Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Colombia is in a risky position. They've got a peace process that's going nowhere, and a drug production problem that's skyrocketing.
The left is being funded primarily by the drug traffickers who provide this tax money and that's why the guerrillas in Colombia, unlike the guerrillas anywhere else in Latin America, have been able to survive for 40 years because they have a hard, solid source of income.
I don't want to suggest that controlling pharmaceutical costs is the answer to what ails the U.S. health care system. It isn't.
In Colombia maybe 95% of the population follow Formula One. It's crazy.
The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.
In 2000, just before leaving the White House, Clinton ratcheted up military aid to Colombia. Plan Colombia, as the assistance program was called, provided billions of dollars to what was, and remains, the most repressive government in the hemisphere.
It's also very important in Latin America. If we can deal with the drug problem there, some of their strife there, it's less likely we have immigration problems here.
I don't think anyone would look at Colombia today and say that it is failing. This positive outcome is an example of the effective application of smart power - it is succeeding.
Colombians are sick of 'Narcos' stories because Colombia is a country that has changed so much. It's a country that's completely different from the country that we see in 'Narcos.' They reconstructed themselves in 25 years, which is amazing.
The purpose of Plan Columbia was to deal with the increased cultivation and illegal activity associated with that cultivation concerning narco trafficking in Columbia.