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Monday’s meeting of the South American Union (Unasur) presidents in Quito was dominated by concerns about negotiations between the United States and Colombia to allow U.S. military personnel to use several Colombian bases. Colombian President Ãlvaro Uribe did not attend the meeting.
(Here is an overview of what we know about what Colombia and the United States are negotiating; it hasn’t changed much since we wrote it three weeks ago. The main change is that two more bases have been added to the list of facilities U.S. personnel can access, apparently at the Colombian government’s request. They are the army bases in Tolemaida, Tolima and Larandia, Caquetá. The basing negotiations could conclude as early as this weekend, says Colombia’s armed forces chief, Gen. Freddy Padilla.)
Some of the region’s elected leaders from the far left had hoped the declaration from the Quito meeting would condemn the basing deal. The presidents were unable to reach consensus on that, but some of the region’s more centrist leaders continued to express concern about the arrangement being discussed between Washington and Bogotá.
One of those leaders, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, made a concrete proposal to Washington: that U.S. government representatives meet with the region’s leaders to explain the agreement and the U.S. government’s intentions. “UNASUR could invite the U.S. government to a detailed discussion regarding its relations with South America. This will be resolved through a lot of conversation, much debate, the speaking of truths. People will have to hear things they don’t like,†Lula said during the Quito meeting.
This is a perfectly reasonable proposal. A joint meeting with high U.S. government officials – or even President Obama himself, perhaps during the UN General Assembly in New York in September – is a good idea.
Such a meeting would help undo the damage done by the Obama administration’s disastrous rollout of the basing arrangement. The approach so far has combined hyper-secrecy from Washington, leaks to the Colombian media mainly from Colombian government sources, and – in a move that cannot make the Colombian government happy – leaving Colombian President Ãlvaro Uribe to defend the deal on his own, spending an entire week traveling throughout South America to hear each country’s concerns about the proposed U.S. military presence.
Lula’s proposed meeting also makes sense because once you get past Hugo Chávez’s hugely overheated rhetoric, it makes perfect sense for the region’s governments to be concerned about a foreign power increasing its military presence, and mission, on the continent they share. And it makes sense for this concern to grow when the foreign power does not even notify them of its intentions. The United States is creating a new capability in South America, and capabilities often get used.
While South American concerns are important, the Obama administration also needs to be far more transparent to the American people. As things stand right now, the basing agreement can go forward without any need for the U.S. Congress to act to approve it. But that doesn’t mean that we should be in the disgraceful situation of getting most of our information about the impending deal from the Colombian press.
Obviously, we don’t ask that the U.S. government reveal the content of ongoing negotiations. Talks between governments routinely happen in secret. But we need to know more about what our government’s intentions are.
Until Colombian media outlets started revealing more details about the basing plan in early July, we were under the impression that the United States and Colombia were negotiating a deal to replace a capability being lost with the exit of U.S. assets from a base in the Pacific coastal city of Manta, Ecuador. There, since 1999, approximately 200-300 U.S. military personnel and contractors worked on a mission limited strictly to counternarcotics, specifically monitoring the Eastern Pacific off the coast of South America for potential aerial and maritime drug trafficking. The U.S. presence at Manta – itself a partial substitute for Howard Air Force Base in Panama, which the U.S. military vacated in 1999 – has ceased operations and will close for good in October, as the 10-year agreement has expired and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa strongly opposes renewing it.
What we have heard about the Colombia deal, however, indicates that the new U.S. presence there will go way beyond Manta’s limited mission. It will support not just counter-narcotics, but “counter-terrorism,” a very vague term in a country in the midst of an armed conflict.
There is an urgent need for more transparency from the U.S. government. More information and responsiveness to questions would help defuse tensions in the region, and is a necessary element of a foreign policy that is accountable to the American people.
Transparency must begin with clear, specific responses to these seven rather basic questions. So far, none of them has been addressed in public.
