Activity Is Not the Same as Victory : Drug War: The recent spate of U.S. arrests shows that appearance can conquer reality. Expect more of the same from the Cartagena summit.

Despite a rather dubious surrender offer from some of the Colombian cocaine tai-pans, the anti-cocaine summit this week in Cartagena, Colombia, is going to be anything but the drug war’s Yalta conference. Indeed, this war is still defined by its fundamental confusions, and victory (whatever meaning the word has in this context) remains as elusive as ever.

It is true that since last September, when the White House strategy was proclaimed, some events within the “drug war” could be construed as successes. The Colombian government’s all-out confrontation against the rogue sector of the cocaine traders is certainly the most important. The Peruvian-American Santa Lucia jungle base, built in the coca-producing heart of Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley, was inaugurated last month, operating against processing laboratories and traffickers in the region, in line with the priorities of the new U.S. plan.

In Bolivia, leftist President Jaime Paz Zamora extradited to the United States the notorious narco-general Luis Arce Gomez (minister of the interior for the military regime in 1980 and 1981, during probably the first narco-dictatorship in history). Soon thereafter, the second narco-dictator, Panama’s Gen. Manuel Antonio Noreiga, became the inglorious quarry of the American invasion. On top of that, the arrest in Mexico of Miguel Felix Gallardo, and the stiff prison terms given in the United States to Carlos Lehder and Juan Ramon Matta Ballestreros could give the impression that real progress has been achieved.

But what has really been accomplished, and what are the prospects in the drug war? The Panama invasion, for instance, awakened very real sensitivities--strongly grounded in hemispheric history--about American military interventionism in Latin America. Peru’s President Alan Garcia initially refused to attend the Cartagena summit while American troops remained in Panama.

Colombian sensitivities to the threat of U.S. military intervention are rooted on keen memories of the American gunboat diplomacy that brought about the secession of a United States-dominated Panama from Colombia at the turn of the century. So when U.S. Navy units sailed last month toward Colombia to monitor and help interdict U.S.-bound cocaine shipments, the reaction in a country that feels it is paying a disproportionate share of the drug war’s human cost was one of outrage. “I really don’t know of another case of a (naval) blockade of a friendly country,” said former Colombian President Misael Pastrana, leader of the opposition Social Conservative Party.

Angered and embarrassed, Colombia’s President Virgilio Barco Vargas made his displeasure clear to Washington. At a pre-summit meeting in Bolivia, one U.S. diplomat called Colombia “the most difficult negotiating partner.” Barco, trying hard to help his Liberal Party win the next presidential election, is going to be very careful not to do anything that jeopardizes its chances. The United States called off the naval muscle-flexing, but the bad feelings remained.

In Bolivia, leftist President Jaime Paz Zamora has apparently come to the pragmatic realization that most of the aid his country can expect will come from the United States. He understands that much depends on his performance in narco-diplomacy. But he is under heavy domestic criticism for Arce Gomez’s extradition, (on the rather solid grounds that to acquiesce to the extradition of a criminal with charges pending in domestic courts is to accept his government’s impotence to enforce its laws). Paz Zamora will no doubt learn what narco-diplomacy has refined almost to the level of art: how to make the right moves while actually doing little.

Both Bolivia and Peru are critically dependent on the hard-currency income of the cocaine trade. To a lesser degree, so is Colombia. Of the three countries, Peru, which produces about 60% of the world’s illegal coca supply, is in the worst condition. Last year, its gross national product fell by about 15% with hyperinflation of 2,600%. An estimated 70% to 75% of the $4 million to $6 million dollars transacted daily in Lima’s unregulated hard-currency exchange markets come from the cocaine trade. The Peruvian economy has become increasingly addicted.

Current U.S. anti-drug strategies in the three producing nations heavily emphasize police and military strategies. The emphasis must shift to development and strengthening of these nations’ legal economies as the main element in reducing and eventually eliminating dependence on the cocaine economy. Until that change is made, the only improvement that can be expected is in rhetorical nuance.

In Cartagena and afterward, Latin American national leaders and U.S. diplomats and politicians will perfect today’s tacit agreement to make the indispensable moves, the right noises. Everybody will understand that the goal is not to “win” the drug war, which under current conditions is regarded as unwinnable, but to do enough to be certified as trying. Hardly a winning situation.