Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America [Hardcover]

Ted Galen Carpenter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1403961379 | ISBN-13: 978-1403961372 | Publication Date: February 1, 2003 | Edition: 1st

The domestic phase of Washington's war on drugs has received considerable criticism over the years from a variety of individuals. Until recently, however, most critics have not stressed the damage that the international phase of the drug war has done to our Latin American neighbors. That lack of attention has begun to change and Ted Carpenter chronicles our disenchantment with the hemispheric drug war. Some prominent Latin American political leaders have finally dared to criticize Washington while at the same time, the U.S. government seems determined to perpetuate, if not intensify, the antidrug crusade. Spending on federal antidrug measures also continues to increase, and the tactics employed by drug war bureaucracy, both here and abroad, bring the inflammatory "drug war" metaphor closer to reality. Ending the prohibitionist system would produce numerous benefits for both Latin American societies and the United States. In a book deriving from his work at the CATO Institute, Ted Carpenter paints a picture of this ongoing fiasco.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Far from a sloganeering metaphor, the war on drugs is an all-too-bloody reality, argues this meticulous and impassioned indictment of U.S. drug policy. While it has eroded civil liberties at home, the author argues, the war on drugs has been a catastrophe for Latin American countries. Their governments have been pressured by the U.S. into adopting a heavy-handed and unpopular program of drug prohibition; peasants have had their crops poisoned by drug eradication programs; dozens of planes have been shot down at the behest of U.S. surveillance teams; and brutal DEA-organized drug sweeps have inspired large protests. Meanwhile, he says, the proceeds from the illicit drug trade flow into the hands of criminal syndicates and guerilla insurgents, fueling the civil war in Colombia and a plague of corruption and gang violence throughout Latin America. Meanwhile, despite all the attempts at suppression, the worldwide market for drugs has exploded and drug prices are as low as ever. Carpenter, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of The Captive Press, argues that the failure of the war on drugs is the predictable consequence of defying the law of supply and demand. Given the strong market for drugs, attempts at prohibition result in high prices and irresistible profits for farmers and smugglers willing to risk criminal sanctions. The only solution, he contends, is full legalization of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. It's a provocative thesis, but Carpenter's thorough research, sober argumentation and clear writing strengthen this challenge to what he sees as the reigning prohibitionist orthodoxy.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...war on drugs is an all-too-bloody reality, argues this meticulous and impassioned indictment of U.S. drug policy."--Publishers Weekly Annex (February 3, 2003)
"A refreshingly candid, controversial, and hard-hitting assessment of Washington's increasingly expensive...utterly futile campaign against illegal drugs."--Kenneth Maxwell, Foreign Affairs
"Mr. Carpenter asks Washington to stop its demeaning and costly 'spectacle of alternately bribing and threatening its neighbors....'"--William H. Peterson, Washington Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403961379
• ISBN-13: 978-1403961372
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #825,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Crime & Criminals  > War on Drugs

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Special Book: Engaging & Enlightening, May 24, 2003

By 

Bert Ruiz "Author" (Pleasantville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Hardcover)

"Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America," by Ted Galen Carpenter is arguably the best book ever written on the American war on drugs in Latin America. This book is engaging and enlightening. Moreover, it is one of the most thoughtful and perceptive analyses we've ever had on Washington's campaign against drug production in Latin America.

This book is truly special. The "Introduction" exposes thirty years of American failure. From there the author explains policy from Presidents' Nixon, to Reagan, to Bush and to Clinton. He then goes on to focus on the dangerous implications of Plan Colombia and of many other flawed strategies that create an "ugly American" image. Finally, the author's narrative arrives at Mexico and the potential for disaster.

In conclusion, author Ted Galen Carpenter bravely outlines a blueprint for peace and for ending the war on drugs. This man has unique vision and this is a very worthy book. Hats off to a tier-one scholar! Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indespensible, Up-to-Date Examination, January 30, 2004

By 

The Independent Review (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America (Hardcover)

"Ted Galen Carpenter's new book is an indispensable, up-to-date examination of `Washington's futile war on drugs in Latin America,' as its subtitle states the topic. The author, a vice president at the Cato Institute, surveys the history of this policy, dissects the `ugly American' tactics used to carry it out, and concludes with `a blueprint for peace.'

