Security in the Caribbean Basin: The Challenge of Regional Cooperation 9781685850005

Citation preview

Security in the Caribbean Basin

Woodrow Wilson Center Current Studies on Latin America Published with the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Joseph S. Tulchin, Director

Security in the Caribbean Basin The Challenge of Regional Cooperation edited by

Joseph S. Tulchin Ralph H. Espach

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2000 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Suite 314, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB www.eurospanbookstore.com/rienner © 2000 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Security in the Caribbean Basin : the challenge of regional cooperation / edited by Joseph S. Tulchin and Ralph H. Espach. (Woodrow Wilson Center current studies on Latin America) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55587-884-9 (alk. paper) 1. Caribbean Area—Politics and government—1945– . 2. Caribbean Area—Foreign relations—United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations— Caribbean Area. 4. National security— Caribbean Area. I. Tulchin, Joseph S., 1939– . II. Espach, Ralph. III. Series. F2183.S43 1999 327.730729—dc21 99-38719 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America

∞

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

vii

Preface 1

Introduction: U.S.-Caribbean Security Relations in the Post–Cold War Era Joseph S. Tulchin and Ralph H. Espach

1

Part 1 The Post–Cold War Caribbean Security Agenda 2

3

4

5

Changing Definitions of “Social Problems” in the Caribbean Anthony P. Maingot The United States and the Caribbean at Fin de Siècle: A Time of Transitions Humberto García-Muñiz The New Security Agenda in the Caribbean: The Challenge of Cooperation Francisco Rojas-Aravena Cooperation in the Caribbean: The Cultural Dimension Rafael Hernández

25

45

65

83

Part 2 Nontraditional Threats to Caribbean Security 6

The Fear of Illegal Aliens: Caribbean Migration as a National and Regional Security Threat Jorge Duany

v

97

vi

CONTENTS

7 Migration and Regional Security: Besieged Borders and Caribbean Diasporas Lilian Bobea 8 Drugs and the Emerging Security Agenda in the Caribbean Ivelaw L. Griffith 9 Initiatives for Cooperative Regional Security: Reintegrating Cuba into Regional Projects Isabel Jaramillo Edwards

119

137

151

Part 3 Toward a Cooperative Security Framework: Practitioners’ Views 10 Toward a New Political Framework for Migration in the Caribbean Robert L. Bach 11 Initiatives for Cooperative Regional Security: The Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System Brigadier General Rudyard Lewis 12 The Cooperative Agenda of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Caribbean Brigadier General Thomas Keck 13 The New Caribbean Security Agenda Wattie Vos 14 A Call for the Redefinition of Regional and National Interests General José E. Noble Espejo 15 Maritime Counternarcotics Agreements: The Cop on the Beat Captain Randy Beardsworth

161

177

185 189

193

197

Part 4 Conclusion 16 Looking Ahead: Regional Relations in the Post–Cold War Era Joseph S. Tulchin and Ralph H. Espach

205

Index About the Book

211 225

Preface

This volume is the fruit of several years of reflection and debate among students and practitioners of international security concerns in the Caribbean Basin. The chapters were presented originally at two international workshops, one held in Barbados in the fall of 1996, the other in the Dominican Republic in the fall of 1997. These workshops were organized by Peace and Security in the Americas (PSA), a project jointly coordinated by the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Facultad Latinoaméricana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Santiago, Chile. PSA includes a series of events and publications that explore the impact of recent global and regional developments on the security agendas of nations of the hemisphere. The project strives to promote mutual confidence, transparency, and cooperative initiatives in regional security, and to enhance discussions of national security by including relevant actors outside of the armed forces, including congressional and executive leaders, the media, local scholars, and civil society groups. The workshops in Barbados and the Dominican Republic were hosted, respectively, by the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS) and the FLACSO office in the Dominican Republic. The chapters collected in this volume examine the Caribbean regional security agenda from a set of multinational and multidisciplinary perspectives. They are the work of regional experts, military officials, and policymakers from the United States and across the Caribbean, each called upon to address a particular issue or to present an institutional viewpoint. Together, the contributions of this team of scholars demonstrate the range of complex challenges and opportunities to be addressed through cooperative security initiatives, and they suggest a variety of available policies that promote cooperation while vii

viii

PREFACE

respecting the differences among the various nations and institutions that comprise the region. The editors would like to thank all of the authors for their seriousness of purpose and for meeting the high standards of quality that we have come to expect from them. We also wish to thank Latin American Program interns Jacquie S. Lynch and Heather Quinter for their invaluable help and indefatigable good spirits. Peace and Security in the Americas is made possible by the generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as with the collaboration of various private and governmental institutions across the Americas. The Ford Foundation in particular provided crucial support for PSA’s Caribbean component. Joseph S. Tulchin Director, Latin American Program Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Ralph H. Espach Program Associate, Latin American Program Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

1 Introduction: U.S.-Caribbean Security Relations in the Post–Cold War Era Joseph S. Tulchin & Ralph H. Espach

Cooperation has become the predominant theme in discussions of security in the Caribbean Basin. Whether the specific subject is drug trafficking, migration, money laundering, natural disasters, or trade, the premise is that it is better to work together than to go it alone. Most surprisingly, the United States appears to have come to accept that cooperation is better for all, despite a historical pattern of taking advantage of its unparalleled power in the region to act unilaterally. The asymmetry that exists between the United States and its regional neighbors, along with other asymmetrical relations across the Caribbean and a host of political and economic obstacles, pose a formidable challenge to regional cooperation. However, in the post– Cold War era cooperation is less optional than imperative, and the generation of cooperative policies requires a rethinking of longhonored definitions and patterns of action in regional security. Alfred T. Mahan and the Formation of Modern U.S.-Caribbean Relations At the end of the last century, United States policymakers, emboldened by the republic’s rapid economic growth and increased international influence, began to reassess the national strategic agenda. Bounded on two sides by water and with growing economic ties abroad, the country’s security and economic growth depended increasingly on the capacity of its navy to protect its shores and promote its foreign interests. Alfred Thayer Mahan, historian and close advisor to top-level policymakers, including President Theodore Roosevelt, championed an emphasis on the importance of establishing naval superiority in key maritime arenas. Mahan foresaw the effects a Central 1

2

INTRODUCTION

American canal would have on global commercial and strategic relations. In his view, as the nexus between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as North and South America, the waterways of the Caribbean formed “a great highway” to the markets of Latin America and Asia and were the key to global naval mobility. Mahan’s strategic vision served as a framework for a long-term policy of economic and military expansion in the Caribbean. Within this framework, despite their diminutive size, the islands of the Caribbean were perceived as strategic points of control over the primary crossroads of global commerce, and a permanent U.S. presence in the region became a key element of the nation’s security agenda. The political and financial stability of the islands, and their responsiveness to U.S. interests, became issues of intense concern in Washington, and European government and commercial involvement in the region came to be perceived as a threat to U.S. national security.1 Mahan’s treatment of the Caribbean as an area of crucial strategic importance for the United States had profound implications for the nations of the region. In the early decades of the twentieth century, U.S. perceptions of the Caribbean as an “American lake” and of the independent island nations as corrupt, uncivilized, and in need of guidance provided the basis for a long-term policy of aggressive regional involvement. The United States invaded Caribbean countries over thirty times between 1900 and 1934, and spent decades in military occupations of the Dominican Republic (1905, 1916–1924), Haiti (1915–1934), and Cuba (1898-1902, 1906–1909).2 Although European and South American nations criticized these interventions as U.S. imperialism, they had neither the interest nor the capacity to raise a serious challenge to the growing hegemony of the United States in what it began to call its “sphere of influence.” To buttress its influence, the U.S. government actively promoted the development of financial and commercial ties in the region to stabilize and deepen regional trade and to constrain further the presence of rivals from outside the hemisphere. U.S. economic and security interests went hand in hand, and marines were employed to seize, and even at times govern, insolvent or unstable countries. U.S. gunboats cruised offshore as a warning to rebellious mobs or to local governments balking at the passage of U.S.-supported legislation. In the 1920s, with Europe suffering from the devastation of World War I, this military and economic dominance gave the United States unparalleled influence over the commercial and political affairs of the Caribbean. The overwhelming presence of the United States—of its corporations, its money, its military, its products, and its culture—affected every aspect of Caribbean life. Elites across the region watched

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

3

events in Washington and New York as closely as they did those at home, while millions less fortunate migrated to the north in search of a better life. Nations throughout the Caribbean Basin, their national systems penetrated by U.S. financial, commercial, and strategic interests, became dependent on the United States for their economic and political stability. This hegemonic dominance had profound effects on U.S.Caribbean relations. Such enormous asymmetry led policymakers, businesspeople, and the public on all sides to assume paternalism, corruption, and underhandedness as the rule in their interactions. In most cases, the sovereignty and autonomy of the island republics were of little concern to U.S. policymakers, whose generally racist and condescending attitudes are well documented, in their pursuit of national security and economic objectives.3 Contrary to its prodemocracy rhetoric, U.S. policy did little to promote and, in most cases, undermined the development of local democratic institutions. “Dollar Diplomacy” and other U.S. initiatives largely centered on the promotion of its business and financial interests, often at the cost of local democratic or social development. Even Wilsonian idealism and constitutionalism placed U.S. strategic concerns before local democratic consolidation, with tragic long-term results in Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.4 During the Cold War, U.S. strategists watched the Caribbean with special concern. The region was commonly referred to as the “backyard” of the United States, or as its vulnerable “underbelly,” images clearly influenced by Mahan’s strategic vision. The fear of the spread of communism, especially after Castro’s revolution in Cuba in 1959, drove the United States to invest considerable resources in the Caribbean. The United States employed a range of devices, both military and economic, to support its anticommunist allies and to undermine radical or socialist-leaning movements. U.S. policy in the Caribbean during the Cold War is commonly criticized for its bullying tactics and support for nondemocratic, repressive, even violent regimes, but there were facets of U.S. involvement that were more positive. While fears of the spread of communism caused the United States to compromise its prodemocratic principles, they also generated a range of programs and expanded funding for economic development. From the 1960s onward, alarmed at the dogged success of the socialist revolution in Cuba, the United States instituted a series of pro-Caribbean trade and assistance programs. The most significant of these initiatives was the Alliance for Progress, instituted under President John F. Kennedy in 1961, and the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) instituted under Ronald Reagan in

4

INTRODUCTION

1982, which included preferential arrangements for trade with the region and the creation of Section 936 Funds to support economic development projects. Many Caribbean leaders, their countries long accustomed to taking advantage of the anxieties and indifference of world powers, played upon U.S. concerns to draw support for a range of their own initiatives, some of questionable nature.5 Islands that retained their colonial ties to Europe also benefited from generous aid packages or quotas for their exports of primary goods, mostly bananas or sugar, which protected them from the pressures or strains of international competition and price fluctuations. Perhaps the nation that benefited the most from the rigid division of the Cold War was Castro’s Cuba, which, in exchange for its sugar and other primary goods, received from the Soviet bloc essential financial assistance, capital goods, technology, and high-skilled training, and favorable prices for its oil. The 1960s and 1970s were a tumultuous period for the Caribbean, in which historical, political, and cultural differences among the islands came to the fore in their regional relations. The polarizing pressures of the Cold War, worsened by the active antagonism between the United States and Cuba, divided the nations of the Caribbean. Many islands, having established their independence only recently, sought to create national identities distinct from those of their European colonizers or their neighbors. Staunchly conservative democratic states of the Eastern Caribbean, such as Barbados and Dominica, had little in common politically and in their foreign policies with those that had more radical traditions, like Jamaica, or with the autocratic regimes in the Dominican Republic or Haiti. Differences in language, cultural history, race, and ethnicity became the focus of public discussion and academic dialogue, and to a large extent conditioned political relations. By the 1970s, the Caribbean community tended to divide itself conceptually into cultural subregions, within which the anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone groupings emphasized their cultural and historical differences instead of similarities among their broader national interests. Contrary to the political vision—and economic pragmatism—that gave rise to initiatives for regional integration such as the Caribbean Community or the Association of Caribbean States, regional relations were weakened by a general fixation with difference instead of commonality. The United States and the Caribbean in the Post–Cold War Era The end of the Cold War and the pressures it imposed upon regions and countries around the world has dramatically altered the structure

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

5

of the international system. Today’s world is unipolar—centered around the United States—in terms of political influence and military might, yet increasingly multipolar in economics and finance, a situation that complicates issues of leadership and international power. The implications of this more complex global environment for U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Caribbean relations, and the strategic options of Caribbean countries are still unclear, but there are some discernible trends. In the Caribbean, as around much of the world, security concerns regarding state-based military conflict have been replaced by less institutionalized, transnational threats such as drug trafficking, human migratory flows, economic instability, and environmental destruction. These dangers constitute a new security agenda for the region, and require the revision of traditional concepts of national and regional security with a view to new ones that include but are no longer centered around traditional state-based threats. Addressing these transnational issues will demand infrastructure, information, and resources far beyond those of any country—including the United States—acting alone. More than ever before, national security in the Caribbean is inseparable from regional security, and requires a coordinated, cooperative approach. In working toward a post–Cold War cooperative regional security agenda, it is important to be aware of the various effects the end of the Cold War had on the United States and its foreign policy formulation, as well as its repercussions across the Caribbean. Before turning to wider regional security issues and the particular obstacles facing cooperative efforts, it is important first to examine the unusual dynamics that characterize contemporary U.S. policy formulation and that, for the Caribbean and Latin America, make the current era one of unprecedented opportunity for growth in regional relations. U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War Contrary to optimistic speculation, victory in the Cold War did not translate into a new world order of peace and stability. Despite its unquestioned power in the international system, the United States has been reluctant to assume the role of the global superpower. The anticommunist zeal of previous decades has given way to pragmatism, with pockets of isolationism on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The legacy of the Vietnam War and controversial recent engagements in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia have left a distaste for involvement in difficult foreign crises that do not pose an immediate and clear threat to national security. The U.S. public, preoccupied with domestic issues and made complacent by five years of steady economic growth, shows remarkable disinterest in international affairs.

