[Peace-discuss] The empire in LA

[C. G. Estabrook]

	September 9, 2009
	Militarizing Latin America
	By Noam Chomsky

The United States was founded as an “infant empire,” in the words of George 
Washington. The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture. 
 From the earliest days, control over the hemisphere was a critical goal.

Latin America has retained its primacy in U.S. global planning. If the United 
States cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect “to achieve a successful 
order elsewhere in the world,” observed President Richard M. Nixon’s National 
Security Council in 1971, when Washington was considering the overthrow of 
Salvador Allende’s government in Chile.

Recently the hemisphere problem has intensified. South America has moved toward 
integration, a prerequisite for independence; has broadened international ties; 
and has addressed internal disorders -— foremost, the traditional rule of a rich 
Europeanized minority over a sea of misery and suffering.

The problem came to a head a year ago in Bolivia, South America’s poorest 
country, where, in 2005, the indigenous majority elected a president from its 
own ranks, Evo Morales.

In August 2008, after Morales’ victory in a recall referendum, the opposition of 
U.S.-backed elites turned violent, leading to the massacre of as many as 30 
government supporters.

In response, the newly-formed Union of South American Republics (UNASUR) called 
a summit meeting. Participants —- all the countries of South America —- declared 
“their full and firm support for the constitutional government of President Evo 
Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a big majority.”

“For the first time in South America’s history, the countries of our region are 
deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United 
States,” Morales observed.

Another manifestation: Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa has vowed to terminate 
Washington’s use of the Manta military base, the last such base open to the 
United States in South America.

In July, the U.S. and Colombia concluded a secret deal to permit the United 
States to use seven military bases in Colombia.

The official purpose is to counter narcotics trafficking and terrorism, “but 
senior Colombian military and civilian officials familiar with negotiations” 
told the Associated Press “that the idea is to make Colombia a regional hub for 
Pentagon operations.”

The agreement provides Colombia with privileged access to U.S. military 
supplies, according to reports. Colombia had already become the leading 
recipient of U.S. military aid (apart from Israel-Egypt, a separate category).

Colombia has had by far the worst human rights record in the hemisphere since 
the Central American wars of the 1980s. The correlation between U.S. aid and 
human rights violations has long been noted by scholarship.

The AP also cited an April 2009 document of the U.S. Air Mobility Command, which 
proposes that the Palanquero base in Colombia could become a “cooperative 
security location.”

 From Palanquero, “nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 (military 
transport) without refueling,” the document states. This could form part of “a 
global en route strategy,” which “helps achieve the regional engagement strategy 
and assists with the mobility routing to Africa.”

On Aug. 28, UNASUR met in Bariloche, Argentina, to consider the U.S. military 
bases in Colombia.

After intense debate, the final declaration stressed that South America must be 
kept as “a land of peace,” and that foreign military forces must not threaten 
the sovereignty or integrity of any nation of the region. And it instructed the 
South American Defense Council to investigate the Air Mobility Command document.

The bases’ official purpose did not escape criticism. Morales said he witnessed 
U.S. soldiers accompanying Bolivian troops who fired at members of his coca 
growers union.

“So now we’re narco-terrorists,” he continued. “When they couldn’t call us 
communists anymore, they called us subversives, and then traffickers, and since 
the September 11 attacks, terrorists.” He warned that “the history of Latin 
America repeats itself.”

The ultimate responsibility for Latin America’s violence lies with U.S. 
consumers of illegal drugs, Morales said: “If UNASUR sent troops to the United 
States to control consumption, would they accept it? Impossible.”

That the U.S. justification for its drug programs abroad is even regarded as 
worthy of discussion is yet another illustration of the depth of the imperial 
mentality.

Last February, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued its 
analysis of the U.S. “war on drugs” in past decades.

The commission, led by former Latin American presidents Fernando Cardoso 
(Brazil), Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), and Cesar Gaviria (Colombia), concluded that 
the drug war had been a complete failure and urged a drastic change of policy, 
away from forceful measures at home and abroad and toward much less costly and 
more effective measures — prevention and treatment.

The commission report, like earlier studies and the historical record, had no 
detectable impact. The non-response reinforces the natural conclusion that the 
“drug war” —- like the “war on crime” and “the war on terror” —- is pursued for 
reasons other than the announced goals, which are revealed by the consequences.

During the past decade, the United States has increased military aid and 
training of Latin American officers in light infantry tactics to combat “radical 
populism” —- a concept that, in the Latin American context, sends shivers up the 
spine.

Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, 
eliminating human rights and democracy provisions formerly under congressional 
supervision, always weak but at least a deterrent to some of the worst abuses.

The U.S. Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, was reactivated in 2008, shortly after 
Colombia’s invasion of Ecuador, with responsibility for the Caribbean, Central 
and South America, and the surrounding waters.

Its “various operations include counter-illicit trafficking, Theater Security 
Cooperation, military-to-military interaction and bilateral and multinational 
training,” the official announcement says.

Militarization of South America aligns with much broader designs. In Iraq, 
information is virtually nil about the fate of the huge U.S. military bases 
there, so they presumably remain for force projection. The cost of the immense 
city-with-in-a-city embassy in Baghdad is to rise to $1.8 billion a year, from 
an estimated $1.5 billion.

The Obama administration is also building mega-embassies in Pakistan and 
Afghanistan.

The United States and United Kingdom are demanding that the U.S. military base 
in Diego Garcia be exempted from the planned African nuclear-weapons-free-zone 
—- as U.S. bases are off-limits in similar zoning efforts in the Pacific.

In short, moves toward “a world of peace” do not fall within the “change you can 
believe in,” to borrow Obama’s campaign slogan.


Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. 
foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News 
Service/Syndicate. [Which the NYT doesn't run. --CGE]