Tag Archives: FARC

Against Us

(Washington, D.C.): For months now, President Bush has been declaring that nations around the world had a choice to make. Either they would be with us or with the terrorists. Some believed, or at least hoped, that this was empty rhetoric. If that perception is not to be proven correct — with potentially debilitating repercussions for Mr. Bush’s credibility and American security interests in the years ahead — those who are now showing themselves to be against, rather than with, us must be held to account.

A Who’s Who

Topping the list, of course, are the three veto-wielding nations that have long supported Saddam Hussein in the UN Security Council, and who are doing so now. France, Russia and China appear determined to block the adoption of a new resolution that would enable the United States to move without delay to compel Iraq’s disarmament when (not if) Saddam once again thwarts UN inspectors. Unless actually forced to choose, each would prefer to maintain cordial diplomatic and lucrative trade relations with the United States, while preserving a valued client in Baghdad.

It could be that these fair-weather (if not actually false) friends have been encouraged in their intransigence by State Department interlocutors — many of whom appear to share Franco- Russian-Chinese hostility to the Bush goal of regime change in Iraq — to believe that the President will accede to efforts to dumb-down the U.S.-drafted resolution. They clearly fancy a diplomatic endgame that will have the UN’s chief sleuth, Hans Blix, going through the motions of inspection over at least the next six-months.

Officials in Paris, Moscow and Beijing well know that if such delay would not completely foreclose American military action, it would certainly defer it until late next year. They may even succeed at last in their efforts to terminate sanctions on Iraq once it is certified (however unjustifiably) to be free of weapons of mass destruction. It is a safe bet that, as soon as sanctions are gone, they will be among the foreign suppliers willing to provide Saddam whatever additional lethal technology and weaponry he desires.

There is a similar risk that Russia and China — and even more reliable “friends,” like South Korea and Japan — may perceive Mr. Bush’s temperate stance towards North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as an invitation to try to have it both ways: Suffering no costs in their relationship with us even as they continue to prop up and reward the malfeasance of one of the planet’s most dangerous regimes.

Then there is the emerging danger emanating from our own hemisphere. The election this weekend of a radical socialist as president of Brazil may further catalyze trends with the potential to transform a region we have generally taken for granted as comprised almost entirely of democratic friends of the United States into one hostile towards us and hospitable to our international terrorist foes.

A warning about this dangerous prospect was communicated last week to President Bush by one of the most distinguished and respected members of the U.S. House of Representatives and chairman of its International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde. In particular, Mr. Hyde called attention to what he called a possible “axis of evil in the Americas” forged by Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Brazil’s Lula da Silva.

Of particular concern is the possibility that the enthusiasm “Lula” has declared for resuscitating Brazil’s long-dormant nuclear program could put atomic weapons and ballistic missiles into the hands of this axis and its unsavory friends (for example, Chavez has established close ties with virtually every terrorist-sponsoring regime and several terrorist organizations, notably Colombia’s FARC and the IRA). Rep. Hyde correctly points out that the United States can begin to counter this metastasizing danger by working with those who are against Chavez, and with us, in the Venezuelan opposition.

Among the other nations who are making known where they stand are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The true colors of the former are on display as Egyptian state-controlled television broadcasts nightly during Ramadan 41-segments of a series loosely based on the Russian blood- libel known as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Such incitement to hatred of and violence against our ally, Israel, is incompatible with being a true friend of the United States — to say nothing of enjoying the status of peacemaker and “moderate Arab state” that garners for Egypt billions each year in U.S. tax dollars and advanced weapons.

Saudi Arabia’s alignment with America’s enemies extends far beyond the anti-U.S. and anti- Western propaganda that is also ceaselessly disseminated by the kingdom’s government-run media. In fact, for some fifty years, Saudi official, royal family and what passes for private sector institutions have been expending untold sums to promote the state religion — a virulently intolerant strain of Islam known as Wahhabism. Washington has long ignored the individual and cumulative effects of such spending on Wahhabi proselytizing, recruiting, indoctrination, training and equipping of adherents who embrace the sect’s injunction to convert or kill infidels.

In the wake of terrorism made possible — or at least abetted — at home and abroad by such Saudi-connected activities, the United States can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to this profoundly unfriendly behavior. That is particularly true insofar as there is reason to believe that Wahhabi enterprises are giving rise to perhaps the most insidious enemy of all: an Islamist Fifth Column operating within this country.

The Bottom Line

Fortunately, the United States does have friends, nations that are genuinely “with us” in the war on terror. They include Great Britain, Israel, Australia, India and Turkey. Each shares, at a fundamental level, our values. Like us, all are, to varying degrees, under assault from terrorist enemies. Like the United States, all face domestic pressure to accommodate — rather than confront — it.

Still, such nations constitute the core of a coalition of the willing that President Bush has resolved to mobilize to address the threats posed by terrorists like Saddam Hussein and his friends. The time has come to do so and, in the process, to make clear who is truly with us and who is prepared, instead, to be with our enemies.

What to Do About Colombia

(Washington, D.C.): Afghanistan’s Taliban regime relied heavily on cash from illegal drug production and trafficking to keep itself in power as the world’s pre-eminent terrorist government. U.S. destruction of that regime effectively has denied al Qaeda and other terrorist groups a state-sponsored safe haven from which to operate.

Enter the FARC

Another narcoterror regime may be in the making, however. Its potential host country shares a border with the United States’ largest foreign oil supplier. It is one of the world’s largest sources of illegal narcotics. It straddles a vital maritime chokepoint. It is nearly twice the size of Afghanistan and more than twice as large as France. Heavily armed militias wedded to discredited, obsolete ideologies and bent on seizing total political control, and financed by profits from drugs cultivated or trafficked under their domain, murder the country’s elected and spiritual leaders with impunity. The largest of those militias, deemed international terrorist organizations by the State Department, is linked to terrorists from around the world.

This is not happening on the opposite side of the world. It’s happening in our own hemisphere. That country is Colombia.

This year indeed, the next few months may well determine whether Colombia remains a pro-U.S. democracy or becomes a full-fledged narco-terrorist state run by an ideologically fanatical regime.

The prime-mover behind seeking the latter outcome is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC. (A second, smaller enemy is the National Liberation Army, or ELN, currently negotiating with Colombia in Havana talks under the guiding hand of Fidel Castro.) The FARC, which began as an offshoot of the Colombian Communist Party and which remains committed to imposing a single-party dictatorship, has been fighting for nearly four decades. Over the past few years — thanks to a misguided U.S.-backed “peace process” that gave the FARC a safe-haven the size of Switzerland, and to a massive inflow of narco-dollars mainly from American drug abusers — the terrorists have grown ever stronger.

A Sea-Change in Washington, A New Lease on Life for Democracy in Colombia?

For years the Clinton administration maintained the fiction that there was no real connection between the producers and smugglers of cocaine and heroin the narco- traffickers and the FARC and ELN guerrillas. During this period, Washington provided Colombia with equipment and training for its superb anti-narcotics police, but stipulated that U.S. assistance could not be used to fight the guerrillas. Colombian President Andres Pastrana, on his own and with American encouragement, continued that fiction.

