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US intervention 'racist and arrogant'
MADRE: One of the places about which there is a growing awareness concerning the impact of US policy is Colombia. Tell us about Plan Colombia and why the US is escalating its involvement there.
NC: Remember, this is a Clinton plan that Bush is implementing and probably accelerating. During the 1990's, Colombia was the leading recipient of US military aid and training in the hemisphere. Approximately half of all US aid in the hemisphere went to Colombia. Colombia was also far and away the leading human rights violator in the hemisphere. In fact, there is a very close correlation between human rights violations and US aid, particularly in Latin America.
Colombia is potentially a very wealthy country. It has tremendous resources, but its wealth is highly concentrated. Most of the population lives in misery, which has led to violent confrontation throughout the century. In 1962, the Kennedy Administration got involved. Kennedy sent a Special Forces mission advising the Colombian military to use what the US called "paramilitary terror" -- this was the phrase -- against "communist proponents." Now in the Latin American context, "communists" meant priests and nuns, human rights activists, labor unionists and anybody else who was getting out of line. The Colombian military received resources and training to implement the US program. And Plan Colombia is an outgrowth of this involvement.
Today, aid to Colombia is given under the pretext of a drug war. That's pretty hard to take seriously. Ten years ago, Amnesty International flatly called it a myth. The actual consequences of Plan Colombia are to devastate peasant communities, which have been driven to drug production. These peasants have no particular desire to grow coca, but their other means of livelihood have been wiped out. For example, Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called "Food for Peace. " It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness. (Food for Peace also provided funds for counterinsurgency, which was in fact its main goal.)
Colombian peasant farmers simply couldn’t compete with US agribusiness. A big producer can survive price fluctuations on the world market. A small farmer can't. You can't tell your children, "don't bother eating this year, maybe you’ll have food next year." So peasant agriculture was destroyed and what was left was coca production. The drug war was set in motion ostensibly to wipe out coca, but very selectively. The program is aimed at the areas under guerilla control, not those under paramilitary control. The paramilitaries, by the way, concede that about 70% of their income is from drugs. These paramilitaries are closely linked to the state military, which the US funds, and the paramilitaries are responsible for most of the atrocities. Everyone agrees with that, including the US State Department.
The fumigation of coca plants is devastating the region’s ecology and people’s health. But there is a much more fundamental question, rarely asked: What right does the US have to do anything in Colombia? Does Colombia have the right to bomb North Carolina? There are more Colombians dying from tobacco than Americans dying from heroin. It's not in doubt that tobacco is far more lethal than hard drugs. The whole basis for the US intervention in Colombia is outrageously racist and arrogant.
MADRE: Given that the drug war is a pretext, what is the bottom line of the US interest in Colombia?
NC: It's to ensure what’s called "stability" in the diplomatic literature. Stability means you do what we say, and what we say is that Colombia and the resources of the Andean region shall be freely available to the rich and powerful of the world, particularly US-based multinational corporations.
Take a look at the bombing of Serbia in 1999. The US was quite open about the reasons for the bombing. A main reason was to preserve stability and credibility. Serbia was interfering with stability, meaning that it was the one part of the Balkans that was not integrated into the Western-dominated (mostly US-dominated) system. Nicaragua is another good example. It was destabilizing Central America, meaning moving in a direction the US didn't like. So Nicaragua was crushed. The Andes region is not stable. So we can expect to see more US intervention. It could be under any kind of pretext. We can no longer use the Russians as an excuse, as we did in Central America in the 1980’s, so drugs will have to do.
MADRE: In fact, most of the Central American countries were reintegrated into the US system in the 1990’s. What’s been the effect in those countries?
NC: Let’s look at Nicaragua. The US reasserted control over Nicaragua in 1990. Since then, the country has experienced a steep decline. It's now the second poorest country in the hemisphere. Haiti, which has been the main target of US intervention throughout the 20th century, is the poorest. And Guatemala, which is maybe the third major target of US intervention, probably ranks third poorest. But no one is concerned with Central America anymore. If a million people are facing starvation in northern Nicaragua and Honduras, it’s none of our business. Few people even recognize that this situation is in part an outgrowth of US policies going back to the 1980’s. Nobody is concerned because Nicaragua is technically stable.
MADRE: It seems that even when the information is available, it’s quite difficult for people in the US to comprehend the impact that US policies have on communities around the world. Why do you think that is?
NC: Well, there is a principle of human affairs that goes back millennia, which is that you don't look in the mirror. You can trace this principle back to the Bible. The designated intellectuals of that time are called prophets, which is a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, but they were basically intellectuals, giving geopolitical analysis, criticizing the moral practice of leadership, etc. Now, these people were not treated very nicely. There were other intellectuals who were treated nicely, namely those who centuries later came to be called false prophets. These were the flatterers of the court. But the dissident intellectuals were treated very harshly. And this principle goes throughout history to the present. You don’t look in the mirror. I think that’s one of MADRE’s strengths: getting people to look in the mirror. There's nothing more important, whether it's in personal life, family life or international affairs, and there are few things more difficult.
It's fine to criticize somebody else's crimes and misdeeds, but you don't talk about your own. The only exception is a country that is defeated. And even that is rather nuanced. Take, for example, Germany and Japan, both defeated in the Second World War. Germany has acknowledged its monstrous crimes to a certain extent, has paid reparations and so on. Japan, in contrast, apologizes for nothing and has paid no reparations, with one exception: It pays reparations to the United States, but not to Asia.
Both Germany and Japan were defeated, so what's the difference? The difference is rooted in the San Francisco Treaty, hailed as a major contribution to peace in Asia. The terms of the Treaty absolved Japan of from any responsibility or reparations for its massive crimes in Asia and limited "atrocities" to the period after December 7th, 1941. That is of course, the day of Japan’s attack on the US at Pearl Harbor. The US designed the treaty in this way in order to reconstitute Japan's empire, but this time under US control, and to use Japan as a base for US actions in Asia. So the general principle is that the victors don’t look at themselves or concede anything. The defeated typically have to, except when it’s beneficial to the powerful for them not to.
uit Madre, An International Human Rights Organization
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