A New New World Order? U.S. Military Mission Grows in Latin America
Doyle, Kate & Isacson, Adam
The smoke has mostly cleared over the Pentagon and the wreckage of New York City's World Trade Center, yet an image of our new new world order has yet to emerge. In the wake of the terrorist...
...The heavy reliance on contractors raises serious issues of accountability and transparency...
...The administration has called on its neighbors for their unequivocal backing as the United 14NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 0 S 0 14 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON U.S...
...In a period of relative peace and democratic governance, with no immediate security threats, the United States pursued military engagement-the development and cultivation of military-to-military contacts-for its own sake, as a central foreign policy priority in the hemisphere...
...POLICY States begins to retaliate with military force...
...military assistance (in fact it is the world's numberthree recipient...
...POLICY Elsewhere in the Caribbean, controversy continues to rage over the future of the U.S...
...concern...
...intelligence assets in the past...
...The backlash against closing Vieques may be fueled by the United States' declared war on terrorism...
...3 The emphasis on enhanced intelligence gathering brings to a halt a post-Cold War assessment of the role of the CIA in Latin America, where the agency has come under attack of late due to revelations about its support for Peru's disgraced intelligence czar, Vladimiro Montesinos, its participation in the shoot-down of a private plane over the Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union-even before the September terrorist attack-security and defense interests have continued to dominate U.S...
...Meanwhile in 2000, for the first time since before the Alliance for Progress, total security assistance to Latin America actually exceeded total economic assistance (roughly $900 million versus $800 million...
...2 His words fuel mounting pressure within Congress to pass a sweeping secrecy bill that would impose severe penalties for disclosing classified material, without defining the legal limits of government secrecy...
...When the Berlin Wall fell over ten years ago, Latin Americans had reason to hope that a new world was imminent-a world in which democratic participation, economic well-being and the rule of law might finally trump the primacy of security interests...
...And even as some members of Congress aver that the country's response to the attack must preserve the essential values and freedoms that its citizens take for granted, government officials have already warned that life, as we know it, is bound to change dramatically...
...o House and Senate lawmakers expressed broad support for pouring billions of additional dollars into Amazon which killed a U.S...
...Or to affect our friends and interests in other parts of the world...
...The Bush administration continues to increase military engagement, while enthusiastically assuming stewardship of the U.S...
...Host countries have signed and ratified ten-year agreements for the sites' use...
...Mexico is to see a moderate rise in counterdrug aid, though military cooperation is still down from the levels of 1996 and 1997, when a large U.S...
...program helped create Air-Mobile Special Forces Groups (GAFEs) in Mexico's army...
...1. Transcript PBS, "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer," September 11, 2001...
...Since 1995, U.S...
...aid will increase in that regionalthough nowhere near the levels of aid to the Andes, as the Bush administration has shown no intention of changing its predecessor's "source zone" anti-drug approach...
...Even the new helicopters could be vulnerable: "We've received numerous reports that the insurgents have surface-to-air missiles," the U.S...
...U.S...
...During the Clinton years, the U.S...
...defense and security policy in the hemisphere and around the globe takes on an unpredictable and potentially ugly demeanor...
...The fall of the World Trade Center is an ominous sign that those hopes may be dashed for a long time to come...
...In much of the country, they charge, Colombia's military continues to work hand-in-glove with paramilitary death squads...
...contractor personnel and Colombia's National Police have sprayed at least 75,000 acres per year with Monsanto's "Round Up," a mixture of the herbicide glyphosate with chemicals that help the poison penetrate plants and soil...
...war against The growth of military programs along so many fronts U.S...
...As of late 2001, however, policymakers are carrying out a "formal review" to determine whether the U.S...
...The contractors, who spoke little Spanish, were unable to call the Peruvians off before they strafed the plane, killing a U.S...
...In post-war Central America, a region with few national-security threats, a robust U.S...
...Rep...
...troops and aircraft at a counter-drug "Forward Operating Location" at Manta on the Pacific coast, the United States will fund a new border-security plan as part of a two-thirds increase in military and police aid...
...The Bush administration has dubbed its 2002 aid request the "Andean Regional Initiative" because it would increase aid to six of Colombia's neighbors...
...The result is that priorities and programs in the region may increasingly be determined according to strategic, not political, criteria...
...The contractors' performance offers more reason for of many U.S...
...But the thening of trends-all expected to continue or accelerate under the armed forces...
...ven before the September terrorist attack, the level of U.S...
...Forward Operating Locations, seen as substitutes for the old Howard Air Force Base in As the Unil prepares for a terrorists, the I programs alre offer a spring further streng Latin America's Panama, are now functioning at Aruba and Curagao in the Netherlands Antilles, at the Manta airbase in Ecuador, and at the Comalapa airport in El Salvador...
