previously-held objections and reservations, and will make a difference to the drug situation. Instead it seems likely to flow from a bowing to the winds of public opinion and political pressure and an assessment that if the defense community does not take the lead in defining its part in the war someone else will do it for it, and probably assign responsibilities which will have a negative impact on other missions and priorities.

If this is the case, it is a quite rational and reasonable position to take. However, it will do nothing to reduce the use of illegal drugs in the United States. Clearly it is a matter of judgment as to the nature of the political climate and the usefulness of putting currently unpopular views, even if one believes them to be correct. It is probably true that in the climate of the moment the question is not should the military be involved in drug control measures, but how and to what extent. Nevertheless, even within these strictures, I believe that the Department of Defense can do much more to influence the nature of the policy debate (although the important thing will be to get the Office of National Drug Control Policy to reassess some of the fundamental assumptions and to take the lead on redirecting the debate in more positive directions) and to suggest contributions where it is placed to make a unique contribution.

In order to determine the appropriate military role (including the use of intelligence) it is first necessary to examine the conditions under which supply-side strategies work in order to analyze the impediments to success of such measures and to look for ways of overcoming them. Then we need to identify the types of military missions which are suggested as contributing to an integrated, drug strategy. Finally it is necessary to look at the impact that adding a drug mission to the military's role would have on its efficiency and effectiveness in its primary war-fighting role. When these analyses have been completed we will be in a position to conclude what impact particular missims are likely to have and whether the benefits are worth the costs (both monetary and otherwise). It is only in that context that an assessment of the potential role of the military can sensibly be made.

The Nature of Illegal Drug Production and Trafficking

A number of features of the international trade in illegal drugs appear to make it literally impossible to stop or even significantly reduce the production and smuggling of these substances except in geographically — and time-limited circumstances. Amongst the most important of these features are the following:

• The absolute size of the trade;

• The ease with which source of supply can change and new producing areas emerge;

• The ease with which drug crops can be grown and processed;

• 'The super-profits which are made from drugs because of their illegal status;

• 'The importance of drug revenues to source countries; Corruption;

• The resistance on the part of the producer nations to externally-imposed solutions;

• Inconsistent application of drug policy priorities; and

•The lack of effective control by governments over drug-producing areas;

Given these features, it would appear that the intensified interdiction effort is mostly concerned with 'sending a message' of seriousness of purpose to various audiences. This is a logical development of the type of analysis underpinning U.S. strategy, but one must question whether it is the most effective direction to take (or the least damaging one, depending on the degree of pessimism attaching to one's assessment of the potential for influencing the dimensions of the drug trade).

In view of the increasing use of military resources in drug suppression and interdiction activities, and of the pressure to contribute even more resources to them, it is particularly important to examine the likely impact of such strategies on the user end of the distribution system in order to evaluate the desirability of their employment. Granted that symbolic gestures may sometimes be important, it behooves us still to critically examine the consequences and costs of making them. A special focus ought to be on the extent to which such gestures (based, as on a strategic assessment of the situation) reduce our flexibility and, therefore, our ability to pursue novel options. It seems to the present writer that U.S. policy has become too driven by making symbolic gestures, both for domestic and foreign consumption, and that too little attention is being paid to the ultimate consequences of the strategies being pursued. This is so in two ways — first, the fact that some strategies do not (and probably cannot) significantly reduce the illegal drug traffic or drug use is ignored, and, second, so too are the negative consequences of some policy positions whose cost (in political, as well as dollar terms) probably outweighs any benefit derived. The difficulty is that many analysts and policy-makers are locked into a particular view of the drug situation and of methods of affecting it, and that alternative views which question this wisdom are not only dismissed out of hand, but are considered to be illegitimate.

Undoubtedly there is a welter of extreme, unsound and outlandish policy prescriptions in the marketplace of ideas about the drug issue. The existence of these ideas, however, should not be used as an excuse for failing to critically analyze our existing beliefs and methods. The failure of current strategies should stimulate a widening of the options to be considered, not a narrowing and a more intense concentration on strategies which now fail and will continue to do so because of limitations inherent in them
or the context within which they operate.