"The title Bad Neighbor Policy cuts to the quick by twisting Roosevelt's `Good Neighbor' phrase of the 1930s to fit the current reality of destructive buck passing that characterizes the U.S. drug war in Latin America today. Most Americans, including drug policy analysts, seldom take this international aspect seriously. Although U.S. policymakers since the Cold War have trumpeted U.S. support for legal, democratic, and market reforms in the region, the `prohibitionist [drug] strategy works at cross purposes to all of these objectives' (p. 167). Indeed as Venezuelan American journalist Carlos Ball remarks, `The war on drugs has done more harm to democratic institutions in Latin America than all the communist guerrillas of the last four decades of the twentieth century combined' (personal correspondence, Ball to William Ratliff, June 24, 2003)....

"Public and government `hysteria' in America reached `record levels' in 1986 after the death of basketball star Len Bias from an overdose of cocaine. This hysteria provoked passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the declaration that drug trafficking is a national-security issue that requires significant involvement by U.S. military and intelligence forces. The invasion of Panama to seize Manuel Noriega in 1989 was the most overt U.S. military intervention to date....

"The core of recent drug policy is the Plan Colombia, originally an integrated $7.5 billion project that was born dead during Clinton's last years. Little beyond the antidrug military component (about a quarter of the total) was delivered (by the United States), while the economic and other development aid depended in large part on nonexistent Colombian and seldom forthcoming European funds. Neighboring countries have become unwilling hosts to drug producers and traffickers driven out of southern Colombia by expanded eradication campaigns -- the inevitable `push-down, pop-up' phenomenon.... Arrogant policies -- such as the potential annual `decertification' of Latin American governments that are determined not to have `cooperated' enough with the United States -- have weakened fledgling institutions, angered the public (who think the United States should be decertified), and driven peasants into the arms of narcoguerrillas. `The bottom line,' Carpenter notes, `is that, no matter what the specific configuration of tactics, the supply-side campaign against illicit drugs is doomed to fail. As long as there is a substantial global demand for those drugs, the supply will continue to flow' (p. 121). In the end, as The Economist has stated, `by any reasonable measure, America's "war on drugs" is a disaster' (May 3, 2001, qtd. from the on-line edition).

"In his final chapter, Carpenter concludes that the only way out is drug legalization -- that is, `treating currently illicit drugs as alcohol and tobacco are now treated' (p. 232). The book's strength, however, is its detailed dissection of U.S. drug policies in Latin America, not its summary statements (however much we may agree with them) on other matters that must be examined in detail when changing a complex, fundamentally flawed, decades-old policy with vast international repercussions. The monster the U.S. government has nurtured in Latin America and beyond is now on its own seeking whom it may devour....

" ...Rather than dodging this dilemma, we need to highlight it, pointing constantly to the baleful international consequences of the prohibitionist drug strategy and to the extremely difficult options it throws in the laps of American policymakers, who of course made the bad policies in the first place and are in a position to change them. Most Americans are moralistic about foreign policy, so one important tack would be to emphasize the moral abomination of this policy, abroad as well as at home.

"Some other recent studies touching on Latin America offer valuable supporting or contrasting perspectives. Ivelaw Griffith's edited volume The Political Economy of Drugs in the Caribbean (New York: St. Martin's, 2000) and Robert MacDoun's and Peter Reuter's coedited book Cross-National Drug Policy (London: Sage, 2002) touch on many of the broad issues. The latter includes a thoughtful essay by Francisco Thoumi. Robin Kirk's More Terrible Than Death (New York: Public Affairs, 2003) relates many examples of the horrors in Colombia and places great responsibility on the United States, but for the most part it targets users, not government policy. Russell Crandall's Driven by Drugs (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002) provides considerable detail on how drugs drive U.S. policy toward Colombia. My essay co-authored with Edgardo Buscaglia, War and Lack of Governance in Colombia: Narcos, Guerrillas, and U.S. Policy (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2001), focuses on domestic as well as international factors affecting drugs and chaos in Colombia. Articles by Pamela Falk and Kenneth Sharpe in Stephen Thompson's edited volume The War on Drugs: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego: Greenhaven, 1998) are useful, but their brevity illustrates how even books that bring together drug war specialists seldom look seriously at the problem's international aspects. Finally, a different twist in several ways is Walton Cook's Buzzword (Boalsburg, Pa.: Public Policy, 2001), a novel that discusses the possible control of narcotics-producing plants by the use of natural or enhanced organisms."

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Excerpted from a review by William Ratliff in "The Independent Review," Winter 2004.