Closing the "Seams": U.S. Security Policy in the Americas
Isacson, Adam
LOOKING AROUND LATIN AMERICA TODAY, one could be reasonably encouraged by he regional security picture. Beyond Colombia and the remnants of Peru's Shining Path insurgency, there are no civil...
...As the Southern Command's Gen...
...But for the most part, dealing with these phenomena has not required military skills as much as good police investigative work to root out clandestine networks...
...Beyond Colombia, though, terrorists are rather scarce in Latin America, and terrorists who threaten U.S...
...This is especially the case with El Salvador, where Foreign Military Financing grants are expected to increase from $5 million in 2004 to $13 million in 2006...
...The number of trainees from outside Colombia has also seen relatively moderate growth, from 8,797 in 2001 to 9,884 in 2003...
...officials' claims that "radical populists" are an "emerging threat...
...military assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean...
...Mexico may be seeing an increase in U.S...
...security planners come to define "radical populism" as a security threat, it is reasonable to be concerned that its containment or reversal could become a guiding goal for U.S...
...officials have come up with a creative new label, "radical populism," to portray Chavez as a security threat...
...BRINGING THE RULE OF LAW AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES to historically neglected zones is not necessarily a military mission-unless, of course, dangerous armed groups are entrenched in these areas...
...security planners is on closing "seams" in security structures...
...involvement in Colombia's conflict may come to mind...
...in January 2005, U.S...
...After the Cold War ended, many countries, vowing "never again," sought to diminish both the size and the role of their armed forces...
...This has since made it difficult to express genuine concerns about some of the Venezuelan leader's autocratic tendencies...
...debate too often ignores the fact that the threats being envisioned rarely require a military response...
...The United States slowed this progress, however, by stepping in with a new internal role to guide its military aid to the region: the "War on Drugs...
...Instead, the emphasis of U.S...
...Colombia is beyond this incipiency...
...security assistance policy comes to regard national militaries as a counterbalance to elected populists, we run the very real danger of returning to a time when the region's armed forces assumed the extremely political role of deciding when civilian leaders had overstepped their constitutional bounds...
...funds have paid for a Colombian army commando battalion charged with hunting down guerrilla leaders...
...For instance, this document tells us, "U.S...
...The regional economy is no longer in a tailspin, and some countries are even seeing poverty rates decline...
...Closing the "Seams": U.S...
...Outside of Colombia and its border zones, armed movements have not emerged, and the terrorist threat to the United States cannot be described as immediate...
...While social upheavals have occurred, they have most often been resolved constitutionally...
...Counterterrorism-really, counterinsurgency-is already the principal declared purpose of U.S...
...When employed so loosely, the term "terrorist" not only loses its usefulness as a way to describe some real threats, it risks becoming a pretext for action against internal opponents who do not even commit violence or work outside the system...
...Nonetheless, the U.S...
...This offensive requires significant logistical support, intelligence and advising from U.S...
...Effective sovereignty" has not yet led to an increase in military assistance to the region...
...Hill told Congress, "Traditional threats are now complemented by an emerging threat best described as radical populism...
...Are Mapuches who damaged plantation property to press for land claims terrorists, as Chilean prosecutors have argued...
...citizen contractor presence (to 600...
...Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, providing assistance to Islamic radicals from the Middle East and other terrorists, say senior U.S...
...In the spring of 2004, the Southern Command's Gen...
...They call for helping the region's security forces to operate in ungoverned spaces, encouraging a blurring of the "seam" between military and police roles...
...Concern about ungovernedd spaces" recurs often in U.S...
...Are Honduran peasants who stage road blockages to stop over-logging terrorists, as some in Honduras claim...
...soil are scarcer still...
...Hill testified, is "overlaid upon states in the region that are generally marked by weak institutions and struggling economies...
...It also got a 50% increase in the U.S...
...Defense planners see terrorists potentially thriving in geographical gaps between countries or governed spaces, and in the functional gaps between the roles of militaries and the missions of police forces...