By contrast, the Bush administration seems committed to telling the truth and to doing something about it. The Department of Defense has prepared what appears to be an extremely well- thought-out plan to help Colombia save its democracy and to destroy a major threat to the American people at the same time. But the administration is still divided, particularly in the National Security Council, where Director John Maisto, a career foreign service officer known for his soft line on narcoterrorism and other security issues, remains a major roadblock to realization of the President’s agenda.

Unfortunately, Colombia does not have much time. Spirits are high within the FARC, even though its public support is in the low single-digits. The FARC has benefitted from years of U.S. policies that denied Colombia the tools and training it needed long ago, and runs a significant information warfare operation. It also enjoys support among those in the United States who took to the streets for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Communist guerrillas in El Salvador in the 1980s. And the FARC can benefit from any blocking actions that the chairman of the Senate Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), might choose to throw in Colombia’s path.

That said, both Colombia and the United States government have a lot of cards to play. Colombia’s political leadership and its people are more united than ever against the FARC. For its part, the FARC has incontrovertibly proven its unwillingness to act within the democratic process, continuing to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, including federal representatives and senators. Consequently the FARC has lost significant support abroad, even in Europe’s socialist ruling class, which recently came out in favor of President Pastrana’s new military campaign. There is even new support in the U.S. Congress for helping Colombia fight the FARC. And President Bush finally has a good team settling into place for doing what needs to be done in the American hemisphere (Maisto notwithstanding), with his able policy shop at the Department of Defense, and his beefed-up State Department with newly installed Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Ambassador Otto Reich.

The Bottom Line

Given President Bush’s position on fighting international terrorism, and the role that illegal narcotics production and trafficking plays in fueling terrorism, the United States should look at foreign cocaine and heroin production as less of a law-enforcement problem, and as more of a military one. Therefore, instead of trying to stop illegal drug production in Colombia with cumbersome and ineffective read-’em-their-rights legalities, the U.S. and its partners should place more emphasis on the military component exactly as it did in hunting down individual members of the al Qaeda network. The United States must take the following steps:

  • Lift the ban that prevents Colombia from using U.S. aid to fight and defeat the FARC and ELN;
  • On an emergency basis, provide equipment, technology, training and other resources to the Colombian National Police and the Colombian Armed Forces so they can bring the war to the narcoguerrillas;
  • Provide Colombian forces with timely, actionable intelligence, particularly electronic intelligence, to destroy FARC and ELN units and forces;
  • Hold open the option for U.S. air power to be used against the FARC and ELN, especially in areas difficult for Colombian forces to reach; and train and equip Colombian special forces to use laser designation devices for that purpose;
  • Launch a substantial public diplomacy effort to explain the stakes in Colombia, the nature of the FARC and ELN, and the U.S. mission there; and
  • Treat the FARC as one would treat al Qaeda: Destroy it once and for all.

Future of the Panama Canal

7 December 1999
Washington, D.C.

On Pearl Harbor Day, one week before today’s official ceremony marking the United States’ relinquishing of the Panama Canal, the Center for Security Policy convened its latest High-Level Roundtable Discussion to address what comes next. This Roundtable, entitled “After the Hand-over: the Future of the Panama Canal and U.S. Hemispheric Interests,” provided an indispensable guide to the strategic challenges to American interests and security now arising in much of the Western Hemisphere — challenges that will likely be exacerbated by the loss of U.S. bases, training and intelligence capabilities and the capacity to provide physical security for Panama and the Canal, and by extension, the region.

More than 100 experienced national security practitioners, retired senior military officers, former Members of Congress, congressional aides and members of the press participated in this Roundtable. Highlights of the remarks made by the Lead Discussants and other participants in the course of this extraordinary three-and-a-half hour conversation included the following:

Overviews

The stage was set by former House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon and Admiral Leon ‘Bud’ Edney (USN, Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. Rep. Solomon provided an excellent summary of how the United States came to be a party to the 1977 treaties relinquishing control over the Panama Canal and how the intervening years have proven the critics of those treaties to be right.

Rep. Solomon also read a letter prepared for the Roundtable by former Senator Paul Laxalt, leader in the Senate of the opponents to the Panama Canal Treaties. Sen. Laxalt expressed the view that, had he and his colleagues known then what is now known about the hemispheric context and Communist Chinese penetration of the Canal Zone (among other places in the region), there would almost certainly have been the votes needed to reject that accord.

Admiral Edney decried the “benign neglect” with which successive U.S. administrations have treated the Western hemisphere, giving rise to a situation in which it is too late to reconsider the wisdom of relinquishing the Canal. He also expressed grave concern at the present Administration’s failure to apply the basic tenets of the Monroe Doctrine with respect to China’s ominous and growing involvement in our backyard.

As Admiral Edney pointed out:


  • “We [have] neglected to apply the basic tenets of the Monroe Doctrine, which goes back to the fundamental history and security interests of the United States in this hemisphere….We’ve ignored that, because if anyone believes that the Hutchison Whampoa Company is like any other Western…operation and does not have a direct security interest and intelligence-gathering interest to the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese government, they are sadly mistaken and naive.”




  • “Dependable access to the Panama Canal is essential to the hemispheric national security and economic needs of the United States.”




  • “We are also being naive if we believe the assurances of the current political announcements coming out of Washington that say that the only non-democratic [government] in the hemisphere is Cuba. If you consider that Haiti is a democracy — and all those other southern and Central American countries that are struggling with improvements — are consolidated democracies which includes a free press, balanced security interests and which includes a financial rectitude, and viable parties — then you look at the world through much more rose-colored glasses than I do.”




  • “As always, we have the right to go back in, but…it’s easier to get out than it is to get back in. And I view this kind of event which has been going on…since 1977 and now is going to be finally accomplished on the 31st of December, as a sad day for the United States of America.”




  • Admiral Edney also warned about the decision effectively to halt the use of the live-fire training range on the island of Vieques near Puerto Rico. He observed that, without access to that unique facility, the Navy will have no need for the near-by Roosevelt Roads naval base, giving rise to a likely withdrawal from the latter.


In addition, the Roundtable benefitted from written inputs by two of the Nation’s most eminent security policy practitioners. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger observed:


    “In the context of a general ongoing Chinese shift toward more outward-looking activities and in keeping with their three millennia of statecraft, it is not logical to assume that they would pass up a chance to acquire a major foothold in one of the world’s three major naval choke-points — especially if it can be done with little cost or risk. It suits their diplomatic, economic, military and intelligence interests, just as such a capability in potentially unfriendly hands can be a threat to ours.”

In a letter to the Senate’s President pro tem, Senator Strom Thurmond, publicly released at the Roundtable, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer rebutted the proposition that the 1977 treaties mitigate security concerns arising from the Chinese or others’ ability to interfere with Canal operations:


    “Right of passage in an emergency is too time sensitive for Panamanian court action or administrative rulings by Panamanian bureaucrats when the safety and effectiveness of our forward deployed units are threatened. Further, with the current departure of our forces it may be only a short period of time before that vacuum is filled by hostile foreign troops which could, in turn, make any current plan, law or treaty ineffective. With U.S. forces no longer present, the likelihood of damage by terrorists or similar catastrophes that could put the Canal out of commission is increased.”

The Roundtable next focused on three subjects: 1) The Strategic Environment — Ominous Developments in the Hemisphere; 2) The Abiding Strategic, Military and Economic Importance of the Panama Canal to the United States; and 3) Is China an Emerging Threat to the Canal — and to Hemispheric Security More Generally?

