Another Round in ‘Certification’ Charade

This week, the White House will issue its annual assessment of foreign countries’ drug control efforts in a decade-old ritual known as certification. Colombia, where traffickers control around 80% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S., is expected to be “decertified” for the second year in a row, for failing to cooperate sufficiently with Washington on drug control. Mexico, where 75% of that cocaine transits, and where government corruption by drug interests is rampant, expects to be “certified” because of its importance in other areas of greater U.S. national interest, such as NAFTA--an expectation suddenly put in doubt Tuesday.

Colombia’s decertification will be portrayed as evidence of the Clinton administration’s determination to win the war on drugs. But in actuality, the certification procedure is a public relations exercise predicated on an untruth. It is intended to show that the U.S. makes drug control its main foreign policy priority when dealing with drug producing and trafficking countries. Yet the quality of drug control cooperation never has been the deciding factor in whether a country is certified.

By the conventional measures of achievement--arrests and seizures--Colombia can claim more success in counternarcotics efforts in the past 12 months than any other country in the world. At the same time, the federal police in Mexico became so corrupted by involvement with drug trafficking that much of the enforcement role was turned over to the military. And the man put in charge of the effort in December, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, is now under arrest, charged with having ties to a Mexican drug cartel.

Of course, no single policy issue should dictate the shape of U.S. foreign relations. Trade and security also matter. But by touting drugs as the overarching priority, U.S. foreign policy is made to seem more the product of caprice than calculation.

Since it was decertified in 1996, Colombia has acquiesced to nearly every U.S. demand. The government has put the last of the Cali cartel ringleaders behind bars, captured more cocaine than ever (including a single seizure of 8.5 tons), granted permission for the U.S. Coast Guard to board Colombian ships, passed legislation that will force traffickers to forfeit assets and introduced tougher sentencing laws. Colombia even has said it will lift its constitutional ban on extradition.

Some analysts argue that Colombia’s achievements on drug control over the past year are the direct result of decertification, proof that the process works to force countries to get tough with traffickers. This is a dangerously short-term perspective. For, rather than ensuring future cooperation, Washington is exhausting its diplomatic capital on a policy of dubious long-term merit.

In the first place, like all blunt instruments, decertification produces unintended and undesirable results. It created an outpouring of nationalist, anti-U.S. sentiment in Colombia last year. And this nationalist backlash was the single most important factor keeping President Ernesto Samper in power when he was in danger of impeachment--even though Washington decertified Colombia specifically to express its disapproval of Samper.

Moreover, the perpetual threat of decertification is a drain on the willingness of Latin American governments to cooperate with Washington in international crime control. The U.S. needs the sustained cooperation of countries like Colombia to prevent the unchecked proliferation of drugs, illegal arms-dealing, terrorism and a host of other transnational ills. But by turning a blind eye to some countries while selectively bullying others, the U.S. is sabotaging its own role as the hemisphere’s drug control leader. Effective leadership demands a dispassionate assessment of the capabilities and limitations of the United States’ neighbors, as well as a willingness to win their support and make the most of their operational strengths.

One way of winning cooperation is by strengthening the criminal justice systems of drug-threatened states. Mexico and Colombia both have ramshackle justice systems paralyzed by case overloads and staffed by underpaid, poorly protected officials susceptible to threats and bribery.

Addressing these matters programmatically would not be an act of charity on the part of the U.S., but an essential step toward the achievement of its drug-control goals.

In the military sphere, the current U.S. drug czar, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, made a good start in this direction when, as head of the U.S. Southern Command, he organized multilateral anti-drug operations with several Latin American countries. However, this type of sustained cooperation at the operational level requires trust and respect, both of which the decertification procedure is guaranteed to destroy.

The scale of hemispheric drug trafficking and other transnational crime is likely to increase exponentially in the next few years. The resources are already in circulation, and freer trade among the countries of the Western hemisphere will create many more opportunities. The U.S. needs the cooperation of countries like Mexico and Colombia more than ever. But as long as Washington carries out the undignified, selective and counterproductive spectacle of certification, such cooperation will remain out of reach. The question is how long it will take Washington to recognize what the rest of the world sees plainly as a charade.