6

INTRODUCTION

While most of the key members of the foreign policy community are aware of the dangers of isolationism, politicians cannot ignore the lack of public support for a more active foreign policy. Some influential members of Congress, including the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even show disdain for international institutions and foreign assistance programs. A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international agenda of the global superpower is still in formation. The Clinton administration has preferred to make policy on a country-by-country basis, and usually in response to some crisis, a style that has led to contradiction and confusion. Beyond general support for democracy, stability, and open markets, its objectives appear to shift, to the consternation of many friends overseas. This inconsistency is often blamed on the failure of the Clinton administration to focus on issues of foreign policy, or the absence of a clear external threat to national security. Ironically, it is in this era of tremendous change in the international system, in which the United States stands as perhaps the most powerful nation in human history, that its executive leadership has been paralyzed by the distractions of contentious partisan domestic politics and humiliating scandal. More than political squabbling, however, is behind the confused pattern of recent U.S. security-policy decisions. The formulation of policy is complicated by significant changes in the context— both domestic and external—within which national interests are shaped and articulated. Unlike previous decades when the priorities of U.S. foreign policy—principally the containment of communism—were relatively clear and accepted by a majority of voters, today no such coherency exists.6 The traditional distinction between foreign and domestic interests has become blurred by economic globalization, an increasingly multi-ethnic and fragmented national community, and advances in communications that introduce crises from the furthest corners of the world into U.S. living rooms and increase the capacity for the mobilization of ethnic or foreign special interest groups. Especially regarding U.S. relations with the Caribbean, from which come some of the nation’s most prominent and politically active immigrant groups and where some of its most pressing domestic issues—drug trafficking and illegal immigration—are played out internationally, the country’s internal and external policy agendas are interrelated and inseparable. Without a clear national strategic agenda and consistent set of objectives, the policy formulation process has become increasingly open to nongovernmental actors. Business associations, multinational corporations, and special interest groups have become adept at lobbying

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

7

Congress to promote their specific issues, even at the cost of overarching foreign policy objectives such as free trade or the promotion of economic development. Policies toward the Caribbean are particularly vulnerable to the influence of special interest groups because they affect certain industries and communities much more than they do the country at large. Communities of immigrants in the United States, especially from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, are increasingly active in local and national politics, even while they wield considerable influence back in their home countries as well. The country’s anachronistic and counterproductive policy toward Cuba is the supreme example of how, in a context of relative indifference nationwide, a well-organized, energetic special interest group with sufficient financial resources can significantly affect the foreign policy of the world superpower. At the same time, the globalization of economic relations has led to a decentralization of foreign affairs, so that states, cities, corporations, and even wealthy individuals can have an impact on regional issues. The state of Florida, for example, is actively developing its own direct linkages with Caribbean countries in order to promote investment and business relations and to better coordinate with the islands regarding seaward emigrants and drug traffickers. Externally, when formulating national security policies, the United States faces a changed world. U.S. policymakers are well aware of the nonstate, nontraditional nature of the security threats in the Caribbean. The new regional security agenda, motivated today not by armies or governments but by multinational criminal networks and the danger of economic crises or natural disasters, has rendered obsolete many security tactics used in previous decades. The range of options preferred by U.S. foreign policymakers is therefore different. Today, the Departments of State and Defense play much smaller roles in U.S. foreign activity, especially among its democratic southern neighbors for which economic and political stability is a foremost priority. Instead, the United States seeks to use other instruments, with varying degrees of effectiveness, to address particular security issues. To support its economic and political interests, it relies primarily on economic tools, such as the disbursement or withholding of aid, the use of conditionalities in assistance packages, the manipulation of tariffs, and its influence over the policies of multinational financial institutions, to exert pressure on foreign governments. The enormous expense involved in assisting Mexico’s government with its currency crisis in 1994 –1995, and controversial strategies for handling crises in Russia and Southeast Asia, have brought the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury increasingly under fire. So far, the

8

INTRODUCTION

administration has failed to make a convincing case of the utility of spending tens of billions of dollars repeatedly to help foreign governments of dubious democratic character during economic crises. In addressing other types of threats, including those most prevalent in the Caribbean, the United States is also still formulating its strategic options. It has become widely accepted in Washington that the United States cannot deal with transnational problems such as drug trafficking and criminal cartels, arms proliferation, and terrorism except by working cooperatively with other governments. In its relations with Caribbean nations, the United States has shown a willingness to assume a more cooperative attitude as a way of reducing the profile and domestic political costs of its actions. During Clinton’s trip to the region in the summer of 1997, he emphasized U.S. membership in the Caribbean community and reinforced his support for continuing preferential treatment for regional export products. Barry MacCaffery, the head of the Executive Office on Drug Policy, has become the first high-level official to acknowledge publicly that the United States shares responsibility for the hemisphere’s drug trafficking epidemic because of its own insatiable demand for drugs, thus showing sensitivity to Latin American complaints against traditional supply-side tactics. MacCaffery also has questioned publicly the contentious policy of unilateral certification of its neighbors according to their perceived helpfulness in the fight against drugs. While significant policy reforms to back up these pronouncements are slow to materialize, this change of attitude represents an opportunity for the improvement of U.S.-Caribbean relations. It coincides with the U.S. relinquishing of control over the Panama Canal in 1999, and with the transfer of the U.S. Southern Command headquarters from Panama to Miami in 1997. It may be true, as the government states, that these changes centralize and strengthen the operational capacity of its forces in the region, but they also help to alleviate two major sources of contention in its relations with the Caribbean. The Opportunity for Improved Regional Relations The lack of clear direction in U.S. policy toward the Caribbean and its increasing openness to cooperation present the countries of the region with an unusual opportunity to assert themselves in shaping the regional security agenda. The present era is unique in the region’s history in that virtually every nation—with the exception of Cuba—accepts the general model of democratic governance and free-market economic policies. This ideological commonality provides ample basis for international cooperation, both within the region and with the

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

9

United States. The dangers facing the islands and their limited national capacities leave them little option in the short and medium terms but to seek further internationalization and to pursue their interests through regional cooperation and in coordination with the United States. The question facing these nations is not whether or not to work toward more openness, better cooperation, and regional integration—none envies Cuba’s isolation from the global economy and regional affairs—but in what capacity and under what conditions this integration and cooperation can best be achieved. The current openness in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy will not last for long, nor will it automatically be beneficial to the Caribbean. Many U.S. analysts of the realist school have found their voices in criticizing the effectiveness of the IMF, UN, and other international institutions, and have seen their positions strengthened by a recurrence of state-based conflict, most recently in South Asia. If the current cooperative position of the United States does not generate working operational systems that show some degree of effectiveness against the new transnational threats, the United States could be tempted to abandon them and revert to stronger unilateral action. The fragility of these initiatives and the limits of U.S. openness are evident in the sting operation the United States carried out unilaterally against money-laundering networks in May 1998, part of which was conducted undercover in Mexico. This action, which undermined recent progress in bilateral cooperation and angered Mexican officials, was hailed as a breakthrough by antidrug officials in the United States. To avoid such backsliding in U.S.-Caribbean security relations, policymakers in the region should seize this opportunity by designing workable cooperative approaches to specific problems that can be negotiated with the United States, instead of waiting for Washington to provide leadership. When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the region in March 1998, she met with the foreign ministers as a contentious group.7 The insistence that each nation have its voice heard individually continues to dilute regional energies, and allows the United States to negotiate bilaterally on specific issues when it chooses, which further fragments the region and weakens its collective negotiating power. A collective regional position and strategy would be more effective in dealing with the pressures of the globalized economy and the changed strategic environment of the post– Cold War era, and would also be a crucial step in improving the islands’ leverage in their negotiations with the global superpower. To accomplish this, however, the island nations will have to address a range of issues that complicate regional cooperation. Foremost among these challenges are a reconsideration of the traditional concept of

10

INTRODUCTION

sovereignty, addressing local asymmetries, and increasing effectiveness in relations with Washington. Challenges to Intra-Caribbean Cooperation

Rethinking Traditional Sovereignty

The idea that the nations of the Caribbean should devote their scarce resources to cooperative security initiatives has been criticized as an attack on national sovereignty. This issue is particularly acute in a region characterized by significant disparities of economic, political, and military power, both among the various countries and between the United States and the rest of the region, and with its history of struggle against foreign powers. The idea of relinquishing one’s control over police or military forces can be extremely discomfiting. The increasing magnitude and transnational nature of today’s security threats, however, require a revision of the traditional concept of national sovereignty. Today, most countries find it difficult to defend themselves from threats such as large-scale migration flows, natural disasters, or drugrelated corruption and violence. In times of crisis, a rigid defense of traditional sovereignty can hinder efforts toward international assistance and prove detrimental to national welfare and security. In the Caribbean, the concept of sovereignty has been used in the past as a tool by which authoritarian leaders could defend themselves against external and internal pressures for reform. There have been many cases throughout the century in which external pressures, mostly from the United States, did compromise the sovereignty of nations in the basin. After the Cold War, however, their sovereignty is threatened more by nonstate actors or phenomena than by foreign governments. Today, invoking the sovereignty argument against cooperation—commonly used to arouse nationalist fears for short-term electoral gains— leads to an isolationist cave that would only further limit a country’s strategic options and increase its vulnerability to nontraditional security threats. Participation in international activities within a mutually agreed upon cooperative system, including the application of a nation’s resources toward the regional good, should be viewed not as diminishing autonomy, but as a means for improving security and stability for the region as a whole as well as for each individual nation. Addressing Regional Asymmetries The nations of the Caribbean vary enormously in size, resources, and capacity. Perhaps no other subregion in the world is as heterogenous

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

11

as the Caribbean in terms of culture, race, and degree of political and economic development. In addition, larger states along the rim of the Caribbean—Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, the Central American republics, Mexico, and of course the United States—also play significant roles in regional affairs. To overcome the problems that arise from such diversity, any cooperative institution or project must be particularly sensitive in its design to the range of cultures, capacities, and needs in the Caribbean. The neglect of such differences and a lack of political commitment have undermined integration initiatives, such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). The issue of asymmetries is related to that of sovereignty, but by emphasizing collective responsibilities instead of individual victimization, it avoids outdated protectionist connotations. The acknowledgment of these asymmetries by all parties involved and a commitment to negotiation in order to minimize their negative effects create a range of options by which countries of different sizes and capacities can seek to protect their own interests within the greater objective of regional security. In negotiating regional cooperation, a balance must be struck between awareness and sensitivity to the differences among partner countries and a sense of commitment to the goal of improved regional security. Negotiations of this sort within a region of contentious democracies will not be easy. In this regard, however, the region can benefit from the experiences of other regional cases—as well as other initiatives in the Caribbean—in which various institutional arrangements have been created to balance the interests of disparate nations within a cooperative community, such as the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and MERCOSUR (the Southern Common Market). Improving Relations with Washington: The Importance of Issue Linkage If history of the region’s generally troubled relationship with the United States includes evidence of U.S. bullying, neglect, and shortsighted policymaking, it also provides examples of Caribbean governments and individuals working against the larger interests of the region. All too often, Caribbean leaders have made it easy for Washington to view the region as a dysfunctional family of microstates bickering over apparently petty concerns. While some Caribbean governments are diligent and astute in their foreign affairs and enjoy relatively open, respectful relations with their U.S. colleagues, others find themselves increasingly marginalized within the host of special interest groups and countries clamoring for attention in the capital of

