The U.S. military relationship with Latin America is evolving rapidly, as the “war on terror” replaces the cold war and the “war on drugs” as the guiding mission for Washington’s assistance programs in the region. Though U.S. attention is fixed on other parts of the world, the scope of military aid is steadily increasing in our own hemisphere.
The United States continues to encourage military practices, programs and doctrine that promote a confusion of civilian and military roles, especially the creation of new military missions within countries’ own borders. This trend raises an increasingly urgent question: What happened to the line between civilian and military roles?
This is not an academic question. It goes to the heart of democracy, which includes a clear division between the civilian and military spheres. Blurring this distinction—for instance, by having the military carry out crime fighting or other roles that civilians can fill—risks politicizing the armed forces, which in turn leads the military to use (or threaten to use) its monopoly of arms whenever it disagrees with the civilian consensus. Utilizing the armed forces in police roles can lead to excessive use of force. Too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists, labor organizers or opposition political-party leaders.
Traditional civilian-military roles are being blurred not only overseas, through programs for Latin American militaries, but here at home, in the formation of foreign policy. Resources and responsibilities are shifting from the State Department to the Pentagon. As the Pentagon and Southcom (United States Southern Command, responsible for all U.S. military activities south of Mexico and in the Caribbean) increasingly set the priorities for U.S.-Latin American relations, human rights and broader foreign policy considerations are likely to be sidelined.
Increase in U.S.-Trained Latin American Troops
According to the U.S. government’s annual Foreign Military Training Report, the U.S. military trained 22,855 Latin Americans in FY2003, a striking increase of 52% over 2002. Nearly all of the increase was the result of a doubling of trainees from Colombia. Most of these trainees were funded by counternarcotics aid programs, which since 2002 can legally be used to support counterinsurgency missions in Colombia. The other top recipients of training in 2003 were Bolivia (2,045 trainees), Panama (914), Peru (680) and Ecuador (662).
Southcom Increasingly Defines U.S. Role in Latin America
Compared with civilian government agencies, Southcom has a growing and disproportionate role in U.S.-Latin American relations. Between August 2002 and July 2004, Southcom Commander Gen. James Hill made 78 trips to Latin America, a record unlikely matched by any State Department official. In her 2003 book The Mission, Dana Priest of the Washington Post claims that Southcom has more people working on Latin America—about 1,100—than most key civilian federal agencies combined, including the Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce and Treasury, as well as the office of the Secretary of Defense.
Southcom and Department of Defense (DOD) personnel are now publicly describing “radical populism” and gangs as disturbing trends, and their focus on these issues suggests they see a role for themselves, or their uniformed colleagues in the hemisphere, in countering them. Yet social problems should not be defined as emerging military threats; doing so risks justifying a military response.
Policymakers must recall the fundamental differences between a police force—a body designed to protect a population through minimal use of force—and the military, which aims to defeat an enemy through use of force. Using the wrong tool for the job, as happens when military personnel are sent into cities to fight common criminals, carries strong risks for human and civil rights. Instead of encouraging military assumption of policing roles, the United States should support police reform and the strengthening of civilian institutions so that they are better able to confront the internal security challenges at hand.
The identification of “radical populism” as a threat is particularly disturbing. As policymakers currently conceive it, the term appears to be directed at political leaders and social movements that espouse economic and social policies that might make some U.S. policymakers uneasy, but which are far from threats requiring a military response. As Latin America has become a lower priority for executive-branch foreign policymakers, the U.S. military—which has the resources, manpower and political clout to cover even relatively neglected zones—is becoming the leading interpreter of affairs in the region.
Little of Post-9/11 Increased Military Assistance Directed to Al Qaeda-Related Threats
Military aid and training programs have not changed substantially since 9/11, even though in some cases they have been repackaged as counterterrorism efforts. The overwhelming majority of military training and aid is directed to long-standing programs, rather than specific new or expanded programs to enhance homeland security or to combat the activities in Latin America of al Qaeda and similar international terrorist groups with global reach. Counternarcotics programs region-wide and counterinsurgency programs in Colombia—nearly all of them in existence before 9/11—continue to receive the most support, while funding for decades-old military aid programs, such as Foreign Military Financing grants and the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, continued a steady upward trend for the majority of countries.
U.S. Involvement in Colombia Intensified in Quantity and Scope
The most ambitious U.S. counter-terror effort in the region is in war-torn Colombia, where in fact it more closely resembles a large-scale return to 20th-century-style counterinsurgency. This effort began in 2002-2003 with an expansion of what had previously been a counter-drug mission for U.S. aid to Colombia. In early 2003, U.S. personnel embarked on their first major non-drug initiative, a plan to help Colombia’s army protect an oil pipeline and re-take territory in the conflictive department of Arauca, near the Venezuelan border. In late 2003 the U.S. effort to help Colombia fight guerrilla groups took a quantum leap with the launch of “Plan Patriota” (Patriot Plan), an ambitious military offensive to re-take territory from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest guerrilla force.
Since January 2004, between 15,000 and 20,000 Colombian military personnel, many in mobile units recently created with U.S. advice and training, have been operating in the southern Colombian departments of Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare, a longtime FARC stronghold.
As the Colombian military has little experience with such long-term, large-scale operations, U.S. military and private contractor personnel are playing a key role in Plan Patriota, providing intelligence to troops in the field, helping to maintain equipment, and offering planning and logistical support—for instance, helping the advancing Colombian troops maintain fuel and supply lines.
