US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America
Published on 11-22-2009
Source: Independent
The United States is massively building up its potential
for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by
acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air
bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders
to it – is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with
much of the continent.
The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of
influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin
American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic
tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US
armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of
Manta by the end of next month.
So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down
well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn)
from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces
regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last
year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least
17 deaths.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten
that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he
was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases
agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.
In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the
outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of
Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d'état in June and initially exiled, has
complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola
collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who
claims to be president.
And, this being US foreign policy, a tell-tale trail of oil
is evident. Brazil had already expressed its unhappiness at the presence of US
naval vessels in its massive new offshore oilfields off Rio de Janeiro, destined
soon to make Brazil a giant oil producer eligible for membership in Opec.
The fact that the US gets half its oil from Latin America
was one of the reasons the US Fourth Fleet was re-established in the region's
waters in 2008. The fleet's vessels can include Polaris nuclear-armed submarines
– a deployment seen by some experts as a violation of the 1967 Tlatelolco
Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons from the continent.
Indications of US willingness to envisage the stationing of
nuclear weapons in Colombia are seen as an additional threat to the spirit of
nuclear disarmament. After the establishment of the Tlatelolco Treaty in 1967,
four more nuclear-weapon-free zones were set up in Africa, the South Pacific,
South-east Asia and Central Asia. Between them, the five treaties cover nearly
two-thirds of the countries of the world and almost all the southern hemisphere.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI), the world's leading think-tank about disarmament issues, has now
expressed its worries about the US-Colombian arrangements.
With or without nuclear weapons, the bilateral agreement on
the seven Colombian bases, signed on 30 October in Bogota, risks a costly new
arms race in a region. SIPRI, which is funded by the Swedish government, said it
was concerned about rising arms expenditure in Latin America draining resources
from social programmes that the poor of the region need.
Much of the new US strategy was clearly set out in May in
an enthusiastic US Air Force (USAF) proposal for its military construction
programme for the fiscal year 2010. One Colombian air base, Palanquero, was, the
proposal said, unique "in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security
and stability is under constant threat from... anti-US governments".
The proposal sets out a scheme to develop Palanquero which,
the USAF says, offers an opportunity for conducting "full-spectrum operations
throughout South America.... It also supports mobility missions by providing
access to the entire continent, except the Cape Horn region, if fuel is
available, and over half the continent if un-refuelled". ("Full-spectrum
operations" is the Pentagon's jargon for its long-established goal of securing
crushing military superiority with atomic and conventional weapons across the
globe and in space.)
Palanquero could also be useful in ferrying arms and
personnel to Africa via the British mid-Atlantic island of Ascension, French
Guiana and Aruba, the Dutch island off Venezuela. The US has access to them all.
The USAF proposal contradicted the assurances constantly
issued by US diplomats that the bases would not be used against third countries.
These were repeated by the Colombian military to the Colombian congress on 29
July. That USAF proposal was hastily reissued this month after the signature of
the agreement – but without the reference to "anti-US governments". This has led
to suggestions of either US government incompetence, or of a battle between a
gung-ho USAF and a State Department conscious of the damage done to US relations
with Latin America by its leaders' strong objections to the proposal.
The Colombian forces, for many years notorious for
atrocities inflicted on civilians, have cheekily suggested that with US help
they could get into the lucrative business of "instructing" other armies about
human rights. Civil strife in Colombia meant some 380,000 Colombians were forced
from their homes last year, bringing the number of displaced since 1985 to 4.6
million, one in ten of the population. This little-known statistic indicates a
much worse situation than the much-publicised one in Islamist-ruled Sudan where
2.7 million have fled from their homes.
Amnesty International said: "The Colombian government must
urgently bring human rights violators to justice, to break the links between the
armed forces and illegal paramilitary groups, and dismantle paramilitary
organisations in line with repeated UN recommendations."
Palanquero, which adjoins the town of Puerto Salgar on the
broad Magdalena river north-west of the capital, Bogota, is one of the seven
bases that the government of President Alvaro Uribe gave to Washington last
month despite howls from many Colombians. Its hangars can take 100 aircraft and
there is accommodation for 2,000 personnel. Its main runway was constructed in
the 1980s after Colombia bought a force of Israeli Kfir warplanes. At 3,500
metres, it is 500 metres longer than the longest in Britain, the former US base
outside Campbeltown, Scotland. The USAF is awaiting Barack Obama's signature on
a bill, already passed by the US Congress, to devote $46m to works at the base.
Many Colombians are upset at the agreement between the US
and Colombia that governs – or, perhaps more accurately, fails to govern – US
use of Palanquero and the other six bases. The Colombian Council of State, a
non-partisan constitutional body with the duty to comment on legislation, has
said that the agreements are unfair to Colombia since they put the US and not
the host country in the driving seat, and that they should be redrafted in
accordance with the Colombian constitution.
The immunities being granted to US soldiers are, the
council adds, against the 1961 Vienna Convention; the agreement can be changed
by future regulations which can totally transform it; and the permission given
to the US to install satellite receivers for radio and television without the
usual licences and fees is "without any valid reason".
President Uribe, whose studies at St Antony's College,
Oxford, were subsidised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has chosen to
disregard the Council of State.