12

INTRODUCTION

the world superpower. In many cases, Caribbean governments have fallen short in efforts to express their interests effectively in Washington. In order to take better advantage of the current climate, the foreign affairs institutions of many Caribbean countries must aim to become more professional and savvy in the conduct of their foreign relations. They must explore more assiduously the various agencies and departments of the U.S. government in search of key individuals who will champion their interests. Once such a network is in place, they must be energetic and sophisticated in expressing their ideas and concerns. The key to success is to stress the commonality of the regional security agenda with that of the United States, and the linkages among the various elements of that agenda. The rise in regional drug trafficking and crime, for instance, is directly linked to the ill effects of economic underdevelopment. Migratory flows are often related to economic or political instability, and can be manipulated for drug trafficking activities. By emphasizing these linkages and the need for cooperation on regional issues, the Caribbean can lessen the effects of the strategic marginalization that it faces with the end of the Cold War. The identification and expression of these linkages are essential to building cooperative regional security, especially when it involves the United States, because through them asymmetrical power and diverse interests can be reconciled. Caribbean governments can build cooperation in different areas at the same time, thereby serving each government’s interests more fully. By offering what the United States strongly desires—greater assistance and openness to counterdrug operations—countries can negotiate ensured access for their exports to U.S. markets, and innovative programs that redirect onerous debt payments to local schools, job creation programs, or police training, all of which would improve the social environment and limit the space in which drug traffickers and criminal gangs can thrive. Building upon these linkages in the regional security agenda provides a rationale and structure for cooperative initiatives sensitive to the differing needs and capacities of the various countries. Beyond Mahan: The Need for Revision in the U.S. Approach to the Caribbean For its part, the United States must also take advantage of the current political environment to abandon the remnants of its century-old hubris in dealing with the region, and establish a new model for partnership that would fortify the region’s democracies and lay the groundwork for long-term stability. While the Clinton administration

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

13

has given some evidence of a change in attitude toward the Caribbean and an openness to new approaches to regional problems, lasting improvement can only be achieved through revised policies and real cooperation at the operational level. Replacing the traditional model for regional relations with one of partnership based on common goals and mutual respect requires a reassessment of Mahan’s interpretation of U.S. interests and policy in the Caribbean. With democracy now in place throughout the region—with the exception of Cuba—and the inability of the United States to handle transnational security threats on its own, the need for cooperative, open regional relations demands a more balanced, less autocratic approach on the part of the United States. New technologies and the changed nature of security threats have dramatically altered the strategic environment studied by Mahan. While commerce in and through the Caribbean is still essential to U.S. economic health, its importance within the global system has declined with the rise of airborne transport and the inability of the Panama Canal to accommodate today’s largest ships. Also, the United States faces no rival that threatens to disturb the free flow of goods through the Caribbean. On the contrary, today’s threats thrive on the quick and loosely monitored passage of goods, money, and information among countries and continents. The substantial presence of U.S. military in the region, designed as an instrument for the support of friendly governments and as a guard against external interference, has become a financial albatross in a budget-cutting era and a sore point in U.S. relations with the region. The mobility of the modern navy, augmented by the increased capacity and importance of air forces, has weakened the rationale for having U.S. bases throughout the Caribbean. Large naval vessels are inappropriate to stop rafters and the Coast Guard cannot enter the territorial waters of a sovereign, friendly democracy without permission, or at least a shiprider agreement. At the same time, U.S. support for democratic governance and free-market economics throughout the Caribbean Basin makes the widespread presence of a dominating U.S. military force at multiple key points and the imperialistic posture upon which this force is based increasingly anachronistic and harmful to cooperative relations. In short, the global and regional climates in which Mahan formulated his strategic designs have changed. The Caribbean continues to be a region of crucial importance to U.S. national security and instability remains a threat, but the traditional militarized approach aimed at excluding rival powers is today more of a hindrance than a help to long-term stability. With the present political environment, it

14

INTRODUCTION

is almost unthinkable that the United States would undertake a longterm praetorian intervention as it did early in the century in Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Central America. Top-level officials from a variety of U.S. government agencies have indicated that the United States is ready to join with its democratic regional partners in fighting today’s security threats, but the message from Congress— especially regarding Cuba—is less encouraging. In many respects, U.S. regional policy remains locked in a Cold War paradigm. The persistent trend toward the militarization of U.S. counterdrug and antiimmigration policies sustains suspicions that not all U.S. policymakers are as committed as the president claims to be to a new model for U.S.-Caribbean relations. Notes on the Development of Cooperative Security: A Look at the Issues Much of the material in this volume, as well as the numerous discussions and debates generated by the activities of the Peace and Security in the Americas project, centers around specific issues and threats. Countless books and reports have been published over the past decade about these subjects, most of which are critical of current political and institutional approaches. The need for new strategies and political vision is increasingly apparent not only to researchers, but to policymakers throughout the Caribbean including the United States. This openness to new policies provides space for collaborative international efforts, but the success of those initiatives will depend not only on their success at overcoming the asymmetries, divisions, and latent mistrust that exist within the region and between the region and the United States, but also on their sensitivity to the complexities of the different issues themselves. The migration issue requires policies and approaches entirely distinct from those applied toward combatting the drug trade, for example, and different sets of institutions and collaborative structures. What is appropriate for one issue is not for another, and policymakers must not rush into operational cooperative arrangements before giving careful consideration to the design of policies appropriate for the issue at hand. For this reason, it is preferable that nations continue the current trend of creating bilateral or multilateral initiatives designed to address a specific threat, with the hope that these smaller projects will encourage networks of communication and confidence that will pave the way for larger regional cooperative programs in the future. The following are brief discussions of just a

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

15

few of the prevalent issues facing the region. They are not meant to be comprehensive treatments of these extremely complex phenomena, but rather to outline their relevance for the overall goal of improved cooperative security and a more balanced, more effective U.S.Caribbean partnership. Economic Viability in the Post–Cold War Global Economy Foremost among the challenges to the Caribbean presented by the new global system is that of increased economic competition. Emerging trends in international trade and economic relations threaten the viability of many of the region’s chief exports. Whereas during the Cold War the United States and Europe had a strategic interest in supporting the economic stability of friendly islands, today’s global strategic environment and liberalized trade regimes make such largesse untenable. Western European nations have shifted their attentions toward helping the underdeveloped economies to the east and the rules of the World Trade Organization complicate the continuance of subsidies, trends with dire implications for the bananabased economies of the eastern Caribbean. The United States, by pushing for NAFTA and more liberalized trade throughout the Americas, has reduced inadvertently the relative advantages the Caribbean countries enjoyed vis-à-vis Mexico. The need is acute to develop alternative strategies for economic development and to lessen dependence on the export of primary goods. The growth of tourism and the service sectors in some of the islands provides some reason for hope, especially considering the quality of human capital in many Caribbean countries. Although some countries are in better position than others to be competitive and grow, increasing economic disparity among the islands will lead to greater migratory pressures and may well increase general instability across the region. The inevitable emergence of Cuba, the economic giant of the subregion, as a commercial contender will require particular care in this regard, a fact that has generated a steady increase in regional diplomatic and economic relations with the island. As with most of the issues of the new regional security agenda, the nations of the Caribbean will best address these growing economic pressures by acting together—for instance, by sharing regional resources and strategies for economic development, especially in key sectors such as tourism and financial services—and by insisting to the United States and other external partners on the linkages between economic stress and increases in crime, drug trafficking, and migration.

16

INTRODUCTION

The goal of promoting economic stability and growth in the Caribbean should not be separated from the security agenda. To the contrary, sustainable economic growth should be the sine qua non of any cooperative regional security project. Drug Trafficking and the Dangerous Trend Toward Militarization The most important issue in which U.S. domestic interests threaten the nation’s foreign relations in the Caribbean is the struggle against the trafficking of narcotics. Demonstrating toughness in the fight against illegal drugs has become extremely important in U.S. domestic politics, both at the local and national levels. This has led politicians to take unduly aggressive positions, including casting threats and condemnation upon source or transit countries in Latin America. While such a stance may help win elections, it infuriates potential antidrug partners abroad and undermines efforts toward international cooperation. Although largely ineffective, the unilateral “war on drugs” declared originally by Ronald Reagan and carried on under the Bush and Clinton administrations signals an appetite for the militarization of traditionally nonmilitary issues. This trend is evident also in new immigration initiatives, as when marines are used to patrol the border with Mexico, an approach that led to the shooting death of a teenage Mexican goat herder in the spring of 1997. Without a clear state enemy, the mission of the world’s most powerful military force is ill-defined, and politicians are eager to put it to use in nontraditional areas. Using military forces that are trained for combat against nonmilitary threats such as drug traffickers and illegal immigrants raises human rights and safety issues and endangers the climate for international collaboration. By confusing the traditional responsibilities of the civilian police and the judiciary with the military, and by representing immigrants and the merchants and users of illegal drugs as enemies against the nation, this trend toward militarization offers a dangerous model to the fragile democracies of Latin America. The nations of the Caribbean cannot allow the fight against drug trafficking to become the centerpiece of their relations with the United States. The case must be made clearly and insistently within Washington and in the minds of all relevant actors that the problems of narcotrafficking and drug-related crime in the region are tied to economic underdevelopment and poverty, as well as to the insatiable demand for drugs in the U.S. and European markets, and that further militarization against drugs is a prohibitively costly and dangerous

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

17

approach. In order to be effective in the long run, aggressive measures against drug cartels and trafficking channels in the Caribbean should be coupled with increased resources for education and social programs, and with policies that promote job creation and reasonable wages in the islands. The issue of drug trafficking is the perfect example of the complexity of the new security agenda in that it is a local, national, and transnational phenomenon, and is handled as both a domestic and international issue, at many levels and in all the countries of the region simultaneously. Unfortunately, the issue of drugs has such deep resonance in U.S. domestic politics that it threatens to become Washington’s foremost regional concern, and the only regional issue for which resources—mostly to support operations of the Drug Enforcement Agency—are willingly provided. As a result of Washington’s focus on drugs, no other topic generates as much political conflict throughout the region. For all these reasons, barring a dramatic change in U.S. policy, counternarcotics policy appears to be an especially difficult area for the development of cooperative partnerships. Regional policymakers may be better served in the short-term by focusing on less controversial and potentially explosive issues in their gradual development of a framework for cooperative regional security. Regional Migratory Flows The issue of migration demands an internationally coordinated response, with mechanisms for greater information sharing, communication networks, and an increased international capacity for handling the immediate needs of migrants. As with other security threats, the region should prepare now for future crises by establishing mechanisms and plans of operation, instead of waiting for dramatic events that will force cooperation under the threat of a humanitarian disaster. Policymakers should explore the linkages between economic policies and much of the region’s migratory flows, so that cooperative systems can better predict and prepare for these crises before they occur. In many cases, improved monitoring of legal and illegal migration and better international communication would also affect the operations of transnational criminal and drug-trafficking groups. Because the issue of regional migration is so deeply felt in communities across the Caribbean, international cooperation in this area must be particularly sensitive. The use of one country’s military forces to control, monitor, or otherwise deal with the citizens of another is very dangerous. Addressing regional migration stirs deep emotions in the United States and across the Caribbean. The presence of growing