...it will strengthen ties to regional armed forces accordingly...
...Indeed, ten years after the Vol XXXV, Na 3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001 15 Vol XXXV, No 3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001 15REPORT ON U.S...
...By the late 1990s, the Clinton administration had found a new regional security threat to orient its military activities: the drug trade and related instability in the Andes, especially in Colombia...
...missionary and her infant daughter and its reliance on violent military officers in the region as informants...
...military contacts in the region was at an all-time high...
...funding has created and trained a new Colombian Army counternarcotics brigade made up of three battalions (a total of The rhetori 2,250 soldiers...
...The U.S...
...Military Group from its rent-free presence in Caracas' Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters...
...Adam Isacson, a senior associate at the Center for International Policy, coordinates a program that monitors and seeks limits on U.S...
...Critics' concerns about U.S...
...2. Transcript of a Department of Defense News Briefing, September 12, 2001...
...support for abusive Latin board for a American regimes...
...counteri The battalions' mission will be to "create security conditions" for counterdrug operations in a coca-growing zone around the departments of Putumayo and Caquetd in southern Colombia...
...I The guidelines had been established by CIA director John Deutch in 1996 after a government-wide investigation revealed that paid CIA informants in the Guatemalan military were U.S...
...For Latin America, the attack will translate into an escalation of U.S...
...While the Bush administration has not publicly opposed a November 2001 referendum that will officially decide the facility's future, it has also done nothing to discourage Congressional Republicans from inserting language in the 2002 defense-budget appropriations bills that would nullify the referendum before it can take place...
...Since the incident, the U.S...
...Concerns of an arms race between this region's traditional rivals have increased with Brazil's announced intention to buy 24 fighters of its own...
...mission should remain "just narcotics, or is there some wider stake we may have in the survival of a friendly democratic government," as Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman defined it in August 2001...
...Deutch's move led to the firing of dozens of Latin American assets on the agency payroll and gave the public a glimpse of the extent to which human rights violators in the region had served as U.S...
...military may disturb many who are ady in place familiar with the history of U.S...
...Navy's bomb-testing range on the island of Vieques off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico...
...Many also point to the cold reception that the U.S...
...In Ecuador, which hosts U.S...
...it includes no new bigticket items like helicopters, since the helicopters approved last year have only begun to arrive...
...Indeed, many officials' rhetoric has recently included calls to help Colombia's government gain control of its territory, which indicates a likely tilt toward counterinsurgency...
...In July, the battalions Colombia's gc took delivery of the first of control of its fourteen UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters (at $15 million indicates a li apiece) and thirty UH-1 Huey helicopters...
...Once Congress finishes debating not whether but how much to pump up intelligence spending worldwide, the CIA will enjoy a resurgence of clandestine intelligence gathering and operational powers in the hemisphere in the name of anti-terrorism...
...decisionmakers probably have greater access to information and recommendations from Latin American officers than from the region's civilian leaders...
...Military aid levels began to rise, a trend that promises to continue under the new leadership in the White House...
...It restricts certain things the government can and cannot do...
...policy prohibiting the use of foreign assets with abusive human rights records, because "it cuts back on your ability to recruit spies inside terrorist organizations if you can't recruit people with some kind of violent past...
...For example, we have designated three groups in Colombia alone as being terrorist organizations, and we are working with the Colombian government to protect their democracy against the threat provided or presented by these terrorist organizations...
...Of all countries worldwide where war claims over 1,000 lives per year, only Colombia receives significant amounts of U.S...
...The new guidelines may be reversed as part of the anti-terrorist legislation being considered by Congress...
...Colombia's closest neighbors-Bolivia, ice...
...Most of the funding supports a strategy that officials call the "push into southern Colombia...
...Three of the thirty-one groups on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations are Colombian (See "Terror's Latin American Profile," p. 51), something that was clearly on Secretary of State Colin Powell's mind in a September 23 television interview: "Quite a few [terrorist groups] will go after our interests in the regions that they are located in and right here at home...
...4 President Gerald Ford signed the executive order in 1976 that barred the use of political assassination, responding to revelations from the 1973 Senate Church Committee hearings about the CIA's failed efforts to murder Fidel Castro...
...Work with Venezuela's National Guard will increase significantly as well...
...The legislation would directly affect the kinds of disclosures that led to the release of new information about U.S...
...national security policy...
...POLICY collapse of the Soviet Union, six years since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and one year into the twenty-first century, perhaps the biggest surprise about U.S...
...citizen and her daughter...
...Other critics worry that the aid package has dealt a severe blow to an alreadyfragile peace process...
...military readjusted its mission in Latin America away from the ColdWar fixation with anti-Communism...