1. How close will U.S. personnel stationed at the bases – both military and contractors – get to hostilities in Colombia? What is the risk to them?
2. How will U.S. personnel stationed at the bases be contributing to, or otherwise participating in, ongoing military operations in Colombia’s armed conflict? For example, will it be providing real-time intelligence and targeting information about guerrillas or other illegal armed groups?
3. Will activities based at these facilities be limited to Colombian territory and airspace, or will the United States insist on the right to fly over neighboring countries as well?
4. Does the U.S. government view these bases as “lily pads” that will give it the ability to carry out contingency operations anywhere in the region? If not, how is it different?
(For several years, the Defense Department has indicated its desire to establish informal, flexible basing arrangements like these in order to have a forward presence as a jumping-off point. These have been colloquially called “lily pads,” and arrangements have been made for several such facilities in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa. Instead of a base, widely cited defense analyst Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote this week, “Think of them as the networking equivalent of an ATM: offering some basic services but hardly constituting a bank branch. And like an ATM, these facilities are to a large degree designed to obviate the requirement of a larger, dedicated presence.” Obviously, a frog jumping off of a lily pad is jumping to somewhere else; Colombia’s neighbors see themselves as likely destinations.)
5. What is the likelihood that the administration will be asking Congress to raise or eliminate the existing “troop cap” (800 military and 600 U.S. citizen contractors) limiting U.S. involvement in Colombia within, say, 3 years? Can the Obama administration guarantee that it will not seek to increase or break the troop cap as a result of activities at the Colombian bases?
(As of June 19, the Washington Post reported last week, there were 268 U.S. military personnel and 308 U.S. citizen contractors present in Colombia. If the military presence is currently one-third of the cap and the contractor presence is half of the cap even without the bases, how close will U.S. personnel come to breaking the cap once they move into the bases?)
6. Will the physical assets stationed at the bases in Colombia be different from those that were based at Manta? Will the U.S. military be stationing the same aircraft as before? If not, how will the array of planes and equipment be different?
7. The three air force bases in the seven-base package are all located to the east of the Andes mountains from the Pacific Ocean. How will U.S. assets be able to cover the eastern Pacific drug-trafficking vector – which was the main purpose of the Manta base – without a presence on the Pacific coast? What is the likelihood that this move will actually make it easier for narcos to transship drugs through the Pacific?
(We understand that the Palanquero base, in Cundinamarca near Bogotá, will be the main facility covering the Pacific, as Manta did. Three chains of the Andes mountains lie between Palanquero and the Pacific. How will this contemplate interdiction? For instance, if radars discover a boat or plane suspected of shipping cocaine in the Pacific zone, how long will it take for an aircraft based at Palanquero to respond?)
August 13th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Good questions overall. I think I’ve seen question #3 answered by officials in both countries. The US will be limited to Colombia’s airspace. Crossing into any other country would be forbidden unless the US had the permission of both the neighboring country and of Colombia.
My guess is that certain neighboring countries won’t be granting the US permission any time soon. The US will just have to respect that.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:48 am
#1 — Nothing changes from the current relationship. If you add more, I guess you increase the risk that something might happen to them, but they’ll be some increased force protection and personnel will be extremely limited to on-base.
#2 — Nothing changes from the current relationship. Nothing needs to.
#3 — To fly over neighboring countries, you’ll need their approval… if they agree for whatever reason, how does that change anything? I don’t see where you’re getting at with this question.
#4 — How could you expect anyone to answer this question with any certainty. It all depends on the situation, which can change over time. Every US base in the world is essentially a forward operating base, ie Lilly Pad. In other words, by design they can extend our military reach, provide force projection. If, for example, Venezuela needs to be bombed then of course we would use these bases to bomb them (so long as the Colombian govt is on board with that).
#5 — Oh… that’s the next step. This is a building block like process. I guess we’re looking for a really good reason at this point. Something like your neighbor to the east ranting and raving about sending tanks to the border.
#6 — I bet it’s different.
