GEOPOLITICS AND DRUGS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE:
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NEW WORLD AND PAN-AMERICAN ORDER
Luis Suárez Salazar
−ABSTRACT−
This conference proposes an up-to-date critical
focus on the undeniable relationship that exists between the geopolitical and
geo-economic approaches that have characterized the great imperial security
strategy designed by dominant U.S. circles and the so-called "war on
drugs", on "narcoguerilla", on
terrorism or narcoterrorism, which is currently being
deployed in some underdeveloped nations of the world and, in particular, in
some of the states pertainig to what is called the
Western Hemisphere.
Within this context, I will highlight the growing
significance acquired by all of the issues tied to the struggle against the
misnamed "international narcotics traffic" under the systematic
efforts deployed by powerful US circles as of the last decade of the 20th century
up to now in order to build, under its domination, what I have pointed to for
several years as a "New Pan-American Order" functional to US
hegemonic aspirations and of domination over the world system as of the
post-Cold War. Namely, on the basis of the illegal "New World Order"
announced by the then president of the United States, George H Bush (father),
at the beginning of the 1990s.
To fulfill my purpose, I will divide my conference
into three articulated parts. In the first, I will present a rapid update of
the main tendencies that characterize the worldwide consumption, traffic and
production of illegal drugs (be they of a vegetable nature, synthetic or semi
synthetic.) Likewise, I will try to show the relatively secondary place
occupied by the 33 independent -or formally independent- Latin American and
Caribbean nations (as well as the colonial territories which subsist in this
region) in the production and traffic of the main illegal drugs that are
currently consumed: marijuana, cocaine, morphine, heroine, as well as a wide
variety of synthetic drugs derived from amphetamines (EA) and "Extasis" (MDMA o "love drug") invented by
Western European laboratories during the 1980s.
Place which is not unlike that which they ocupy
in transnational connected crime (such as money-laundering and trafficking in
precursors and weapons) which have deeloped and will
inevitably continue to do so under what has been termed "neoliberal globalization."
In contrast to this finding, in the second part, I
will show how -on the basis of its redefinition of the "new enemies of InterAmerican security" (to be understood as U.S.
imperial security) which came as of the post-Cold War- the past three U.S.
administrations (successively headed by George H. Bush, William Clinton and
George W. Bush) have turned made some of
the nations in the Western Hemisphere (Mexico, Colombia and other Andean-Amazon
nations, as well as those of the Caribbean Basin) into the main scenario for
"the war on drugs and other connected crimes". This war which, as of
the second half of the 1980s, was
proclaimed unilaterally by the reactionary Ronald Reagan Republican
Administration and (see us in 1981 to 1989).
I will, furthemore, address the issue of how
the "war on drugs" has served as a facade to promote other US foreign
policy and security objectives.
As of these observations and some references to the
entramaje network of agreements and pacts of all
sorts which, as of the first Summit of the Americas (December 1994) up to now,
have been signed by the 34 governments of the Hemisphere which (with the
exception of Cuba) make up the InterAmerican system
and, likewise, on the basis of a critical analysis of a series of regional and
national cases (the Caribbean Basin, Mexico, Colombia and other Andean-Amazon
countries), I will also approach the close ties which exist between the
struggle against "narcotics trafficking" and the more general
objectives encompassed by the U.S. strategy against those nations located south
of the Río Grande and below the Florida
Peninsula. In particular, with those
actions geared at guaranteeing its domination over all those nations and
territories bordering the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea; zone, which, for
the past two centuries, has been considered by the dominant classes in United
States as "the Southern frontier" of its misnamed "national
security."
I will complement all of these approaches in the
third part of my conference. As of my
ongoing reflections regarding the international and hemispheric implications of
what is termed "the war against global terrorism" deployed by the
White House immediately after 9/11 . In
this part I will present some considerations regarding the perverse
relationship estalished by some of the more
reactionary sectors of US foreign policy and security establishment between
problems tied to consumption, production and marketing of illegal drug is,
money-laundering and political military struggles with national popular
content, and governments which promotes alternative actions to "neoliberal globalization" then to what has been termed
"preventive military intervention" against "terrorism networks
with global reach" as well as it against this does the so-called and
"flannel states for "rock states defined as the main enemies to US
national national security for the 21st century up.
Accordingly, my exposition will end with a series
of recommendations regarding the technical-practical alternative concepts
which, with regards to consumption, production and the drug trade, as well as
with regards to anti-drug policies and the misnamed "narcotics
traffic", should motivate all of those social and political forces
interested in building a better and more just world and continent than that
being built by the dominant classes in most parts and nations of the plane. To
counteract those forces, particularly, those "neofascist",
neoconservative and neo right-wing members of some of the triadic financial and
technotronic oligarchy which today controls the
design of US and other Western "powers'" foreign and domestic policy,
namely, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
Translated from Spanish by MM Moreno,
Mama Coca www.mamacoca.org