Strategic Environment

This first section featured lead discussants: Dr. J. Michael Waller, Vice President, American Foreign Policy Council; Dr. Norman Bailey, former Senior Director, International Economic Affairs, National Security Council; Tomas Cabal, journalist and professor, University of Panama; and Dr. Constantine Menges, former Senior Director for Latin America, National Security Council.

Among the topics discussed in this section were: the instability in Columbia, which is facing challenges from three armed groups; the growing authoritarianism, leftist radicalism and anti-Americanism of Venezuelan President Chavez; the increasingly warm entente between China and Cuba; escalating economic difficulties and rampant corruption in Mexico and Ecuador; and drug-, arms- and alien-smuggling by the PRC, the Russian mafia, the made-over KGB and other parties in the region. Of particular note were the following:

Dr. J. Michael Waller


  • “General Charles Wilhelm, who is the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Southern Command, is constantly telling anyone who will listen that our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and assets in the region are terribly eroded — in some places virtually completely eroded. We have extremely limited resources, yet more problems and more duties than ever before.”




  • “The first [problem], obviously, is Panama and the whole question of what are the Chinese companies involved with Panama. When you figure that the Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, takes a personal interest in the story, has the Senate Armed Services Committee hold a hearing on this exact question, and then won’t invite a single expert witness on China or the Chinese military or Chinese enterprises and treats it as a Latin America event….[and] after four hours of testimony, Senator Bob Smith asked each of the administration witnesses, as well as the head of the Panama Canal Commission, the American deputy head of the Commission, a State Department official, and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for SOLIC and said, ‘what do you know about Chinese companies and their service in the interest of the Chinese military,’ and all of them said they didn’t know, yet all had just been testifying for four hours on the fact that this company, Hutchison Whampoa presented no threat at all.”




  • “The problem is a lot larger than Panama [insofar as] you have a lot of these small island republics in the Caribbean becoming independent little narco-states of their own, where they have banking secrecy laws, where you can buy passports. You have all these Ukrainians and Russians running around with Dominican or St. Lucia passports. You have even some countries where we’re running our new counter-drug operations out of which have huge drug operations of their own, particularly in the Netherlands Antilles.”




  • “And you have Cuba, which has not only been allowing certain types of trafficking to be run through Cuba as a transshipment point, and has not only allowed the Russians to upgrade their electronic intelligence facilities, but is also allowing Russia to begin flying Tupalev 160 strategic nuclear bombers in and out of there again. [Havana] has brought the Chinese in now to set up at least two electronic intelligence facilities of their own, as well, on their territory.”




  • “Now, I’d like to comment a little bit on Colombia….First of all, they seem to be losing…the drug war down there, both the opium poppies and the coca….You have a very high morale, very aggressive, very professional, very honest, and very trusted police force there….Now, the goal, obviously, is to help the army do the same thing. But the Colombians are being hamstrung for a couple of things. First, lack of commitment of the United States to make fighting the drug war a priority. We send down antiquated equipment, completely insufficient equipment with insufficient quantities or with, in the case of the Blackhawks, insufficient or nonexistent spare parts….




    “But also, we have encouraged them to get into this peace process with the guerillas. There are two Marxist guerilla groups, the FARC and the ELN. They’re both Marxist. The FARC is mostly rural-based, but with the peace process, the Colombians, with U.S. cajoling, have given them a demilitarized zone about the size of Switzerland, which they’re using not only to regroup and to resupply and to build themselves up and probably to launch attacks on Bogota….Also, they’re inviting in foreign investments. And who are the foreign investors they’re bringing in? The Iranians.”

Norman Bailey

  • “Just a very few words about Ecuador. To start out with, Ecuador is in the process of disintegration — socially, politically, and economically, having suffered through El Nino and the drop in oil prices, but particularly a series of governments which can only be described as an amalgamation of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers put together.




    “The result of that has been a situation at the present time in Ecuador where the country is…totally bankrupt, where everyone is at everyone else’s throat, where the government has no authority and no control over much of anything. The armed forces have recently been making some not terribly subtle statements about how awful the civilians are running things, and I don’t think it’s out of the question, although I’m certainly not predicting it…that there will be some kind of (probably somewhat disguised) military coup in Ecuador.”



  • “The Venezuelan situation is extremely volatile and extremely dangerous. You have a former coup leader who’s been elected president of Venezuela. This is a man who is following through on the plan that he developed through many years of conspiratorial activities, and during his time in jail….Mr. Chavez is deadly serious about what he intends to do with Venezuela, and anyone who is still under any illusions as to what he has in mind can only be described as a complete and utter fool, not to put a fine point on it. What he does have in mind is to become a civilian dictator with the support, not only the support of the armed forces, but with the military in many of the most important positions in the country.




    “As far as the United States is concerned, there are many dangers to that situation. The most dangerous of all is the fact that as a result of [Chavez’s] total mismanagement and likely future worse management of the economic situation, petroleum production in Venezuela is likely to peak and decline, whereas it should have, if properly managed, continued to increase and Venezuela, depending on which month you’re talking about, is either the first or second petroleum supplier to the United States.”



  • “[Chavez] also is very actively interfering in his neighbors’ business. He has reawakened the boundary dispute with Guyana on one border and he has actively interfered in the so-called peace process in Colombia, interestingly enough, on the side of the guerillas. He was stationed on the border during a substantial period of his military career and he established excellent relations with the Colombian guerillas and he maintains those relations. And he and Fidel Castro have every intention of being involved in the so-called peace process, and in the case of Castro, of course, with the agreement and at the request of the Colombian president, about which more later.”




  • “The Colombian situation is one of extreme danger and instability. You have five different armed forces fighting each other for control of the national territory. Some comments have been already made about the situation. The aspect that I would most like to comment on is the fact that the border with Panama is totally uncontrolled. Panama has absolutely no capacity whatsoever to control their own border with Colombia. The guerillas of the FARC and the ELN and the paramilitary forces go in and out of Panama at will.”




  • “The more serious aspect of it is the fact that there is no security in the Canal area. Once the American forces have evacuated and most of them are gone already and they’ll all be gone by the end of this month, the security situation in the Canal Zone is absolutely nonexistent….There is no security. The possibility of sabotage on the part of Colombian groups, on the part, for that matter, of any other kind of terrorist group and so on, are enormous and would be extremely easy to carry out.”


Tomas Cabal


  • “The increasing presence of Red China and their companies, which in the long run, may provide a threat to the geopolitical interests of Panama and the United States.”




  • “I do think that there still is a window of opportunity which has been presented by the current administration’s opening negotiations of a wide security agreement with the Republic of Panama. As part of that negotiation, the government has already set aside portions of Howard Air Force Base, Rodman Naval Station, the communications center at Curacao, and facilities on the Atlantic side of Fort Davis and at the general training school at Fort Sherman.”




  • “There is also a possibility that Panama can extend either forward operating landing rights for American aircraft or simply to reach a new agreement to utilize Howard Air Force Base for American aircraft. It seems to me ironic that the Clinton administration will be spending $100 million to upgrade an Ecuadorian air base…and they’re also negotiating with the governments of Curacao and Aruba to secure landing rights. When you add those figures to the increased fuel bill [entailed in] operating AWACS aircraft out of Key West, then one fails to understand why the Clinton administration could not agree that some type of economic package could have been signed and secured with the Panamanian government.”


