And just how far is the Bush administration willing to wade into the Colombian quagmire? Significantly deeper, apparently. The State Department’s top Latin American affairs official, Otto Reich, flew down to Bogota after the election for meetings with Uribe and the country’s outgoing Defense minister. Most of the $1.3 billion approved by the United States two years ago for its anti-drug initiative, Plan Colombia, has been disbursed, but in the Bush era Washington is no longer confining itself to the war against drugs. The White House is asking Congress to send Colombia another $572 million aid package that includes military assistance specifically earmarked for Bogota’s counterinsurgency efforts. In fact, the administration has already gotten the go-ahead to use helicopters and other resources furnished under Plan Colombia to fight FARC and other armed groups. “It creates a demand for a dramatic expansion of our military involvement in Colombia,” warns Adam Isacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy think tank.
The rising levels of U.S. military assistance have inevitably raised questions of whether the South American country could become America’s next Vietnam. Most experts dismiss the notion out of hand, and Uribe himself has ruled out the deployment of U.S. combat troops for now. Even prominent critics question the likelihood of a full-blown Vietnam-style commitment while continuing to express grave doubts about the current direction of U.S. policy. “I can’t conceive of us sending tens of thousands of soldiers down there,” says Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas. “But we are down there because we’re determined to get involved in their civil war, and it could become a little Vietnam.” Others warn that Washington is about to pump massive sums of U.S. taxpayer dollars into a foreign imbroglio without coming clean about one basic fact: there is no foreseeable military solution to the country’s 38-year-old conflict. “[As in] Vietnam, our government thinks Colombia can defend itself and all we have to do is provide the training and equipment,” says Bert Ruiz, author of the book “The Colombian Civil War.” “No one in our government has admitted that the Colombian armed forces are woefully inept and incapable of defeatingthe FARC.”
Under lame-duck President Andres Pastrana, the government has fought its civil war on the cheap, devoting a paltry 3.5 percent of Colombia’s annual gross national product to military and security-related expenditures. Officials in Washington want Colombia’s incoming government to spend more. “Colombia has to do some things to get on top of its own security,” said White House anti-drug czar John Walters last month. “It’s not spending at a level commensurate with a country in a state of war.” Uribe understands; he campaigned on a pledge to double the defense budget.
After watching Pastrana’s peace process go nowhere for three years, most Colombians who voted for Uribe concluded that might makes right. That line of thinking jibes with the hawkish instincts of the Bush administration. But skeptics worry that Colombia could become just another black hole that will eat up U.S. military aid without ever achieving any of Washington’s goals.