#7 — Easily… we have global reach in a myriad of ways. Pacific operations don’t revolve around a single base or bases in one country. Inter-connectivity is the key word(s).
They can tell you whatever they want to, and it will ALL change. Heck, that’s this administrions motto… and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but transparency is hard to come by these days.
August 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
There are some additional questions I can think of:
Will the US and Colombia renounce the doctrine of ‘pursuing terrorists across borders’, at least for the Andean region?
How much assistance or capacity-building would be conducted, using DOD funds, through the increased presence?
Speaking of this and transparency, why doesn’t DOD submit its Colombia-specific budget as part of the budget request?
But this is not just a problem of transparency. Adam, you seem to be trying to brake an escalation of US military presence, but in doing so, it has the effect of accepting the status quo, in which the Colombian state makes little distinction in practice (and often in rhetoric) between ‘terrorists’ and political opponents or other civilians. Any ‘counter-terrorist’ mission in Colombia – current or increased – should be opposed, or at least, questioned, for that reason alone.
August 13th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
As always, I appreciate Adam’s intellectual effort. He’s asking good questions that should be debated. But I think there is a problem here that goes beyond civilized debate. Suppose the Obama Administration answers all these questions and says all the “right” things so that everyone is happy. Would that matter? We are talking here of a long term commitment, ran by lots of unaccountable people who will make lots and lots of decisions on the ground based on who knows what information. In fact, the early signs from Washington are not reassuring in this regard. Just like I’ve been fearing for a long time, Obama seems to have farmed out his Latin America policy to old hands in State and the Pentagon, partly because he has so much on his plate coming from other regions that there was little reason to bother with a new hemispheric policy. (I think Camilo Wilson will concur on this.) So, whatever he says, and let’s remember that Obama has a way for words, the decisions on the ground will be up to a lot of other people, both in uniform and out of it, and chances are good that some of them are the type of shady characters you shouldn’t want anywhere near your country. Then there’s the issue about Obama’s own political finitude. He’ll be out of there by 2012 or 2016 (I hope it’s the latter). No one knows what the political climate will be then, but the bases will still be there. The thought of President Jeb Bush and Assistant Secretary for Hemispheric Affairs Ros-Lehtinen deciding on how to use these bases to defend US interests in the region, with input from a think-tank that has Jose Obdulio Gaviria in its board of trustees is the stuff of nightmares.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
True enough, lfm. This just doesn’t seem like a good – or necessary – direction of U.S. resources. I am completely missing where this has been determined to be a priority for the American public and their now very precious tax dollars.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Steve: “I am completely missing where this has been determined to be a priority for the American public and their now very precious tax dollars.”
It was determined a long time ago. Now people like Chris, and everyone in DC who wants to be considered ’serious’, just take it for granted that it’s the U.S. government’s inherent right to put our troops anywhere, to do whatever we want with them, when we decide to do it, and to hell with answering to U.S. citizens and taxpayers, much less anyone else. It’s good to be the empire.
Until you aren’t anymore. That day’s coming fairly soon, but President Obama intends to proceed as if almost nothing has to change.
August 14th, 2009 at 4:33 am
I may have missed it, but I don’t think Adam has asked whether the Obama administration has consulted the U.S. Congress on the kinds of questions he (Adam) poses. For that matter, what has Congress as a body said about the expanded Colombian arrangement (I’m not referring to statements from individual Congressmen, right or left)? In any event, I think the new expansion scenario should be subject to public hearings and questions and questions like Adam’s should be considered.
Colombia’s counterproposal to UNASUR interlocutors is fair; what’s good the goose, etc. Colombia has open and consultative with LA countries about what it’s doing with the U.S. in terms of the new bases and why. It’s only fair to press Ecuador and Venezuela regarding FARC presence and operations in those two countries, and to ask why certain countries are allowing FARC financial operations to take place on their territories.