...James Hill similarly warned Congress: "Terrorists throughout the Southern Command area of responsibility bomb, murder, kidnap, traffic drugs, transfer arms, launder money and smuggle humans...
...Terrorists, drug traffickers, hostage takers and criminal gangs form an antisocial combination that increasingly seeks to destabilize civil societies...
...or the chance that terrorists could enter the United States via routes used for illegal immigration...
...A more important obstacle to "effective sovereignty" is a lack of regional enthusiasm for the concept...
...citizens on U.S...
...government's case against Latin American governments that have poor relations with Washington...
...In blatant violation of the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States, it rushed to recognize a government that briefly deposed Chavez during the April 2002 coup attempt...
...More than five years into Plan Colombia, with $4 billion appropriated (80% of it for Colombia's security forces), the U.S...
...When Colombian President Alvaro Uribe calls human rights groups "defenders of terrorism" in a speech before a military audience, is he engaging in rhetorical exaggeration or a veiled threat...
...Anyone concerned about human rights, democracy and healthy civil-military relations in the Americas must be extra-vigilant during this moment of Washington's preoccupation with "seams," "ungoverned spaces" and "radical populists...
...Ambassador to Colombia William Wood demanded "clarity" from Chavez regarding his relationship to the FARC...
...13NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT: THE WAR ON TERROR In a region with the world's highest levels of economic inequality, the result is that militaries have historically made some citizens more secure than others, while too often targeting those working peacefully on behalf of the have-nots...
...government is carrying out a host of activities that would have been unthinkable back in 2000 when the Clinton Administration promised that its new aid package would not cross the line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency For two years now, a $100 million-plus program has sought to help the Colombian Army defend an oil pipeline partly owned by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum...
...Possible exceptions may include some Hezbollah and Hamas fundraising activities...
...Elected leftists in other countries-Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay-do not yet appear to qualify, though the Administration's attitude could change if these leaders should run afoul of U.S...
...They watch, they probe, looking for areas of vulnerability, for weaknesses, and for seams in our collective security arrangements that they can try to exploit...
...News & World Report.1 Bush Administration representatives have increasingly sought to link Chavez to Colombian guerrillas...
...Security Policy in the Americas 1. Linda Robinson, "Terror Close to Home," U.S News & World Report, October 6, 2003...
...The 2006 aid High Mountain request includes $5 million to battalion in 200t...
...There is still time to mobilize non-military resources to make "ungoverned spaces" inhospitable to terrorists...
...ONLY FOUR LATIN AMERICAN ARMED GROUPS IN TWO countries (Colombia's FARC and ELN guerrillas and the AUC paramilitaries, and Peru's Shining Path guerrillas) are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations...
...military assistance to Latin America...
...But the imperatives of the Bush Administration's "global war" are beginning to manifest themselves through a still-incipient set of exercises, aid programs, policy initiatives and proposed doctrinal shifts...
...Adam Isacson has worked since 1995 at the Center for International Policy, an independent research and advocacy organization in Washington D.C...
...In a part of the world with few external threats-Latin American countries have fought relatively few wars against each other-armed forces have tended to look inward to find their reason for being...
...The request for Bolivia "also includes equipment and training for the Bolivian Army's new Counterterrorism Unit...
...to reinforce their radical positions by inflaming anti-U.S...
...Cuba, for instance, is one of seven countries on the State Department's list of "terrorist-sponsoring states," despite abundant evidence that it has long since abandoned any such practices...
...Anti-Terrorist Assistance programs brought Argentine officials to the United States for valuable counterterrorism briefings and training...
...In the Dominican Republic, "FMF [Foreign Military Financing] will train Dominican forces capable of responding to terrorist threats...
...Over the past century, the region's militaries have needed little prodding to focus on perceived threats within their own borders...
...Nonetheless, the word "terrorism" appears as a justification for military aid in 16 of the Western Hemisphere country narratives in the State Department's 2005 congressional presentation document for foreign aid programs...
...Instead, U.S...
...This was evident in the November 2004 meeting of the hemisphere's defense ministers, at which Donald Rumsfeld's vague calls for "a new regional defense architecture" were largely rebuffed by governments who clearly do not share the Bush Administration's perception of imminent threats rooted in ungoverned spaces, and who are unwilling to give police roles to their militaries...
