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The Peace Corps, Drugs and US Foreign Policy

Taylor Dibbert - 1/31/2012

A few months ago, President Barack Obama was celebrating the “profound” relationship between the United States and Honduras.

This happened in spite of the fact that current President Porfirio Lobo’s rise to power was aided by a June 2009 coup.

Even though Obama publicly denounced the coup, the administration’s response was timid.

It did not take the Obama administration long to warm up to the ouster of democratically elected Manuel Zelaya. Sure, the US briefly halted some foreign aid (around $30 million), but the effect of that was negligible. Besides, remittances from the US to Honduras topped $2 billion that year.

Respect for human rights and the rule of law have deteriorated since Lobo took office in 2010. A lack of media freedom and the intimidation of journalists have not helped.

Earlier this month, the Peace Corps withdrew all of its volunteers from Honduras because of the violence. With 158 PCVs living there, that was one of the biggest programs in the world. Since 1962, over 5,000 PCVs have served in Honduras.

US-Honduran relations have been mostly collaborative over the years and the Zelaya coup created tension that was merely transitory. Bilateral assistance is back up and the Obama administration asked that nearly $70 million be given to Honduras this year.

Military cooperation between the two countries has continued in spite of the fact that many leaders of the 2009 coup received military training at what used to be known as the School of the Americas, a “controversial facility” in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, even a coup d’état on the US’s doorstep could not derail ongoing “counternarcotic” efforts and unwavering security cooperation with Honduras.

Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate, where there are about twenty homicides per day. This is not an accident. To a large extent, it is a condemning indictment of US foreign policy in its own backyard.

There is not just one reason for such high levels of violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. And some of the problems are related. Poverty, inequality, the proliferation of drug gangs, weak judicial systems and corruption are all factors.

However, a horribly misguided drug policy is driving this violence. While somewhat complex, the correlation between drug trafficking and violence is well-known.

A recent UN study noted that four of the world’s five most violent countries are in Latin America. Every country in the top five, including Cote d’Ivoire, has at least one thing in common: “all of them play a huge role in the international cocaine trafficking networks.”

And yet drug policy is the factor that the US could modify most easily to reduce violence in Central America.

In a New York Times article this month, Kevin Sabet highlighted the dangers of drug consumption in the US. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), fatal overdoses are six times greater than they were thirty years ago.

Sabet goes on to say that “One might expect such news to spur politicians to explore new options for drug abuse treatment, prevention and enforcement. Instead, at precisely the wrong time, extremists on both sides have taken over the conversation. Unless we change the tone of the debate to give drug-policy centrists a voice, America’s drug problem will only get worse.”

US drug policy is not working at home or abroad; it is exorbitantly expensive and will continue to damage US interests unless changes are made. Nevertheless, such a discussion is not even taking place.

Removing the Peace Corps from Honduras is a mandate from Capitol Hill.

Unfortunately, it probably will not have much of an effect on US-Honduran relations, or US foreign policy in the region. One would expect full withdrawals, or at least far fewer volunteers, in both Guatemala and El Salvador within the next two years.

Withdrawing Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras will not make the country safer; it is just a response to negative trends that appear to be worsening.

The American foreign policy machine is “pivoting” to East Asia for good reason, but there is a disaster unfolding in Central America that deserves immediate consideration.

Perhaps recent alarms about Peace Corps safety portend a greater emphasis on US-Central American relations. Maybe Washington will reengage with a part of the world it has ignored for far too long and address the underlying causes of the violence.

Then again, 2012 is an election year. Is it likely that substantive debate about drug policy would not reach Capitol Hill in the next twelve months?

Don’t bet on it.

*This article first appeared in The Journal of Foreign Relations.

The Peace Corps and Violence in Central America

In Central America, the Peace Corps is getting leaner. The organization has recently announced that it will be pulling out of Honduras. The Peace Corps has also put a hold on sending new training groups to Guatemala and El Salvador.

There is no question that these countries are dangerous. Honduras, for example, has a murder rate of nearly 82 people per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in the world.

The safety of Peace Corps volunteers has been an intensely debated topic on Capitol Hill recently. Earlier this year, the House and Senate unanimously passed the Kate Puzey Volunteer Protection Act of 2011.

This is an important bill for which Congress deserves praise, but, it does little to address volunteer safety and deals more with how the Peace Corps should respond after an incident has already occurred. Furthermore, total safety is an illusion; people need to understand that.

According to ABC, “The bill requires the Peace Corps to improve the training of volunteers to reduce sexual assault risk, would protect whistleblowers, and would require the Peace Corps to hire victims’ advocates for each region the agency serves.”

As I have argued in The Journal of Foreign Relations, concerns about the safety of Peace Corps volunteers have been and continue to be exaggerated.

On the other hand, the level of violence in Central America is alarming, so apprehensions about volunteer safety in these particular nations are not without merit.

As mentioned, the question is not whether these three countries are dangerous; obviously, they are. What people need to be asking is: Was the response by the Peace Corps an appropriate one? Or is it an overreaction?

Most of the violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras is in the respective capitals of those countries, hardly places Peace Corps volunteers would be spending much time.

It is unclear who is actually driving the decision to withdraw all volunteers from Honduras. It could be Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams. It could be the US Congress. Or maybe Country Directors within these three countries are deeply concerned about the deteriorating security environment in Central America, and that they have conveyed those concerns to Peace Corps Washington.

It is unlikely that Honduras’s Peace Corps Country Director, Mrs. Emily Untermeyer, would advocate for a full withdrawal. She was sworn in a little more than a year ago.

The security situation in Central America is going to get worse before it gets better.

Security and the respect for human rights in post-coup Honduras under President Lobo have been abysmal. This is indisputable. Yet a full-scale withdrawal of the Peace Corps seems impetuous. Besides, it will make reentering Honduras very costly.

The Peace Corps has made it clear that all 158 volunteers in Honduras are “safe,” but that they will all be leaving in January.

Now, allowing current volunteers in Guatemala and El Salvador to stay put (a group of PCVs totaling more than three-hundred people) is a wise decision. Holding back a training group or two is a balanced, more considerate response.

Again, regarding the Honduras withdrawal, where such a bold move emanated from, or how long it took this decision to go from an idea to official policy is unclear.

What is clear is that it speaks volumes about both Central America’s current level of insecurity and worries in Washington about Peace Corps volunteer safety.

Iraq and Afghanistan have dominated headlines in the United States for the past decade. To put it mildly, the Arab spring (and the effects of previous US policies in the Middle East) certainly seem to have gotten people’s attention.

Yet, Central America is the most violent region in the world.

There are many reasons to think that violence in the short-term will increase and this recent announcement by the Peace Corps seems to underscore that point.

The US has pressing security and geopolitical concerns in East Asia and elsewhere; that is irrefutable.

But something else is also irrefutable: if Washington refuses to pay more attention to Central American violence, continues to view US drug policy as a matter of criminality (as opposed to public health) and promotes what is at best an incoherent strategy as it relates to security in the Western Hemisphere, the effects of such a “strategy” will be devastating and will take, at least, decades to overcome.

Pulling Peace Corps volunteers out of violent Central American countries is an inappropriate policy response to a much larger, more complex dilemma. It is disaster mitigation. Washington should address the root causes of the problems in Central America, instead of avoiding them.

*This article originally appeared in The Journal of Foreign Relations.