http://ww4report.
THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION FARCE
Right-Wing Paranoia Misses the Real Threat of NAFTA's Militarization
by Laura Carlsen, IRC Americas Program
It's got millions of right-wing citizens calling Congress, sponsoring
legislation, and writing manifestos in defense of US sovereignty. It
comes up in presidential candidates' public appearances, has made it
into primetime debates, and one presidential candidate-Ron Paul-used it
as a central theme of his (short-lived) campaign.
Not bad for a plan that doesn't exist.
The North American Union (NAU) conspiracy theory is an offshoot of an
all-too-real trilateral agreement called the "Security and Prosperity
Partnership" (SPP). Cultivated by xenophobic fears and political
opportunism, the NAU soon outstripped its reality-based progenitor. The
confusion between the two today has made it difficult to sort out the
facts. A little history helps.
The Impossible Leap from SPP to NAU After the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) went into force in 1994, the three governments began
to talk about expanding the scope of the agreement. Mexico, in
particular, hoped to negotiate a solution to the border/immigration
problem. However, the process was brought to a grinding halt by the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
In a 2005 summit of then-Presidents George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and
Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, plans for "deep integration"
between the three countries finally progressed with the official launch
of the SPP. In the post-September 11 political context, immigration was
off the table and US security interests, along with corporate aims to
obtain even more favorable terms for regional trade and investment,
dominated the agenda.
As the executive branches of Canada, the United States, and Mexico
conspired to expand NAFTA behind the backs of their unconvinced
populaces, an independent task force sponsored by the Council on
Foreign Relations floated the idea of deeper integration under the name
of the North American Community. Their paper, published in May of 2005
and financed by Archer Daniels Midland, Merrill Lynch, and Yves-Andres
Istel, was not authored by an underground network of conspirators
against US sovereignty, as NAU critics would have us believe, but by a
staid group made up mostly of former government officials and big
business representatives.
This group envisioned regional integration as the creation of a
"community" with shared commercial, security, and environmental
purposes. It proposes sacrificing national policy tools to regional
goals in areas such as creation of a common security perimeter, a
permanent NAFTA tribunal to settle disputes, expanding NAFTA to
restricted or excluded sectors, and adopting a joint resource agreement
and energy strategy. Indeed, some of these recommendations could very
well present threats to democracy in all three countries. But the
report does not include adopting a common currency or a single regional
government and in fact states that a "union" along the lines of the
European Union is not the right approach for North America.
The CFR paper was an academic exercise with pretensions of reaching
policymakers. While some of its recommendations were later taken up in
the Security and Prosperity Partnership talks, particularly suggestions
on ways to improve transnational business, many of them were unanchored
by reality and quickly went the way of the vast majority of policy
recommendations.
The SPP, on the other hand, established working groups, rules,
recommendations, and agreements that have had a huge and largely
unknown impact on rules and policies. It is a complex web of
negotiators who work without congressional oversight, public
right-to-know, or civil society participation. The corporate world,
however, has ample representation; the SPP advisory body called the
"North American Competitiveness Council" reads like a "Who's Who" of
the largest transnationals based on the continent.
While the lack of transparency and the US corporate and
security-dominated agenda of the SPP are cause for great concern, they
are not evidence of a plot to move toward a North American Union. Among
the most bizarre assumptions of NAU scaremongers is the contention that
the SPP will threaten US sovereignty and erase borders. The idea of a
regional union that effaces US sovereignty is light-years away from
George W. Bush's foreign policy of unilateral action and disdain for
international law and institutions. On the contrary, the precepts of
the Bush administration'
neocon belief that the world would be a better place if the US
government just ran everything.
Real and Conjured Threats A poli-sci undergrad can tell you who will
prevail if Canadian, US, and Mexican negotiators get together to set
out a common agenda. (Hint: it's not Mexico or Canada.)
Officially described as "...a White House-led initiative among the
United States and the two nations it borders-Canada and Mexico-to
increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries
through greater cooperation,
sovereignty threat to NAFTA's junior partners. Canadians have been the
most active in opposing the SPP, not out of fear of a mythical NAU but
because of real threats to their ability to protect consumer health,
natural resources, and the environment. SPP rules would force open oil
production in environmentally sensitive areas and channel water
supplies to US needs.
Likewise, Mexican civic organizations have protested against SPP
pressures to privatize Mexican oil and allow greater US intervention in
the Mexican national security system.
