The Free Trade Agreement from a nonbusiness perspective

Claudia López, columnist for EL TIEMPO
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

According to President Bush, the FTA with Colombia has become a matter of politics and national security. It's worth evaluating the FTA from this perspective.

Both President Uribe and President Bush have made the doctrine of security a central component of their governments. They've built this doctrine around the fight against terrorism as the supreme and indisputable goal. They argue that this goal justifies legitimate and preventive defense, which includes invading foreign territory that may constitute a terrorist refuge. The U.S. government also established that this goal justifies torture and supersedes the applicability of any type of International Law. Following this pattern, Colombia legalized the use of the death penalty for terrorists, but since the Constitution prohibits the death penalty and summary executions by State agents, the government pays private contractors who are able to carry out executions as an incentive to raise their “killed in action” body count.

Colombia's embracing of this doctrine and its lone vote in favor of the Iraq invasion are what makes Uribe Bush's top ally in the region and commits Bush to returning the favor by making sure the FTA is ratified. This is the point, for it's hardly worth mentioning that U.S. food, economic, and international security does not depend on trade with Colombia. The only thing that depends on Colombia is the maintenance of Bush's security doctrine in Latin America.

In light of the recent incident between Colombia and Ecuador brought to the OAS, it has become clear that with the exception of Colombia, all other countries in the region reject Bush's security doctrine and the way Colombia appealed to it to justify its armed incursion into Ecuadorian territory. I don't recall any more resounding diplomatic defeat in the history of U.S. dealings in Latin America—and this despite the fact that it exerted major pressure and sent its secretary of state to tour the region.

Due to the misuse of the security doctrine that Bush imposed on the world, Colombia and the U.S. are politically isolated on this matter in Latin America. This isolation is, in fact, a threat to national security for both countries. All of Latin America has sent them both a clear message that if they want cooperation in the fight against crime, they will have to bring their policies in line with multilateral rules and not attempt to impose them through unilateral aggressive actions.

In the United States, the Democratic Party gained a majority in Congress by exposing the abuses of the Bush doctrine and its failures, costs, and risks to the security of U.S. citizens. The Democrats' chances of winning the presidency depend in large part on whether they can offer security to U.S. citizens by means of a different policy from Bush's. The same applies in the area of economics. Bilateral FTAs, deregulation, tax breaks, and preferential treatment for the wealthy have been the primary instruments of Bush's economic policy. In this time of economic crisis and uncertainty, the presidential campaign will also be defined by the candidate who is able to reduce uncertainty and bring back stability with a different policy from the one that caused the crisis.

And with respect to U.S. interests in Colombia, I don't know if the Democrats are aware that while it's assumed that Rep. Pelosi would be photographed presiding over the signing of the FTA in her role as the Speaker of the House in a legitimate Congress, in Colombia 20 percent of Congress members who debated the FTA and a number of those who helped to pass it would have to be photographed from the jail cells in which they’re being held because of their ties to drug trafficking and paramilitaries, who have murdered Colombian union leaders and prevented the inclusion of much more equitable labor, environmental, health, and trade standards in the FTA. Do Rep. Pelosi and the Democrats mind appearing in the same picture with jailed Colombian Congressmen and women? To legitimize the decisions of a Colombian Congress taken over by criminals and drug traffickers would be, without a doubt, a serious threat to the security of Colombia and the United States. The FTA with Colombia must be evaluated in this context, if it's about politics and national security.

Claudia López