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Latin
America breaks free of the US
The US has lost ground in Latin America over the past decade,
since the project to develop the Free Trade Area of the Americas
flopped and since leftwing governments took power and used it
with imagination and vigour. The US continues to try to block
such emancipation by promoting more free trade agreements, and
increasing military cooperation in the name of the war on
terrorism and narcotics and the defence of market democracy.
By Janette Habel
12/21/07 "Le
Monde diplomatique
-- -- Latin America is a lost continent according to the
editor of Foreign Policy, Moises Naim. The president of the
Inter-American Dialogue organisation, Peter Hakim, voiced the
same concern when he asked: “Is Washington losing Latin
America?” (1). Over the past decade the United States has
suffered many setbacks in this part of the world. Voters,
rejecting neo-liberal policies, have elected radical or moderate
leftwing coalitions, claiming degrees of independence. In April
2002 the attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez
failed. In 2005 the native movement brought Evo Morales to power
in Bolivia despite US State Department efforts. Though it
exerted pressure, the US was unable to prevent Daniel Ortega
from being elected in Nicaragua or Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2).
But despite growing hostility, most of the free market
groundwork is still in place. The Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA), launched by President Bill Clinton at the
Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994 to open up a huge market
from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, failed to materialise. But US
firms nevertheless invested $353bn in Latin America and the
Caribbean in 2005, with their subsidiaries employing 1.6 million
people. In 2006 US exports to the region increased by 12.7% and
imports by 10.5%, according to the US commerce secretary, Carlos
Gutierrez.
Though the FTAA failed, progress was made through bilateral and
multilateral agreements, particularly free trade accords (FTA).
The US market is a powerful asset when bargaining: “Our country
must find the strength it lacks on account of its size through
its relations with all the countries in the world, and
particularly the United States,” said the economy minister of
Uruguay, which is tempted by an FTA with the US. One consequence
would be a conflict with Mercosur, the South American common
market, which would please the US. Latin America’s elites may
see themselves as representing the centre left but they soon
yield to neo-liberal pressures.
The political content of the FTAs has gradually increased. A
further step towards integrating the whole continent was taken
in Waco, Texas, on 23 March 2005. The Security and Prosperity
Partnership of North America (SPP) is a trilateral effort by the
US, Canada and Mexico. “What is new about this agreement,” said
legal expert Guy Mazet, “is that it adds the notion of security
to the rationale of economic and trade processes, while
institutionalising the power of business and the private sector
to influence public policy” (3). The legal basis for an
agreement negotiated without consulting national parliaments is
open to question. “The private sector is using an international
agreement to exert greater influence over national policy,”
Mazet added.
The US writer Craig Van Grasstek has established that all the
Latin American countries that joined the Coalition of the
Willing in Iraq also signed up to an FTA with the US. The same
applies to those – Colombia, Ecuador before Correa’s election,
Peru, Costa Rica and Guatemala – who left the Group of Twenty
(G-20) (4). The publication by El País of the transcript of
conversations between President George Bush and Spanish Prime
Minister José Maria Aznar in February 2003 (5) revealed the
brutality of the pressure exerted by Bush on countries reluctant
to support military intervention in Iraq: “[Chilean President
Ricardo] Lagos should know that the free trade accord with Chile
is awaiting Senate confirmation and a negative attitude about
this could put ratification in danger.”
Lagos’s successor, Michelle Bachelet, favours a strategic
partnership with Washington. However, she would run the risk of
sanctions if the Chilean Congress were to ratify the treaty
establishing the International Criminal Court and refuse to
guarantee the immunity of US soldiers before this jurisdiction.
The US may suspend military aid, forcing Chile to pay the
Pentagon a lot to train its pilots to fly the F-16 fighters it
has just purchased. The US has suspended military training and
aid programmes for Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia
and Uruguay on the same grounds.
Consensual forms of domination
The collapse of the Soviet Union boosted the credibility of US
democratic rhetoric. Times have changed since Jeanne
Kirkpatrick, then working for a conservative think-tank in
Washington, criticised President Jimmy Carter for raising the
issue of civil rights. In so doing, she argued, he was
undermining non-Marxist authoritarian regimes although they were
closer to US interests. With the boom in free market reform, it
has become received wisdom that the discipline of the global
market limits the risk of regimes becoming too populist. As the
researcher William I Robinson has noted, it is possible to
penetrate civil society waving the flag of democracy, although
the aim may be to control it through consensual forms of
domination (6). Drawing on the teachings of Antonio Gramsci, US
strategists have realised that the real seat of power is civil
society, providing it can be split into groups and communities
with divergent interests.
