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Another drug war has begun in Latin America. The newly elected president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has declared a state of emergency and the military is being used to tackle violence and drug trafficking in a country that is part of the transnational cocaine smuggling trade. Ecuador will probably realise what other countries in Latin America have done: military solutions to the illicit drug problem do not work. For decades, the Colombian government has confronted powerful drug cartels and drug-related violence with a policy guided by a series of UN treaties that prohibit drugs and oblige governments to prosecute recreational drug use and production. These treaties are known as the “drug prohibition regime”. Under the mantle of these treaties, the US has pushed Latin American governments to implement tough laws on drug use, and crackdown on drug cartels in an attempt to tackle drug trafficking and drug addiction. Governments, such as Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras, have used their armies against drug cartels since the 1980s. However, the use of the military in the region, with operations supported by the US Drug and Enforcement Agency, has not prevented an increase in violence in the region. In the case of Mexico, researchers have found a relationship between the deployment of the military in anti-drug operations and the rise of homicides since 2007. Moreover, drug addiction has not reduced in the US (one expected outcome of the “war on drugs”). Nowadays, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world. According to the 2023 report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 34% of the homicides on the planet during 2021 happened in the Americas. Many of these homicides relate to the global war on drugs. Some Latin American administrations have started to push back against policies that make drugs illegal. For example, Bolivia legalised indigenous production of coca crops in 2011. Uruguay and Jamaica legalised some purchases of cannabis in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Mexico and Colombia are discussing cannabis regulation. Some of these governments, including Colombia, Mexico and Bolivia, tried to put forward a plan for a new global approach to drug use in 2016 at a UN general assembly special meeting but proponents of this failed to convince other countries to allow all types of drug decriminalisation. However, the assembly did reach an agreement to allow countries to regulate the medical uses of some previously illegal drugs such as cannabis. Now, these countries led by Colombian president Gustavo Petro will call for a new UN meeting to try to get more support for a new approach to the “war on drugs”. Colombia’s role Since the early 1960s, Colombia has been the epicentre of the global war on drugs. Infamously known as the centre of production of cocaine trafficked by regional criminal organisations, this country is experimenting with a peace process on two fronts: first, with the guerrillas, and second, with the drug cartels. Petro was elected with the promise to reduce the endless problem of violence. In September 2023, Petro asked his Mexican counterpart, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to help convene a new UN meeting to overhaul the international approach to illegal drugs. Petro was also responding to pressure from global research showing the existing policy was not working. For example, public health experts in The Lancet have argued that making drugs illegal has failed to stem drug use. There is a longstanding debate about whether proposing the end of drug prohibition – and the war on drugs as a consequence – will stop violence and reduce harmful addiction. From 2011, a group of former world leaders and intellectuals (such as former presidents of Mexico and Colombia, César Gaviria, Juan Manuel Santos and Ernesto Zedillo) have pushed for the end of drug prohibition. The data seems to back up their claims that prosecuting drug consumption and production is not reducing addiction. According to the Global Burden of Disease Data, from the Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation, since the late 1990s, the number of drug users with drug dependence has increased from 40 to 50 million users yearly around the world, despite the “war on drugs”. But Petro faces an uphill battle to gather support to challenge the drug prohibition regime. In September 2023 Latin American governments signed the Cali declaration, calling for a UN assembly on the global drug problem to be held in 2025, one year before Petro’s presidency ends. But the US, which is experiencing a fentanyl opioid epidemic, is not likely to be positive about making more drugs legal. US president Joe Biden is less prone to tackle drug policy with police prosecution and his approach includes alternatives such as treating addicts in health clinics instead of incarceration. If in November Donald Trump wins the presidential election, drug policy is likely to be more militarised than ever. The former president explored using US military force in Mexico to tackle fentanyl smuggling through Mexico. López Obrador helped to organise the September 2023 Cali conference, but domestically he is not pursuing drug legalisation policies. He has deployed the Mexican military to reinforce drug confiscation of fentanyl after pressure from the US government. Petro might find an ally in Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. The new Argentinian president has declared he favours drug legalisation, inspired by his libertarian position. However, Argentina is facing increasing crime rates in some regions and this security challenge might dissuade him from pursing drug legalisation. Beyond the Americas, some European countries might back the initiative, such as Portugal which decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2001. There, possession results in confiscation or a fine, but not imprisonment. If political factors align, Petro might edge forward with his plans to tackle the global war on drugs differently. However, international tensions and the recent war in Ecuador have complicated the scenario. Hopefully, scientific evidence may force countries to consider new options.

