"Life is like a box of chocolates"

The current regime has spoke at length about the value of democracy and justifiably so. A number of studies have demonstrated that democracies simply don't go to war with other democracies (although they have no such compunction with non-democracies). This idea is, in large part, the ideological basis or justification for our adventure in the territory formerly known as Iraq.

That being said, not all democracies are created equal. A lot of press, rightly, is being given to the election of the Hamas to the Palestinian Parliament. This marks the first time that the (former?) terrorist group has controlled the Palestinian government and immediately led the US to cut all aid to the Palestinian National Authority. The US position is that as long as Hamas advocates the elimination of the state of Israel, then they should not receive support from Western democracies. A fair point.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about Palestine today. That's getting plenty of press. Instead, I want to talk about a country that is undergoing a radical and amazing transition, much to the chagrin of the US. The country: Bolivia.

As some of you may have heard, Bolivia recently elected Evo Morales as its president. Morales is notable for two reasons: he's the first member of the indigenous (Indian) majority to win the presidency and he's a former coca farmer.

I don't want to give a full primer about Bolivia, but it should be sufficient to say that Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, it is becoming a larger supplier of coca, and it's presumably where Mike Tyson was headed when he famously quipped, "I'm heading to Bolivian." No matter who is in power, it's going to be tough to make things work in Bolivia.

Morales is going to be very interesting to watch, if for no other reason, that he's a total wildcard. For example, upon taking office, he immediately slashed his salary in half, something that will probably lower all government salaries since there is a statutory prohibition on government employees earning more money than the President (much like in the US). I'm not convinced that's the most clever strategy (high salaries draw talent, low salaries send talent abroad and it might fuel corruption), but it does, at the least, have galvanating symbolic importance with the chronically impoverished public and it should result in more teachers.

At any rate, the most important aspect of the new Bolivian president is his stance on coca production. The US has been unrelenting in its position that coca producing nations need to do two things: destroy the coca crops and prosecute/extradite producers and traffickers. And Bolivia is the world's 3rd largest producer of coca which makes it a "country of concern" for the State Department. Therefore, Morales' appointment of a coca farmer as his "drug czar" is unlikely to win friends in Washington.

The new Czar, Felipe Caceras, has a simple strategy: don't ruin the coca farmer, just stop production of cocaine. This policy is clever because in poor countries, farmers will always produce the crops that earn them the most money. Coca isn't going away. But, focusing counternarcotics resources on the production and trafficking of the end product (cocaine) is certainly a more equitable and effective use of resources. Only time will tell if it works, but I applaud the thinking because it's long overdue, not just in Bolivia, but across South America.

The US has spent trillions of dollars on a decades long ineffective and bloody campaign to eradicate cocaine at the source to no avail. Sometimes you have to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em and the US has been raising the bet on a losing hand for too long. So I applaud Bolivia and Morales for taking a step in a different direction.

Bolivia is equally fascinating, however, because it is part of the leftist shift in Latin American politics. Morales is a socialist. Not the Soviet style, throw them in the gulag, seize their pay, distribute the money among the elite, and get a trashy mistress to drink icy vodkas with while you cool your heels as your ritzy dacha type of socialist. No, Morales is the latest of South American socialists that seem genuinely committed to the democratic process but are strongly rejecting the corrupt practices of the right wing parties that have dominated in decades past. This shift is disconcerting to US policymakers, perhaps because of the eminently vocal Hugo Chavez, but also because Morales is making his affiliation with Chavez and Fidel Castro no secret. There is the very real concern that US influence in South America could be waning. Colombia remains the US's strongest ally, but the list of "friends" is shrinking. Vexing, I'm sure, for the Bush administration.

This will be an interesting story to watch over the next few years not just because of what's happening in Bolivia, but also for what it means in South America. The shift away from aerial fumigation to cracking down on drug cartels is a much needed experiment in counternarcotics. The US "war" on drugs has failed to such an extend that one wonders why we don't just legalize it and deal with the consequences. Now that one important player in the coca market is departing from tradition, essentially legalizing coca, the regional implications are clear. Either the move will improve anti-trafficking efforts or Bolivia will become the next hub for the coca cartels. I hope that my (soon but not soon enough!) travels in South America will take me to Bolivia so that I can see with my own eyes and report on the developments of the Morales presidency.