In the Pipeline
by Clay Risen

It's called mission creep, and it's defined America's military policy since Vietnam. Don't get involved, we learned, unless there is a clear purpose and plan of attack. Then get in and get out. It's why the United States cut things short in Iraq, why it left Somalia and stayed out of Bosnia altogether. Avoiding it is the core of the Powell Doctrine. And it's about to get us into deep trouble in Colombia.

In early 2001 the Clinton administration approved the $1 billion Plan Colombia, an aid package designed to give Andres Pastrana's government the military and economic tools it needed to fight the drug trade. Many in Congress worried that the money, like previous US aid disbursements, would be filtered into the coffers of right-wing paramilitaries, which are openly supported by members of the Colombian armed forces. At the same time, there was concern that the money and equipment would be used to re-ignite the then-smoldering conflict between the government and left-wing guerrillas. The plan went through despite opposition, and now, a year later, it has had zero impact on the situation — no drop in cocaine exports, no increased performance by anti-drug units, no end to the violence that has wracked the country for decades.

A few years ago, this might have been a signal to American planners that beefing up Plan Colombia might lead to mission creep. But that was before Sept. 11. Now, with the United States officially at war with terrorism, the Bush administration has requested $500 million more in aid — the largest single-year disbursement to Colombia and almost double the amount the administration pledged to rebuild Afghanistan. The majority of that money would go to training and equipping two counterdrug brigades to support defoliation efforts in southern Colombia.

But $98 million is set aside for a third brigade, which would defend an oil pipeline — decidedly not counter-narcotics. The Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, which is owned and operated by Occidental Petroleum, was attacked by guerrillas 166 times in 2001, and runs through a part of the country not even remotely close to the coca fields of counterdrug concerns.

Rather, the Bush administration defends its allocation by describing the pipeline as a major part of the Colombian economy; Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Congressional hearing that "what makes this pipeline unique is that it is such a major source of income … and without this pipeline operating something close to its capacity, it is not just a military problem; it is a serious problem with respect to the economy of the country."

Others defend the pipeline as an element of US national security. US Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson told MSNBC that "Colombia has the potential to export more oil to the United States, and now more than ever it's important for us to diversify our sources of oil," this even though Colombia exports only 600,000 barrels a day to the United States, or 2 percent of our imports.

All this — the importance of the pipeline to the Colombian economy, the need to diversify America's oil imports — may be true, but the whole thing still stinks of mission creep. So far there's no plan to send in US troops, just supplies and trainers. But Pastrana's likely successor is Alvaro Uribe, an independent hardliner who is already calling for more direct US involvement, and there's no reason to believe that he won't lobby hard for troop deployment at some point.

Until now the United States has maintained a steady, if artificial, bifurcation in its aid policy as a means to avoid mission creep — all money, training and equipment must go toward counterdrug efforts, and nothing else. And while this belied the (at times paradoxical) tight-knit relationship between Colombia's drug kingpins, its right-wing paramilitaries and its left-wing insurgents, it did prevent us from going in too deep. But by defending the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, the Bush administration has removed that barrier and made it more likely than ever that the United States will get drawn into the Colombian conflict.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.