A New “Effective Sovereignty” Doctrine Emerges
The blurring of police and military roles in the region is being strongly encouraged by a doctrine the Bush Administration developed to govern its counter-terror effort in the hemisphere. Dubbed “Effective Sovereignty,” this policy contends that the United States’ national security is threatened by Latin American governments’ failure to exercise control over the vast “ungoverned spaces” within their borders.
Declaring “ungoverned spaces” themselves to be threats guarantees a steady flow of U.S. military aid with the open-ended mission of maintaining a military presence in stateless areas as vast and diverse as the Amazon basin, Central America’s Mosquitía or gang-ridden city slums. The emphasis so far appears to be on improving military mobility and coverage in these areas. The appropriate solution for lawless, ungoverned territory must be an extension of civilian government services, including courts, police, health clinics, schools, road-building and agricultural services, rather than a strengthened military. With declines in development aid in the Bush Administration’s FY2005 aid request for the region, there is no parallel effort to help civilian institutions enter “ungoverned spaces” alongside, or instead of, the soldiers.
U.S. Special Forces Train Civilian Police in Light Infrantry Tactics
The U.S. military trained 1,855 Colombian National Police and 100 Panamanian National Police in light infantry tactics in 2003. This is the most egregious example of U.S. military training blurring the line between civilian and military roles. Light infantry tactics are appropriate military skills, not police skills, and the provision of such training encourages the militarization of police forces. Panama does not even have a military, having abolished its army—the force behind decades of dictatorships, including that of Manuel Noriega—with a 1994 constitutional amendment. This training is not being conducted by U.S. military police, but by U.S. Special Forces. According to the Special Forces Web site, the U.S. Special Operations Command “plans, directs, and executes special operations in the conduct of the war on terrorism in order to disrupt, defeat, and destroy terrorist networks that threaten the United States, its citizens and interests worldwide.” The U.S. Special Forces do not have a policing mission or use policing tactics, and their role should not be replicated by Latin American police forces.
In fact, training of Latin American police goes well beyond light infantry skills. Last year Bolivia’s police were the number two Latin American recipients (after Colombia) of U.S. military training—1,650 police and military were trained in civic action techniques. Civic Action programs generally involve entering a community to provide social services (i.e. medical assistance, school building, well digging). This again raises issues about the appropriate roles and divisions of responsibilities between military, police and governmental service agencies.
U.S. Military Training Increasingly Funded Through Defense Department
Two-thirds of U.S. military training for Latin America is paid for by the DOD, (as opposed to the Department of State-managed foreign aid budget), through counternarcotics accounts and Special Forces “engagement” programs that operate with few limits and little opportunity for public scrutiny.
Traditionally, foreign military training has been funded and administered by the State Department because of the serious foreign policy implications of such assistance. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 stipulates that the State Department, not the Pentagon, sets policy and makes decisions governing military assistance programs, which are subject to a number of human rights and democracy conditions. These conditions, while limited in scope and impact, are important; they include a ban on military assistance to gross violators of human rights or to countries that have experienced military coups. In addition, the annual foreign aid appropriations bills, which fund State Department activities, contain specific conditions on countries with human rights problems, including Guatemala, Cuba and Colombia in the Western Hemisphere. These appropriations bills are also subject to a much stronger version of the Leahy Amendment, which prohibits assistance to military units known to violate human rights with impunity. Most of these restrictions do not apply to training funded directly through DOD.
Enduring Friendship: U.S. Advocates Formation of Latin American Navy
Bush administration defense officials have been developing a proposal, “Enduring Friendship,” to create a multinational operational maritime force of the Americas, a flotilla of vessels led by the United States. This idea, often referred to as a “Latin American Navy,” was seen as a way to fill the security and drug interdiction gap created when U.S. naval assets were redeployed from the region to defend the U.S. coastline after 9/11.
The stated goal of Enduring Friendship is to create an operational force to respond to transnational threats on the high seas, such as drug and weapons trafficking, terrorism, uncontrolled migration, fish poaching and other threats to marine life, hazards to navigation and humanitarian emergencies. The U.S. government sees current multilateral exercises within the region, such as the “Panamax” canal defense exercise with Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama and Peru, as a precursor to Enduring Friendship, establishing the kind of coordination needed to make this effort function. This proposal, which has not been viewed favorably by Latin American militaries, should generate considerable debate, as it potentially would place civilian policing activities, such as those governing fishing and migration, under military jurisdiction.
U.S. Military Aid Nearly Equals Economic Aid to Region
In the FY2005 budget, U.S. military aid nearly equals economic aid to Latin America and the Caribbean. The United States is slated to provide $921 million in economic aid and at least $859 million in military aid. Indeed, the major economic and humanitarian aid programs, Development Assistance and Child Survival and Health, are reduced by 10% and 12%, respectively, from their FY2004 levels in the Bush administration’s 2005 plan. This continues a trend that accelerated in 2000 with the Clinton administration’s introduction of Plan Colombia, an overwhelmingly military aid package that has been renewed each year as a regional Andean Counterdrug Initiative. In 1997, by comparison, economic aid was more than double military aid to the region. During the cold war, the ratio was even higher.
The increasing concentration of U.S. assistance on military rather than development and humanitarian aid reinforces the image of the United States as preoccupied primarily with its own security rather than being sufficiently invested in the welfare of the region’s population. Our security, however, is inseparably tied to democracy and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere; a greater emphasis on nonmilitary priorities is urgently needed.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Based on a more extensive report by Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy http://www.ciponline.org, Lisa Haugaard of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund http://www.lawg.org and Joy Olson of the Washington Office on Latin America http://www.wola.org. The full report, “Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S. Military Programs with Latin America,” with graphics and citations, is available on the organizations’ Web sites.