A wave of violence, neoliberalism and drug trafficking Ecuador has been grappling with a profound crisis marked by heightened insecurity, exacerbated by the implementation of neoliberal policies and widespread impoverishment over the past few years. The looming threat of a quasi-permanent state of conflict, at least until the upcoming elections, coupled with a concerning trend towards creeping authoritarianism, while not yet institutionalized, casts a shadow over the current state of affairs. “By associating the presentation of meat to a dog with a bell sound for a certain number of times, eventually the bell sound alone will determine salivation in the dog.” - Pavlov's experiment There is much neuropolitics in the unraveling of the most recent events in Ecuador, with the worsening internal crisis and the draconian responses decided by President Daniel Noboa. There is the neuropolitics of terror, there is neuropolitics in the performance anxiety of a newly elected president who is confronted with a situation, already clear from the outset, that threatens to undermine his eventual future election. And there is much psychopolitics in a country that cannot shake off its visceral hatred of the years of the "Revolucion Ciudadana" on the one hand or its unconditional love for its father Rafael Correa on the other. And who inevitably falls back "like Pavlov's dog," into electoral choices that favor the country's economic elites in the belief that they are choosing the lesser evil. And there is a country exhausted by impoverishment, marginalization, viral weakening of the state apparatuses. And on the other side, again, overseas, there is a kind of Pavlovian reflex that a civil war, or a coup, is going on in Ecuador today. A hell on Earth, in short. A Pavlovian reflex that seems to hide a sort of latent "Orientalism" that still permeates the reading of events on this continent on the other side of the ocean. It will therefore be necessary to use the classic Occam's razor, to try to debunk the facts, news, and interpretations and get to the grain of things. The grain of things is so called. Ecuador has been experiencing for some years now an overt situation of increasing insecurity brought about by the penetration of as many as 22 drug trafficking gangs (Colombian, or affiliated with the Mexican cartels of Jalisco - Nueva Generación and Sinaloa, assisted by Albanian gangs present on the country's coast, which also suggests connections with the Calabrian "ndrangheta") mostly in the coastal regions. The homicide rate is among the highest in Latin America. Regions such as Esmeraldas - with an overwhelming majority of Afro population, which has always been marginalized and impoverished, or Guayas, in one way or another, are fertile or strategically relevant terrain for cocaine routes. The former due to the great availability of cheap "labor," "gatilleros" they call them, notably suburban boys left to their own devices, victims of a historical fate that marginalizes them, who for a fistful of dollars receive a gun and simply pull the trigger. Or they go to extort bribes, "vaccinations," from traders or families. The latter for the important port of Guayaquil, territory to be controlled to export drugs to the United States and Europe, often inside banana containers, as happened in a recent large seizure at the port of Gioia Tauro, Calabria, Italy. The penetration of narcos gangs into Ecuador undergoes a paradoxical acceleration with the peace process in Colombia when border areas "controlled" by the FARC are abandoned and left prey to new paramilitary formations or the coca-producing gangs. Ecuador thus finds itself between two producing regions such as Colombia and Peru, with porous borders, small and large ports from which to ship cargoes, a social fabric torn apart by years and years of neoliberal policies, an economy centered almost exclusively on an extractivist model that leaves large swaths of the population impoverished (and which is, after all, the "good" face of that of the narco-economies), a society ridden with enormous inequalities, first and foremost in urban areas, informal labor markets, and rampant corruption in state apparatuses. A dollarized economy that also makes money laundering easier, and further backed up by widespread illegal gold mining. What better combination for the narco-traffickers to make it the place for processing and shipping their goods? There is a strong correlation between the application of the IMF's neoliberal "shock doctrine," and its social, political and economic consequences, and the spread of organized crime. A correlation that calls for a indepth analysis of the root causes causes of what can be considered a "polycrisis" that runs through the small Andean country, certainly not used to