...troops 14 who may be in Colombia at a time...
...While there is discussion in Washington of doing more to help the region's security forces to fight gangs, no concrete proposals-whether for military or police aid-have yet been adopted...
...In its worldwide search for terrorists and other "new" transnational threats, Washington is once again encouraging Latin America and the Caribbean to arm, enlarge and reorient security forces to combat internal enemies...
...The Bush Administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has characterized Chavez as a "negative force in the region," and has placed Venezuela near the top of its list of security threats in the Americas...
...Evo Morales, the coca growers' union leader-turned-head of Bolivia's main opposition Hugo Chhvez and Evo Morales are two presumed targets of U.S...
...officials' discussions of hemispheric security threats...
...Z 0 z rr I 0 z Some leaders in the region are tapping into deep-seated frustrations...
...government, however, takes a much darker view...
...Victims numbered in the thousands...
...The United States is also heavily supporting Plan Patriota (Patriot Plan), a massive, year-old military offensive in the guerrilla jungle strongholds of southern Colombia...
...For U.S...
...The spread of radical populism, Gen...
...He coordinates a program that monitors security and U.S...
...aid to Colombia...
...Instead of changing the region's "security architecture," the U.S...
...Good progress has been made, but much work remains to better secure our region," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a gathering of the hemisphere's defense ministers in Quito in November...
...There is little new about this...
...During the past century, and especially during the Cold War, the definition of "internal enemy" came to include labor and campesino leaders, opposition politicians, human rights defenders, journalists, authors and leftist intellectuals...
...Ecuador and Panama have received aid to beef up their security forces' presence along their shared borders with Colombia...
...security relations with the hemisphere for some time to come...
...But hints about terrorist linkages make up only part of the stated rationale...
...security planners looking for the next terrorist threat, Latin America's many vast, neglected and sparsely populated zones-strategically located jungles, navigable rivers, empty coastlines, busy but unmonitored borders-are viewed as places where "evildoers" can organize, recruit, raise funds and plot attacks with little state interference...
...In the next few years, we can probably expect efforts to expand this program to the entire hemisphere...
...2. U.S...
...15NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT: THE WAR ON TERROR Terrorists and transnational criminals "often find shelter in border regions or areas beyond the effective reach of government," says Rumsfeld...
...2 Meanwhile, the countries that offered soldiers for the Iraq war-El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic-are getting more aid and cooperation in return...
...military personnel on o 60 I z 0 0MAY JUNE 2005 REPORT: THE WAR ON TERROR their soil...
...jails...
...As relations with Venezuela continue to sour, U.S...
...The U.S...
...The "American Servicemembers' Protection Act," passed in 2003, requires a cutoff of non-drug military aid for countries that are signatories to the new International Criminal Court and do not offer special immunity to U.S...
...When U.S...
...government can make Latin America safer by helping to close the wide "seams" that persist between wealth and poverty, law and disorder, participation and isolation, and citizenship and neglect...
...Despite the lofty rhetoric of President Bush's inauguration speech, the Administration has already blown much of its pro-democracy credibility in Venezuela...
...Pentagon civilians call their proposed response "effective sovereignty," meaning that Latin American governments must effectively exercise sovereignty over their full national territory...
...the potential presence of al Qaeda-related cells in zones where criminality-particularly contraband smuggling-is already common, such as the tri-border area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay...
...This concern is a serious one...
...In its effort to expand "effective sovereignty," one of the largest obstacles the Bush Administration faces is, in fact, self-imposed...
...If the definition of "terrorist" is not rigorously applied, the region's security forces may end up applying it far too broadly...
...military and private contractors, so the Southern Command asked Congress for, and was granted, a doubling (to 800) of the number of U.S...
...Currently, 12 militaries in the region, including such major aid recipients as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, are getting no non-drug aid...
...Excluding Colombia, military and police aid levels have been rather flat at roughly $300-350 million a year region-wide...
