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This message contains the latest issue of the CSIS Watch, focusing on U.S.
involvement in Colombia and U.S.-South African relations. For further information, contact the CSIS Director of Studies Office at 202-887-0200, or reply to this e-mail. ************************* U.S. Involvement in Colombia. Edward Luttwak, CSIS senior fellow, says that the Colombian guerrilla groups, the FARC and ELN, aren't trained, aren't disciplined, and don't know how to shoot. How then do they control vast amounts of territory in southern Colombia? Because the Colombian army was never properly trained, asserts Luttwak. And the U.S. military is now teaching the Colombian army tactics that aren't appropriate for a jungle environment. Luttwak believes that the $1.3 billion aid package signed by Clinton to help the Colombian army is a mistake. Plus, whatever the United States does this year in terms of aid, it will have to do again next year. Why is the United States getting involved? The popular reason repeated on the Hill is to destroy the Colombian narcotics trade. Colombia contains most of the narcotics activity now, but that can easily move to a different country. The worst thing the United States could do, says Luttwak, would be to push the bulk of the coca production to a different Andean country in the "arc of fragility." U.S. involvement also helps to mitigate the chances of the guerrillas overthrowing the civilian government, says Luttwak, noting that President Andres Pastrana's popularity is extremely low. What then should the United States do? Luttwak's answer is to organize mobile training teams of people (as the United States did in El Salvador) to go into villages to create home guards, which would use weapons of a different caliber than the army. Luttwak asserts that this would work because people aren't divided politically at the village level. Such a solution, however, will not diminish narcotics trafficking. The United States and South Africa: Drifting Apart? The U.S.-South African relationship has undergone a significant shift, asserts Stephen Morrison, director of the CSIS Africa Program. The result of this shift is that the United States now feels that it needs South Africa much less than it did six years ago, while South Africa has come to value its relations with the United States much more than ever before. For both countries, however, there has been a ratcheting down of expectations. South African president Thabo Mbeki's May visit to Washington was marked by an anxiety that the next administration may reduce its contact with Africa. Thus, Mbeki attempted to reach out to a number of audiences-both the Bush and Gore camps as well as the U.S. Congress, corporate sector, and media. The response of the latter three was rather muted. While the Gore-Mbeki Binational Commission proved that high-level intervention is essential to move forward on key issues, lacking was serious cooperation at the diplomatic level to respond to crises such as those in Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Nigeria, or Sierra Leone. Plus, South Africa, fueled by protectionist interests, was largely ambivalent to the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). It remains to be seen if the South African private sector will seize this opportunity. Morrison says that in the future, the relationship will be evaluated according to the level of development of joint diplomatic initiatives in Zimbabwe and Congo, collaboration on the AIDS epidemic, security enhancement, trade and investment, and debt relief. Some form of the binational commission should remain in place for the next administration, warns Morrison, because otherwise there will be contentious wrangling over issues of trade and investment, international property rights, AIDS policy, and security. - Watch 233.doc
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