Constantine Menges


  • “The situation that I think is emerging now is a new constellation of threat that involves: the Castro regime, as always, using its covert resources through its intelligence service and its long-established connections in the region; the emerging radical military dictatorship in Venezuela; and then, with its large checkbook and political influence operations, Communist China is moving into the region both in the Panama Canal zone — having through corrupt means won that contract to manage the ports….I think this context of simultaneous threat is something that requires thought and action.”




  • “Colonel Chavez has had a life-long history of activism on the radical left….Reliable reports indicate that he lived for a time with the Colombian communist guerillas in Colombia; in 1996, Chavez was engaged in smuggling weapons of the Venezuelan armed forces to the Colombian guerillas. And in his established political movement and in his campaign for the presidency in 1998, he received extensive support, financial and otherwise, from Saddam Hussein and the regime in Libya.”




  • “And, in fact, having taken office as president in February 1999, Colonel Chavez has, in my judgment, essentially acted time after time contrary to the existing constitution of Venezuela….He has also established his control over the armed forces, bringing back to the military the people who were his fellow coup- plotters, the officers. They’re now in charge of the military, the intelligence services, the national guard. He has established parallel military committees in 16 of the 22 states of Venezuela that have, in fact, taken over the governmental functions of the elected governors of the states.”




  • “Chavez has gone to China. He has gone to Cuba on November 18 and told Castro once again that he is ‘with Castro.’ ‘Castro is not alone.’ He will lead the Venezuelan people to ‘the same sea as Castro has led the Cuban people….’ And we see a situation where this regime, in my view, will, once the dictatorship is consolidated there, it is still not too late.”




  • “We see a situation where, in my view, Colombia is very fragile. It is a country in which the Communists can come to power either through power-sharing, the false kind of political settlement that was attempted in the 1980s, or through a victory leading to a collapse of the armed forces and taking power more or less in the Vietnam scenario or the China 1949 scenario. It is in a very fragile situation. Castro hopes to use Colonel Chavez as his ostensible neutral intermediary to try to persuade the Colombian president to accept conditions politically that would lead to the end of democracy in Colombia and to the victory of the communists.”


Discussion


  • “There are people in this Administration who have told me, very high level, that the canal is going to be closed”




  • “All polls indicate that over 76 percent of the Panamanian people welcome a continued military presence of the United States in Panama.”




  • “The new Foreign Minister of Panama, Aleman, said, under no circumstances would the American military be permitted to return to Panama.”




  • The Clinton Administration made no real effort to pursue negotiations with the Panamanians to permit the U.S. to maintain a military presence in Panama.




  • It is offensive to the people of Panama than neither President Clinton nor Vice President Gore [nor even Secretary of State Albright] will be present for the hand-over ceremony.


The Continuing Importance of the Panama Canal

The Symposium next moved onto its discussion of “The Abiding Strategic, Military and Economic Importance of the Panama Canal to the United States” with Lead Ddiscussants: Vice Admiral James Perkins (USN Ret.), former Deputy Commander-in-Chief , U.S. Southern Command, and former Commander, Military Sealift Command; and Lieutenant General Gordon Sumner (Ret.), former Chairman, Inter-American Defense Board.

These distinguished former military officers and other knowledgeable participants confirmed that U.S. economic and military interests would be seriously and adversely affected should the Nation be denied the use of the Canal for a protracted period of time — or even a relatively short period at a strategically inopportune juncture. The following comments were of particular interest:

Admiral Perkins


  • “[The United States] spends millions of dollars in places [whose names] end in “stan” and we spend so little time, effort and money in our own hemisphere from a military standpoint.”




  • “Day-to-day, pound-for-pound, I think we get more bang for the buck as Americans from the mentoring and the training and the example that these young men and women provide to the Latin American militaries than any other place in the world.”




  • “Civilian control of the military is not a proud tradition in that part of the world, and I think the example that our sailors and soldiers and airmen and Marines and Coast Guardsmen provide on a day-to-day basis is absolutely essential to continuing the process of civilian control of the military in Latin America, which is doing pretty well in some places, not doing so well in others. It’s a tenuous sort of day-to-day thing.”




  • “[The United States relies on] the Military Sealift Command in time of war or national emergency to deploy the force by sea. Ninety-five percent of the stuff that went to the Gulf went on a ship….and I think that’s become more and more important as we pull back from Germany and from Europe and from other places and become, in fact, a continental army.”




  • “From my perspective as a Military Sealift commander, clearly, there are other ways of getting to places besides going through the Panama Canal — but it takes longer and it’s harder. So [as] we look very closely at the Panama Canal, we’re concerned as it evolved toward the 31st of December this year.”




  • “…The counter-drug effort that was mounted out of Panama was significant. Howard Air Force Base, a piece of it in airborne surveillance and interceptors, is absolutely critical. I’m very concerned that the basing arrangements that we’ve ginned up since that time in Ecuador and in the islands are going to be sufficient to pick up the slack.”




  • “Plus, another threat to the canal and to Panama itself is the narco-threat. It was clear to me when I was there that the Darien province down on the border with Colombia is full of narco- guerillas. They used to use it for a ‘rest and relaxation (R&R)’ camp at one stage. Without the deterrent factor of U.S. military troops in Panama, one has to wonder, what’s the next logical step? I don’t think it’s necessarily a good one.”


General Gordnon Sumner


  • “This country has been focused East versus West….We have strategic myopia when it comes to the Western Hemisphere. The tragedy is that as far as the professional life of a military officer is concerned,, the Western Hemisphere is a backwater. It is a backwater. We have about 1,000 general and flag officers in the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army….We have about a dozen out of 1,000 assigned to the Western Hemisphere. That gives you exactly what this country thinks strategically of this hemisphere.”




  • “This is a major problem for this country. The last time we went in there, we were on the ground, and I was very much involved with getting Max Thurmond to run that operation. We were on the ground. Wait until we try to go in the next time and the FARC is on the ground, the ELN, the Chinese.”




  • “[Former Panamanian Dictator] Omar Torrijos told me…the winds of communism were coming [from the East]. Right now, the winds are blowing from the West, the Chinese winds.




    “But we have a strategic problem here that I don’t see anyone in the executive branch of the government dealing with, and very few people in the legislative branch of the government dealing with. History has a way of coming up, and a major power that…does not understand its national interest [is] destined to the ash heap of history.”

Discussion

  • Concern was expressed that Russia’s SVR, the successor to the KGB, and Russian organized crime is also exploiting the perceived vacuum of power and growing instability in Latin America. Evidence was cited that Iraq and Iran are doing so, as well.




  • “But to offer some thoughts on what can be done on Panama, there’s a newly-elected president….I think the United States Government, members of Congress, could write a letter to the President and perhaps try and get the President to focus on this in a competent way, in spite of his extraordinary comment on November 30, as reported by Reuters, that he thought the Chinese would do a very efficient job in managing the canal (subsequently corrected by the State Department spokesman to indicate that he meant the Panamanians would do an efficient job. But he actually meant the Chinese, because the question was specifically asked him about the Chinese.”




