It's been pretty common knowledge that Central American leaders, past and present, have been airing grievances about the state of the US drug war as the Mexican and Colombian levels of disorder and violence start showing up elsewhere as side effects of American consumption. Up til now, Costa Rica's conservative president has been stalwart in sticking to the party line, investing heavily in the police and law enforcement responses as the US prescription demands. Possibly in response to domestic pressures and a dismal approval rating or as a result of behind-the-scenes disagreements with US policymakers, she's now joined the chorus (including a pretty diverse crowd) demanding that the cost of the US habit in terms of violence and lawlessness not be borne disproportionately by Latin American countries (sorry, US, a willingness to incarcerate your underclass doesn't count for much). In diplomatic terms, this could be taken as a measure of Central American independence, a measure of US government distraction from its Monroe Doctrine mentality, or alternatively a reflection of an increasingly multipolar world in terms of who small countries can do business with (ie China).
I know you're allergic, but this strikes me as the sort of topic that deserves to the be in the Serious Politics forum. Anyway, what would be the upshot if Costa Rica said "screw it, we're not treating this as a crime anymore?" I'd think nothing. The issue is that the demand (the US) is illegal, the dealers consequently need to be violent to survive, and the prices are artificially high. Even if the US didn't retaliate diplomatically, and I imagine we probably would, I'd think that the exported violence in Costa Rica would remain much the same. Who else is on board at this point? You mention the chorus, but the article only talks about Costa Rica.
Also, I found this graphic (from a report linked in that article) interesting: One thing that stood out for me is that Russia is a bad place to be right now, particularly for an ex-superpower.
I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable and I hope you can see past any potential problems that may arise. I'd prefer to keep meta-issues out of it, if at all possible, as I think I've been pretty clear about my reasoning in those threads. Perhaps export was a poor choice of words. The logic that is presumably driving these initiatives is that the US is essentially trying to interrupt the supply side of the drug network by propping up prohibition, which they do through military/law enforcement aid (and the paramilitarization of the police in Costa Rica, which has no army). Mexico, on the verge of 50000 dead depending on how you count, with a concomitant radical destabilization of law and order across the country, has vastly more resources to bring to bear on the matter as well as far greater US support, and the results have been disastrous. The concern is that the same escalation and rapid political infrastructure decay that indicated the way things were headed in places like Juarez is now being seen on the periphery of countries like Costa Rica and creeping inward. Now, from the lack of hyperbole in the presidential statements, I think it's fair to say they are willing to negotiate with the US if it's willing to exponentially increase its commitment and demonstrate a strategic sense of the reality on the ground beyond handing out more surplus military hardware and training programs (which we all know it isn't in a domestic position to do, and it's questionable how much good it would do. But they are going to leave that on the table because diplomacy works that way). While it's not a situation that's directly comparable to Portugal's successful experiment in drug legalization (because that wasn't primarily a transit country as in Central America), from the point of view of Latin Americans the only downside to legalizing drugs and creating periphery DMZs to insulate the country proper from the corrosive effect of illegal drug trade (which has more to do with the illegality than with the drug per se, as a vocal minority in law enforcement in the US will tell you) is that the US will threaten you about your own domestic policy. As Costa Rica took a wait-and-see attitude initially, it's significant that they've decided to go in with a united stance that puts the US in a tough spot in terms of trying to destroy that solidarity piecemeal so they can isolate and make an example of a single "bad actor" rather than flipping the fuck out on an entire region. While US favor is important, it's not a good trade for having your country turn into what Mexico is today, which is bleak but seemingly unavoidable logical deconstruction. Guatemala, for one, along with four others. What's interesting is that it's not the usual Chavez-prompted mumbling about US hegemony as per Ortega/Nicaragua in the OP, but otherwise pretty middle of the road or outright US allied leaders (ie Mexico) who are doing this.
Would decriminalisation in Costa Rica help? The gangs would still be funded by US drug money and just as prone to violence to protect their routes from other competitors as well as government interference. Even if they just stop by Costa Rica on the way that is bad enough.