The previous point also gets to the interesting – and evolving – issue of sovereignty versus regional concerns in South America these days. Colombia’s willingness to discuss its relationship with the U.S. is novel, in my experience down here and it’s a big concession on the very sensitive subject of sovereignty to a regional forum. The flip side of this is the potential of UNASUR has as a true regional consultative body (at least as long as Lula’s around to lead it, anyway). The UNASUR concept might actually work in terms of open, constructive dialogue amongst its members, and be useful in defining how the region wants to relate to the U.S., if, (and it’s a big if) you’ve got serious, centrist/moderate leaders like Lula around to keep folks like Correa and Chavez under control and keep the dialogue civil…
August 14th, 2009 at 4:54 am
An image is worth a thousand words
August 14th, 2009 at 4:55 am
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QU74BXd8GPE/R5tbGMNQN2I/AAAAAAAAAHc/wWG2CvQKt3g/s1600-h/Chavez+-+you+are+next+-+Irak.jpg
August 14th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I agree with IFM that Obama has “farmed out” his Colombia policy. At issue is whether the farming out is intentional or by neglect. It seems to be in the hands, mostly, of the Pentagon. Whatever, one thing is clear: the new administration is in effect relegating its interests in the hemisphere to its bilateral relationship with Colombia. And that should disturb everybody with an enlightened understanding of the stakes. The cost to the United States may well prove to be long-term and high. The cost to those of us in the region is high as well, in terms of worsening social and economic conditions, and consequent growing conflict that is debilitating and dangerous.
Funny things seem to be going on with regard to U.S. foreign policy in general. Take for instance Secretary Clinton’s recent meltdown in Africa when asked about her husband’s role in freeing two Korean Americans held by North Korea. Frustrated in a very un-statesmanlike way with the question, Secretary Clinton suggested that she had nothing to do with the release of the Americans, and that any reporter who might wish to pursue the matter should do so with her husband.
My take on this perhaps telling scenario is that, first, the episode of the release went around Secretary of State Clinton. And second, the release was arranged by individuals of the two governments in question, the U.S. and North Korea; Bill Clinton himself had nothing to do with it beyond qualifying as a high-level American, which is probably what the North Koreans demanded in order to release the women.
One has to wonder whether other U.S. foreign policy issues are handled in similar fashion. Indeed, how much real influence does the Secretary have? One is reminded of a remark the Godfather made in the famous movie. The Godfather said he liked to have his friends close to him, but his enemies even closer. Having Secretary Clinton as Secretary of State, but with little real power, could be a way to “neutralize” her and avoid any potential harm. Real power lies elsewhere.
(Should anybody have the idea of using Bill Clinton to effect a prisoner swap with Colombia’s insurgents, or otherwise play a role in moving them toward dialogue, they might wish to reconsider. This is the Bill Clinton of Plan Colombia; the Bill Clinton who accepted an award in New York from the Uribe government; the Bill Clinton whose remarks have supported Uribe on several occasions; the Bill Clinton who delights in appearing in Cartagena de Indias in ceremonies with pretty girls and local dignataries… In a word, Bill Clinton, the consumate political opportunist. In the South, we know Bill Clinton.)
The Obama administration’s Latin policy is going south–very appropriate the metaphor in this instance–at full tilt. Those of us in the South who had hoped that Obama would be attuned to new realities here are disillusioned. We see more of the same. Indeed, we fear that Obama’s Latin policies may prove to be as bad or worse than those of Bush. Is this by design? Or is somebody asleep at the helm?… Those in the North might do well to press for some answers.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:03 am
The entire executive operation, and decisions therein, is being conducted at the WH. People throughout the govt are complaining about a lack of transparency, and have this sense of wandering around with no clue as to what we’re supposed to be doing or what our efforts are going towards. Again, there are random calls for information on everything, but nobody knows towards what end.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
“An image is worth a thousand words”
Too bad those thousand words would be just as facepalm-inducing as the image and the person being supposedly “threatened” in it.