18

INTRODUCTION

diaspora communities of ex-immigrants with strong political and social ties to their homelands and the freedom of expression and political influence that come with democratization further complicate the issue. However, the basic characteristic of the region, and especially the United States, as a community built on immigration, facilitates the development of a shared approach toward migrants. Even the United States and Cuba in 1994 were able to see beyond their antagonism enough to sign an accord on migration. Despite the complexity of the issue and the variety of actors, both international and domestic, that influence the formulation of policy, multilateral strategies and institutions for improved monitoring, study, and control of regional migration may serve as a key starting point for the development of a cooperative security regime. In the last few years a new issue has arisen, combining immigration and drug trafficking to create tension between the United States and its island neighbors: forced repatriation of criminals from U.S. jails to their country of origin. This is a combustible mix of sensitivities on matters of sovereignty, race, and culture. The benefits of information sharing and cooperation are evident. The question is whether the parties can stop hurling accusations at one another long enough to work out collaborative solutions. The Incorporation of Cuba into the Regional Agenda As the largest of the Caribbean islands, and arguably having the region’s best-trained and highest-skilled work force, Cuba’s incorporation into regional affairs is crucial to the long-term success of the Caribbean as an integrated unit. However, the motivating factors behind the U.S. position on Cuba are domestic, and it is unlikely there will be any significant change in the next few years. International pressure from the Caribbean will not influence those factors and would put at risk the region’s relationship with key figures in Washington. Instead of criticizing the United States publicly for its anachronistic policy, the nations of the Caribbean would be better served by proceeding quietly to build their own relations with Cuba. The invitation to Cuba to participate as a member of the Association of Caribbean States, for instance, and the diplomatic ties many nations are establishing today with Havana are positive steps in this direction. By developing constructive ties today, Cuba’s neighbors will be helping themselves prepare for the inevitable changes ahead and the far-reaching repercussions that will accompany any major shift in the Cuban situation. The region should be observing closely, for instance, the effect Cuba’s gradual economic opening is having on the tourist

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

19

industry. As Cuba continues to develop, its agricultural and manufacturing sectors will play a major role in regional trading patterns. Countries across the Caribbean should work today to minimize the possibility that Cuba develops as a competitor to their small-scale industries, and instead should attempt to build strategic relations so that they can benefit from, instead of suffer as a result of, Cuba’s inevitable opening and further development. With warmer relations, they may also gain the cooperation of the technically advanced and practiced Cuban police and military on other security matters, including immigration flows, drug trafficking, and transnational crime. Ultimately, Cuban participation will be crucial to the success of any regional security system. Friendly relations will also help the region to encourage a gradual, smooth transition to democracy—a transition essential to the long-term stability of the Caribbean. Any rapid dramatic political change in Cuba is very likely to present tremendous security threats to the rest of the region. The establishment of closer relations, and the eventual reintegration of Cuba into regional affairs, would mitigate future crises and ensure long-term stability. The View from Regional Practitioners: The Need for Institutional Reform and Focus at the Operational Level The spirit of this volume reflects an emerging conjunction of interests among different nations of the region and different national and international institutions. In this regard, the chapters presented by policymakers are particularly important. The enthusiasm for openness and cooperation shown by such notable regional security leaders as Brigadier General Rudyard Lewis of the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System and General José E. Noble Espejo of the Dominican Republic, matched by the international initiatives of U.S. Southern Command forces, as described by General Richard Quirk, reflect the extraordinary nature of the opportunities at hand for the region. While differences among the various national agendas and approaches remain, all sides are eager to focus on shared needs and the gains of better cooperation. The inclusion of the chapters by policymakers and officials at the operational level, such as Robert L. Bach of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Captain Randy Beardsworth of the U.S. Coast Guard, is of particular importance because it is at this level that the need for cooperative policies is most pressing, where they prove their effectiveness on a daily basis as well as during crises, and where the region has seen the most progress. Whereas constraints and

20

INTRODUCTION

uncertainties within national and international politics make cooperation difficult, at the operational level the coordination of action and the sharing of information is essential to both short- and long-term success. Concerns regarding sovereignty and political balance lose much of their weight in the face of the need on all sides for improved effectiveness. When refugees are in danger of drowning at sea, or a boatload of cocaine and small arms is in route to local markets, or a devastating hurricane threatens, the degree to which the police, military forces, or rescue teams of various nations can communicate and work together can determine their success at saving lives, whether those lives are Cuban, Dominican, American, or otherwise. For this reason, the lessons to be gained from the experiences of officials at the operational level, and their recommendations for improved cooperation, can be crucial starting points for future initiatives. In many cases, officials at the operational level are more open to increased international exchange and cooperation than are the higher-level policymakers, both because they are less constrained by political demands and because at the operational level there is often no other alternative to cooperation but complete failure. Nevertheless, cooperation at the operational level—however helpful it can be in laying the groundwork for mutual confidence—cannot go far without support from above. Building cooperative regional security will require leadership, creativity, and determination at both ends of the policy process—from the policymakers who determine the priorities, strategies, and perceptions of national and international institutions, as well as from the actual police and government agents, military personnel, civilian actors, and others involved with the implementation of cooperative initiatives. In many cases, improved coordination depends first on the improvement of existing institutional capacities at the local or national level, before these institutions can be used as the basis for international linkage. Police or security institutions that are poorly managed or funded can be a source of mistrust and division even when political will exists for greater cooperation. Differences in the capacities and cultures of various institutions, therefore, must be openly and realistically addressed in the negotiation of cooperative initiatives. The case of U.S.-Mexican cooperation in antinarcotics operations is a revealing example of the challenges facing two institutions of vastly different cultures. While improved cooperation has scored some significant successes, it has also been undermined by the exposure of corruption within Mexican police and antidrug forces. These setbacks created brash headlines in the U.S. media that have weakened public confidence in closer relations with its neighbor, and likewise fueled

U.S.-CARIBBEAN SECURITY RELATIONS

21

nationalist resentment in Mexico. As this case makes clear, closer cooperation also tends to increase frictions. Cooperation in such cases is never easy, but it remains the best overall strategy for improving effectiveness, both as a group and within each individual participating institution, which in turn benefit from the shared technology, infrastructure, training, and information that cooperation offers. A number of international agencies, as well as the U.S. military, work to address the problem of institutional weaknesses through joint training or assistance programs. Some institutions, such as the InterAmerican Defense College and the Inter-American Defense Board, have taken positive steps toward the strengthening of such initiatives. In the past, however, this type of cooperation has been highly contentious. For decades the U.S. military has offered training programs, most of which were developed to encourage law and order, and later the fight against communism and radicalism in the region, often with detrimental effects on local democracies, citizens’ rights, and regional stability. In order to build international confidence and cooperation, and to avoid the real issues of dependence and the erosion of sovereignty, such international training must be carried out under the guidance of a regional representative body, or at least under the open inspection of multinational observers. In most cases, institutional development can best be carried out at a national level, perhaps with the advice of foreign experts, but always under the control of the local civilian government. Here is a case in which disparities in state capacity should not be seen as impossible to overcome. In some cases, the lack of preset operational strategies and methods can make cooperation easier because the participating forces can develop a single system of action at once for all to follow, and thereby avoid contention over which institution’s existing method is superior. At any rate, any cooperative regional system must be sensitive to differences among the participating institutions and the political and social environments in which they operate. The goal of such policies is not to develop a uniform set of regional forces, but to find the means by which the strengths of the participating units can be maximized by acting collectively instead of alone, and weaknesses improved through cooperative training and the sharing of resources and information. The multinational synergy and intellectual enterprise reflected in this collection of essays lay the groundwork for the advancement of cooperative security policies in the Caribbean. Although changes in the short-term political and economic climate of the region will challenge these initiatives, and institutional growth will only come gradually, the common agenda of the nations of the region and the increasing danger of the threats they face will make collaboration less an option

22

INTRODUCTION

and more an imperative in the years to come. International cooperation will require of regional policymakers—including those of the United States—a degree of leadership, political will, and creativity not often seen in regional relations. It will require overcoming sentiments of nationalist and ethnic division, isolationism, long-held attitudes of dominance and dependence, and natural fears and mistrust, not just within the minds of leaders but among the public as well. The deepening of democracy and the protection of citizens’ welfare and rights, which must never be compromised, will complicate the development of internationally accepted standards and policies. However, the emergence of a shared security agenda and a common ideological and economic framework presents an opportunity for regional partnership unique in the region’s history. The editors of this volume hope that the energy and commitment it represents on the part of the authors and all of the participants in the Peace and Security in the Americas project will continue to increase across the region for the improved safety and welfare of citizens everywhere in the Caribbean. Notes 1. The definitive study of this period is Ernest R. May, American Imperialism (New York: Atheneum, 1958). 2. See Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), and The United States and the Caribbean Republics 1921–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974); Peter Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.–Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 53. 3 See Anthony Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean: Challenges of an Asymmetrical Relationship (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). 4. Joseph S. Tulchin, The Aftermath of War (New York: New York University Press, 1971). 5. See Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean. 6. On the way in which Caribbean issues are inserted into domestic politics, see Joseph S. Tulchin, “The Formulation of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Caribbean,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 533 (May 1994). 7. Trinidad Guardian, March 30, 1998.

PART 1 THE POST–COLD WAR CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

2 Changing Definitions of “Social Problems” in the Caribbean Anthony P. Maingot

Defining a Social Problem One of the fundamental tasks facing the United States and its Caribbean Basin neighbors is to arrive at a consensus on how to combat the drug trade and organized crime. Before there can be a consensus on strategy and tactics, however, there has to be agreement at a higher conceptual level on a definition of the nature of the social problem, both in the United States and in the islands. It is this set of definitions that will form the basis for action. The purpose of this chapter is to help advance that process of definition as a prelude to action. If it is a cliché that generals always fight the last war, it is equally true that civilian elites (including academics) tend to hold on to theories long after events have rendered them irrelevant. The result has been a cultural lag, an incongruency between theory and action The reasons are not hard to find. In Figure 2.1, we diagram the decisionmaking paths that any action geared toward dealing with a social problem has to take. These paths reveal the complex mix of objective and subjective factors, domestic and international pressures that must be confronted before any action is initiated on a social problem.1 These antecedents can be grouped into broad categories of objective and subjective factors. In terms of objective factors, it is widely agreed that any definition of a social problem has to include two aspects: First, that it be “a condition affecting a significant number of people in ways considered undesirable,” and, second, that “it is felt [that] something can be done [about it] through collective action.”2 In other words, a social problem cannot exist separate from the consciousness and the intention to do something about it. This is where “collective consciousness” formation comes in. Among those affected there must be at least a few, 25

26

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Figure 2.1 The Genesis of Action on Social Problems ELITES, PERCEPTIONS NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

INFORMATION (DOMESTIC/EXTERNAL)

HIERARCY OF PREFERENCES

OPPORTUNITY COSTS

INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS (DOMESTIC/INT’L)

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

DECISIONMAKING MECHANISMS PUBLIC/PRIVATE (DOMESTIC/INTERNATIONAL) SOCIAL OUTCOMES POLICIES/ACTIONS DOMESTIC/INTERNATIONAL

Sources: This figure is a modification of one appearing in Debra Friedman and Michael Hechter, “The Contribution of Rational Choice Theory to Microsociological Research,” Sociological Theory 6, no. 2 (fall 1988), p. 203. Other aspects of this conceptualization are from Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

usually called an elite, who are relatively well-informed about the nature of the problems and have both the will and the capacity to act on the often incipient collective moral indignation. This matter of consciousness is crucial, as Emile Durkheim noted in his studies of crime. “We must not say,” he wrote, “ that an action shocks the common conscience because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the the common conscience.”3 Beyond being informed, these elites must have the capacity to articulate the characteristics of the problem in popular language and have the political will to attempt a remedy. All this assumes that these elites believe that the problem has a solution, given available resources. Political conviction is necessary to be sure; it is hardly sufficient. There also has to be political capacity to overcome institutional constraints. In the pursuit of this remedy, these