situations such as that experienced in the past in Colombia or currently in Mexico. A polycrisis that is evident by analyzing in filigree the events of the last six months. Let us rewind the tape to August of last year. Riots have been igniting in prisons for some time. Gang clashes, often aided by the connivance of prison authorities (how else would one explain the presence of weapons and explosives used in the riots?) rage with unprecedented brutality. The prison problem stems from widespread pan-penalism in state apparatuses and an essentially punitive and deeply patriarchal view of retribution, and one that has disproportionately increased the type of crimes for which people go to jail (even for driving without a license). And by the construction in 2014 of three maximum security prisons in which narcos are locked up, creating the conditions for their transformation into command centers and theaters of internal wars among them. The presidential election campaign, convened prematurely following then-President Lasso's decision to dissolve parliament recurring to the mechanism of "muerte cruzada" and go to the polls to avoid impeachment proceedings for corruption, is actually dominated by the issue of security. Close to the opening of the polls, there comes the knockout blow that will determine the election outcome. First the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a champion of the fight against corruption, killed in Quito at a campaign event, few weeks after Augustin Intriago, the mayor of Manta, another port city, a territory in the hands of gangs like others on the coast. In the days that followed, the hitherto minor figure of the coastal candidate, an expression of local and national oligarchies - the same ones that had supported Lasso at the time - emerged in the polls. A young man unknown to most, a sort of electora underdog, Daniel Noboa, son of "Alvarito" great tycoon of the banana industry, a permanent candidate for president, and grandson of Isabel a Guayaquil’s wealthiest real estate entrepreneur. In the runoff Noboa wins against the Revolucion Ciudadana candidate, Luisa Gonzales, and immediately makes of security his priority. He faces a very complex scenario. A Congress in which on paper it does not enjoy a majority (although it will later vote by a majority for the first economic measures and the state of internal armed conflict also by virtue of a pact with important sectors of the oppositions), the overwhelming majority of territories controlled by opposition parties (Revolucion Ciudadana and Pachakutik, the reference party of the powerful CONAIE, Confederation of Indigenous Organizations of Ecuador). In the background is the important victory in the national referendum against oil extraction in the Yasuni, which foreshadows the existence of a social and ecological movement far stronger than electoral numbers. In short, Noboa appears from the outset to be a kind of lame duck who will experience a situation, to return to the neuropolitics mentioned above, of a real post-electoral stress disorder, squeezed between the urgency of giving strong and impactful signals to counter organized crime and that of responding in the short time of his term (new elections are due for mid 2025), to the interests of the lobbies to which he refers. Tertium non datur, even if that tertium is represented by the overwhelming majority of the country, already affected by the pandemic. And it is precisely there, in that "tertium," "from below," Uruguayan sociologist Raul Zibechi would say, that decision makers should start to reconstruct a plausible hypothesis of a country capable of another future. It is that tertium to which the country's resources should be devoted, young people and adolescents left alone and in the grip of criminal gangs, with fathers and mothers migrating out of desperation, crossing the Isthmus of Darien on foot to try to get to the United States. So even before he takes office, Noboa finds himself making some pre-government reshuffles, launches a security plan, "Phoenix," then decides to get the inconvenient vice president, a great Vox sympathizer, out of the way by sending her to Israel with the assignment of "special envoy" for peace. And he gets to work. A few weeks go by and the "Metastasis" scandal explodes, proof of how far the narcos have managed to penetrate the judicial sector, squeezed between corruption and death threats. In the meantime, the president begins to set his economic agenda by presenting laws aimed mainly at flexibilizing the labor market, creating free-trade, tax-free zones that coincide with the large estates and plantations of the agribusiness tycoons, announcing the removal of fuel subsidies, the main detonant of last year's indigenous uprising, brutally suppressed by the Lasso government. A "ley economica" that would create great resistance in the country, and which responds, along with the others, to the need to secure support from the International Monetary Fund. In parallel, funds to local authorities are reduced, the security department under his direct command is even closed. A tax "amnesty" for the highest incomes is announced. Cases of corruption in the security apparatus follow one another. Noboa prepares a package of legislative proposals and amendments to the Constitution that would allow the police and army to have a free hand and enjoy total immunity, which in fact is already the case thanks to the decrees issued by Lasso, who several times resorted, in vain, to the state of emergency. Nothing new then. He