In the meanwhile, friendly neighbor Uncle Hugo keeps shopping around for weapons that make Colombia’s look like relics (which they are, in many cases, outside of the helicopters and some exceptions) and nobody cares or everyone “understands” him, the poor guy, because there is surely a real danger that Emperor Obama is going to invade him next.
You, at this rate I’m even going to wish that he did. Not that it will ever happen, but one can dream paranoid dreams, no?
Regards,
Marcos
August 18th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I think Uribe intends to get aggressive and destroy Hugo Chavez. Hugo is a bigtime drug dealer and allows FARC to operate openly on Venezuelan territory. He needs those drug dealers and the steady cash they bring, because the oil earnings are drying up and the investment to ensure future earnings is nil. Hugo needs that cash to reward cronies and ensure loyalty – otherwise, he can trust no one. He allows drugs to flow openly in Venezuela, that’s why it’s such a crime pit, it’s also why no judges or cops are being murdered in Venezuela – they are all on the take and took, as Pablo used to say, the silver over the lead.
Chavez’s closest lieutenants are named as drug ‘kingpins’ – a pre-indictment term that is legally actionable if it’s wrong – and the fact that they haven’t sued tells a lot because they could make big money off the US government if it made a mistake. Let’s just say it didn’t.
So for Uribe, this is all very simple. Instead of talking or thinking about getting rid of the brutal dictator next door in Caracas, all he has to do is fight drugs, hard, and Hugo will find himself ensnared. Naturally. Because Hugo loves drugs and is the top drug lord on the South American continent. Taking down Kingpin Hugo: I think that’s the Uribe strategy.
August 18th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Camilo: re: Those of us in the South who had hoped that Obama would be attuned to new realities here are disillusioned.
I could have told you right off the bat that Obama could care less about Latam. That is just reality. He never set foot there, he considered it a dirty place, and he avoids the whole region whenever he can. He doesn’t speak one word of Spanish and has no intention of learning. He was naive as hell about Hugo Chavez and I know people who counseled him against backslapping with him in Trinidad and he thought he was too smart for them and could handle Hugo with just a few smooth words. He’s been unpleasantly surprised. The only thing the former community organizer in chief ever paid attention to that was Latino was the Latino vote. After he got that, he cut Latin America loose. I knew he wasn’t going to care. He left the same staff onboard as the Bush administration and wants someone else to deal with it. He just doesn’t care.
I even told some high-ranking Venes he didn’t care and I suspect that’s why Hugo made a phone call to Tom Shannon, not Obama, over Honduras that late night a few weeks ago.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Camilla,
I think you’re right about Obama and his concerns for and knoweldge of Latin America. We certainly agree on that. As one who straddles both worlds, and can see in some measure the virtues and vices of each, I find this tragic.
Cheers–Camilo
August 18th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
he considered it a dirty place
And you know this how?
August 18th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Americans, we bring your victims body in spirit, so that his karma may permeate your future:
His father Mario described him as a person fascinated with spirituality, a man with integrity, an individual struggle for knowing one’s self between good and evil and that the effort to achieve it consisted in the main objective in life, not only individually, but collectively.[2]
«La sensibilidad social del autor, el hombre integral que buscaba y la lucha interna que Kazantzakis padeció y soportó a través de su vida entre el ángel y la bestia, entre la naturaleza interior y superior del hombre, entre el mundo pasional y el espÃritu, lo fascinaban dice su padre- la búsqueda de esa trascendencia espiritual y el esfuerzo para realizarlo constituÃa para Luis Carlos el objetivo de la vida, no solamente en lo individual sino también en lo colectivo».
“ Once again the Colombian men turn passionate; but their passion is not that of the parties, the one that perverted their spirits and pushed thousands of countrymen to death towards phantoms of selfish ideals. Now our passion is Colombia and we believe in this ideal as the only one capable of uniting the whole country.[13] â€
- Luis Carlos Galán – Revista Vértice, May 1964.
Have a nice day.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Camilla, you little Mary Anastasia O’Grady, you.