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

27

elites will have to demonstrate that they have the capacity to use the information available to do the following five things: (1) correctly locate the particular social problem in the scale of values of the society (in the model, the “hierarchy of preferences”); (2) understand the nature of the institutional constraints, both domestic and international, that will be confronted in dealing with the problem; (3) calculate what the opportunity costs are in deciding to tackle this social problem rather than any other; (4) have the capacity to “package” their concerns for legislative purposes, making “social outcomes” possible; and (5) convince much wider sectors of the society who are not directly (objectively) affected by that specific problem that the problem is indeed of wider social concern and that they should support the elite’s initiatives. In other words, they have to have engendered a “social consciousness” and a willingness to act on that problem, at home and internationally. This last point requires elaboration. We can assume that the general public will conceptualize the social problem in a more diffuse fashion, will have less access to specific information, and will make less pointed calculations of opportunity costs and the institutional constraints that might hinder or discourage action.4 It is up to the elites to bring the general public more decidedly and effectively into the process. This is the case as regards social problems of a purely domestic type, but it is even more the case when the social problems are global in nature. The reason is obvious: as complex as the process of conceptualizing social problems is domestically, that complexity is multiplied when the paths leading to social outcomes (see Figure 2.1) are complicated by the global nature of information, institutional constraints, opportunity costs, the hierarchy of preferences, and, critically, the capacity to formulate and execute remedies. The complexity is increased further when the relationship between the various elites are very asymmetrical. Clearly, it will be the elites from the nation with the most power that, theoretically at least, will have the greatest capacity and opportunity to act. Whether it will have the same will to act is an empirical question.5 It is in the context of this theoretical conceptualization, with its domestic and global dimensions, that we explore the process of shifting conceptions of social problems in the Caribbean during and after the Cold War. The Integrality of Cold War Perceptions In terms of the hierarchy of values and preferences, it is a fact that Caribbean peoples have always frowned on the consumption of illicit drugs. They tended to define the problem in a way consistent with the

28

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

conservative nature of these societies6: drug usage was regarded, by individuals and groups alike, as either an issue of morals akin to sin or of a pathology in individual psychology. In other words, drugs were viewed as a problem of individual malevolence deserving condemnation or as personal tragedy deserving pity. In many ways, such a moralistic conceptualization had its equivalent in another great social problem of the time: the political struggles, based on ideological certainties, of the Cold War. For the past several decades, these two social problems have formed one harmonious and integral moral moiety. Domestic information was continually reinforced by information emanating from external forces—invariably perceived to be more trustworthy—all at once justifying and strengthening a well-established hierarchy of preferences. Bolstered by such moral certitudes, at home and abroad, there was no need to be concerned with institutional constraints, much less calculate the opportunity costs of existing policies. Clearly, any shift from such a monolithic conceptualization of the nature of social problems to a broader and less moralistic definition was, on general principles alone, not easy. It is never easy to shift from the solid ground of morality and anticommunist doctrine accepted as “truth” to the operational and problematic thinking that the new national security strategic planning for the changing global order required. This was especially difficult in the Caribbean where there was a complex mix of legal, constitutional, and geopolitical alliances, all within an ill-defined and largely externally driven notion of national security. Yet this is precisely the challenge that the whole region faced as of the early 1980s. U.S. elites, by far the most dominant ones in the region, had already defined the drug threat as its fundamental domestic social problem. The newly appointed drug czar of the Clinton administration stated the case when he noted that “there is perhaps no other issue that cuts across more areas of national concern than does drug policy.”7 This was especially true after 1985 when “crack” cocaine usage became epidemic. As Thomas A. Constatine, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), noted, crack meant street violence, corruption of local authorities, presssures on community services (especially those that were health related), and a general community outcry that something drastic be done about the problem.8 The Caribbean region could hardly avoid the pressure that radiated from Washington; they were asked to engage the problem, starting by fundamentally changing their hierarchy of preferences based on a new conception of social problems. It has proved, and is still proving, to be a slow, often excruciating, process for obvious historical reasons.

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

29

Let us remember that when Fidel Castro and the “July 26” movement entered Havana, Cuba, in January 1959, there were only two other independent countries in the insular Caribbean: Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In the rest of the region, British, Dutch, French, and U.S. metropolitan governance existed, and there the “model” was Puerto Rico, not Cuba. The emergent elites of the English-speaking Caribbean, for instance, admired not only the industrialization-by-invitation strategy being pursued by the Puerto Ricans but also their pluralist party politics. Luis Muñoz Marin, not Fidel Castro, was the Caribbean figure to emulate. Just as in Puerto Rico, the issues, that is, social problems, in the European Caribbean were political party formation, independence (or some form of association with the metropolis), and economic development. The record shows that the rest of the Caribbean would not “join” the politicized Latin Caribbean until the late 1960s. Paradoxically, the driving forces behind that geopolitical shift were a combination of internal and external forces, none of the latter directly from Cuba. The dominant external force was the emergence of the Black Power social movement with its roots in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada. It was this U.S.-inspired movement that introduced the area to Cuba through the writings of Caribbean radicals who had experienced revolution elsewhere in the Third World. The new social problems throughout the insular Caribbean concerned race and how to manage the various ethnic tensions of these pluralist societies. As we now know, Grenada 1983 was the watershed for both Marxism (at least in its Leninist form) and Black Power as a political movement, identified as they were not only with the excesses on that island but also with the unprecedented brutality of the Bouterse regime in Suriname and the ongoing abuses of the Forbes Burnham regime in Guyana. Cuba, it turns out, ended up associated with the most unpopular regimes in the region, a fact that contributed to its decline as an ideological and developmental model. It was common during the period of the Cold War to speak of one solid “geopolitical triangle” and several real or potential subtriangles, all with Cuba at the epicenter. The first involved Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada. A series of incipient or potential tangles would be drawn from that basic geopolitical entity to describe an area swarming with entrenched communist forces. Such geopolitical thinking allowed for strategies of containment based on a continuous flow of information (or propaganda), persistent searches for common hierarchies of preferences, the putting in place of institutional constraints to communist expansion, and, in general, the setting of priorities for defense and

30

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

development. Outside forces contributed mightily to all this and especially to any calculation of opportunity costs as they related to aid and development assistance. Friend was unmistakenly distinguished from foe, domestically and globally. The foe, and thus the social problem, was Cuban interference, perceived as merely the phalanx of broader Soviet designs. Interestingly enough, although only partly true, it was the integrality of this geopolitically based belief system that helped the region contain those forces that favored “many Cubas” (as Maurice Bishop once put it in Nicaragua), which came very close to occurring in Jamaica in 1979. The region had defined its social problems in ways consistent with its collective hierarchy of preferences and, not trivially, with the preferences of Washington.9 How fast the region had changed. We can derive several lessons from an institutional and a behavioral assessment of this Cold War period. Such an assessment shows both strengths and weaknesses in terms of the capacity of these societies to confront the new round of social problems. On the positive side, there were two. Institutionally, the pluralist party system and the Westminster form of government served the societies well. Civilian authority was sustained, the danger of the operation of the “garrison state” process, that is, militarization, was avoided, civil rights were respected, and due process operated in the judicial system. Behaviorally, there was clear personal and collective reassertion of a hierarchy of preferences that included democracy with a “conservative” but pragmatic bent, as well as continued alliances with the United States and the Western democracies generally. All this was done without a generalized revanchist sentiment. Indeed, the fundamental nature of Caribbean political cultures revealed a capacity to “put behind, move on.” Except for those who committed murder (as in the Grenadian case and leaving aside the perplexing case of Suriname), non-Latin Caribbean people hold few grudges. This allowed the GrenadaCaribbean watershed to pass without major bloodshed or dislocation through exiles or confiscations. There were also weaknesses. Behaviorally, there continued to be the admiration of the “self-made” man who lived by his wits and was always socially mobile. This individual was admired for his or her capacity to take advantage of any and all opportunities, at home or abroad, that life offered. Accompanying this attitude was a lackadaisical, or at least a calculated, indifference toward bending the rules. Definitions of corruption were broad, flexible, and ultimately self-serving. Interestingly enough, this behavioral orientation had its institutional dimension, which meant that there was more continuity than change in the fundamental underpinnings of Caribbean political

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

31

cultures. Caribbean elites learned to leverage their geopolitical position vis-à-vis the United States’ constant preoccupation with Cuba. Throughout the previous decade these pragmatic leaders had played the “Cuban card” with admirable skill, using it essentially to (1) keep their own small but aggressive left at bay by hanging the bell on the Cuban cat, (2) revalidate their credentials in a Third World movement that had moved ideologically well beyond the “nonaligned” principles of the original Bandung generation, and (3) increase their leverage with the U.S. administration. These actions took full advantage of Washington’s own opportunistic calculation of opportunity costs. Washington’s interest in the Caribbean were perceived as being self-serving and based on U.S. national security ineterests rather than on a scale of democratic principles to be defended and promoted in the Caribbean or elsewhere. The difference was that for the United States this geopolitical game was merely one of many that they could turn on or off as domestic political constraints mandated. For the Caribbean, the interests were ongoing but the opportunities presented by the Cold War were conjunctural and, as such, of temporary value. The result of all this geopolitical positioning and of the congruence of the hierarchies of preferences between Washington and the majority of Caribbean societies was that neither made any objective, longer-term opportunity costs calculations about the strategies being pursued by Washington. This was regrettable because there were in fact very serious consequences to Washington’s single-minded and tunnel-visioned approach to the area and to the Caribbean’s shortterm tactical use of these. The most negative of all these costs, in terms of the subsequent definition of threat, were what can now be called “blowback” situations. Blowback: An Explosion of Latent Processes During the period of the Cold War, Washington—and to a certain extent Europe—decided to turn a blind eye to any activities that did not threaten the active pursuit of Cold War policies. Among the most serious of these was narcotrafficking and other corrupt activities on the part of national elites. This intentional inattention to crime created a host of unintended consequences, known as “blowback” situations.10 Two in particular—Cuba and the Bahamas—would have lasting consequences for the post–Cold War phase. It is now revealed that there had been trafficking in morphine and heroin between Medellin, Colombia, and Havana since the late

32

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

1940s.11 Elements of organized crime, such as the involvement of corrupt officials and the connection with international criminal networks, especially the American mafia (already well-established in Havana), were already evident in this trafficking. Meyer Lansky, the American genius of casino gambling, had become Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista’s “consultant” on casino gambling and had built the most modern hotel in the Caribbean (the Riviera); mobster Lucky Luciano travelled there occasionally, and Santos Trafficante had been living there since 1946.12 When the Cuban revolutionary elites decided to expel the U.S. mafia and dismantle its local organizations, these criminals relocated to Miami where they would soon take full advantage of the Cold War strategies of their host society. The story illustrates how criminal activities can prosper when there is no will on the part of elites to label and combat it. After the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created a very large fleet of speedboats, used to infiltrate commandos into Cuba. Located in multiple bays and canals in the Miami area, this fleet of boats was “controlled” out of a CIA station in Homestead, Florida.13 All these Cold War strategies and tactics of direct attacks on Cuba came to a halt with the signing of the Kennedy-Khruschev Treaty, which brought to an end the missile crisis of 1962. With no war to fight, many of these Cuban commandos turned to crime, fundamentally smuggling drugs and selling guns, especially to the Colombians, who were only just then discovering the American market. Subsequent information indicates that these Cubans were the first to utilize sophisticated electronic equipment to outsmart U.S. controls. “The suspects,” writes a former CIA field commander, “employed many of the intelligence and security techniques they had learned from the CIA, making our job much more difficult.”14 The trade was first in marijuana; cocaine came later. The transportation of marijuana also took advantage of another historical conjuncture involving Cuban exiles. Some 600 Cuban lobsterers had left Cuba, seeking exile in Miami with their boats. They made the Miami River their base and the Bahamas banks their fishing grounds. When the Bahamas became independent in 1966, they banned these Cubans from lobstering in its territorial waters. Here was an additional fleet of boats with experienced sailors, now out of honest work. We now know that it was these Cubans who first taught the Colombians how to process cocaine for the U.S. market.15 Eventually, these same Cubans would develop such strength and organization that they acted independently from the Colombians and the U.S. mafia.16

