Drugs Thugs And Diplomats

In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.

In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.

Explores how the idea of human rights is actually employed by activists and human rights professionals. Tate, an anthropologist and activist with extensive experience in Colombia, finds that radically different ideas about human rights have shaped three groups of human rights professionals working there--nongovernmental activists, state representatives, and military officers. From publisher description.

"This book disputes the commonly held view that Colombia's armed conflict is a result of state absence or failure, providing broader lessons about the real drivers of political violence in war-torn areas"--

In US foreign policy, conflict has replaced diplomacy. At home, wars on crime, drugs, immigration, and terrorism dissolve barriers between law enforcement and combat. Tracing the origins of militarized policy to post-Vietnam fears of waning US power, Osamah Khalil argues that it is time to discard forever wars and invest in political solutions.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

After generations of foreign policy failures, the United States can finally try to make the world safer—not by relying on utopian goals but by working pragmatically with nondemocracies. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign economies in the hope that its investments would help remake the world in its own image—or, at the very least, make the world “safe for democracy.” So far, the returns have been disappointing, to say the least. Pushing for fair and free elections in undemocratic countries has added to the casualty count, rather than taken away from it, and trying to eliminate corruption entirely has precluded the elimination of some of the worst forms of corruption. In the Middle East, for example, post-9/11 interventionist campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved to be long, costly, and, worst of all, ineffective. Witnessing the failure of the utopian vision of a world full of market-oriented democracies, many observers, both on the right and the left, have begun to embrace a dystopian vision in which the United States can do nothing and save no one. Accordingly, calls to halt all assistance in undemocratic countries have grown louder. But, as Stephen D. Krasner explains, this cannot be an option: weak and poorly governed states pose a threat to our stability. In the era of nuclear weapons and biological warfare, ignoring troubled countries puts millions of American lives at risk. “The greatest challenge for the United States now,” Krasner writes, “is to identify a set of policies that lie between the utopian vision that all countries can be like the United States . . . and the dystopian view that nothing can be done.” He prescribes a pragmatic new course of policy. Drawing on decades of research, he makes the case for “good enough governance”—governance that aims for better security, better health, limited economic growth, and some protection of human rights. To this end, Krasner proposes working with despots to promote growth. In a world where a single terrorist can kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, the United States does not have the luxury of idealistically ignoring the rest of the world. But it cannot remake the world in its own image either. Instead, it must learn how to make love to despots.

From khat to kava to ketamine, drugs are constitutive parts of cultures, identities, economies and livelihoods. This much-needed book is a clear introduction to the anthropology of drugs, providing a cutting-edge and accessible overview of the topic. The authors examine and assess the following key topics: How drugs feature in anthropology and the work of anthropologists and the general role of drugs in society Comparison between biochemical and pharmacological approaches to drugs and bio-socio-cultural models of understanding drugs Evolutionary origins of psychotropic drug sensitivity and archaeological evidence for the spread of psychoactive substances in pre-history Drugs in spiritual and religions contexts, considering their role in altered states of consciousness, divination and healing Stimulant drugs and the ambivalence with which they are treated in society Addiction and dependency Drug economies, livelihoods and the production and distribution segments of drug commodity chains Drug policies and drug wars Drugs, race and gender The future of the study of drugs and anthropological professional engagements with solving drug problems With the inclusion of chapter summaries and many examples, further reading and case studies – including drug tourism, drug industries in the Philippines and Mexico, Afghanistan and the ‘Golden Triangle’ and the opioid crisis in North America – The Anthropology of Drugs is an ideal introduction for those coming to the topic for the first time, and also for those working in the professional and health sectors. It will be of interest to students of anthropology and to those in related disciplines including sociology, psychology, health studies and religion.

Over the last few decades, drug trafficking organizations in Latin America became infamous for their shocking public crimes, from narcoterrorist assaults on the Colombian political system in the 1980s to the more recent wave of beheadings in Mexico. However, while these highly visible forms of public violence dominate headlines, they are neither the most common form of drug violence nor simply the result of brutality. Rather, they stem from structural conditions that vary from country to country and from era to era. In The Politics of Drug Violence, Angelica Durán-Martínez shows how variation in drug violence results from the complex relationship between state power and criminal competition. Drawing on remarkably extensive fieldwork, this book compares five cities that have been home to major trafficking organizations for the past four decades: Cali and Medellín in Colombia, and Ciudad Juárez, Culiacán, and Tijuana in Mexico. She shows that violence escalates when trafficking organizations compete and the state security apparatus is fragmented. However, when the criminal market is monopolized and the state security apparatus cohesive, violence tends to be more hidden and less frequent. The size of drug profits does not determine violence levels, and neither does the degree of state weakness. Rather, the forms and scale of violent crime derive primarily from the interplay between marketplace competition and state cohesiveness. An unprecedentedly rich empirical account of one of the worst problems of our era, the book will reshape our understanding of the forces driving organized criminal violence in Latin America and elsewhere.

Over the last few decades, drug trafficking organizations in Latin America became infamous for their shocking public crimes, from narcoterrorist assaults on the Colombian political system in the 1980s to the more recent wave of beheadings in Mexico. However, while these highly visible forms of public violence dominate headlines, they are neither the most common form of drug violence nor simply the result of brutality. Rather, they stem from structural conditions that vary from country to country and from era to era. In The Politics of Drug Violence, Angelica Dur n-Mart nez shows how variation in drug violence results from the complex relationship between state power and criminal competition. Drawing on remarkably extensive fieldwork, this book compares five cities that have been home to major trafficking organizations for the past four decades: Cali and Medell n in Colombia, and Ciudad Ju rez, Culiac n, and Tijuana in Mexico. She shows that violence escalates when trafficking organizations compete and the state security apparatus is fragmented. However, when the criminal market is monopolized and the state security apparatus cohesive, violence tends to be more hidden and less frequent. The size of drug profits does not determine violence levels, and neither does the degree of state weakness. Rather, the forms and scale of violent crime derive primarily from the interplay between marketplace competition and state cohesiveness. An unprecedentedly rich empirical account of one of the worst problems of our era, the book will reshape our understanding of the forces driving organized criminal violence in Latin America and elsewhere.