then attempts the popular plebiscite card a few months before the new election deadline. To the first 11 referendum questions announced, it then adds others, even including issues that only partly have to do with the issue of security. These include the opening of casinos, or measures to ease foreign direct investments. Proposals that a leading constitutionalist and former member of the Constitutional Court, Ramiro Avila Santamaria, defined as unconstitutional or unfounded. The decision is now up to the Court. Then comes the sensational news of the escape from prison in Guayaquil of one of the leaders of the Choneros gang, alias "Fito," allegedly occurring as early as Christmas, and of another leader of the "Lobos" apparently implicated in the murder of Villavicencio. A severe blow to the government's credibility to which Noboa responds with yet another declaration of a state of emergency, resulting in a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., a decision to have the army assist the police in public order operations, and the restriction of the right of assembly and the inviolability of the home. The narcos' response is immediate: new riots in prisons, attacks on some police stations, and the "raid" - the details of which have yet to be fully clarified - of a commando breaking into a live broadcast of a Guayaquil television station. A blow to the heart of his main electorate. Fact of the matter is that within a handful of hours of the blitz a new decree is issued in which the President - for the first time in the country's history - declares a state of internal armed conflict, that would be fought by the army, and recognizing the 22 gangs as "belligerent" parties. The crisis thus shifts from being a matter of public order to one of actual war, governed by international humanitarian law, such as the Geneva convention. Upon the announcement of the measure, the country goes into panic. Classes are suspended and will remain in online modality for several days, the evacuation of public buildings is ordered, and contingents of soldiers are dispatched to guard sensitive targets. The president locks himself up in the Carondelet Palace with senior state officials to decide what to do. After a few hours, military big brass in full uniform appear in front of the cameras, explaining the situation to the country and giving the line. A coup? There goes the first Pavlovian reflex. And yet no, Decree 111 declaring a state of "internal armed conflict" is overwhelmingly approved by Congress, even by the leftist opposition parties that had from the outset given declaration in favor of national unity. Indeed the main concern is that of not appearing as those who throw up their hands in the face of organized crime, a tasty opportunity for opposing parties in the upcoming 2025 presidential and parliamentary elections. A civil war? Not even, since we are not faced with organizations structured in paramilitary form, nor are we faced with an armed conflict on a national scale, but rather with public order operations "with boots on the ground" in well-defined territories. The declaration of war is in fact a media coup for effect to create the conditions for a "national unity" and "war", in which a clear distribution of tasks is emerging. On the one hand, the military, which from now on takes command of public order operations, with the police at their service (something that creates quite many frictions) and which can thus reaffirm their role and their credibility before the people. It must be said that the presence of the military in the streets is - at least in the capital Quito - very sporadic, the effect appears to be mostly symbolic. On the contrary the situation is pretty different in prisons where the military can now intervene freely to suppress riots and free that hundred hostages still in the hands of the rioters. Or when launching raids or searches in the "hot" outskirts of crime-ridden cities. However, even in the symbolic also lurks the risk of a pervasive "securitization" of public space, resulting in the inhibition of every possible form of dissent or social conflict. Noboa was quick to declare that even those who do not take action against gangs, (by extension one could also interpret those who oppose his policies) could be considered "the enemy." And then, in that public space now controlled by the military, there is a clear risk that the real victims of repression will end up being those marginal and marginalized classes, guilty only of being such, or of having dark skin. The precedent of "false positives" in Colombia comes to mind, where the military, in order to demonstrate the success of their operations, displayed to the public corpses of poor people in guerrilla uniforms. The military thus takes over – de facto - the public space determining by default the direction in which the country will go. In parallel, the private space is taken care of by the president with new decree-laws presented invoking the need to raise funds for internal warfare, from raising VAT to 15 percent, to the liberalization of the energy sector, the rejection of the result of the public consultation on Yasuni in order to continue drilling to generate funds to support the “war”, to policies aimed at attracting foreign capital. In the background are two agreements on cooperation in the military and security sector with the United States signed months ago by Lasso providing for the albeit temporary presence of the military on the national territory. They are in a hurry in Washington, with