If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan Peninsula, that last bit of land hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible—and tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming. … So, when the United States votes $400,000,000 to help that war, we are not voting for a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurance of something that would be of the most terrible significance for the United States of America—our security, our power, and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of … Southeast Asia.—President Dwight Eisenhower, speech to Conference of Governors, 4 August 1953.

Political scientists have often referred to core decision-making groups in American politics as “policy communities” or, more popularly, as “the iron triangle.” Invariably, they are describing the interaction patterns of specialists in the executive and legislative branches of government and in the private sector who devote primary attention to the initiation and implementation of public policy in a particular issue area. In large measure the groups are depicted as having close-knit working relationships that result from frequent interaction, similarity in information sources and commonality in ideological predisposition. Perceptive observers such as Hedrick Smith, however, have pointed out that in some policy arenas there are critics who are not part of what is usually regarded as the cozy establishment network. These he has referred to as “dissident triangles” or rival networks that compete with varying degrees of success in the process.

The general public in the United States has been inundated during the 1980s and early 1990s with information about narcotics abuse, trafficking, and control. From journalists, politicians, law enforcement officials, and the medical community, the American populace ascertained that illicit drug use and trading have recently become among the nation's most intractable problems. Repeatedly, those sources reported that the consumption of cocaine, especially “crack”, had reached epidemic proportions, that drug-related violence overran the country's major cities, that youths should (according to First Lady Nancy Reagan) “just say no” to the purveyors of addictive substances, and that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had declared war on drugs. Americans learned too that only partial gains had been made against narcotics abuse and trafficking. Such a realization proved difficult for them to fathom following the 1988 presidential election campaign with its antidrug rhetoric, after the enactment by Congress of the Omnibus Drug Act of 1988 (which created a cabinet level “drug czar”—the director of the office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President), and given the stormy two-year tenure of William Bennett in that post. Of greater concern by 1991, evaluations of the nation's antinarcotics endeavors by the press, government authorities, and other informed observers indicated that the fundamental strategy of drug control was in dispute. Notwithstanding compelling arguments which insisted that the narcotics problem would continue until the domestic demand for drugs ended, federal government efforts have generally sought to eliminate foreign narcotics production and the smuggling of those substances into the United States.

The drug problem in the United States and elsewhere has historically received intermittent attention, most often when the problem has reached crisis proportions in a certain locale. In such times, one of the natural focal points of discussion has been the role that other nations play in supplying drugs. It has not been unusual for foreign states to be accused of being the source of the problem, while others have been identified, in varying degrees of culpability, as accessories. This often has created conflict, especially when an accused nation has viewed the issue differently. Under these circumstances, states have frequently attempted negotiations in hopes of reaching some sort of agreement that will accommodate all the affected parties.