Well, that depends on how you look at it, since it hasn't really been experimented with in "transit" countries as a result of foreign pressure. My contention is that you could design a framework to mitigate harm and regulate the side effects locally, and by giving them a conditional safe space to operate within certain constraints many drug gangs would choose rationally and accept some degree of firewalling. Keep in mind that just defusing one of the most subtly pernicious aspects (drug gangs paying in drugs) and removing the black market premium from drugs would potentially change many of the incentives on the ground. What is absolutely clear is that the US currently doesn't have an answer that doesn't look like Mexico or Colombia as a means of addressing its drug habit, and that is unacceptable. The long term play has to involve US participation in legalization, and it's a big problem that the tone of the debate there is set by social conservatives and moderates who think drugs are scary enough to be worth shitting up the entire country's underclass as well as the rest of the world. But basically what they are saying IMO is that they are between a rock and a hard place, and they are not going to choose passivity in the face of that dilemma.
Yes, but as I asked before, and Kalle asked, how large is the upside? I'm all for dropping the stupid "war on drugs," but it appears to me that the problems won't go away so long as US policy remains the same. EDIT: OK, answered, but not really in a way that says much. Granted, we don't really know, since it hasn't been done so far, but it still seems like the issue remains.
I think there's actually some gains to be had simply by reaching a tacit agreement with the drug smugglers that they can do their business undisturbed as long as there is no violence. It wouldn't be a good situation to be in but it would be a lot better than ending up like Mexico. The whole payment in drugs - corruption angle was one I hadn't considered but it's impossible to say how much of an impact legalisation would have on that.
You would prefer that I speak with certainty about what I think to be undiscovered territory? I can say *with certainty* that the current prescription is one for disaster on the part of Latin America in every way, and I can think of precious little wiggle room there since the US insists on total compliance to its moral panic conclusions. So if you're going to have to break with that anyway, why not try things that are potentially going to defuse the violence component and the surrounding criminality, as well as depress the amount of money in play? What we can learn from decriminalization in consumer countries is that it does not need to infants smoking crack on the carcass of civilization but rather to a relatively painless transition to dealing with it as a medical and social problem primarily. I think that's a fine solution for countries in that situation, but I have to imagine that it would require a much more aggressive take in transit countries, such as the aforementioned "decriminalization/legalization + DMZ for transit" approach. Unlike Kalle, I don't think a tacit agreement would be a good outcome because even in countries with relatively strong institutions (like Costa Rica) the potential for radical levels of corruption would be significant, and the United States' wrath not significantly reduced. The country already has free trade zones (including one operated by the Chinese) that could serve as models for how to work the deal. I understand decriminalization and legalization are not synonymous, but I think they are largely interchangeable in how they would address the concerns at hand in these countries. IMO, legalization would be preferable if you can get it because in this case the "dealers and above" in question that are usually left out of decrim deals need to be explicitly cut in to the deal and that would be one way. Either way, we're still talking about the country that stayed out of the metric system because fuck the rest of the world and logic, so it's open to debate if external pressure can do much other than rile nationalists in the US. But sitting on their hands waiting for things to magically get better while the US fumbles around the issue with no regard for the welfare of its own people, let alone the world, might not be an option for Central America any longer, and that's encouraging to me.
I didn't use the word "certainty." I said your answer didn't say much. Nor does your second response. Look, reiterating yet again that the US policy doesn't work isn't really shedding any light on the issue. My point is that Cost Rica's change in stance seems unlikely to change much, no matter what policy they enact. Yes, it does bring the debate up again, but the US populace doesn't care what Central / South American countries think about the issue.