  • “If you look at OPEC production, it’s 30 million barrels a day, 15 million of which Chavez and the radicals will control. The price has gone up a large amount, from 12 to 24, since he’s become president. The oil weapon against the industrial democracies, I think, is part of this. Global production is 72 million barrels a day, so there’s enough supply to overcome it in time, if it’s dealt with in time.




    “Russia produces seven million barrels a day. So if it adds to the 15 million that the Chavez group will have in OPEC, you’ve got 22 million a day. You actually have a situation in which, at a number of different levels, political [steps], covert action, the oil weapon, the radical entente can start and reinforce and act against the interest of the United States and its major allies, and I think that’s happening.”



  • “I think that if leaders in Congress will focus on the Hutchison Whampoa issue in the next week and will make public statements — whether they go to Panama or make them here — it can be an issue in Panama and we can get some traction among those people in Panama who might agree with us….After all, the bribes were not paid to the current administration. And, after all, Ambassador Hughes, Clinton’s own ambassador, called it a corruptly concluded agreement.




    “This is the starting point. If we break the dam on this, it paves the way for making progress in other areas. I think we should focus on canceling the Hutchison Whampoa contract. But that will be achieved only if there is some indication from elected officials of the United States Government that there is a concern about it.”

A particularly noteworthy intervention was made by Major General John Thompson (USA), the current Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board. Speaking in a personal capacity, Gen. Thompson spoke passionately about the need for a greatly increased focus by U.S. executive and legislative branch policy-makers on hemispheric security matters in the wake of the Canal’s handover. Special and urgent attention needs to be paid to the fact that “Important U.S. strategic interests in Colombia are dying the death of 1,000 cuts every day.” According to General Thompson:

  • “One of the things that’s very important that this group can do a lot to help is that we can require our political leaders to have a deeper understanding of the tremendous interest that America has in this hemisphere. Indeed, there have been significant changes in the security paradigm. With the end of the Cold War, there are new forces that are unleashed. There are new expectations that people have all over the world, but especially in this hemisphere, and as we have heard ample evidence of today, there are an awful lot of very serious problems, we could almost say conundrums, facing some of the democracies of this hemisphere.”




  • “I don’t know how many of you read an article about four weeks ago in the Washington Times written by Bobby Charles….But Bobby’s article expressed his deeply-felt disappointment and frustration over Congress’ inability to come to grips with important American strategic interests in Colombia and to take bipartisan action to help a country, a longstanding, albeit imperfect, democracy that Colombia is who is dying the death of 1,000 cuts almost every day while her great friend, the United States, sits by shaking our head, spending more energy discussing the imperfections that exist in Colombia than doing anything of the many things that are within our power to do something about.




    “Colombians are not asking Americans to die for them. They were terribly embarrassed that five Americans died several weeks ago in a tragic aviation accident. They don’t want our soldiers to come to die for Colombia. But they do need help.”



  • “In the past, not only have we not helped the Colombians help themselves, we have refused them access to materials that they wanted to buy from us when they were in much better economic condition. And they’re still desperately trying to get materials from us. Many of us here should be doing a better job of advocating their interest.”




  • “We [‘Cold Warriors’] still believe that there are people out there who mean us ill. I find many of my friends in this town amused when I suggest that there are people who are waging psychological warfare against our society and against the other democracies of this hemisphere. I absolutely know that that is true, but I don’t think it’s politically correct to talk like that today.”


Is China an Emerging Threat?

The final segment of the CSP Roundtable dealt with the topic “Is China an Emerging Threat to the Canal — and to Hemispheric Security More Generally?” It featured as Lead Discussants: Al Santoli, the editor of the American Foreign Policy Council’s China Reform Monitor and congressional investigator; Roger Robinson, former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs, National Security Council; and Dr. Richard Fisher, Office of Rep. Chris Cox. Among the important interventions offered in this section was a contribution by Edward Timberlake, co-author with William Triplett of the best-selling books Year of the Rat and the newly released Red Dragon Rising.

During this section the Roundtable heard additional, compelling evidence of: China’s cooperation with Cuba in areas of intelligence; the PRC’s willingness to use “engineer battalions” to introduce military personnel into the Western Hemisphere under the guise of infrastructure construction; Beijing’s use of military-to-military ties with Ecuador to acquire “aggressor” training for the People’s Liberation Army to defeat the tactics and weapon systems the United States has employed and has shared with its allies; the PLA and other Chinese entities’ increasing exploitation of American debt and equities markets to raise large sums of money for activities — whether in Venezuela, Sudan, Iraq or elsewhere — that are highly inimical to U.S. interests; and Chinese attempts to penetrate, corrupt or otherwise undermine democratic processes in the hemisphere. Among the most noteworthy points were the following:

Al Santoli


  • “[There] is a Chinese-language publication produced by the People’s Liberation Army early this year called Unconventional Warfare, written by two strategists who are colonels in the PLA. Since this book has come out, it’s gotten some attention in terms of their concepts of asymmetrical warfare, non-conventional warfare, which is the way that they’re studying the Gulf War and studying what we have done in Kosovo and other places. [Their focus is on] how to defeat the United States. Myself being a part-time martial artist and understanding some of the general concepts of how you take down a bigger opponent, you a) look for their weaknesses and b) you try to defeat them with their own strength.




  • “And so what I see the Chinese doing now in Panama is a microcosm of this, is a triangulation of the United States — a triangulation involving: ports (Bahamas and Panama’s Colon grigiop, which are the two major ports in the Southern hemisphere, very closely tied to our economy; Vancouver, above us on the coast, as well as setting up shop throughout Canada. And this is one of the things that has shocked Canadian security officials, is the extent that Li Ka-shing, Henry Fox, Stanley Ho, and some of the others who are tied into the Riadys and the CPP group in Thailand, all of whom are Chuchao Chinese.“




  • “[In the] November 2, 1999 [editions of] the Hong Kong Ming Pao Chinese language newspaper was a story where they were citing Chinese military sources about how the PLA navy is now refitting COSCO ships for, specifically, they went into in the outset of the story, warfare against Taiwan. (We know that COSCO is the merchant marine, besides the chief merchant fleet, it’s also the merchant marine for the PLA.) In this particular article, they went into detail of how these COSCO ships are being refitted for the event of an invasion of Taiwan.




    “However, deeper into the story that goes into how Haifeng container ships are being reequipped to stay within the merchant fleet, but at the same time to be able to conduct military operations, such as sealing off the sea, fighting submarines, controlling air space, mine-laying and mine-sweeping, and monitoring missions, for example, blockade warfare and information warfare, using counter-electronics and other means.”



  • “Li Ka-shing and Hutchison are directly involved with COSCO, not only in our own hemisphere. COSCO is a big user of the Panama Canal with or without Hutchison, but they are partners with Hutchison, but also North Korea. Li Ka-shing and Hutchison have the only outside foreign port holdings in North Korea, and tell me if anybody in this room would think the North Koreans would have somebody hold the ports if they were not part of the Chinese communist government and closely connected to the Chinese military.”




  • “If we go to war with China over Taiwan, in our hemisphere, if they want to block our shipping, our supplies, or just to create financial [and] economic warfare, they are in position to do so. And the maintenance of the canal and their port facilities on that canal, in tandem with their control of Freeport, Bahamas, as well as Vancouver ports, as well as COSCO activities up and down our coast, is a strategic advantage for the Chinese.”