You have no way of fathoming the freedom we breathed in Latin America compared to your corrupt narco-pharma-oil-guns-para-police state. Lost in space. Poor idiot.
You probably watch Glenn Beck
lmao!
August 18th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
lepetitmort: Who is Glenn Beck?
August 18th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
It’s late and I want to get some sleep so I’ll keep it short, especially because I will try to reason with Camilla directly something that I know is a fool’s errand. Camilla: don’t give us horse manure. We all know that you looved Bush, nuts about it, you thought his policies toward Colombia were the best thing since sliced bread. So now Obama comes and pretty much extends those policies and… you criticize him? C’mon! Don’t be so bitter, pop up the champaign!
I was going to comment on the fact that if one wants to mention Pablo Escobar in the same sentence as some sitting South American statesman, Venezuela wouldn’t be the first choice that would normally come to mind. Most people would look west for that one… But, I know, it’s Camilla, I’m already regretting this attempt at a reasonable discussion. I’ll hit the “Submit” button before I change my mind. There, did it.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Glenn Beck is a deranged CNN alcoholic talking head that feels proud to be so, not missing a chance to tell his audience the way he almost commited suicide. he he he he he
August 19th, 2009 at 3:55 am
He sounds like someone to avoid, Jaime.
LFM: We will have to agree to disagree, but you ought to know about the Lugar report in the Senate that pretty well lays the drug dealing charge right at Hugo’s feet and at the feet of his top lieutenents. It’s a damning and indisputable report. Hugo loves drugs.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Linking Chavez to drug trade is like acquitting Medellin’s cartel Uribe for the thousands of white powder kilos he helped his sidekick Escobar smuggle into the US as Director of Civil Aviation in Colombia. It’s plain rubbish.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Glenn Beck is on Fox News now – also, wasn’t this blog post about military bases…??
August 20th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Wait Jaime, what about the father of the modern black crack epidemic? George HW Bush aka the Father of Crack?
August 20th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
So you’re saying, Jaime, that if Uribe is a drug dealer, Chavez can’t possible be one, too? Can’t they both be in the business? ;D
August 21st, 2009 at 1:42 am
lepetitmont: you mean the LA infamous crack invasion? well, that’s a cold case. Here we are talking about a “hot” case
August 21st, 2009 at 7:26 am
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aHFOiD5ukzr0
Senate approved.
August 21st, 2009 at 9:42 am
Is it possible that the Obama Administration took a harder than usual (for US standards) stand against the Honduran coup because they envisioned a similar change in constitution in Colombia and didn’t want to have to a hard stand against it?
August 21st, 2009 at 9:44 am
“take a hard stance against it”
kind of flippin’ the cards if you get my drift…
August 21st, 2009 at 11:26 am
Well Chris, off the record here is what I understand from the Honduran Coup. The position of Obama against the coup is lip service to his liberal policies but the US gvt was a main party ousting Celaya off power. Zelaya himself claimed he was taken to the US military base in Honduras before being sent away. Although neocon speech in the uS claims that Obama is going to turn the US into communism, there is nothing farther from the truth. One has to read between lines. Not let oneself be carried away by politicians speeches or media disinfo but interpret facts and actiosn taken. Then you join the dots. And voila: everything is crystal clear. I wish everybody was able to understand this simple principle, but the fact is they are not. They think thas speeches and news media anchors are telling the truth. That’s not the case. Bases in Colombia, reelection of Uribe, and the Honduras coup are all part of the same strategy.
August 21st, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Connecting the dots sounds great…provided you don’t choose to connect only what favors your point of view, completely throwing away or blatantly ignoring at least half of the available information.
For exmaple, if there are 1000 dots, people like Jaime Bustos are all about just focusing on the 500 that tell him what he already knows and everything else isn’t important.
In any event, I’ll leave you to continue trading conspiracy theories and scratching your own backs, if you don’t mind.
Regards,
Marcos