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

33

Given Washington’s total concern with fighting the Cold War— and the total absence of institutional constraints to this approach— Washington took no action against this growing criminal enterprise operating out of Miami. Additionally, and for the same reasons of state, neither did Washington act against the growing criminal enterprise in the neighboring Bahamas, another blowback situation. According to two experts on the cocaine trade, by 1979 the Bahamas was “a country for sale.”17 There were fourteen entrepreneurs of the marijuana and cocaine trade operating with full collaboration of the highest Bahamian officials. To those who know Bahamian history, there was nothing surprising in that fact. If the white Bahamians (the so-called Bay Street Boys) who formerly controlled these islands had consolidated their power through their illicit gains from alcohol smuggling during Prohibition, why would one expect black Bahamians to be less “smart” when their opportunity arrived? Three investigatory journalists had revealed that there had been an early MiamiBahamas connection through the activities of Meyer Lansky, brains of the Sicilian mafia, expelled from Cuba and then resident in Miami. Lansky had helped finance the campaign of Lynden O. Pindling, for independence and for office. The quid pro quo: casino and gambling rights similar to those Lansky managed in Havana.18 At the same time that Pindling was moving the Bahamas to independence and to mafia-controlled casino gambling, a fugitive from U.S. justice, the financier Robert Vesco, was settling in as a welcome guest of the Pindling government. On Cistern Cay, which he virtually owned, Vesco entertained and negotiated with a horde of international criminals, not the least of whom was Carlos Lehder, important leader of the Medellín Cartel. Lehder had already taken control of another small Bahamian island, Norman Cay.19 Thus by the early 1980s, there were essentially three “independent” territories in the Bahamas, two of which were overt criminal enterprises and the other, the independent country of the Bahamas, a willing collaborator. The crucial thing about all this is that even as individual agencies of the U.S. government investigated Vesco and Lehder (and, indirectly, Pindling), the United States’ single-minded anticommunist strategy meant that they merely winked at the illicit goings-on in this neighbor of Cuba. In addition to keeping the loyalties of Pindling, there was also the U.S. missile experimentation base in the Bahamas, which had to be preserved.20 There were many other instances of turning a blind eye—and thus blowback—in the region, especially in those parts of Central America where anticommunist wars were being fought. The point is

34

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

that Washington—facing few if any institutional constraints to this Cold War strategy—controlled the flow of information about the growing drug trade and refused to calculate the longer-term opportunity costs of its hands-off policy. The U.S. elites’ perceptions of social problems did not yet include a definition of the threat represented by the illegal activities of some of our Cold War allies. Such a sense of threat, and the definition of it as a social problem, would have to await the end of the Cold War. After the Cold War: Constraints and Opportunity Costs Despite this indifference toward the activities of organized crime in many of the islands, it is an empirical fact that the Caribbean Basin countries managed to come out of the various crises of the Cold War with operating democratic systems, respect for human rights, and vigorous civil societies generally. The key question for the post–Cold War period is whether, given the nature of the challenges by organized crime, these small systems will continue to function as democratically and civilly. Will, for instance, the nature of the flows of information, the hierarchy of preferences, the incentives or constraints provided by the institutional structures, and the major national and international elites’ calculations of opportunity costs—all of which helped the region through the Cold War—serve as well against the new onslaught of social problems? These are hardly academic queries; they go to the heart of the question as to how prepared these countries and the United States are to confront the realities of a new global situation with threats so complex that they challenge the conceptual capabilities of large and small states alike. Part of this difficulty is the speed with which “history” is moving, the velocity of social change. By the mid-1990s people in the Caribbean region were finally realizing that the “drug problem” was no longer “an American problem”; it was everyone’s problem. In its starkest form, the present crisis can be summed up by recent (August 1996) Drug Enforcement Agency estimates of the drug trade: more than 40 percent of all the cocaine entering the U.S. mainland is transiting through the eastern Caribbean and Puerto Rico; 62 percent of the heroin entering the United States comes from Colombia, and 99 percent of this enters either by direct commercial flights from Colombia or through the eastern Caribbean. The trade through the Caribbean is increasing.21 Aside from the Dominican Republic–Puerto Rico axis, there are the many cays off the southeastern coast of Cuba that continue to be favorite air-drop points, easily

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

35

retrievable to speed boats operating out of the Bahamas and even the Florida Keys. There were grand juries sitting in the U.S. Virgin Islands looking at drug-related police corruption and even murder; there were commissions of inquiry sitting in the Bahamas looking at the widespread corruption that has characterized government in those islands over the past two decades, and in island after island, the New Scotland Yard—the DEA and the FBI—were operating alongside local authorities. In fact, one is tempted to say that the drug trade has engendered a benign form of “recolonization” of the Caribbean as agencies of the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France intensify their surveillance and investigations into the problem. The assumption was that the region was being “Colombianized,” that is, that not only was the regionwide trade coming under the control of Colombian cartels, but that the nature and frequency of criminal violence on individual islands was taking on Colombian proportions and, indeed, being run by Colombians. This fear is now Caribbean-wide and has transformed an erstwhile sanguine attitude to one of urgency. In 1995, several new offices for the regional study and combat of the drug trade were opened in the Caribbean. In November, the DEA opened a regional office in Puerto Rico where, according to one official, major drug trafficking organizations are completely controlled by the Colombian mafia. Besides being a major market itself, as well as a key transshipment center for drugs, Puerto Rico is a significant money-laundering center. In Jamaica, construction began on a new Caribbean Regional Drug Trafficking Center that would serve the eighteen English-speaking countries of the area. Ground was also broken for a police-military post at Pedro Cays, forty miles south of Jamaica, a favorite dropoff point for drugs moving up through the islands and destined for the U.S. mainland. Legislation punishing money laundering was being prepared by the island’s Ministry of National Security. The opening of these regional centers and the numerous regional meetings on both the trade and the accompanying issue of money laundering, all indicate that there is among Caribbean governing elites a strong presumption that in the face of increased and more sophisticated criminal activity, new strategies are called for. The question is, which strategies? Confronting the New Social Problems As this study has illustrated, the Caribbean region is facing a series of challenges that are not new but are newly conceptualized. At a minimum, the complexity of the drug trade and the crime it engenders

36

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

force us to go beyond single-country case studies and analyze them globally and comparatively. Additionally, the study of the drug trade has to be done within a context of the study of elite and popular definitions of what is corrupt behavior. Just how far can the “smart man” go before he or she is condemned as deviant?22 And, are such individual assessments sufficient in an area of illicitness so vast and transnational that it is difficult to define its behavioral boundaries? This is the problem confronted in a significant theory of corrupt behavior called the “enterprise theory” of corruption, which, stated broadly, maintains that there is a range of behavior along which any business can be conducted, and legality is an arbitrary point on that range. Be all this as it may, however, there is no escaping the need for new definitions and paradigms to meet the new challenges. At a minimum, such a new definition should include the following six characteristics of this new social problem: 1. As distinct from conventional and even unconventional warfare, where “negotiations,” peace treaties, conventions, or agreements are possible, no such institutionalized “settlement modes” exist. To the extent that governments or other officials engage organized crime in talks, the former become tainted. This occurred in Italy and to a certain extent in Colombia and is certainly one of the reasons why there invariably is great hesitation to unleash the military against organized crime. The confrontation has a fundamental axiological or Manichean dimension with little if any honor among the combatants. 2. The new social problem is nonideological in nature. As distinct from the Cold War days when the “enemy” was a state, a party, even a “cell,” today the enemy cannot be easily identified. Even the nature of the threat that enemy poses lacks clear definition and identifiable shape. The result is that concepts from the Cold War are of no use in identifying its dimension or providing clues on how to combat it. In many ways, the fundamental strategy of organized crime is to take advantage of “market” forces and the institutions that serve that free market (transportation, banks, lawyers, accountants, etc.). They operate best and are most protected in the vast gray area between outright illicitness and propriety. 3. While the enemy has a command structure and is organized hierarchically, these structures and hierarchies vary widely. The Colombian cartels are organized in one way, the Jamaican posses in quite another, and, as we shall note later, the propensity to localizing the business by definition means a multiplication of organizational formats. Because there is no single enemy, or, indeed, single “war,” no single strategy can be devised to confront the whole situation. There

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

37

is no “Kremlin” to be targeted, no “red menace” to easily identify and warn against. 4. While the threat is an ongoing one—i.e., it has continuity over time—and there is evident longer-term planning, being nonideological and flexible in organization, the enemy can change the nature of its “profile,” lie low or shift strategies and tactics at will. What are the measures, other than figures on levels of consumption, by which progress in the war on drugs can be judged? The many premature and erroneous claims of victory and to having “defeated” the enemy attest to that. 5. Organized crime has a formidable capability of enforcement and for the use of force, yet cannot be identified in traditional military or even “nonconventional” warfare fashion. Since it prefers to co-opt and buy rather than to use raw force, it makes use of that historical and universal enemy of transparency and accountability: corruption. Because it is not the only agent of corruption, generalized corruption, wittingly or unwittingly, is an invaluable ally. 6. Finally, an extremely controversial and delicate point: drug traffickers make excellent use of the ethnic ties and contacts that global trade and mass transportation make possible. These ties, for instance, can link areas as distant and distinct as the Middle East and the Caribbean or Colombia and Miami. It is no longer necessary to have the centuries of gestation that we identify with the Sicilian mafia; ready-made, on-command ethnic alliances and reciprocal relations are everywhere in evidence. Defined this way, international organized crime is evidently not something these small islands can handle on their own. They naturally and logically look toward Washington for assistance and strategic guidelines. Keeping in mind the asymmetry of power in the region, the question is just how U.S. foreign policy is affecting the region in terms of the new challenges. The region’s elites have reason to be confused. The U.S. response to these challenges has been to declare a “war” on drugs. That war has now had three different leaders or “czars,” espousing three different philosophies: William Bennett, the first of the czars, tried the pedagogical approach: attempting to change basic attitudes among youth. “Just Say No to Drugs” was the theme of his public-relations strategy. Public dissatisfaction with the absence of immediate results led to the appointment of New York Police Commissioner Lee Brown as the new czar. It was thought that Brown’s “street cop” strategy, and the fact that he was black, would help deal with the problem, especially in the inner-city problem areas. This was not regarded as successful either. As of the mid-l990s, a third czar,

38

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

General Barry McCaffrey, has been given ample powers and resources to attempt a “comprehensive” approach. Press reports citing a still secret FBI memo to the White House would have us believe that none of these efforts have been adequate.23 As far as the Caribbean is concerned, the common element in the strategy of the three czars is the interdiction of the flow of drugs. It is at this juncture that U.S. interests and strategy interact with Caribbean interests and strategy. The problem is that even if this policy of interdiction were sufficient, and it is not, it is, from a geopolitical point of view, only a half measure. The reason is simple and it is fully understood in the rest of the Caribbean: the basic weakness in the way the United States defines the social problem resides in the hierarchy of preferences that flows from that U.S. definition—that is, it is still captive of the strategies of the Cold War. Simply put, the United States wishes to implement a Caribbean-wide policy of interdiction without dealing directly with Cuba, and this is the weak link in the chain. If the U.S. policy on interdictions is premised on the notion of the strategic geographical location of the islands, how can it ignore the largest of these islands, located right at the entryway to the Gulf of Mexico and across from Miami? There is, and Caribbean elites understand this, a sharp difference of opinion between U.S. politicians with large Cuban constituencies and the military. While the former insist that Cuba is itself a trafficker in drugs,24 the latter consistently disclaim having any such knowledge. “My judgment is,” opined drug czar General Barry McCaffrey recently, “Cuba is not a major factor in drug smuggling to the United States. It will be.”25 The last prediction is ominous and should lead policymakers to some opportunity cost analysis of current Cuban policy. Evidently, without a shift in paradigms, the present war on drugs in the Caribbean, based on a strategy of interdiction, will continue captive to the strategies of a past war fought against a totally different enemy. Logically, there cannot be a change in strategy and tactics in the field until there is a change in foreign policy, that is, thinking about Cuba as a whole, and in this Caribbean elites have little say. In the United States as elsewhere, policy responds to the institutional constraints of the domestic political system and the opportunity cost calculations of those competing for office. Conclusion and Policy Recommendations Revisiting the model of paths to social outcomes (Figure 2.1), we note that even though the context of decisionmaking has a strong global

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

39

dimension, in the final analysis the fundamental decisions are local ones, in the United States and in Caribbean nations. Decisions by local elites, concerned with local issues and opportunities, will always precede international ones. The conclusion is that even in an age of global actions, it is local action that has to be the first line of defense for each nation. Theoretically, local action should precede or at least parallel multilateral action. The logic is that if every nation took significant measures against their own mini-mafias, the indispensable chain running from production to consumption would be broken. Thus there is good reason to emphasize a strategy of strengthening local forces even as the interdiction campaign against the major cartels continues on a regional basis. This being said, however, there is no reason to believe that this will provide the longed-for solution to this complex problem. In the final analysis, we are dealing with a series of dilemmas and the nature of dilemma is that there are no maximal solutions, only trade-offs. The best one can hope for is that the strategy chosen provides, on balance, that is, optimally, the best results. Local action appears to be, on balance, the optimal approach. Precisely because this is made as a policy recommendation, one should submit it to the tightest scrutiny possible, including some counterintuitive argumentation. One might start the review by stating the obvious: the problems for the United States in attempting a localization approach lie in the nature of the region itself. First, there is the problem of formulating a policy for an area that is fragmented culturally, politically, economically, ethnically, and jurisprudentially. The Caribbean is not what the anthropologists call a “culture area”; there is no single core or center of gravity on any issue, much less on the issue of combating the drug menace. Indeed, the very definition of the social problem varies, as do concepts about security and threat. The issue of tightly defined sovereignty complicates any cross-border initiatives. The issue of sovereign sensitivities is made even more intractable by the mix of constitutional systems with their own justice, security, and intelligence thrusts. It is not at all clear that the United States could design, or at least successfully implement, one pan-Caribbean antidrug policy. Providing U.S. material and police assistance to each island will help, but it will not address the institutional and behavioral factors that go into creating the collective consciousness that has to precede policy and action. This is a task for local elites and there is much doubt that many of them are up to the task. “Daily news reports,” writes the director of the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) in Barbados, “tell us that the antinarcotic spirit—the political will against drug lords—is undoubtedly strong while the