Roger Robinson


  • “China, as many of you know, is in a kind of energy crisis itself….they are net importers today of about 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day. By 2009, that number is expected, very conservatively, to grow to 11 million barrels a day. So they really are scouring the earth for oil, and not surprisingly, they have decided to forego what’s called the Japan model in the oil business, particularly for large importers.”




    “In doing so, it really means that they’re not going to rely on world market mechanisms. They’re not going to buy their oil on the spot market, for example. They don’t trust it. They want what MIT Professor Dan Fine…calls “flagship assets” to secure physical product. It’s the old fashioned way. The dirt and the oil in the ground is what they have in mind.”



  • “Now, prior to coming to this subject, we’ve been sort of following China National Petroleum Corporation, particularly in other areas of concern from a national security perspective, the most immediate being the Sudan….Well, it turns out that China National Petroleum, just to give you an example, because I think it’s relevant to the Venezuela case, has put about $1.5 billion to $2 billion in Sudan, so far. They’re planning to ramp up to $5 billion.”




  • “The Chinese government with its flagship China National Petroleum [has] a flag asset putting down concrete stakes. Now, just to give you a sense of where else they’re hanging their hat: They have about $1.4 billion in Iraq, all primed and ready to go the first day that the sanctions are lifted, which, of course, they’re working daily to do against Saddam Hussein. And they’re also involved in a trans-Iranian pipeline. In other words, they find out where we can’t be and they march in there, sometimes with conventional weapons, not to mention a fat wallet, in places like Sudan, and with more exotic weaponry, components for weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile delivery systems and the like [on offer] for their Iranian and Iraqi partners.”




  • “Not surprisingly, they warmed up to the Chavez idea in a very profound and quick way. Thus far, China Petroleum has put in some $750 million…into Venezuela. They’ve already been awarded some of the highest quality blocks (as they’re referred to) of offshore oil deposits. And just two months ago, when the first Venezuelan oil arrived in Beijing, it wasn’t some quiet, discrete event that you’d [expect from] a commercial venture. [Rather], it was greeted with almost a state visit, I mean, major fanfare. And that was, of course, about the time that Chavez showed up in Beijing to identify himself with the Maoist revolution — just as he did so in the case of Havana more recently.”




  • “Now, the tragic part about this is that the U.S. investor community may be providing multi-billion-dollar support for China Petroleum’s consolidation of its activity in Venezuela, not to mention the new signals intelligence listening post in Cuba and their other hemispheric penetrations with an announced listing on the New York Stock Exchange in January or February of this year with an initial public offering estimated between $5 and $10 billion. The best number I have is $8 billion, which would make it by far the largest IPO in New York Stock Exchange history, led by one of the premier U.S. investment banks in this country and involving almost all of the others because of the size of the offering.”


Richard Fisher


  • “My conclusion, based on my own review of developments and the facts as they stand, is that there is nothing phony about China’s interests south of our border and we have every reason to be wary, if not scared. This is a serious undertaking on the part of the People’s Republic of China. I am very thankful for Al Santoli’s expansive and round explanation of how the unofficial and the underworlds of the Chinas collude and combine with the open and the business world to advance the interests of the PRC, and Roger’s eloquent explanation of the paramount economic interests that we must never forget.”




  • “China is pursuing their own interests, and they are preparing, not just south of our border but around the world, for the day — sooner, they hope, rather than later — [when] China will be exercising power, political power, military, economic power, on a par with our own, if not beyond. I am almost certain that this is not an immediate goal, it’s a medium-term goal, possibly by the year 2030, 2050, to be as influential in our hemisphere potentially as we are today. I point to activities that are already underway as signs to me, as demonstrations to me that this process is continuing apace and accelerating.”




  • “I also look to the accelerating level of People’s Liberation Army diplomacy in our hemisphere. I think it’s instructive, it may be obvious or simplistic, but the PLA’s power position within the People’s Republic automatically creates an affinity with militaries in our hemisphere that also have a tradition of political involvement and political activity.




    “My cursory review of the FBIS files of the last year lead me to conclude that, roughly, PLA delegations [and] South American and Central American delegations have had contacts that would roughly cover 80 percent of the countries south of our border. There’s a lot there for the PLA to work for and many reasons for the PLA to want to expand these relationships.”



  • “[For example,] ten years ago, Brazil and China entered into a codevelopment enterprise to build an earth resources satellite, the CBERS, China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite. It had a long gestation period. It had some financial difficulties. But on this past October 14, the satellite was launched successfully. [True,] it supplies low-resolution imagery best mainly for following vegetation in agriculture matters, but this is just the beginning. China has benefitted from some technology that only Brazil could acquire, and where could this go?




    “Well, if you look at the globe, Brazil is almost on a polar opposite position from the PRC. In order to be supporting a robust civil and military space presence, China needs to establish a global ground- tracking network. There have been reports that Brazil is considering cooperation with China in this area. China already has a ground tracking station in Tarawa….But Brazil, Tarawa, Pakistan, a few places in Africa, and voila, China has a global space tracking network, and in a few years, when China has its own one meter or better imaging and radar satellites, it can then begin to [employ] in the same kind of strategic information that we’ve been trafficking in for years to our own benefit. China will play that same game to its benefit south of our border.”

Discussion

  • “Many people in the government, in the Panamanian government, believe that, somehow, you need to play the game of pitting the Taiwanese against Communist China in an effort to get much more resources. However, as one of the government’s advisors told me one time, the problem with Red China is that they don’t seem willing or able to come up with anything in exchange for this diplomatic recognition.”




  • “However, what we’re noticing now is that, apparently, in conversations with the Chinese, they have told the government of Panama that, if there is a switch in allegiance (i.e., in effect, if they abandon Taipei)…then hundreds of millions of dollars needed by the current Panamanian administration will be forthcoming (not necessarily through the Chinese government directly, but through their international corporations).”


While no effort was made to reach a formal consensus among the Roundtable’s participants, the President of the Center for Security Policy, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who chaired the session summarized the points that seemed to enjoy broad support. These included the following:


  • “I’ve been impressed by the description of how serious the problem is in our hemisphere. Even as of this morning, when I was writing about it, I think I hadn’t fully appreciated just how much the peril to American interests, certainly over the medium, if not the nearer, term are, not only in Panama, but in Venezuela and Colombia, and obviously in Cuba”




  • “We’ve had several good suggestions made as to things that can be done now, first and foremost, I gather, being challenging Hutchison Whampoa’s corrupt transactions; assuring that American companies can get access to some of the bases that are up for grabs now, as well, hopefully, as Balboa and Christobo; developing Congressional interest in and support for finding ways to effect these kind of turnarounds; and also for helping Colombia and for dissuading the countries of the region from accepting what seems to be the open invitation of the Chinese corps of engineers to come in and build infrastructure for them.”




  • “And not least, of course, I think the point that was made several times in the course of the day, that there’s an awful lot riding on what happens in Venezuela over the next few weeks. It does seem to me it bears considerable attention and creative thought to think about how, without becoming involved unhelpfully in the internal political affairs of a country, the common interest in having democracy survive the present crisis in Venezuela does seem to me to be generally viewed here as something we ought to be giving serious attention and thought to.”

