Latin America Is Unsettled By Washington’s Rhetoric

Is the war in Colombia a matter of drugs and politics? Or is the Colombian government facing a concerted attack from terrorists? These are questions being asked in Washington. And the fact that they are even being discussed here is making many Latin Americans once again nervous about U.S. intentions.

Whatever the United States does in Colombia, the hemisphere’s most troubled country, will unquestionably affect its neighbors, who worry that, as in the past, Washington will act unilaterally in pursuit of its own interest without regard to the region’s concerns.

Colombia was already the largest recipient of U.S. security aid outside the Middle East. Now the U.S. State Department has included three Colombian groups on its list of 28 terrorist organizations, opening the door to Washington stepping up its involvement in Colombia as part of its global campaign against terrorism. Colombia’s problems are complex and nuanced, not reducible to a simple military initiative to defeat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest insurgency. Not surprisingly, other governments in the region, already uneasy about the risks of greater “spillover unrest” from Colombia and worried about their own fragile security situations, are tracking Washington’s policy review with keen interest.

The signals have been mixed. Some in the administration have explicitly pushed to expand operations in Colombia as part of the war on terrorism. Last Wednesday, President Bush, sensing some congressional misgivings, seemed to pull back from a significant policy shift. For the time being at least, he put aside proposals to eliminate the official distinction between aid to fight drugs and aid to fight guerrillas.

Still, there are unmistakable indications that the administration is determined to test the limits of the current policy, which has been narrowly focused on counter-narcotics operations. The president’s 2003 budget proposal, for example, contains a request for $98 million to provide the Colombians with training and helicopters to protect a strategically important oil pipeline that has often been the target of rebel attacks. The administration has also plainly sought to pave the way for greater sharing of U.S. intelligence with the Colombian military. And on Tuesday, before Bush’s comments, drug czar John Walters suggested that legal restrictions on the use of anti-drug assistance be reconsidered.

Such signals, coupled with reports of the United States moving ahead with military operations in the Philippines, the former Soviet republic of Georgia and now Yemen have fueled nervous speculation about what Washington might have in mind for Colombia. The trepidation in Latin America is reminiscent of the region’s strong reaction to the $1.3 billion U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia, the largely military anti-drug package passed in July 2000. Although most Latin Americans would welcome greater U.S. engagement with the region, they would prefer an approach aimed at enhancing political and economic ties. The focus on a military role--whether to fight terrorists in Colombia or drugs in the wider region--carries echoes of the Cold War, when a country’s underlying problems and development aims were considered subordinate to immediate U.S. strategic interests. In a region where memories of excessive U.S. military intervention are still fresh, the resurfacing of the term “counterinsurgency” in the U.S. Colombia policy debate is cause for concern.

Apart from the U.S. role, the region’s security situation is complicated not only by the remarkable cruelty of Colombia’s conflict--dramatized most recently by the kidnapping of presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt--but by a growing and generalized sense of insecurity, uncertainty and tension in adjacent countries. To varying degrees, Colombia’s neighbors must cope not only with their own economic and political issues, but with spreading criminality and violence, an expanding drug trade and a growing number of refugees fleeing across borders.

Existing strains between countries have intensified. In Venezuela, wild-card President Hugo Chavez, while expressing support for Pastrana’s decision to end peace talks, also made clear his sympathy for the rebels, which has caused further tensions between the two countries at a time when Venezuela already has plenty of domestic problems on its plate. In the past two weeks, four military officials there have called for the resignation of Chavez, a former paratrooper who, a decade ago, led an unsuccessful coup against an elected government.

No country is more vulnerable to the “spillover” effects of the widening Colombian conflict than Ecuador. Although the pervasive violence and vast numbers of refugees predicted by some observers as inevitable consequences of Plan Colombia have not materialized, Colombians fleeing the conflict are moving across the porous border between the two countries. Disturbingly, Ecuador for the first time is starting to produce coca, no doubt the result of the displacement of coca production in Colombia. The development of the drug trade could well aggravate an already serious security problem and provide an incentive for Ecuador to expand its military, which has long enjoyed disproportionate political and economic power. Ecuador’s foreign minister, Heinz Moeller, has expressed apprehension about possible Washington policy shifts, making it clear that a U.S. military base in the coastal area of Manta could only be used for the purpose of fighting drugs--not fighting rebels.

Peru, too, is worried about growing security imbalances. Its foreign minister, Diego Garcia Sayan, has acknowledged that there have been incursions of the FARC into Peruvian territory. Peru’s home-grown insurgency, the Shining Path, responsible for some 30,000 deaths, is showing signs of resurgence. In addition, some of the country’s noteworthy advances during the 1990s are in danger of being reversed. A combination of market forces, the displacement of coca farming in Colombia and a year-long suspension of drug interdiction flights has resulted in a sharp increase in coca production--which had dropped dramatically. Peruvians worry about the rhetoric coming from Washington. The country’s newspapers are full of speculation that the main purpose of President Bush’s scheduled visit to Lima on March 23 is to announce the installation of a new military base near the border with Colombia.

With the rupture in Colombian peace talks and the consequent prospect of escalating violence in Colombia in the coming months--along with uncertainty about how far and in what capacity the United States is prepared to get involved in response--both the Ecuadorean and Peruvian militaries have been put on alert and have fortified their borders. Panama, too, which has been without a military since 1989, is profoundly concerned about refugee flows and paramilitary and rebel incursions. Brazil, the South American powerhouse whose strategically sensitive Amazon region borders Colombia, is also monitoring the signs from Washington.

When President Bush meets with the leaders of four key Andean countries later this month in Lima, he will likely be greeted warmly. But there will also be many questions simmering beneath the surface about U.S. motives and plans. He should view the visit as a welcome opportunity to focus high-level, positive attention on a region that has been relegated to relatively low priority--especially since the global anti-terrorist campaign began.

Given what is at stake in the region, Bush should consider advancing two fundamental and positive ideas. First, he should commit diplomatic and political resources aimed at bringing the Colombian conflict to an end. This is entirely in keeping with increased security aid to enable the Colombian government to assert authority and gain control over its territory within a context of respect for human rights. And, second, he should try to energize a genuinely multilateral approach to the drug problem. Above all, he should seek the counsel and cooperation of our partners in the region in forging a common agenda.