...During his two terms in office, former President Clinton championed the promotion of democracy and free trade in the hemisphere, but he left behind a booming U.S...
...military presence...
...Such a provision would cast a shadow on any contact between the public, especially the media, and government officials, and would restrict the ambit of public debate on U.S...
...Senior U.S...
...Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion...
...officials have floated the possibility of reversing a decades-old ban on assassination in order to give the administration greater powers in waging its war on suspected terrorists...
...Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), who has been outspoken in her concern about a "privatized Gulf of Tonkin c n incident" in Colombia, asked a May 2001 hearing: "Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment...
...This tary, Colombian officials quoted in Bogotdi's press critely tilt toward icized MPRI's work as irrelevant and not tailored for urgency...
...policy in I f+in Amnrilr involved in kidnapping, torture and assassination...
...contractors flying the fumigation planes are among a contingent of 160-180 U.S...
...In April 2001, Aviation Development Corporation, a CIA contractor, helped the Peruvian Air Force target a planeload of missionaries as a possible drug-smuggling flight...
...This tilt will probably be substantially stronger in the wake of the September 11 tragedy in the United States...
...The Bush administration promises to continue the trend...
...links to human rights abusers in Chile, Guatemala and Peru...
...plans in Colombia go well beyond contractors, however...
...Washington's determination to fight the war on drugs through military means has translated into unprecedented levels of new military aid, training, equipment, radar and the most sophisticated weaponry available pouring into countries vulnerable to narcotics trafficking...
...The third battalion completed training by officials inclu U.S...
...Propelled by these programs, the U.S...
...As drug smuggling shifts away from Mexico and toward the Caribbean, U.S...
...Much of the aid will help security forces tighten borders with Colombia to stem a feared overflow of violence and drug-crop cultivation...
...intelligence agencies, increasing spy networks around the world and creating a new federal agency designed to fight terrorism...
...entanglement in this conflict could follow if the "push into southern Colombia" fails militarily-a possibility, since FARC guerrillas are quite strong in the new brigade's zone of operation...
...As the United States prepares for war-and terrorists come to occupy a place held earlier by Communists and drug lords-the U.S...
...citizens working as contractors in Colombia on an average day, hired by a still unknown number of companies...
...In Colombia, the request anticipates a continuation of all programs begun in 2000...
...Human-rights advocates have also voiced strong doubts about the direction of the Clinton-Bush policy toward Colombia...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18REPORT ON U.S...
...The State Department's 2002 aid request declares that military assistance to Argentina "continues our policy of supporting Argentina, as a major nonNATO ally, at a time when fiscal austerity has drastically ted States shrunk Argentine defense spending...
...pressure over security concerns at the cost of ongoing multilateral efforts to strengthen democracy, human rights, trade and development...
...policy in Latin America, with little regard for the painful lessons learned from past crises...
...defense posture at home and abroad...
...The U.S...
...The counterdrug operations these battalions will protect are mostly raids on drug-processing labs and a dramatically expanded program of aerial fumigation of coca and opium-poppy crops...
...Republicans alike are calling for massive reinforcements to the national defense and intelligence budgets...
...Democrats and Kate Doyle is a senior analyst of U.S...
...It is a turn of events wholly unforeseen and potentially disastrous for the hemisphere...
...arms-sales policies threaten to exacerbate civil-military tensions in South America's relatively wealthy "Southern Cone...
...POLICY Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at an April 2001 press conferer So far, the Bush administration has continued the Clinton administration's policy of aiding only Colombian military units with counternarcotics responsibilities...
...In Colombia, these initiatives add up to an estimated $1.28 billion in military and police aid in 2000, 2001 and 2002...
...After one company, Military Personnel Resources es calls to help International (MPRI), per- formed a yearlong, bottom-up vernment gain review of Colombia's militerritory...
...Bob Barr (R-GA) has drafted a bill designed to overturn the ban, and has found ten members in the House to co-sponsor it...
...Former CIA director, James Woolsey, went on national television on the evening of the attack arguing for a reversal of a U.S...
...The number of contract personnel exceeds 300 when non-citizens are included...
...This is just the beginning of what promises to be a profound restructuring of the U.S...
...policy in Latin America is the extent to which security and defense interests continue to dominate...
...A New New World Order...
...It did not, however, reduce its involvement in the region...
...aerial interdiction program-which links radar sites, forward-deployed U.S...
...Most troubling of all, the din of warmongering has drowned out the voices of those calling for an examination of U.S...
...strategy has received in Europe, where contributions to Plan Colombia have been much lower than Bogoti and Washington had hoped...
...Since the main threat to "security conditions" in this zone are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, the United States will be funding offensive operations against Colombian insurgents for the first time in decades, a significant new step in Colombia's rapidly worsening conflict...
