Source: Current History Pubdate: April, 1998 Contact: http://www.currenthistory.com/ Editors note: Only the first article below is on the Current History website and is being posted. Below is the abstracts for all the articles. Current History is available in most libraries. If any newshawk scans the remaining articles and sends them to it will be appreciated! NARCOPOLITICS - APRIL ARTICLE ABSTRACTS Title: America's Drug Problem and Its Policy of Denial Author: Mathea Falco "For too long, United States drug policy has been driven by the need to appear 'tough' on drugs, regardless of results. The United States should leave behind the distinction between 'tough' and 'soft' approaches to drug abuse and concentrate its attention, research, and resources on determining what actually works." Title: A Drug Trade Primer for the Late 1990s Author: Geopolitical Drug Watch "As with the effective marketing of any product at the end of the twentieth century, the drug system involves strategies and tactics that bring radically different civilizations, attitudes, and principles into contact. . . [Yet] the system of producing and marketing drugs is. . .very different from that of any other product, whether legal or not. Everything connected with drugs is at the same time 'modern' and 'traditional,' 'international' and 'local.' In short, drugs are the barely distorted reflection of the problems involved in managing the world at the dawn of the third millennium." Title: The Nature of Drug-Trafficking Networks Author: Phil Williams Can governments and law enforcement agencies learn something from drug traffickers to beat them at their own game? Phil Williams argues that both "have to think and act much more in network terms" to create informal transnational law enforcement networks based on trust. "While this approach does not guarantee success, it does at least conform to the first precept of effective strategy, which is to know your enemy and adjust your actions accordingly." Title: The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico Author: Peter Andreas "As long as America's seemingly insatiable appetite for imported psychoactive substances persists, Mexico's close proximity to the United States market assures that the logic of narco-corruption will remain entrenched" in the country's political system. Title: The Militarization of the Drug Warin Latin America Author: Peter Zirnite "Although United States international narcotics control efforts have borne little fruit to date, Congress and the Clinton administration have dramatically increased security assistance to Latin America in the last two years in the name of fighting the war on drugs. . . The costs to democratization and human rights throughout the region will no doubt continue to be high." Title: Asia's Drug Menaceand the Poverty of Diplomacy Author: James Shinn The United States and the countries of Asia "have been curiously slow in adding narcotics to the diplomatic agenda, unable to move beyond pious expressions of concern to tackle the problem together. What happened to the anticipated Golden Age of multilateral cooperation that was to have unfolded in Asia in the post-cold war era?" Title: Global Reach: Drug Money in the Asia Pacific Author: Bertil Lintner "Whether it is obscure banks in Burma and Cambodia, or more respectable financial institutions elsewhere, the essence of money laundering is the same: to convert ill-gotten cash, usually in small denominations, into a solid deposit-and then hide the origin of the funds in order to use them for legitimate purposes." Bertil Lintner examines how this is done in East Asia, and why it is so difficult to eradicate. Title: New Drugs, New Responses: Lessons from Europe Author: Elizabeth Joyce "The drug war as a moral call to arms has always lacked resonance in Europe. Expectations about what drug policy can do are lower than in the United States; the possibility of victory over drugs-the elimination of drug abuse-is seldom raised, even rhetorically. Nor is drug policy conflated with military goals and security. . . In Europe, drug control remains a civilian affair."