Bolivia recently elected as president the indigenous socialist leader Evo Morales, who ran on a platform hostile to US policy in Latin America - especially in the area of the US "War on Drugs." Should the United States be concerned about Morales' election, and can we expect changes in US policy?

Bolivian President Evo Morales has made headlines for his election as the first indigenous president of his impoverished, Indian-majority country, his practice of wearing a modest striped sweater to meet with foreign heads of state, and his proclaimed policy of “zero cocaine, but not zero coca.”

Morales swept to his electoral victory on the strength of indigenous discontentment with the entrenched, conservative, white ruling class. He needed few specific policy prescriptions to gain victory, and his positions are consequently vague. Even the name of his party, Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), seems to hedge against substantive commitments—is this socialism, or merely a step along the way? Yet the legalization of coca has been one of Morales’ firmest promises. Indigenous Bolivians chew coca as a source of nutrients and energy to compensate for poor diet and high altitude. The crop also has a variety of commercial uses in teas, foods, and other household products; nevertheless, the export of coca for these purposes is currently foreclosed.

The question of US policy in Bolivia illuminates an important principle in the study of international affairs: the interaction between international and domestic policy. If the United States aims simply to advance its economic and geostrategic power, it should have little interest in a poor, isolated country like Bolivia. Bolivia is a US priority solely because the United States wishes to prevent cocaine from reaching its domestic market. US policy toward Bolivia depends upon a discrete, changeable, and arguably non-essential (at least compared to other forces motivating foreign policy) domestic priority.

The first weeks of Morales’ term seem to suggest, however, that US policy will not be greatly altered by his election. He has announced that he will not expel the US Drug and Enforcement Agency (DEA) personnel who, for rural indigenous Bolivians in the coca-growing Chapare region, may seem a perpetual reminder of the inescapability of the US presence. A February meeting between Morales and US Ambassador David N. Greenlee yielded an agreement to permit the eradication of “excess” coca crops, and Morales made verbal commitments to a tough stance on cocaine production and trafficking.

Indeed, Morales has proven to be something of a pragmatist so far. His public pronouncements remain fantastically unattainable: he vowed after his meeting with Greenlee to combat cocaine production without “even one death, or one injury, or one blockade of roads, or one march.” Morales has done his share of grandstanding intended for domestic political consumption, including an initial junket to Venezuela and Cuba to establish his leftist and anti-American credentials. But he has balanced such symbolic gestures with careful navigation of real policy issues, including his agreement with Greenlee and his efforts to negotiate regulated exports of commercial coca products to India.

In the final analysis, what should the United States think of Morales? This question illuminates another important principle in international affairs: the distinction between elites and mass publics. The US government is surely relieved that its Latin American drug policy—the product of extensive research, tortuous negotiations, and decades of massive financial commitments—will remain intact. Drug interdiction abroad might be described as an entrenched priority of the US government: it probably does not hinge upon the outcome of presidential elections, and it is the prerogative of a vast, institutionalized bureaucracy that will wish to defend its turf. The United States government can surely tolerate tiny Bolivia’s economic and ideological alignment with Venezuela and Cuba as long as US drug policy is largely unaffected.

Irrespective of their ideological and political affiliations, however, citizens of the United States might have reason to feel differently about the matter. A December 2005 report by the non-partisan General Accountability Office (GAO) of the US Congress challenged the Bush Administration’s contention that Plan Colombia, a five-year drug interdiction program largely focused upon eradicating coca crops in that country, had reduced the amount of cocaine available in the United States and diminished its quality. According to the GAO report, estimates of the volume of cocaine entering the country were too inconclusive to be useful, and the number of US cocaine users has remained constant. Even if one accepts that interdiction increased the domestic price of cocaine and lowered its quality, these outcomes are not obviously beneficial. If demand for an addictive substance like cocaine is inelastic (insensitive to changes in price), then a higher street price may have little effect upon total consumption while encouraging cocaine dealing by making it more profitable. A decrease in quality might simply make the product more dangerous.

Strangely, President Morales’ pragmatic reluctance to boot the War on Drugs from Bolivia might be a missed opportunity to change the course of a questionable US policy. The law of unintended consequences, too, is an important principle of international affairs.