...Human rights advocates warn that single-minded policies emphasizing security interests damage the ability of the United States to influence human rights and respect for the rule of law...
...Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela-will see large increases in military and police assistance in 2002...
...4. Mark Benjamin, "Assassination Ban Debated," United Press International, September 18, 2001...
...program of humanitarian military exercises helps retool armies to defend against threats posed by the weather, tectonic plates and poverty...
...relations with the militaries of this region remain quite close, particularly with Argentina...
...The U.S...
...policy in Latin America for the National Security Archive...
...military's return to El Salvador is to be accompanied in 2002 by a quadrupling of assistance to the Salvadoran security forces...
...government would not tolerate leaks of classified information...
...She lives and works in Mexico City...
...It also means that U.S...
...aircraft, and local air forces in what many have called a "you-fly-you-die" policy-has been suspended...
...Vol XXXV, No 3 NOVEMSERIDECEMBER 2001 19 0 0 0 Q 0 Vol XXXV, No 3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001 19REPORT ON U.S...
...military assistance to the Western Hemisphere...
...Although the ban remains in place to date, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared days after the attack that "There is no question that the ban does have an effect...
...U.S...
...President George W. Bush has pledged to wage war against the perpetrators of the assault, wherever and whoever they may be...
...policies that may have helped bring the country to this crisis: the policies that fuel despair, that exacerbate difference, that stall or obstruct peace...
...Military assistance and cooperation is increasing beyond the Andes as well...
...Over 55,000 U.S...
...The United States is busy upgrading three new overseas military sites...
...They include improvements to Army, Navy, Air Force and police weapons, communications and other equipment, training, logistics, intelligence, and military reform advice...
...military personnel pass through the region in a typical year, and in 1999 (the only year for which reliable figures are available) the United States trained nearly 13,000 Latin American soldiers and police...
...PostFujimori Peru will see an especially sharp increase in such aid, from a 2000-2001 average of about $50 million to nearly $90 million in 2002...
...While military engagement has been growing in the region, State Department and foreign aid budgets have fallen or stagnated...
...military presence in the region already rivals that of civilian diplomats...
...In the wake of the terrorist attack on the United States, U.S...
...Last June, the Bush State and Defense Departments (which at the time included many Clinton holdovers) submitted a 2002 aid request that would maintain and expand many of the previous administration's military pro- grams and policies in Latin America...
...military programs already in place offer a springboard for a further strengthening of the region's armed forces...
...While military-aid levels declined for a time in dollar terms, military training, exercises, and Special Forces deployments proliferated everywhere in the hemisphere except Cuba...
...Venezuelan President Hugo Chdvez has nonetheless made a point of saying "no" on occasion, barring drug surveillance aircraft from Venezuelan airspace and removing the U.S...
...While the security implications for Latin America remain uncertain, what is clear is that the United States will demand unswerving allegiance to its plans for an imminent war waged against not only the terrorist networks responsible for the international crime committed on its soil, but possibly against nations believed to harbor terrorists, finance terrorists or otherwise support terrorists...
...Chile is purchasing ten F16 C/D series fighter aircraft and other equipment from the United States for about $700 million, the largest arms sale ever to Latin America and the first high-tech weapons sale since a twenty-year policy banning such sales was lifted in 1997...
...Along with aid for counternarcotics-essentially a law-enforcement mission-the Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA) program of infrastructure-building and medical projects encourages Latin American militaries to take on internal roles that could otherwise be filled by skilled civilians...
...Such programs guarantee the region's armed forces relevant missions in an era of diminished threats, allowing them to avoid ceding power and resources to civilian leaders...
...Southern Command's chief told a House committee in 2000...
...contribution to "Plan Colombia," the $1.3 billion mostly military aid package for the Andes that the Clinton White House put into place during its final year...
...The hours and days after the attack were filled with ominous signs that the United States was prepared to tighten an array of security measures that will have repercussions for U.S...
...Special Forces in May 2001...
...And so we have to treat all of them as potentially having the capacity to affect us in a global way...
...military-an institution designed for war, not statecraft-is playing an increasing role in foreign policymaking...
...Contractors will even serve as co-pilots in the Colombian counternarcotics battalions' new helicopters...
...Bush administration-also carry risks for the way the United States relates with Latin America today...
...e During a press conference on September 12, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned repeatedly that the U.S...
...In addition to flying spray planes, the contractors work as mechanics, searchand-rescue personnel, military trainers, logistics experts, and intelligence gatherers, among other duties...
...their needs...
...3. Lizette Alvarez, "Spying Terrorists and Thwarting Them Gains New Urgency," The New York Times, September 14, 2001...
Vol. 35 • November 2001 • No. 3