the specter of Trumpian “America First” isolationism looming. No surprise that the Ecuadorean Constitutional Court ruled that no approval by Congress is required. Then the free trade agreement with China, so far stalled by Congress, is due to go into effect soon. What about what exists and lives between public and private space? Movements? Civil society organizations? Theirs are the only expressions of criticism and dissent. CONAIE declares solidarity with the victims of the conflict, urges communities to organize indigenous guards to protect their territories (so far almost untouched by narco violence) and warns the government not to use the pretext of war to impose anti-popular measures. Its Amazonian organizations have recently taken to the streets to protest the construction of one of the two “Bukele-model” megaprisons in the Pastaza province. Environmental and indigenous movements are now denouncing Noboas’ decision against the ITT Yasuni’s decision. On the other hand, human rights organizations point the finger at the inappropriateness of the use of the military instrument, and the possible serious effects on human rights. The risks to the millions of Ecuadorians and Ecuadoreans working in informal economies or on temporary contracts are also stressed, as well as how the state of exception may increase cases of intra-family and gender-based violence. The rest is still a work in progress. The risk of a sort of permanent state of war that will characterize the country and the public debate at least until the next elections is just around the corner together with a creeping authoritarianism, certainly not at the institutional level, but surely in the state of affairs. Although the decrees of emergency and state of internal armed conflict have a duration of two months, it is highly unlikely that in that time the state will be able to declare victory. Since when you declare a war you must also be clear about when you are going to win it. Which at the moment is very vague and indefinite. Will it be when all Colombian or Venezuelan criminals are deported? Which is very difficult since the Constitution recognizes the human right to free mobility. Or when will they all be put in jail? Or when they will all be "shot down"? (numbers range from 30 to 50 thousand gang members), according to the term used by the mainstream press. This article was published originally in the Transnational Institute under the Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 licence

Now with 11 members, BRICS’ decision-making by consensus will be that much more difficultOnce upon a time, the BRICS were nothing but a slogan devised by Goldman Sachs’ economists to describe four emerging market economies to which South Africa was later added. But more than a decade later, the grouping, now with an investment bank—New Development Bank—of its own is besieged by dozens of countries of the Global South for membership.The Johannesburg summit of BRICS has drawn unusual interest around the world. There was a time when it barely merited a mention in the western press, but now it has been the subject of major stories, in which some saw BRICS as brittle whiel others thought it was  seeking to challenge the G7 and the western world through a process of enlargement. While the BRICS puts itself forward as a unified face of the emerging economic powers, the reality is that within the organisation—which  is neither a trade nor military bloc—there is considerable jostling between two Asian powers who are developing a global imprint—India and China.BRICS expansion announced in JohannesburgOne of the issues where this jostling played out in was the BRICS expansion process. Reportedly, 40 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, though some 22 nations had formally expressed interest in joining the bloc. With the latest expansion, Iran, Egypt, Argentina, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been offered membership effective 1 January 2024. That there was a bit of lobbying is evident from the fact that  last week, President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran spoke on the phone with Prime Minister Modi. According to the official spokesman, they talked about “regional and bilateral matters” as well as issues like the expansion of BRICS. The two leaders later met in Johannesburg as well.There was some doubt at the beginning of the summit as to whether expansion would actually be announced. This was because of the intense negotiations over the names of the proposed members.Earlier this month, an Indian official spokesman had clarified that India believed that BRICS expansion should take place through “full consultation and consensus” among members of the bloc. In his speech at the summit, the Prime Minister made it clear that “India fully supports the expansion of the BRICS membership. And welcomes moving forward with consensus in this.” On Thursday, too, there were reports that there were “eleventh hour negotiations” over the potential new members. Reuters claimed that an agreement had meant to be adopted on Wednesday, but it was delayed by India’s introduction of new criteria for membership. On Tuesday President Lula of Brazil had made it clear that his country was did not want to be any kind of “a counterpoint to G7, G20 or the United States. We just want to organise ourselves.”In an organisation that acts through consensus, getting in is difficult, but global politics is about give and take and a certain degree of persuasion and arm twisting does go on. So does