Clinton Legacy Watch # 44 : A Lot is ‘Going South’ South of the Border

(Washington, D.C.): “What the President
meant to say is….” Any seasoned bureaucrat has had
to employ a variation on this theme from time to time. Usually, the reason is because the
occupant of the Oval Office has misspoken in some minor way, deviating unintentionally from
the government’s chosen line on a point of policy.

Who Will Be ‘Running the Canal’?

Rarely — if ever — however, have all the President’s flacks and all the President’s bureaucrats
had such a monumental challenge as the Clinton spinmeisters now face in walking-back a
statement the Commander-in-Chief made last week concerning Communist China and the
Panama Canal. On November 30, Mr. Clinton dismissed concerns about a Chinese company’s
acquisition of ports at both ends of the strategic waterway saying, “I think the Chinese
will in
fact be bending over backwards to make sure that they run it in a competent and able and
fair manner….I would be very surprised if any adverse consequences flowed from the
Chinese running the Canal.”

The problem for Mr. Clinton is that this is no small mistake in which he innocently
substituted
“the Chinese [will be] running the Canal” when he really meant to say they will run two ports.
The President is, after all, on record as a great admirer of how well the Chinese run strategically
located ports. He personally held four meetings to try to help secure port facilities for COSCO,
the PRC’s merchant marine, at the former U.S. Navy base at Long Beach.

Indeed, the problem is not simply that it is the Panamanians who are supposed to be
“running” the Canal after next week’s hand-over ceremony. Rather, it is that
Mr. Clinton’s
remarks, as delivered in all their insouciance, are entirely consistent with his well-documented,
“see-no-evil” attitude towards Communist China in particular and, more
generally, toward the unraveling security situation in much of the Western hemisphere — to
which Beijing is significantly contributing.

With regard to the former, a President who has authorized the sale to China of an array of
militarily relevant technologies (for example, supercomputers, jet engine hot sections,
sophisticated machine tools and fiber optic telecommunications gear) and failed to respond
vigorously to the PRC’s theft or diversion of others (notably, ballistic missile- and nuclear
warhead-related know-how and equipment) is perfectly capable of viewing with equanimity the
prospect that the Chinese will fill the vacuum of power we are creating with our withdrawal from
Panama.

‘Going South’

Worse yet, Mr. Clinton has been Neroesque in his attitude towards ominous developments in
Latin America and the Caribbean — and the Chinese role in exacerbating, or at least taking
advantage of, them. Consider a few of the things “going south” south of the border:

  • Colombia is in the throes of civil war, a war in which it seems likely the
    axis between drug
    traffickers and Marxist revolutionaries will at a minimum achieve the country’s de
    facto
    partition, if not the overthrow of its democratically elected government. Interestingly,
    Colombia’s revolutionary organization known as the FARC is said to be seeking Chinese
    permission to open a liaison office in Beijing.
  • Since neighboring Panama has no armed forces, Colombian money
    launderers, drug-smugglers, guerrillas and others operate from and through its territory with
    impunity. This
    greatly exacerbates the climate of corruption that is rampant in Panama (and much of the rest
    of the region), making especially problematic the prospects for stability so critical to the
    Canal’s reliable operations once the U.S. presence comes to an end.
  • Colombia’s neighbor to the east, Venezuela, is undergoing its own
    momentous political
    transformation at the hands of its new president, Hugo Chavez. The
    implications if the
    United States’ largest source of foreign oil were to adopt a constitution that greatly
    consolidates power in Chavez’s hands, at the expense of pluralistic democratic institutions,
    are likely to be all the more serious in light of his travels. During recent state visits to China
    and Cuba, Chavez announced respectively his admiration for and his intention to
    emulate Mao’s and Castro’s revolutions.

    It is worth noting that both energy-starved Beijing and economically destitute Havana
    have a keen interest in exploiting Venezuela’s oil resources and/or wealth. Both
    would be especially pleased to do so at American expense. It is no accident then that
    the huge, state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is
    making a
    play for Venezuelan oil (even as it is seeking to exploit reserves in Sudan and Iraq).
    And one can only assume that Fidel and his Chinese friends are delighted at Chavez’s
    declared intention to nationalize foreign oil companies’ holdings in Venezuela.

  • Ecuador, which also shares a porous border with Colombia, is in the throes of an
    economic
    meltdown. When Quito recently defaulted on bonds bearing the name of the man who
    engineered an earlier bail-out — then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady — the Clinton
    Administration, in its wisdom, decided to make an example of Ecuador. Evidently, because
    they lacked nuclear weapons and/or major sponsors among multinational corporations, the
    Ecuadorans have been denied the sort of emergency interventions that countries like Russia,
    Mexico and Indonesia have received. Meanwhile, thanks to improving military-to-military
    ties with China, the U.S.-trained and -equipped Ecuadoran military are providing “aggressor”
    units to help teach the People’s Liberation Army how to defeat our armed forces.
  • The eased — and increasingly unpoliced — access to the United States’ market and territory
    afforded by NAFTA is making Mexico once again a transhipment point of
    choice for
    Colombian cocaine and heroin and Chinese and others’ alien-smuggling operations. Systemic
    corruption, rampant poverty and growing popular anger at the political elite may mean
    Mexico is approaching a pre-revolutionary situation.
  • President Clinton’s hapless efforts to prevent Puerto Rican displeasure at
    the U.S. military’s
    use of the vital Vieques live-fire training range from harming the campaigns
    being waged by
    his wife and Vice President Gore is giving rise to the worst of both worlds: Navy and
    Marine battle groups unprepared for combat operations and increasingly expensive
    bribes for unappeasable separatists.

The Bottom Line

The reality is that these and other cancerous situations in our backyard have gone largely
unaddressed while they metastasized on the Clinton-Gore Administration’s watch. The
squandered opportunity for democratic consolidation and free market economic growth in
the Western hemisphere will be among the most malevolent aspects of the Clinton legacy —
a legacy made all the more reprehensible for Mr. Clinton neither meaning nor saying
that
he stands by the Monroe Doctrine when it comes to Chinese penetration of our
neighborhood.

Hard Questions About the Coming War in Colombia

(Washington, D.C.): Over the past two nights, Dan Rather, reporting from Colombia, has
capped
off the CBS Evening News with a stark wake-up call: The United States is becoming
increasingly embroiled in the narcotics-underwritten mayhem that is engulfing that
Central American nation, putting vast quantities of drugs on this country’s streets and
threatening to destabilize Colombia’s region from Brazil to Mexico.

The Shape of Things to Come

As the CBS broadcast of 11 August put it:

    “Very rapidly in recent weeks, the following things have happened — it appears
    suddenly — to put Colombia very much on Washington’s radar screen: First, the crash
    of a US military reconnaissance plane that killed five Americans on an anti-drug
    mission last month. Two of the bodies were returned today. Then, the sudden arrival
    of the Clinton administration’s drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, who, in a reversal of
    policy, called for up to $1 billion to be spent fighting what he now calls narco-guerrillas….The
    highest level talks in Bogota in a decade were held this week between
    U.S. and Colombian officials. That reflects general confidence in the new Colombian
    government, but also alarm over the fact that an estimated 40 percent of the country is
    already in rebel hands    .