Both these fears have been born out in Mexico in recent months.
President Felipe Calderón is expected to announce a plan to privatize
segments of the state-owned oil company PEMEX any day now. Plan Mexico
(also called the Merida Initiative), currently before the US Congress,
goes farther than any other measure in the history of the binational
relationship toward developing a common security perimeter, within
which US government teams and private defense companies would train
security forces, coordinate intelligence-
equipment for use against internal threats. Few countries in the world
have been willing to take this kind of risk.
As for moving toward a borderless North America, the years since the
SPP began have witnessed a hardening of the US-Mexico border never seen
before in modern history. Fifteen thousand Border Patrol agents, 6,000
members of the National Guard, and a border fence powerfully belie any
suggestion that the US government aims to eliminate borders as it moves
toward a secret North American Union.
Right Wing Red Herring? How, then, to explain the fact that the NAU
conspiracy has gone viral among right-wing populists in the United
States?
How to explain how a baseless myth has garnered the support of
millions, made it into presidential candidates' debates, and became the
subject of 20 state resolutions and a federal one?
Given the absolute lack of factual data to support the existence of a
secret plan to create a North American Union, it's tempting to assume
that the NAU scare was put forth as a red herring to divert attention
from real issues facing the country. By channeling the insecurities of
white working-class Americans into belief in an attack on US
sovereignty, the NAU myth obscures the very real globalization issues
raised by NAFTA-job loss, labor insecurity, the surge in illegal
immigration, and racial tensions caused by the portrayal of immigrants
as invaders. This is convenient for both right-wing politicians and the
government and business elites they attack, because real solutions to
these problems would include actions anathema to the right, including
unionization, enforcement of labor rights, comprehensive immigration
reform, and regulation of the international market. Instead, these
options are shunted aside with the redefinition of the problem as a
conspiracy of anti-American elites.
But espousing a conspiracy theory to contradict another conspiracy
theory would be absurd. It's unlikely there's a central kitchen that
cooked up the NAU red herring. The NAU myth taps into deep-rooted
traditions and fears of many Americans, and so it has found a broad
audience. This audience is predisposed to defend imagined communities
from external threats, rather than face the complex task of unraveling
the contradictions within their real communities brought about by a
model of economic integration that generates insecurity and
inequality.
In this context, outrage over a nonexistent NAU should not be confused
with growing criticism of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The
SPP has proceeded to change national regulations, and create closed
business committees without the participation of labor, environmental,
or citizen voices. SPP negotiations provide a vehicle for more of the
corporate integration that has eliminated jobs, impoverished workers,
and threatened the environment across borders.
It has also served to extend the dangerous Bush security doctrine to
Canada and Mexico, despite its lack of popularity in those countries
and among the US public. Its latest outgrowth, the $1.4 billion-dollar
Merida Initiative or "Plan Mexico," would extend a militarized model of
fighting the real problems of drug-trafficking and human smuggling that
would lead to greater violence and heightened binational tensions.
The NAU is a red herring. It serves to divert attention from domestic
problems that have more to do with layers of contradictory policies and
unmet challenges than any kind of anti-US conspiracy.
It's time to separate out false threats from real threats. A good place
to start is to demand transparency in trinational talks (April 21-22 in
New Orleans) and informed public debate on regional integration.
----
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program of the Center
for International Policy. She also edits the Americas Mexico Blog.
This story first appeared Feb. 27 on the website of the IRC Americas
Program.
RESOURCES
John Birch Society page on the NAU http://www.jbs.
Resolution seeks to head off union with Mexico, Canada WorldNetDaily,
Oct. 25, 2006
http://www.worldnet
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
http://www.spp.
See also:
PLAN MEXICO Militarization and the "Mérida Initiative" by Laura
Carlsen, Foreign Policy in Focus, WW4 Report, December 2007
http://ww4report.
QUEBEC: PROTESTS ROCK NAFTA SECURITY SUMMIT As Reports Reveal Free
Trade's Empty Promise from Weekly News Update on the Americas, WW4
Report, September 2007 http://www.ww4repor
FLASHPOINT IN THE FLATHEAD US-Canada War Looms Over Energy, Water by
Bill Weinberg, WW4 Report, November 2007
http://www.ww4repor
From our daily report:
Chihuahua: rural activist killed WW4 Report, March 18, 2008
http://ww4report.
The coming war with Canada: our readers write WW4 Report, Dec. 2, 2007
http://ww4report.
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