the notion of giving a push to countries who you see eye to eye with and blocking countries that you don’t. Sometimes the negotiation involves two powerful players splitting the difference and negotiating the entry of countries in such a way that a balance of sorts is maintained. This is the way India became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation dominated by China. India’s case was pushed by Russia to balance China, and Beijing finally agreed to have India, if Pakistan, its “iron” friend, could become a member at the same time.Another element in such organisations is that countries seek membership not just to further their interests but to block the ambitions of others. In this way, China sought and became a member of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) arrangement and once in there, it has used its vote to block efforts by the United States (US) to shape APEC into an Asia Pacific Economic Community in the manner of the European Economic Community that finally gave rise to the European Union.India has been reportedly joined by Brazil in resisting the haste and suggesting that new members may first be given the status of observers. The Indian position has been that while it was all for expansion, there was need to develop and standardise mechanisms to consider the applications and move on them.As of now, BRICS is more of a symbol than a unified and purposive entity. True, it has members like China and India who wield substantial power in their respective regions, but the entity itself hardly functions as an economic bloc of any kind. It does have the New Development Bank headquartered in Shanghai, which, in 2021, sharply stepped up its disbursements to US$7.6 billion, with its total disbursements being of the order of US$32 billion for infrastructure and sustainable development in four continents . The initial subscribed capital of the bank is equally distributed among the BRICS members.China’s role in and vision for BRICSBeijing, no doubt views BRICS as a means of offsetting US global power. In a page 2 commentary in the People’s Daily by someone with the nom de plume  “Huanyu Ping,” said that currently the world governance system was “at a historical turning point”. The growth of the emerging market and developing countries has enhanced their influence. But the western-dominated global order was a “stumbling block to world economic development and social progress.” The multilateralist BRICS was therefore providing a model for decisions to be made on the basis of equality and consensus, as testified by the share-holding of the New Development Bank. They also actively promoted reform of the global governance system and upheld the validity of multilateral and multipolar solutions.There should be no doubt about the weightage China has within BRICS. It has a GDP more than twice the size of the other members combined. Its economy may have slowed down but it is still growing, with IMF predicting a 5.2 per cent growth as against 5.9 for India. The others are growing at less than 1 per cent.  It has played a significant role in getting together two of the new incoming members, Saudi Arabia and Iran. In 2022, China was the largest trading partner of South Africa, India and Brazil.There should be little doubt that China sees Africa as a battleground in the global struggle against the US. In a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday, President Xi spoke of the urgent need for China to promote cooperation with Africa because of “changes and chaos” in the world, an indirect allusion to the US. He took up the theme in the Business Forum meeting that he did not attend, but where his speech was read out: “Right now, changes in the world, in our times, and in history are unfolding in ways like never before, bringing human society to a critical juncture.”China may swear by multilateralism, but it is not really comfortable with it. What it is seeking to do is to shape institutions like BRICS in its own image for countering its principal rival, the United States of America. In this, it is unlikely to get Indian support, so what it is trying to do is to pack its membership with countries where it has already made significant investments through its Belt & Road Initiative. Such countries would be inclined to follow its global agenda, which is now manifesting itself as the Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative.The Chinese aim, according to James Kynge in the Financial Times is two-fold. The first is to ensure that large parts of the world remain open to Chinese investment and trade in an environment where western attitudes are increasingly hardening. And the second is to have a bloc of votes in multilateral forums like the United Nations (UN) to project Chinese influence.In the turbulent world, China’s path is not an easy one. Its economy is slowing down and its global security calculations have been roiled by the Russian adventure in Ukraine. Further, in promoting the Global South it runs up against India which has its own ambitions, as well as the backing of the west. Even while promoting the UN and its institutions, China is not interested in any serious reform there because that could result in a bigger role for its adversaries like Japan and India.Done increases with the expansion of its membership. Now, with 11 members, things will be that much more difficult. The BRICS countries have economies and geopolitical profiles that are hugely divergent, and which makes consensus-based decision-making hugely difficult.