If you have specific questions I'm happy to discuss them in terms of hypotheticals or otherwise, but it's frustrating to just try to answer for "not saying much". In any case, I don't see what the US populace and its detachment from evidence-based policy has to do in terms of the legitimacy of the US international stance (rather than the particulars of US internal drug concerns, which are a long term rather than near target for obvious reasons, and I framed them as such), and ultimately what these leaders are doing is questioning that legitimacy in a way that is very diplomatically and practically significant, especially given the region's history. I don't see how "the US will not offer a plan B for the current disaster" doesn't make clear what the alternatives are for the countries that have skin in the game. So I guess between the two of us, we don't see a whole lot. Essentially, the US is still trapped in 1930's era "good neighbor" mentality, which is indefensible under any serious scrutiny. The body count of the drug war and the rapid spiral of Mexico in particular are forcing that scrutiny from exactly the kinds of elites and conservatives who would otherwise gladly be co-opted. That's an interesting dynamic, at least if you view the rest of the world as more than a character foil for the US.
Costa Rica could change their own policies to completely legalize and appropriately regulate/tax the drug trade. Honestly that's what about every country in the Americas south of the US needs to do. The US will of course go batshit over it but the costs of incurring US displeasure are probably less than the continuing costs of having a violent gangs fueled by US money and running out of control. Make the US drug problem a US issue, and suggest that everything up to the US border is legal and taxable and hunky dory.
Both you & Gus have raised this point, but I don't think it's valid.* I'm pretty sure decriminalisation would help quite a bit, for several reasons. First, the governments wouldn't be wasting buckets of money fighting the drug war, so those resources could be used for something else. Hell, even if the violence continues they would be fighting violent gangs rather than all drug use, production, and trafficking. (sp?) Second, there are plenty of examples of organizations that are peaceful & law-abiding in one country, but violent (or at the very least shady) in another. Oil companies, for example. Or the Chiquita company, to take another. Third, and most importantly, (IMO) it would probably be cheaper for the drug gangs to just abide by the law & be peaceful citizens in Costa Rica. "Drug gangs" is a bit of a misnomer; most of them are simply corporations that traffic in something that's illegal. Based on what I've read, and also based on my personal experiences with mid-level drug dealers, it's a business for them first & foremost. If you give them an avenue to operate peacefully, then they'll quite happily not pay all that money for armed guards, security measures, and all the rest. It will be in their interest to work out deals with their competitors. Hell, they already work out deals, but they could use the courts to enforce those deals rather than violence if they were legitimate organizations. Granted, the enforced deals would only extend to the borders of Costa Rica, but hey... from the point of view of the government of Costa Rica, that's enough. *By "It's not valid", I mean that I disagree with it. "I disagree with it" doesn't quite fit the syntax of the sentence.
Speaking of Chiquita how would Costa Ricas other crops fare? Why grow cheap bananas when you can grow coco? Of course there's the remotest chance that big companies, such as Chiquita, would get involved, under billions of dollars in layers of course, in the drug growing business and put pressure on legalization here. I'm just blue skying here though. In any event wouldn't most of those police have to be shifted over to borders and docks and other points of egress to avoid export?
Depends on the nature of the legalization. Even if countries completely legalize drug production and legitimate business take over the production and distribution from criminal gangs, there still needs to be a criminal element in the chain for the last step of shipment. No legitimate business is going to get directly involved with smuggling illegal cargo into the US. They might, however, be happy to sell in bulk to "independent importers" at convenient near-the-border markets. Big US companies might be willing to get into the legal end of that, though suitable proxies, since there's probably great money to be made. There's a real danger of getting raped by US laws in US courts though, so I would guess most US business wouldn't dare touch the drug trade even if it was legal in the countries they were operating in. I think the point is that they don't shift those police to anything to do with drugs. If a bunch of drugs transit through smoothly on the way to the US then no big deal. That's a US problem.
I don't see why it's Costa Rica's job to manage export. If people want to ship from CR to the USA, it's clearly the USA's business to regulate that on import if we feel it's necessary, rather than requiring CR to do it on export.
If Costa Rica can succeed in establishing a nonviolent solution to the drug-cartel problem through legalisation or decriminalisation, then the next place I imagine that creating political pressure would be Mexico. Opposition parties promising to end the violence by following the established successful "Costa Rican Model" would doubtless garner huge levels of support. And a change in policy in Mexico could be the first step toward an end to the madness in the US and worldwide. One can hope.
