ABSTRACT
Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative were striking examples of the ratcheting up of US foreign drug control policy. Key representatives of a transnational elite based in Colombia and the USA actively promoted a militarized drug-war policy that would deepen Colombia's integration into capitalist globalization. The profitable drug trade and the centrality of Mexican traffickers in shipping illegal drugs produced in Mexico and Colombia across the US–Mexican border contributed to increasing levels of violence in the years leading to the election of Felipe Calderon in 2006. Within both the Bill Clinton and Bush administration key state managers involved in advancing US foreign drug policies enjoyed important links to transnational corporations and/or corporate dominated policymaking groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the Woodrow Wilson Center. They were individuals closely interconnected with the leading social forces in this period of accelerating capitalist globalization and included key foreign policymakers.
