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.

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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