Posted: Monday, 25 February 2008

Summary

In June 2007, the Canadian government began controversial negotiations with Colombia with the intention of concluding a free trade agreement. The Government of Canada must answer its critics. How is it in Canada's interest, or the interests of the working people of Canada and Colombia to conclude such an agreement now? Who really benefits from such a deal? What harm will be done? As the two governments prepare to announce their agreement, it becomes clear that the answer to these questions lies in the nexus of U.S. economic/security interests and foreign policy in the Americas. To understand why Canada is about to announce this deal, we must actually focus more on Canada’s relationship with the United States, than on its new bilateral interests in Colombia.

The Canadian labour movement and its allies continue to demand that Canada immediately cease negotiations and undertake a serious assessment of the human rights implications of such a deal.

It is important to understand that the United States does not perceive its interactions with Latin American countries as simply “inter-state” relations. Rather, the United States maintains extra-territorial control over countries in the region. It considers its own security to be dependent upon widening the space it controls around its own official territorial boundaries. Some of the ways in which the Bush Administration “extends its security perimeter” were explained in a report prepared for the U.S. Congress in early 2005. The Congressional Research Report analyses U.S. security policies which “push out the border”. These are policies intended to ensure U.S. security by dealing with issues before reaching their territory. These are policies that Canadians have become familiar with in the three years since Canada joined the United States and Mexico in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

Since the defeat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the United States has chosen its South American negotiating partners carefully. It concluded a Trade Promotion Agreement with Peru in February 2006, and with Colombia in May 2006. It is in a highly ‘securitized’ context that the U.S. Administration’s agreement with Colombia must be understood. In this post 9/11 era it is becoming increasingly apparent that the U.S. wars on terror, drugs and immigrants are implicated in extra-territorial initiatives which are justified as efforts to ‘secure the border’.

The Administration does not hide the fact that the deal with Colombia is meant to extend the U.S. security perimeter by undermining Venezuelan leadership on economic and political alternatives. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been promoting an Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA); a “fair trade” initiative first established with Cuba (doctors for oil), then Bolivia, and then Nicaragua (under Daniel Ortega). Dominica is the first English-speaking CARICOM member to join. Most recently, Chavez has announced the creation of regional lending banks which provide alternatives to the International Monetary Fund.

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