A consensus gradually emerged within the Organisation of
American States (OAS) after 9/11 that defending democratic order
went hand in hand with the right to intervene against threats to
that order. The adoption (by acclamation) of the OAS’s
democratic charter in 2001, under the wary eye of the US defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, confirmed this trend. There is
nothing new about forcibly upholding democracy, but some on the
left are now citing the right of humanitarian interference as a
reason for endorsing the use of force.
However, the shift in the balance of power in South America has
complicated the task of the OAS – and the fact that all threats
to democracy are not treated in the same way has created
tension. At the OAS’s 37th General Assembly in Panama in June
the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, called for a
committee of inquiry to be sent to Venezuela to find out why
President Chávez’s government had not renewed the concession of
Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). The assembly rejected the
proposal, isolating Rice and obliging her to leave.
The US administration is counting on other allies to weather the
storm, in particular NGOs and foundations. The United States
Agency for International Development (USAid) plays a pivotal
role in this process, primarily through financial aid. It is
“the most appropriate tool, when diplomacy is not enough or
military force imprudent”, its administrator, Andrew Natsios,
explained to a Senate Committee in May 2001. Venezuela is a good
example of this approach, with USAid funding a wide range of
initiatives alongside other “democracy builders”. The
International Republican Institute, directed by John McCain,
currently a presidential candidate, is one of five NGOs
allocating USAid funds to opposition organisations and
programmes.
Destabilise, then overthrow
After the bid to oust Chávez in 2002, which Bush endorsed, the
State Department set up an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI)
in Caracas. One of its stated objectives is to “encourage
citizen participation in the democratic process”. It presents
non-violent resistance as the most effective method for
destabilising governments prior to their overthrow.
The campaign to defend freedom of speech in Venezuela is part of
political exploitation of separatist demands by Bolivia’s
rightwing opposition. “The racist, separatist, violent and
anti-democratic right,” according to Bolivia’s vice-president,
Alvaro García Linera, controls four provinces (Santa Cruz, Beni,
Pando, Tarija) and is holding up the work of the Constituent
Assembly. The fact that the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia
and Ecuador have taken control of their strategic resources –
oil and gas –helps explain the US attitude.
Bush has strengthened the US embargo on Cuba and the Commission
on Assistance to a Free Cuba is drafting proposals for a
peaceful transition, some of which are secret for reasons of
national security.
In 1998 the US Southern Command (Southcom), the main military
organisation in Latin America, moved from Panama to Miami.
Contacts between Southcom and governments in the region involve
the military but exclude civilians. Southcom sets the agenda for
the region unilaterally, without informing the State Department
directly. The Bush administration has sidelined development and
agricultural aid agencies, with bilateral aid down by one third
from its cold war level, and the Defence Department now handles
most development programmes in the sub-continent. This move is
far from neutral, as Congress has much less control over the
defence budget than over foreign aid. Between 1997 and 2007 the
US spent $7.3bn on military and police aid for Latin America
(7).
The Centre for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) defines the war on
terror as “a global enterprise of uncertain duration” and
“global reach”. In this asymmetric conflict the enemies are
manifold: Islamists; smugglers and narco-traffickers hiding
between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay; radical populists,
primarily in Venezuela and Bolivia; terrorist organisations such
as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) or the
National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia; social movements,
but also gangs of youths, refugees and illegal immigrants, all
of whom may be potential terrorists.
A nuclear-free zone
Southcom considers that no single foreign power threatens US
interests, the sub-continent being a nuclear-free zone with no
weapons of mass destruction. The key emerging threat, according
to Southcom’s former commander, James Hill, is “radical
populism, in which the democratic process is undermined to
decrease rather than protect individual rights.” Such populism,
embodied by Chávez, gathers strength by tapping into
“deep-seated frustrations of the failure of democratic reforms”
and by “inflaming anti-US sentiment” (8).
General Bantz J Craddock blames political instability on
“anti-US, anti-globalisation, and anti-free trade demagogues”.
The US must strengthen security forces in the region and
increase Southcom’s budget because it “cannot afford to let
Latin America and the Caribbean become a backwater of violent,
inward-looking states that are cut off from the world around
them by populist, authoritarian governments” (9).
Alongside the Pentagon’s involvement it is worth noting the
presence of US military advisors and the growing importance in
Colombia of private military companies and non-state actors,
also based in the US. These subcontractors fulfil missions that
the armed forces cannot undertake due to the limits on
engagement fixed by Congress. No such authorisation applies to
private military companies.