40

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

antinarcotic flesh—the implementation of those policies—remains weak and fragmented.”26 Beyond the issue of the political will of local elites, there are several other problems with a strategy that emphasizes localization and policymakers should take these into account. First, in a region where the drug menace is now high on the public’s list of social problems, there is a tendency for local officials—in the United States and in the region—to claim victory over local crime, especially around election time and just before tourist season. The problem is that there are few hard measures by which to judge performance. The very nature of the criminal enterprise makes it difficult to describe, measure, and assess. Neither time series on tonnage seized or arrests made serve as unassailable evidence of successful policy formulation; it might simply mean that routes have been shifted and the local syndicates or gangs are lying low until drug-fighting effectives are moved elsewhere. These problems, however, pale in comparison to the dangers of not directing policy to local, individual island situations. This tells us something about the need to do opportunity costs analyses now so as not to repeat the errors committed during the Cold War. By far the gravest problem that is evident in island after island is the growing public exasperation with the generalized criminality that is spawned by drug trade and usage. This, in turn, is engendering two types of activities whose opportunity costs have to be considered. First, there is a growing privatization of security. Because of the downsizing of government, the shifting to the private sector, and the export-driven nature of the new global economy, the private sector is having to pick up much of the slack in security at a time when the threat is increasing geometrically. A series of cases involving both sea and air transportation companies illustrate the new situation, wherein even the increasing expenditures on private security are inadequate. American Airlines’ recent clash with U.S. Customs over the expense of new security measures and their relative inefficiency is an example.27 Interviews in Miami indicate that a significant cause in the failure of Eastern Airlines were the expenses involved in security and the volume of fines paid to the U.S. government upon the failure of those measures. The privatization of security goes even further, however. In country after country private security firms guard airports, docks, businesses, and private residences. Local leaders wonder how long it will be before the example of Colombia, where segments of the regular army are being contracted to safeguard a range of industrial installations, will become common practice. Second, and aside from the added expense to the society these services represent, there is the fragmentation of the security effort

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

41

and a consequent diminution of the status of the regular armed forces. The potential consequences of this situation go well beyond the struggle against organized crime to threaten democratic governability by undermining collective trust in the system. Because the enemy and the threat are so multifarious and shifting, the new social problem is characterized by a generalized climate of suspicion. There is virtually no electoral campaign in the region where accusations of drug financing are not hurled with reckless abandon. Even a fairly routine change in police or military commands becomes a subject for commentary tainted with suspicion and implied charges. In Jamaica, the regular retirement of the commissioner of police is accompanied by opposition charges that “corrupt cops” were behind the government’s decision.28 The erosion of the legitimacy and trust so necessary in pluralist systems is already evident. In multi-ethnic societies, the mistrust and suspicion heightens intergroup antagonism and stereotyping on an ethnic basis. In Trinidad, for example, the Indianbased party in power asked parliament to extend the tenure of Police Commissioner Mohammed for another year; the black-based opposition summarily accused the government of trying to “Indianize” the police force.29 Localization is justified by the problem posed by the new binational criminal gangs such as the Jamaican-U.S. posses and the socalled Dominicanyorks. This is a new phenomenon as far as the Caribbean is concerned, and the full implications for the islands of this growing phenomenon—the migration of criminal aliens—have yet to be analyzed. It stands to reason that if they are considered threats to U.S. national security they surely must be even larger threats to their countries of origin. There also is jail overcrowding and the professionalization of local criminals, who make use of the contacts in the United States to strengthen their local capabilities. This is an issue that requires that attention be paid to individual islands. There is no general, regionwide policy that can address it. As perilous as the situation looks for these small states in the Caribbean, history provides grounds for guarded optimism. It should be recalled that, confronted with the authoritarian menace in the 1970s, these elites stood steadfast in their democratic beliefs and practices, convinced that in a truly pluralist world steadfastness has to be accompanied with a heavy dose of realism and pragmatism. It was that combination of ideological conviction and flexibility that allowed these small states to overcome the authoritarian threat. With much less ideological cohesion and even less assistance from the United States, those same attributes are being sorely tested by the menace of international organized crime. It is not clear what the new definitions

42

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

of their particular social problems will be or what strategies they will ultimately choose. It is absolutely clear, however, that given the vagaries in Washington’s own definition of its war on drugs, they will now—more than ever in their short history as independent states— have to take stock of their own resources and take their destinies in their own hands. Notes 1. This theoretical discussion draws largely from Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), and Arnold M. Rose, Sociology: The Study of Human Relations (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1956), p. 452ff. 2. Paul B. Horton and Gerald R. Leslie, The Sociology of Social Problems, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974), p. 4. 3. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 81. 4. Editors’ note: “opportunity cost” refers to the loss of other alternatives when one course of action is chosen. 5. On this point, see Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean: Challenges of an Asymmetrical Relationship (London: Macmillan, 1994). 6. See Anthony P. Maingot, “The Caribbean: The Structure of ModernConservative Societies,” in Jan Knippers Black (ed.), Latin America: Its Problems and Its Promise (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 309–336. 7. Barry R. McCaffrey, The 1997 National Drug Control Strategy: Executive Overview, Washington, D.C., Office of National Drug Control Policy, February 25, 1997. 8. See U.S. Department of Justice, The Cocaine Threat to the United States, DEA Drug Intelligence Report, DEA-95016, Overview, Washington, D.C., Drug Enforcement Administration, March 1995, p. iii. 9. See Anthony P. Maingot, “The Security/Sovereignty Paradox and the Security of the Insular Caribbean in the 90s,” Cuadernos del INVESP (Caracas), no. 2 (June–December 1993), pp. 24–44. 10. Tim Weiner claims that the term “blowback” was used by the CIA to describe “a poisonous fallout, borne by political winds, drifting back home from a faraway battlefield.” (“Blowback from the Afgan Battlefield,” New York Times Magazine, March 13, 1994, p. 53.) 11. Eduardo Saénz Rovner, “La prehistoria del narcotráfico en Colombia,” Innovar (Bogotá), no. 8 (July–December 1996), pp. 65–92. 12. See Robert Lacey, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991), pp. 223–237. 13. Tom Tripodi with Joseph P. DeSario, Crusade (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993). See also Anthony Henman, Mama Coca (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1981), p. 132. 14. Henman, Mama Coca, p. 27. 15. See the study done by the RAND Corporation, Kevin Jack Riley, Snow Job? (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), p. 174.

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “SOCIAL PROBLEMS”

43

16. August Bequai, Organized Crime: The Fifth Estate (New York: Lexington Books, 1979), pp. 136ff. 17. Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen, Kings of Cocaine (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 61. 18. Paul Eddy with Hugo Sabogal and Sara Walden, The Cocaine Wars (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1988), pp. 135–137. 19. Further on this in Anthony P. Maingot, “Laundering the Gains of the Drug Trade: The Role of Miami and the Offshore Tax Havens in the Caribbean,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 30, nos. 2, 3 (summer 1989), pp. 167–188. 20. See Alan A. Block, Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in the Bahamas (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1991). 21. The United Nations has established a special office to deal with the drug problem in the Caribbean, the United Nations International Drug Control Program, Regional Office for the Caribbean, Barbados. Its many reports are indispensible to any study of the problem. 22. Further on this in Anthony P. Maingot, “Confronting Corruption in the Hemisphere: A Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 36, no. 3 (fall 1994), pp. 49–62. 23. New York Times, October 6, 1996, p. 16. 24. See the publication of the influential Cuban-American National Foundation, Inc., Castro’s Narcotics Trade (Washington, DC, 1983), with a foreword by then-senator (R.-Fl.) Paula Hawkins. 25. Quoted in the Miami Herald, June 4, 1997, p. 5B. 26. Sandro Calvani, “Foreword,” in No One Is an Island, UNDCP Activities Report, 1997 (Barbados: UNDCP Office, 1997), p. 2. 27. Miami Herald, September 28, 1996, p. 1. 28. The Weekly Gleaner, September 20–26, 1996, pp. 1 and 7. 29. The Trinidad Guardian, August 1, 1997, p. 1.

3 The United States and the Caribbean at Fin de Siècle: A Time of Transitions Humberto García-Muñiz1

The point I wish to make is that this is not a meeting between Caribbean nations and the United States, but rather a meeting among Caribbean nations, including the United States. —President William Clinton, May 10, 1997

President Clinton’s separate visits to the Caribbean and Central America in May 1997 tacitly recognized the differences between these two Western Hemisphere subregions, even though official foreign policy encapsulates both subregions in the geopolitical expression “Caribbean Basin” since 1982, when Ronald Reagan proclaimed the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).2 In Bridgetown but not in San José, Clinton claimed that the United States is a “Caribbean nation” because of its possession of Puerto Rico and several of the Virgin Islands, as well as on the long-standing Caribbean migration to the United States. Is this “Caribbean-ness” of the United States a new approach to the Caribbean heralding a new policy toward the region or just mere rhetoric to garner support from Caribbean states for its antidrug and antimigration policies?3 In this chapter, I analyze a number of transitions—and some continuities—in U.S.-Caribbean relations taking place at the turn of the century. I deal with the following themes: (1) defining the Caribbean, with reference to some proposed subregional integration schemes; (2) a historical appraisal of U.S.-Caribbean relations, particularly the economic-commercial and security-military aspects; (3) an analysis of the drug threat for the security of the United States and the Caribbean; and finally (4) a discussion of present U.S. security-military policy toward the region, specifically the relocation of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) to Miami, the transfer of the Caribbean to SOUTHCOM and its possible impact on U.S.–Puerto Rico relations. 45

46

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

My aim is to inquire whether the United States, as a so-called Caribbean nation, has a coherent policy toward its neighbors and whether this policy is of advantage to the United States, the Caribbean, or to both. Defining the Caribbean Prior to the 1980s, “Caribbean Basin” was not a unanimously accepted term.4 In the mid-1970s, the reputed scholar-statesman Eric Williams challenged the expression, confining the Caribbean to the archipelago and littoral where the sugar cane plantation economy and society had been dominant.5 Williams attempted in his long political career (1956–1980) to give political form to his Caribbean conception, but fell short of incorporating non–Commonwealth Caribbean countries. Williams’s integration scheme partly failed because of the Caribbean’s “myth of homogeneity.”6 Williams’s definition blurred the differences and variations among his own Caribbean in terms of size, colonial cultural processes, origins, timing and intensity of the plantation, demography (including intra- and out-migration patterns and the various diasporas), and in social, economic, and political developments.7 In the 1950s, John Gillin, an American anthropologist, divided the Caribbean into two cultural types: “the Latin American,” consisting of Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican societies, and the “Caribbean African,” containing Haiti, the French Antilles, and the British Caribbean (including the Guianas and British Honduras [now Belize]).8 Even though Gillin’s terms might be questionable, undoubtedly the Latin American Caribbean islands share a common cultural, linguistic, and religious base.9 Not so the Caribbean African, which includes heterogeneous societies inside each metropolitan jurisdiction. This explains partially the difficulties of their integration process (as in the experience of the Caribbean Community [CARICOM]), or further fragmentation (as in the Dutch Caribbean in the 1970s and 1980s). France’s constitutional relationship with its Caribbean territories incorporates the subregion’s division, a division it fostered from the early days of colonization.10 Despite their commonalities, the economic and political routes of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico diverged, with the United States playing a continuing, determining role. At the turn of the century, the United States intervened and established a protectorate in Cuba, incorporated the Dominican Republic into its financial and commercial sphere of influence, and annexed Puerto

