Transit countries are those through which drug shipments travel to reach local dealers and users. Drugs that come to the United States from South America pass through a six million square-mile transit zone that is approximately the size of the continental United States. This zone includes the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. strategy to deal with the cocaine problem, for example, might best be described as a series of concentric circles around the source and trafficking countries of the Andes, through (1) the surrounding countries in South America (2) the transit countries of MEXICO, Central America, and the Caribbean, to (3) the major consumer countries. Since the 1990s, the United States has similar objectives for dealing with both source and transit countries—namely, to strengthen their governments' political will and capability; to increase their effectiveness in...