...Was the retired mil-MAY JUNE 2005 REPORT: THE WAR ON TERROR itary officer who staged an abortive takeover of a rural Peruvian police station in late 2004 a terrorist, as the Peruvian government claims...
...16 There are exceptions, however, which indicate where the effort to "fill the seams" has begun...
...delegation resisted a push to include explicit references to human rights and international humanitarian law in the final declaration's discussion of anti-terrorism...
...party and a presidential hopeful, also gets frequent mention...
...military and police assistance with a focus on anti-terror border control...
...The new threats of the twenty-first century recognize no borders...
...When the terrorist threat inspires military aid in so many unlikely countries throughout the hemisphere, it is reasonable to wonder who exactly is being considered a "terrorist...
...The term is politicized when it becomes part of the U.S...
...Terrorism, after all, is a term that is easily abused and can easily come to mean both everything and nothing...
...personnel have helped set up Special Forces, mobile brigades, river-based Marines and other specialized units all over the country...
...Democratic governance can be improved, and economic opportunity created by investment in civilian police forces, judges, courts, prosecutors, mayors and governors, roads, schools, clinics, energy, potable water, credit, land titling, technical assistance and anti-poverty programs...
...Are Bolivian coca growers who blockade roads terrorists...
...Unless one is paying close attention to the hemisphere, the words "Latin America" and "War on Terror" don't seem to go together...
...officials have hinted that President Hugo Chavez may have links to terrorist groups...
...defense planners have their eye on criminal gangs (a phenomenon that has been fed in part by massive deportations of Central American criminals from U.S...
...government's message for the next few years appears to be: The world changed after September 11, we all face borderless, stateless threats, and militaries must play an active role in helping governments administer their own territory...
...Coca-growing campesinos whose booby traps kill or maim eradication forces certainly deserve jail, but do they (as well as the union they belong to, the political party affiliated with it and allied labor and indigenous movements) really merit the terrorist label...
...This resulting frailty of state control can lead to ungoverned or ill-governed spaces and people...
...Today, the "War on Terror" provides a new and seemingly more urgent internal enemy...
...Strategies and policy patterns begun now could become the blueprint for U.S...
...For the most part, this push is still incipient beyond Colombia, and some countries are resisting it...
...military and intelligence officials," claimed a 2003 story in U.S...
...sentiment...
...Elections generally regarded as free and fair are taking place, and left-of-center leaders are winning and even being allowed to govern...
...So to portray terrorism as a region-wide threat, from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, seems like a tough sell...
...Department of State, "State Department Briefing" Washington, January 27, 2005 <http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.htmI?p=washfileenglish&y=2005& m--=January&x=20050127190527EAifas0.839245&t=wh/wh-latest.html...
...launch "Enduring Friendship," an effort to increase maritime cooperation among the navies of the Caribbean...
...What's more, a renewed effort to mobilize militaries against an "internal enemy" risks a repeat of past policies that yielded such well-known tragic consequences...
...The U.S...
...In a troubling development, reports from those present at the Quito summit indicate that the U.S...
...However, the Bush Administration is showing no interest in supporting the spread of non-military governance: the 2006 foreign aid request foresees a precipitous drop in economic aid to nearly all of the region, especially development assistance, and child survival and health programs...
...The Southern Command's exercise program now includes "Panamax," a multinational exercise The Colombian in which the region's militaries prac- military introduced its tice defending the Panama Canal U.S.-funded from a terrorist attack...
...According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, "In 2004, we sponsored over 100 training courses attended by more than 4,000 Mexican police officers and prosecutors, working on everything from criminal investigations, anti-corruption, border safety, forensics, kidnapping, hostage negotiationsthere's a whole gamut of police techniques and police training...
...Chavez heads the Administration's list of "radical populist" threats in the region...
...interests...
...Images of the Guantanamo detention camp or perhaps of U.S...
...Elsewhere in Central America, and in Mexico as well, U.S...
...Beyond Colombia and the remnants of Peru's Shining Path insurgency, there are no civil wars and relatively little organized political violence in the hemisphere...
...If U.S...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 6