In September, after a plea by the families of 173 people
murdered in banana-producing areas, a Washington court found the
multinational banana company, Chiquita Brands, guilty of paying
$1.7m to a paramilitary organisation, the United Self-Defence
Forces of Colombia (AUC), to protect its plantations between
1997 and 2004. The court ordered the firm to pay a $25m fine,
but an agreement was negotiated with the US government exempting
the management from prosecution. “I am surprised that a few
million dollars can buy impunity in the US,” noted the Colombian
justice minister.
Soldiers as policemen
At the instigation of the US, Latin American armies are once
again involved in domestic policing activities. In December 2006
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon sent 7,000 soldiers to the
state of Michoacan to combat drug trafficking. The military also
intervenes in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, against
mara youth gangs all over central America, and to check
immigration on the Mexican border. There is nothing new about
military involvement in enforcing law and order. Here it comes
in response to demands for greater security in the face of
organised crime, but it goes against the trend, observed since
the end of the dictatorships, of confining the military to their
barracks. Civil rights organisations are concerned, for the
troublemakers are often native Americans, unemployed youths and
other underprivileged outcasts. Intervention by the army may
further stigmatise them, stirring fears of the “enemy within”.
It may also give the military greater political clout, recalling
sinister memories (10).
It was in this context that Bush asked Congress in October to
approve Plan Mexico to combat narco-trafficking. Its draft
budget of $1,400m will be allocated to procuring military
equipment (helicopters, intelligence gathering) and joint
training of the armies of both countries. The risks involved in
militarising the war on narcotics are apparent, particularly
with several Mexican states in serious social conflict. A $50m
budget extension is now scheduled to broaden the campaign’s
scope to include Central America. It remains to be seen how the
Democratic majority in Congress will respond.
The US has been advocating reform of the conventional role of
Latin America’s armed forces and argues that priority should be
given to regional cooperation and interoperability, whereas
during the cold war military aid was almost exclusively directed
to bilateral collaboration. Southcom aims to set up a
rapid-response force to cope with new threats. In 2006, at the
37th OAS General Assembly in Panama, Rice proposed a mutual
defence alliance to counter threats to the continent’s security,
monitoring domestic policies of member states and ensuring they
meet democratic standards. The assembly rejected the proposal,
seen as a stratagem to penalise Venezuela (11).
The US needs forces in the field and allies to endorse its
intervention, but the launch of a rapid response force seems
uncertain given the current balance of power in Latin America.
Lessons may yet be learnt from Haiti. William Leogrande has
analysed the Bush administration’s part in the downfall of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (12). He noted that although
Aristide’s mistakes contributed to his forced departure, it was
a paramilitary force, the US-backed Front for the Advancement
and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), which ousted the president in a
successful example of outside interference. It is surprising
that forces from South American countries should be taking part
in the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah) (13) despite
the continuing dispute over the coup against Aristide. The
former representative of the UN Secretary General in Haiti,
Dante Caputo, has accused the CIA of involvement (14), but in
view of the situation the US may conclude that a stabilisation
force such as Minustah could be useful for future initiatives.
Southcom has other ways of convincing reluctant allies. In 2001,
at a meeting in Santiago, Chile, OAS members adopted the
“cooperative security” concept, which fosters “transparency in
military matters” (15). Regular Defence Ministerial of the
Americas (DMA) meetings help to build trust. Army manoeuvres
with international components, joint naval exercises, training
by the US of 17,000 Latin-American military (2005 figures) and
arms sales all create ties.
The official end of the embargo on arms sales to Latin America
confirmed the Pentagon’s leadership and the importance of the
military-industrial complex, at a time when the US was already
the region’s top supplier of such equipment. The decision risks
starting an arms race. The sale of F-16 jets to Chile may prompt
other countries to modernise their air forces (16). Brazil’s
defence ministry has already announced that it will be
increasing the military investment budget by more than 50%, even
though it is on good terms with all its neighbours.
In its dealings with the US the Latin American left is in a
quandary, split between advocates of a negotiated partnership
with the constraint of limited social reforms, and those in
favour of greater political integration for whom the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas (Alba) represents the first step
(17). “Imperialism today is not the same as it was 30 years
ago,” wrote Atilio Boron (18). Leftwingers must make allowance
for these changes, while considering that the US administration
is not prepared to let them re-appropriate national resources,
scrap free trade agreements or pursue the political independence
advocated by the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
English language editorial director: Wendy Kristianasen - all
rights reserved © 1997-2007 Le Monde diplomatique
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