Mexico is Unique among the tyrannies friendly to the United States. Not only does it share a porous, 2000-mile border with the United States, but it is probably more interdependent with the United States on a host of issues — water resources, pollution, energy supplies, tourism, investment, trade, finances, migrant labor, debt, drugs, agriculture, to say nothing of politics and diplomacy — than any other country in the world. What happens in Mexico has profound implications for the United States and viceversa.

A Lesson of the Reagan years is that a workable consensus between Congress and the presidency is essential to the execution of an effective and sustainable foreign policy. In a democracy, no consensus ever will be absolute; but if there is not at least general agreement on both the goals and the means to be employed, almost any policy is likely to fail. For instance, divisiveness undermined Reagan administration designs on Nicaragua. For a policy to succeed, a workable consensus must precede any long-term commitment of US resources, troops, or prestige.

Furthermore, even if a consensus is achieved, the goals and the means employed to attain them must be realistic. The experience of US policy in Panama exemplifies this. Uniting such diverse figures as neo-conservative Reagan administration official Elliott Abrams, ultra-conservative Senator Jesse Helms, and liberal Senator John Kerry, the US objective of ousting General Noriega enjoyed extensive bipartisan support.

Colombian Politics, by 1982, were characterized by stagnation, increased levels of violence, and diminished regime legitimacy. In the face of an active, though limited, guerrilla insurgency as well as nascent labor unrest and popular protest, the successive governments of the National Front had come to depend on the coercive powers of the state to preserve public order and political stability. Colombia's peace process, initiated during the government of Conservative President Belisario Betancur (1982- 1986), was a recognition of the limits, indeed the failure, of the military solution to the maintenance of public order.

“Rarely In History has an innovation in economic and financial policy caught on as quickly in as many different countries as privatization,” trumpeted the Financial Times (1987) recently. In Europe and the United States in the 1980s, victorious conservatives led an assault on the state (both its welfare and productive arms), but the movement included more than just conservative free marketeers. Spanish socialists were privatizing, and Communist party leaders in China and the Soviet Union introduced farreaching market reforms. Privatization also became a constant theme in policy debates in the Third World, though the ratio of discussion to implementation was low except in cases such as Chile and Togo.

Long Wracked by Civil strife and turbulence which seemingly defy resolution by either political or military methods, Colombia also has suffered economic setbacks through a series of guerrilla attacks on its main petroleum pipeline. During the first half of 1988, more than 6 million barrels were lost, at an estimated cost of one-quarter billion dollars. Recognizing its inability to curb the attacks — largely the work of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) — the government in Bogotá in early June proposed construction of a new pipeline with Venezuela. According to Minister of Mines Oscar Mejia, it would carry Colombian crude across the border well to the south of ELN territory, thence to be shipped to Venezuelan seaports for export to international markets.

The Colombian Naval Corvette Caldas sailed under orders into a disputed zone of the Gulf of Venezuela on 9 August 1987 and began ordering Venezuelan fishing boats and naval craft to leave areas which the Colombian vessel declared were the territorial waters of Colombia. The Venezuelan navy responded by deploying frigates to the scene to reassert Venezuela's claim of territorial jurisdiction over the waters. A protracted naval encounter followed; Venezuelan warships crossed the prow of the Caldas and dispatched Mirage fighter aircraft to overfly it. As the confrontation proceeded, both governments appealed for calm but took steps which to many observers suggested preparations for war.