Source: March 29, 1997 Economist Armwisting Latin America When it "decertifies" neighbors in the war on drugs, The United States achieves more insult than effect The news will surprise some of its members, but no one appointed the Congress of the United States as God. No, nor even as lawmaker, policeman, jury, judge and executioner to planet Earth. Not even the American president, who at least heads, not just legislates for, the planet's only superpower, can claim as much. Yet between themCongress more, Mr. Clinton lessthey have been trying to play all these roles. And in so doing they have antagonised their country's friends without notably hurting its enemies. Last year's folly was the HelmsBurton law against investment in Cuba. This bit of extraterritorial arrogance has angered much of Europe and Latin America, without destroying Fidel Castro. Similar, if less contested, threats to those who have certain dealings with Iran and Libya have not brought down, or even low, the ayatollahs or Colonel Qaddafi. Last year brought also the 'decertification" of Colombia (and, very nearly, of Paraguay, to that country's rage) in the war against drugs. President Ernesto Samper, no less than his country's drug barons, was one target of that American decision. Has he gone? Despite the best efforts of some of those entitled to dispose of92himthe citizens of Colombia, not the United States, or even its ambassador therehe has not. This year Mr Clinton decertified Colombia again. He might have added Mexico, had its drugs scandal erupted a little earlier; and, when he did not, the lower house of Congress, happy to do the president's work for him, blithely passed a resolution requiring that the Mexicans too be decertified unless they met sundry tests of antidrug virtue written by itself Wisely, the Senate showed more sense. So has Mr Clinton in not applying to Colombia, as yet, the economic sanctions that decertification can lead to. But, despite that, all that has been achieved is to make Colombians and Mexicans alike angrily and publicly defensive of their sovereignty. True, Colombia and Mexico are awash with drugs and drugtraffickers. So, as both governments point out, is the United Statesand with users too. But even if that riposte were unjustified, no country, however mighty, is entitled to write the laws of others. That, exactly, is what the United States demands: they must alter their criminal codes and extradition laws, even (in the Caribbean) open their territorial waters to American coastguards. Or else risk public disgrace, like errant schoolboys, and threats of economic sanctions. And the price? This is no way to treat neighbours. That a big country can armtwist small ones is a fact of life; to make a yearly, codified, public display of it ought not to be. And what does it achieve? It wounds friends. Latin Americans have long memories of being shoved by Uncle Sam, and many governments, privately or through bodies like the 14country Rio Group, have joined the MexiColombian chorus of anger. Does it also lessen the flow of drugs? Some Colombians say Mr Samper's antidrug efforts would have been far less vigorous (and vigorous they have been) but for the stick of decertification. Yet Mr Clinton's own drugfighters have doubts about the process; his ambassador in Mexico last week openly called it counterproductive. And for all the drug busts south of its borders, experts in the United States detect no lessening of the flow. Nor does the market. If supply shrinks, prices should rise. They have fallen.