I just figured it'd be a logical compromise position, in the same way they're being controlled by pressure from the US today I doubt the pressure would totally go away so they'd have to make some token gestures to "stop drug trafficking". I should have explained that better.
The mafia is alive and well in Russia (and elsewhere, including my city). Every Russian immigrant I have ever met has been terrified of the mafia. It is a very real and pervasive threat. I think you're right but the US will never give ground on this and will leverage as much as they possibly can against these countries in the event of legalization/decriminalization, not only because of public perception issues in the US but there are quite a lot of powerful people that profit as a direct result of the drug war and the mass-incarceration of the underclass. I always feel like I come across as conspiracy-theoryish when I talk about this but I honestly don't think we can change how we do prison in the US without massive overhauls to our criminal justice system and multiple industries that just can't happen at this point because of how the major players have invested themselves in it. Purely on the industrial/economic side of things, what happens to our economy when there is no longer a steady influx of inmates to do what basically amounts to slave labor and produce goods for domestic use and imports? There's an incentive there to keep drugs evil and illegal and as long as that's true we're going to shit up other countries in the process. That said, I hope Costa Rica and other latin american countries do their best to forge ahead here. It's in their interest in every conceivable way and it's disgusting watching the US basically destroy other countries in the process of their misguided drug war.
You think there are rich parties or business profiting handsomely from our fetish for locking lots of people up? That sounds a bit far fetched to me. Prisons aren't for-profit institutions and only a small handful of them are privatized that I'm aware of. I would think most local state governments would be happy to pay more to have license plates made if it meant not carrying the huge cost of prisons on the budget.
Yes? http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289 And it's not just shit like license plates. It's office furniture, underwear, bluejeans, body armor, you name it, a prison in the US somewhere probably produces it. Chances are you own or use something that was produced as a result of domestic slave labor.
Like most civil liberties issues, I don't think the economic piece is very significant. Very few people care about our incarceration addiction problem, so it persists. If people cared, it would stop. Ending the drug war is a matter of Americans deciding they will vote on ending the drug war, which they do not, or Ron Paul would win the nomination. As for Costa Rica, I strongly suspect that legalizing would get the violence out of the drug trade. A drug transport company that can openly work with the police to put its rivals out of business has a huge advantage.
That's not far-fetched at all. It's pretty well established fact. The prison guard union in California is rather influential, and the prisons in Washington state are privatized. Or... semi-privatized. I'm not sure what their exact status is, but a for-profit motive has definitely been introduced. I wish I could link bomb you to support my assertion, but my google-fu sucks, and I gave back the books on this topic that I had borrowed. So.... hopefully someone with better google skills will step in. Or you could look it up yourself. (I don't mean that in the typical Internet snarky fashion, by the way.)
Interesting stuff, though the link reene provided wasnt very credible sounding. Apparently more prison labor going on than I thought. Im still skeptical it presents a big enough economic interest to really sway policy much. I think we lock tons of people up because of some misguided puritan notions about how to stomp out vice in society.
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, there, in that the puritanical/demagogical/racist/ideological aspect is often the prime mover but economic motivations frequently end up being a key variable in helping to preserve and worsen the situation. There are credible works that take on the problem of incarceration from a cultural and from a racial perspective, and no shortage of economics-oriented works with which I am less familiar (many of which are described in this excellent New Yorker article). Just as a related data point to the original topic, Costa Ricans are by no means lax on regulation of vice. Recent crackdowns on drunk driving and even a sweeping set of smoking regulations have surprisingly dominant popular support. I think that suggests you can have a relatively conservative electorate (in a Central American sense) and still approach the issue of drug criminality without immediately committing political suicide, which is pretty interesting. As an aside, I imagine the start-to-impeach attempt cycle on Obama looking sideways at decriminalization would be pretty quick in comparison, and yet the exact same people would flip the fuck out at any attempt to make cigarette smoking a private vice rather than one you inflict on others or reflect its healthcare costs in taxation. And I expect when and if change does come on the topic, it will be rather sudden when the fear of that flipping the fuck out is tested and found to be less compelling than it appears on the surface.