Grant Wardlaw is Principal Criminologist at the Australian Institute of Criminology, GPO Box 2944, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

Footnotes

* This paper is excerpted from a larger report prepared for the Defense Intelligence College, January 1990, copies of which are available from the author. The views expressed or implied in this paper are the author's and are not to be construed or represented as those of any government or its agencies.

1 CBS News/New York Times Poll, Drugs: One Nation, Under Siege, Sept. 6-8, 1989.

2 ibid.

3 ibid.

4 U.S. General Accounting Office. Drug Control. Issues Surrounding Increased Use of the Military in Drug Interdiction. Washington, D.C., April 1988.

5 Aspin, Les and Nichols, Bill. Foreword to Narcotics Interdiction and the Use of the Military: Issues for Congress. Proceedings of a Seminar held by the Congressional Research Service June 7, 1988. Report of the Defense Policy Panel and Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives. One Hundred Congress, Second Session, Aug. 24, 1988.

6 See, for example, Ethan Nadelmann, 'U.S. Drug Policy: A Bad Export', Foreign Policy, Spring 1988, no. 70, pp. 83-108.

7 Typical of the comments of those who want intensive military involvement are those of ex-Mayor Koch of New York City who has described the drug epidemic in America as being just as great a threat to the nation's security as Soviet military pressures (see 'Koch calls for U.S. armed forces to halt "foreign invasion" of drugs', Washington Times, May 25, 1984, p. 2). Criticism of the Department of Defense for its lack of enthusiasm for some proposals mandating greater involvement have included comments from General Paul Gorman, former head of Southern Command, to the effect that the Department's focus on defense against communism has impaired its ability to perceive drugs as a major national and regional security threat (see 'Should U.S. military forces be sent to fight war against drugs?', Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Oct. 18, 1988, p. 15). Typical of Congressional supporters of a drug war using real military muscle is Representative Nicholas Mavroules who, saying 'This is national security', told military leaders at committee hearings that the military must take the lead in the drug war and should use as much of its budget as is necessary to do the job (see 'U.S. military pushed to do more on drugs', The Journal, April 1, 1989, vol. 18, no. 4, p. 2).

8 For example, discussing Senate moves in 1988 to increase military participation in drug interdiction, Senator John McCain III (R-Ariz.) commented: 'This is such an emotional issue — I mean, we're at war here — that voting "no" would be too difficult to explain .... By voting against it, you'd be voting against the war on drugs. Nobody wants to do that.' (`Second thoughts on the military as narcs. Hearings stress doubts on Pentagon's drug-interdiction role', Washington Post, June 15, 1988, p. A21).

9 op. cit., note 7.

10 For a discussion of some of the issues surrounding druginsurgent-terrorist links, see Grant Wardlaw, 'Linkages between the illegal drugs traffic and terrorism', Conflict Quarterly, 1988, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 5-26.

11 Juan Tokatlian, 'National security and drugs: Their impact on Colombian-U.S. relations', Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 1988, Spring, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 133-60.

12 ibid., p. 134.

13 Of course, the contribution of both supply and demand is being acknowledged increasingly in most debates on drug policy. The National Drug Control Strategy released in September 1989 explicitly warns against artificial (and, one might add, partisan) distinctions between supply and demand and correctly identifies the need for a coherent and integrated program. Nevertheless, in terms of rhetoric, philosophy and funding drug policy remains very heavily supply-side oriented.

14 Tokatlian, op. cit., p. 134.

15 ibid., p. 135.

16 ibid., p. 136.

17 ibid., p. 138.

18 One has only to examine the wide range of policy options between the positions of, for example, the United States and the Netherlands, to see the opportunities for different directions which exist within the current framework of international drug policy.

19 For example, `... the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that the U.S. Navy has proposed placing a flotilla of warships in international waters off Colombia early next year to intercept drug traffickers .... Although Defence [sic] Secretary Dick Cheney has not formally approved the proposal, several senior officials said the move was certain to win his favour [sic], the newspaper reported' (Canberra Times, Nov. 25, 1989, p. 10).