JUNE 6, 2018
It was no surprise. Already Colombia had sent
personnel to military training schools in Germany and Rome and troops to the
Horn of Africa to fight Somali pirates, all under the auspices of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. Already, in 2013, Colombia and NATO had agreed to cooperate in
intelligence-sharing, military-training exercises, and so-called humanitarian
interventions. And in May 2017 Colombia and NATO agreed that the former would
become a NATO “global partner.”
On May 25, 2018 Colombian President Juan Manuel
Santos made an announcement to that effect. He mentioned too that Colombia was
joining the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OCDE), “an
international club of creditors of deeply indebted poor countries,”
according to one observer. Within a few days Santos
was conferring in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
Colombia thus becomes NATO’s first global partner
in Latin America. The others are Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, New Zealand,
Japan, Mongolia, and South Korea. But planning for Colombia’s association with
NATO apparently preceded that for the seven other
nations. As a global partner, Colombia isn’t bound by Article 5 of NATO’s
founding treaty of 1949 which declares that an attack on one member state is an
attack on all of them, something applying to the 29 fully-fledged members.
The job description of a global partner,
according to the NATO website, is to “develop cooperation
with NATO in areas of mutual interest, including emerging security challenges,
and some [partners] contribute actively to NATO operations either militarily or
in some other way.” Thus an “intimate bond between the country and the
structure of NATO” involves “close collaboration in most military
areas.”
Colombia boasts two qualifications for associating
with NATO. One, It’s a regional military power. Representative numbers tell that story: Colombia’s
military force includes 550,550 troops (369,100 active duty), 273 helicopters,
1345 armed fighting vehicles, and $8.976 billion in budgeted military
spending for 2017. Only Brazil at $25.75 billion exceeds Colombia in this regard
in Latin America. The Colombian government spends 13.1 percent of its total outlay on
military spending, which accounts for 3.4 percent of Colombia’s GDP, the
highest such rate in South America, says a source citing a percentage of 3.1.
Secondly, Colombia’s relations with a powerful
sponsor are tight. The bond between the United States and Colombia has
persisted since 1948 when Bogotá hosted the conference at which the
Organization of American States took shape, since 1951 when the “Colombian
Battalion” joined U.S. troops in the Korean war (alone among Latin American
soldiers), since 1962 when U.S. military advisors in effect turned Colombia’s
counter-insurgency effort over to paramilitaries thereby sowing seeds of
murder and chaos, since the 1980s when common purpose in dealing with illicit
drugs first emerged, since 2000 when billions
of dollars in military aid started to flow under Plan Colombia, since 2009 when
arrangements for seven U.S. bases in Colombia were finalized.
Colombia enters a NATO where its U.S. patron has
exerted leadership at the highest level. Partnership between the
United States and Colombia, resting on shared commercial and economic interests
of the dominant social classes of both countries, now plays out within a
militarized, multi-national entity that protects such interests.
A dreadful
duo thus has the back of Colombia’s oligarchy. The prospect is good that new
grief will be falling upon the underclass not only in Colombia, but also in the
region and farther afield.
Criticism
centers on facades obscuring possible NATO and U.S. militarized interventions
in Colombia and Latin America generally. These include operations of
humanitarian assistance, fighting illicit drugs, and countering alleged
terrorism. Intelligence-sharing and military-equipment standardization are
likely.
There is speculation that a NATO – U.S. alliance
may lead to new impediments to struggles in Colombia for justice and peace. It
will “fence in possibilities for social transformation,” says one analyst. With
NATO on the scene, the government’s zeal for implementing the recent peace
agreement with the FARC, enfeebled already, may weaken even more. And
Colombia’s army and paramilitary forces may soonbe acting “like a praetorian, imperial guard in the region
controlling all the narco-trafficking in the region.”
There is worry too that with NATO’s intrusion in
Latin American affairs, recent advances toward regional unity may be doomed. The presence
of NATO, real or imagined, may cancel out or damage regional alliances that
deal with social programs, or promote mutually beneficial trade arrangements, or
foster military and diplomatic cooperation. The prototype of the latter
has been the Latin America and Caribbean Economic Community(CELAC) with its
mission of ameliorating conflict among member states. In retrospect,
CELAC’s declaration of January, 2014 in favor of a “Zone of Peace” looks now like wishful
thinking.
President Santos has come under serious criticism,
for example, that “he brings to a peaceful and denuclearized
region like Latin America and the Caribbean a weapon [capable] of mass
destruction of peoples and states like NATO.” And according to Venezuela’s foreign
ministry, Colombian authorities
now“lend themselves to introduce, in Latin America and
the Caribbean, a foreign military alliance with nuclear capacity, which in
every way constitutes a serious threat for peace and regional
stability.” That has meaning, says another observer, especially “along the borders of progressive states like
Venezuela and Ecuador.”
Lastly,
claims are heard that Colombia’s now close association with NATO represents a
fundamental shift in U.S. strategies for global control. Formerly, and
especially during the Cold War, NATO leaders targeted Soviet Russia ostensibly
because of its communist government. For reasons that are less clear, but
having to do generally with control, NATO undertook to encircle post-Soviet
Russia. While engaged in the Middle East and Afghanistan, NATO had its eyes on
Russia too.
Now, however, NATO has a Western Hemisphere ally
with a coastline and ports on the southern reaches of the Pacific Ocean. U.S.
machinations may have accounted for Colombia joining NATO, and, if so, with
good reason. Atleast one analyst there thinks that “China
seriously threatens the political economic, military, and cultural hegemony of
the United States.”In fact, he says, the Pacific Ocean is “today the most
important battlefield of the Second Cold War.” And “for imperialist plunderers
of the 21st Century, Colombia has become the point of their sword.”
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in
Maine.
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