Ah hah! My pathetic google skills have yielded fruit! Here's the bit that I was looking for: So there are, in fact, many privitized prisons in the U.S., and the trend continues to be in that direction. My understanding of the situation is that the profit motive for prisons isn't so much from the free(ish) prison labor, but rather from private companies chasing after government contracts which pay a fixed amount per incarcerated prisoner. The private companies then push down costs as much as possible and pocket the difference. Unfortunately, I don't have any links to support this paragraph, but I do have personal experience. (not as good, I know, but it's something) I have a couple friends that have been in & out of prison since the early-90s here in Washington state, and they've noticed a sharp decline in prison amenities since they started their... careers, if you like to call it that. According to them, prison food has always sucked, but recently the portions have been cut so much that it's pretty much standard practice to supplement your food with purchased food from the commissary. People who can't pay for additional food regularly go hungry, even if they eat all the slop that's handed out for free. Anyways, sorry for the derail, especially given my meager evidence.
I know I would be utterly pissed off if the far wealthier citizens of my much larger neighbouring country keep sending billions upon billions of dollars to my local violent criminals so they could get increasingly violent and well armed! Its really amazing that a central American country HASNT snapped before now and just said "here is a 5km by 5km free trade zone port - which you are going to pay for with usage fees by the way. Narcotics are legal to ship through it. We catch you shipping guns, people or other nasties and you can never use the port ever again. Suitably bonded trucks can make deliveries of narcotics to the port from elsewhere in the country, or from across our interior borders. We still vigorously enforce the laws about assault and murder. Its legal to sign a special "free trade zone" contract about the sale and shipping of narcotics. Commercial and shipping disputes can be enforced by the special free trade zone court (user pays). Don't abide by the rulings and you cant use the port." Provided there was no limit on the supply of port / warehouse space, why would drugs cartels get in a fight in the port zone? only issue is that you would have a combined US Navy / Coastguard fleet parked in international waters off the port in about 2 seconds flat.... Just one port wouldn't work.
That's about right, which is why the show of regional solidarity in the face of decades of US divide and conquer strategy is an important shift. While it's easy to visualize US power as a concrete force when it can be directed at a single target where it can hurriedly wave away international pressures and concerns about sovereignty, it becomes increasingly more difficult the more nations that form a bloc. Especially when those nations are speaking the language of moderation and compromise rather than Chavista hyperbolic anti-Americanism, since it's really more about their self-determination than it is about taking something away from the US.
Guatemalan president reiterates the point at a summit, and targets the veneer of respectability that the US misuse of diplomatic language lends the pro Drug War position. That last part is of greater interest to me since it's my belief that the hand-me-down language (ie listen to Hillary Clinton any day for a textbook example) from negotiations between relative equals put the weaker party at a disadvantage in an asymmetrical relationship, since they can't enforce the "courtesies" asked of the other group and must always give ground. Typically, the response that tries to get around that looks like North Korea, Iran, or Venezuela, and I'm pleased to see a plan B in effect.
I think they all have a good point. Their countries would be much less violent if they legalized the sale and transport of drugs.
I'm surprised Russia isn't on the same tier as Brazil or even South Africa. All three are tops for expensive travel insurance (among common, allegedly civilized destinations. I can't speak for Zaire or Uganda.) Also ranking surprisingly low on this list is the Philippines, but that's anecdotal.
It's in the subtext of "taboo". The US controls the debate by making sure it never gets to the table in any forum. Speaking about the hows and whys of drug warring invariably fails any test of pragmatism, so the only way the US perspective wins debates is by not having them in the first place. The first rule of traditional diplomacy is "don't ever speak about what you actually want or why you want it".
South Americans up the ante: Uruguay proposes nationalization of the marijuana industry. I don't know how firm "tweeting in support" counts in terms of the opposition, but I guess it's a shoe-in.