    “There is also a growing fear, even among government officials, that the crisis in
    Colombia could spread to the surrounding countries. These nations, many of
    which are newly established democracies, including Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and
    possibly even Venezuela and Panama, can not afford to have their fragile
    democracies wrecked by insurgents as is happening in Colombia.”

This “fear” was most recently publically described by Assistant Secretary of
State for
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Rand Beers in testimony on 6
August
before the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee of the House
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Despite a determined effort to find grounds
for optimism, Secretary Beers opened his remarks to Congress by declaring:

    “It is difficult to describe the current situation in Colombia without sounding
    alarmist.     Colombia’s national sovereignty is increasingly threatened by a resurgent
    guerilla movement, a violent illegal paramilitary movement, and wealthy narco-trafficker
    interests. Although the central government in Bogota is not directly
    threatened at this time, control over large swaths of the countryside is limited to non-existent. It
    is in these very areas where the guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and
    narcotics traffickers flourish.”

A Need to Know

Now that the American people and their elected representatives are being encouraged to
focus on
the unraveling state of affairs in Colombia, they are entitled to answers to, among others, the
following pertinent questions that have bearing on Clinton Administration policies beyond
Colombia:

  • What role, if any, is Fidel Castro’s government currently playing in aiding and
    abetting
    “narco-guerrillas”     with which his regime has had long-standing ties? At a minimum,
    according to a 29 January article in the London Financial Times, the Colombian
    drug
    traffickers are using Cuba as a drug market and as a favored “cleansing route” employed to
    reduce the opportunities for detection, contributing to what is said to be a more-than-doubling
    during 1998 over previous years in the frequency of drug cargoes dropped by air traffickers
    into Cuba waters for pickup by smugglers. The principal destination for such narcotics is the
    U.S. market.

    Were Castro to be exploiting this opportunity to achieve two of his well-established
    objectives — subverting democracies in Latin America and inflicting harm on the United States —
    the case for rejecting the Clinton Administration’s efforts to normalize relations with his
    brutal totalitarian regime (the most recent manifestation of which is the sanctioning of
    charter flights to Cuba from New York and Los Angeles) is all the stronger.     1

  • What part is Communist China playing in fomenting narco-activities that are
    destabilizing a key country in the hemisphere?     China is no stranger to the drug trade.
    Its
    People’s Liberation Army has, for example, been actively exploiting the PRC’s de
    facto
    colony, Burma, for drug-running operations. In addition, given China’s warming relationship
    with Cuba — China is now using and improving the Cuban signals intelligence facility in
    Lourdes — and its desire to further entrench itself in the United States’ “backyard,” 2 it may
    become more closely involved in the Colombian situation, if it has not already done
    so    .
  • To what extent is the Clinton Administration putting at risk sensitive “sources and
    methods” of intelligence as part of its reported program of providing Colombia with
    real-time intelligence?     The Administration has repeatedly seen intelligence-sharing as
    a
    technique for endearing itself to those like Russia, the UN, Cuba and the PLO that are
    more likely to use such information against the United States and its vital interests than
    be constructively influenced by this practice. 3 Under its
    current president, Andres
    Pastrana, the Colombian government may be less prone to such behavior than other
    beneficiaries of what the Clinton team seems to regard as noblesse oblige.

    Given that government’s history of corruption, the suborning influence of drug operatives
    and
    the incompetence of the Colombian military, however, it is not unreasonable to question whether
    American intelligence will be compromised by the narco-guerrillas, or even foreign governments
    with whom they have ties that are hostile the United States.

  • Why is the Clinton Administration encouraging the Colombian government to
    pursue a
    doomed “peace process” with the insurgents?     Although Secretary Beers told the
    Congress,
    “We have made it very clear to the Pastrana government….that we cannot accept ‘peace at any
    price,'” the Clinton team’s support for negotiations between the Colombian government and
    the leftist guerillas known as the FARC is likely to have the same result as its encouragement
    of peace processes elsewhere: Generally, they have the effect of making it more difficult,
    if
    not impossible    , to protect democratic societies and law-abiding populations against the
    predations of those who employ violence to achieve their ends. It seems likely that, in
    Colombia, such a false “peace process” will only serve to make the country more susceptible
    to total dominance by the narco-guerrillas and their drug-lord backers.

The Bottom Line

Whatever the answer to these questions — and whatever the ultimate decisions about the
nature
and extent of U.S. involvement in Colombia — one conclusion seems inescapable:
Neither the
cause of a secure democracy in Colombia nor the United States’ interest in promoting
stability in the hemisphere more generally and curbing the drug trade will be served by
completing America’s withdrawal from the Panama Canal Zone at the end of this year.

Fortunately, incoming Panamanian President Mireya Moscosco has
signaled a welcome
willingness to see an American presence in her country, but only after the treaty is full
implemented and all American troops leave. Present circumstances in neighboring
Colombia —
to say nothing of the penetration of Panama by enterprises with ominous ties to the Chinese
military — argue for suspending the final stages of the withdrawal and retaining U.S. bases in the
Canal Zone from which to run counter-drug operations, protect the Canal and, if necessary,
project American power.

1 See the Casey Perspective entitled
Administration Move To Normalize Relations with
Castro’s Cuba Bucks Tide of History, Business (No. 99-C 77, 8 July 1999).

2 See the Center’s Security Forum entitled
Carter-Clinton Legacy: Chinese Penetration of
Panama (J. Michael Waller, No. 99-F 11, 10 August 1999).

3 See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Mission Impossible: Wye Deal Poses Threat to U.S.
Intelligence — As Well As Israeli Security, American Interests (No. 98-D 178,
30 October
1998) and Before U.S. Intelligence Can Be Reformed, The Clinton
Administration Must Stop
Deforming it (No. 96-D 44, 6 May 1996).

Open Letter to Secretary Cohen

Newt Gingrich
Sixth District
Georgia

Office of the
Speaker
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

March 31, 1998

The Honorable William Cohen
Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I understand that you are completing a Department of Defense assessment that press reports
indicate will minimize the security threat from the Castro dictatorship by concentrating on
conventional military factors. If true, such a conclusion would be very misleading.

Despite Cuba’s current economic situation, Castro is a dangerous and unstable tyrant capable
of
many of the same things we know Saddam Hussein is doing. Furthermore, the Castro
dictatorship is the only rogue regime 90 miles from our coastline.

Just two years ago, Castro ordered Cuban MIG-29 fighter aircraft to attack and kill unarmed
American civilians flying in international airspace just miles from the United States. Today,
Castro continues to support terrorists such as the Basque ETA, provide logistical support to
guerilla groups such as the Columbian FARC, provide safehaven for international criminals such
as more than 90 felony fugitives wanted by the Department of Justice, and profit from
narcotrafficking. In the past month, the Castro Regime has also signed a new agreement with
Russia to renew cooperation to complete a Russian-designed nuclear reactor. Furthermore, I am
very concerned about recent reports indicating that Castro’s secretive network of sophisticated
biological and genetic research labs are being used by the military and Interior Ministry to develop
chemical and biological weapons.

Any assessment by the Pentagon supporting the notion of a diminished U.S. national security
threat from the Castro dictatorship will raise serious questions of credibility. Given Castro’s
proven instability, ongoing anti-Americanism, and proximity to the U.S., it would be an
unacceptable mistake to underestimate his capabilities or his intentions.

Sincerely,

/signed/

Newt Gingrich