Going to Cartagena--but Why?

When Americans talk about Thursday’s meeting between President Bush and the leaders of the nations that produce most of the world’s cocaine, they focus on whether the President will be safe in Cartagena, Colombia.

This is a perfectly valid concern, but there is more to the South American drug summit than that.

Bad timing makes it unlikely that much can be accomplished in Cartagena. Both Presidents Virgilio Barco Vargas of Colombia and Alan Garcia Perez of Peru are finishing their terms of office this year. And President Jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia represents a country that has long been politically unstable (180 military coups in 125 years). As one U.S. official put it, Bush will meet with “two lame ducks and a wild card.”

That’s why preliminary reports indicate that what is most likely to come from Cartagena is a general, non-controversial communique that’s very general in its approach to the war on drugs, condemning drug traffickers who have taken such a terrible toll in Colombia and committing the four countries to help the Andean peasants who grow coca leaves to plant other crops to support their families. All well and good, but the four presidents could have agreed to such generalities in a telephone conference call.

Thus the real value of Cartagena may lie in another direction entirely. One possibility is that if Bush “listens to what they say,” as he told his press conference Monday, he may find that the Latin Americans have important points to make. One is that coca production may never be entirely wiped out in the Andes--its cultivation predates not just the Spanish, who also tried to eliminate it, but even the Incas. More importantly, they will likely argue that turning coca leaves into cocaine would not be so profitable but for one economic fact of life: There is a huge demand for the product in one of the wealthiest markets on Earth, the United States. Until Bush and other U.S. officials do more to limit that demand, there will be unscrupulous entrepreneurs willing to supply it, if not in the Andean nations, then in Brazil, Venezuela and other neighboring countries where law enforcement is already identifying new cocaine supply rings.

Make no mistake: Given the level of drug violence in Colombia and the bloody arrogance of that nation’s drug lords, going to Cartagena has its dangers. But that’s why Bush and his fellow presidents must do all they can to make it more than just an especially risky photo opportunity.