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

47

Rico, paradoxically the one Latin American Caribbean territory with which it had the least relations.11 Modern changes and trends deepened historic social and political differences between them, as can be seen by Puerto Rico’s attendance as an observer in the U.S. delegation to the Barbados meeting, the Dominican Republic’s dual destiny by participating in the Barbados and Costa Rica meetings, and Cuba’s exclusion from both.12 Subregional Integration Schemes The lack of an economic, social, and cultural base for “PanCaribbeanism” did not impede the invention of various integration schemes at the subregional level, conceivably to offset the weakness of the individual partners vis-à-vis the United States.13 Hence, the early intellectual and political elites of the Caribbean subregions watched and scrutinized U.S. policies with trepidation.14 These subregional schemes usually limited potential membership to their own grouping, as if a common cultural background or metropolitan control was a sufficient condition for success.15 For example, in 1938 Carlos E. Chardón, the renowned Cornell-trained scientist, educator, and chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico, wrote: In fact, no economic policy for the Antilles exists that represent an integration of their interests. There are partial projects and plans that tend more to the economic disintegration of the group of islands comprising the Antillean archipelago than towards its integration as an geographical unit of production and consumption.16

Chardón proposed an integration scheme of the complementary economies of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic that would follow with the latter’s signing a reciprocity treaty with the United States that would eliminate the “Chinese wall” of the tariff.17 The few integration schemes that became a reality belonged to the British Empire and responded to initiatives by the Colonial Office. The Federation of the West Indies, which lasted from 1958 to 1961, is the best example.18 Some years after the Federation, several of the former British colonies regrouped in a Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) and in 1974 most of them organized CARICOM. Only recently did CARICOM accept members out of different stock, Dutch-colonized Suriname in 1995 and Haiti in 1997, both coming out of predatory military dictatorships and with marginal economies in their trade with the region. In less than three years, a non-English-

48

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

speaking population is the majority in CARICOM. At last, the organization is becoming Caribbean in Williams’s sense of the word, but much remains to be done with respect to the Latin American Caribbean, which are the stronger economies of the region. United States–Caribbean Relations It is not by chance that the most forceful argument against viewing the Caribbean as a single entity comes from a Dominican historian born in peasant-dominated La Vega, Frank Moya Pons.19 Moya Pons says that “the Caribbean as an entity exists for only three groups of persons, none of which, curiously, draws its roots from the area.” These are: “sales managers of the great local and multinational corporations” who see “a great market for their products”; “Washington policy-makers” for whom “the Caribbean was and has been always a strategic region”; and “the local and foreign intellectuals and scholars, who, for analytical purposes, strive to give a conceptual coherence” to the region.20 As noted, the long-standing U.S. goal of primacy in the Caribbean played a catalytic role in the formulation of these schemes. Starting with the Monroe Doctrine (1823), passing through the Olney Declaration (1895), Roosevelt Corollary (1904 and 1905), Dollar Diplomacy (1912), the Good Neighbor policy (1933), the Act of Havana (1940), the Kennan Corollary (1950), the Johnson Doctrine (1965), and the CBI (1982), U.S. strategy has aimed to define the nature of domestic politics, economics, and security policies of Caribbean territories.21 U.S.-Caribbean asymmetric relations have been aptly analyzed elsewhere by Anthony P. Maingot.22 Yet, not enough emphasis has been given to the bilateral nature of these relations. While strengthening the coupling of the United States and individual territories, these bilateral relations kept each territory separate from the others, reproducing further subregional division and competition. Preventing the establishment of military bases or a geopolitical presence in the area by extrahemispheric powers lies at the core of traditional U.S. policy toward the Caribbean Basin. Best expressed in the Monroe Doctrine, the emergence of the United States as a world power in the twentieth century caused a significant addendum to the axiom: U.S. capabilities as a global power are enhanced by the exclusion of the region from the international arena. Economic and financial conflicts of European states with Caribbean countries opened the possibility of their military intervention.

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

49

By the terms of the Roosevelt Corollary, the United States assumed the role of “international police” in the region and deterred that prospect. Moreover, Dollar Diplomacy meant that to prevent European claims, the U.S. government sought actively better bank loan terms for Caribbean and Central American countries. The United States established a program to advance trade and investments of the U.S. private sector in foreign countries, particularly those in the Caribbean. The new policy assumed that the private sector would find the Caribbean countries attractive for investment. But the historical reality has been otherwise. The Caribbean attracted neither sufficient nor adequate U.S. investment to achieve economic development (still less what is called today “sustainable development”) in its territories, several of which are simply not viable.23 During the hearings for the adoption of the latest U.S. government–sponsored program, the CBI, Caribbean economist Ransford W. Palmer expressed it correctly when he said: “While this is rightly trumpeted as a one-way free trade offer, the ultimate benefits to the Caribbean will depend largely on the amount of American private capital flowing into manufacturing into the region.”24 Though now permanent, the CBI is an unilateral U.S. trade concession concocted for strategic reasons. It is based on a Caribbean export-led strategy on trade with the United States that spurs greater integration into that market and society. With the end of the Cold War, the structure of the international system started to change abruptly, presenting new challenges to the national security of the United States. The Soviet strategic threat disappeared almost overnight, dwindling the military importance of the Caribbean. The United States’ main goal switched from the roll-back of communism in the Caribbean Basin to the pursuit of market-oriented export-led growth, with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as its principal policy instrument. The CBI remained at a standstill because of the trade-diversionary effects of NAFTA and because the United States was now absorbed in a hemispheric perspective. With the writing on the wall, the Caribbean, led by CARICOM, awakened and pushed forward several initiatives, one of which is the Association of Caribbean States, seeking to draw closer to the nonEnglish-speaking Caribbean, Central America, and the littoral countries in South America.25 Yet, CARICOM’s past record gives room for skepticism. Referring to the Commonwealth Caribbean, one scholar says that a more realistic option than the “Latin American dimension” would be “to seek association with the United States,” the nature of which should be “freely and painstakingly negotiated and agreed.”26

50

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Still, as Ransford Palmer says, if the export-led strategy is to be successful, “the Caribbean will have to trade away much of its political sovereignty in matters of trade.”27 The perception of the nonviability of the Caribbean is such that Elliot Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs during the Reagan administration, advanced what I call the Abrams Proposition: “In an increasingly troubled region [the Caribbean], reliance on a foreign power for security and prosperity may be the most sensible form of nationalism. And the only available foreign power is the United States.”28 But easier said than done, largely because the United States is a tough bargainer with its weak and small Caribbean neighbors, as CARICOM learned in its futile attempts to negotiate NAFTA parity. The key question remains as to whether the Caribbean, even with optimum arrangements with the United States, will be able to draw sufficient private investment to provide improved living standards to its population. Unless Congress decides otherwise, the United States moves nonstop from NAFTA to the Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005, and the Caribbean, minus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is left behind. In January 1997, the well-informed journalist John Collins wrote that “many people in the Caribbean are increasingly resigning themselves to the sad reality that the region can hardly be found on the radar screen in the U.S. and Europe anymore.”29 In economic terms, the Caribbean was left stranded in the transition of the U.S. focus from the region to the hemisphere. In the emerging new world order after the Cold War, the United States is the only truly global power, that is, with a role in every region of the world. New geopolitical realities and economic constraints have affected U.S. overseas commitments, but the defensive perimeter under a disengagement approach that would seek to defend immediate and longer-range security interests would naturally include Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean, and might extend to the mid-Atlantic and the northern part of South America, to protect access to Venezuelan oil.30 The Caribbean is part of the “sphere of influence” of the United States. This old concept of international relations is tied to the ongoing world regionalization process, as noted in one of the leading journals of the U.S. armed forces, the Joint Force Quarterly: “closely related to the emergence of economic and political blocs has been the focus of military attention in their spheres of influence.”31 Even if the United States partially neglects or disengages from the Caribbean at the current transition stage of the international system, the U.S.-Caribbean connection is so deep and varied that it “converts

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

51

‘U.S. foreign policy’ problems into domestic or ‘intermestic’ ones or vice versa.”32 Two prominent security analysts of the National Defense University recognized this reality when they asserted that “the Caribbean basin still commands public attention, often narrowing the scope of U.S. interests and blurring distinctions between domestic and foreign policy.”33 For the first time since its independence, the United States is hegemonic in the Caribbean Basin. In the nineteenth century, the United States handcuffed British power and defeated Spain militarily. During the twentieth century, the United States overcame German and Soviet attempts to establish a geopolitical presence in the Caribbean. The United States won the military battle against perceived European aggression and the ideological war against communism in the Caribbean. In the process, the United States subordinated the security policies of the remaining European colonial powers (France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands) in the region, as well as those of the older (the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the newer independent states (the main ones are Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname).34 Drug Trafficking: A Nonmilitary Transnational Threat The end of the Cold War brought about a redefinition of U.S. military and security interests in the Caribbean. The United States identified two principal nonmilitary transnational threats: drug trafficking, associated with money laundering and other crimes, and illegal migration.35 The nature of these threats is totally different from U.S.S.R.-sponsored communism, which generally was an endogenous movement based on the Soviet-Cuban nexus with minimal local support in a small number of countries.36 Today, the source of the threat—drug production and trafficking business—is an indigenous, intrahemispheric, extremely profitable business. The Caribbean is mainly a transit area, with relatively high consumption in certain islands, and little production in some countries.37 In fact, attempts at eradication in one generate its propagation to the others and the U.S. military efforts at interdiction at the border have been reduced.38 Hence, Robert Pastor’s analysis that perceives the Caribbean as “a ‘whirlpool,’ a whirling eddy, which occasionally sucks the United States into a vortex of crisis” is in this case inaccurate.39 The Caribbean is pulled within the “geonarcotics” circuit of the Western Hemisphere by the unquenchable demand for drugs in the United States.40

52

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

The corrosive powers of the drug business on countries with formal democratic traditions and relatively efficient governmental systems, as in some of the Commonwealth Caribbean states, are well known, but need to be studied. In countries with weak governmental apparatuses and nascent democratic cultures, such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Suriname, its power is devastating, specially because it corrodes the political system, the security forces, and the judicial system. No Caribbean territory is immune, its manifestation is not always the same, and all lack the security forces, equipment, and monies to defeat the drug menace. The money generated by the drug business in Latin America, the Caribbean itself, and the United States—by far the largest source—is much welcome in the region’s capital-scarce economies. In the context of U.S. concern over drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the Caribbean’s anxiety over U.S. neglect or partial disengagement from the region, President Clinton and several Caribbean heads of state adopted on May 10, 1997, the Bridgetown Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action to develop the shared economic and security interests between the two parties. The United States secured its immediate goal by persuading reluctant Barbados and Jamaica to enter treaties allowing U.S. law enforcers (“shipriders”) to enter their territorial waters and air space in pursuit of suspects.41 Meanwhile, Clinton agreed only to propose an enhancement to the Republican-controlled Congress of the CBI that would extend tariff reductions to categories currently excluded, such as textiles and leather goods. The meeting, “long on rhetoric and short on economic commitments,” was not fruitful enough for the Caribbean.42 The tradeoff was cooperation and support for actual U.S. counterdrug interdiction policies in exchange for a pledge with no guarantee of approval by Congress. Yet at the end the United States might be the main loser. With no sustainable development, the small, vulnerable Caribbean societies remain more accessible to drug monies, with the concomitant result of the corruption of the political system and no end of illegal migration. Nevertheless, no type of integration to the United States and other Latin American countries will keep away drug funds. The elimination of trade barriers in goods and the free movement of capital already implemented in a large number of countries, and ready to start in others, gives access to the exploitation of fast, efficient, and low-cost commercial and financial transactions that facilitate money laundering.43 The Caribbean has made poor use of its leverage with the United States despite the latter’s indispensable need for cooperation from Caribbean governments and societies in its war against drug traffic and

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

53

illegal migration. With no extracontinental threat, the United States accords Latin America and the Caribbean a “low prominence” in its security interests, “except for the countering of drug trafficking.”44 SOUTHCOM Takes Over the Caribbean The downgrading of Latin America and the Caribbean in U.S. security priorities caused an important reorganization in the U.S. unified command structure, within the overall changes implemented in the U.S. military establishment in the post–Cold War period.45 The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) took over the Caribbean from the U.S. Atlantic Command effective June 1, 1997.46 Now SOUTHCOM is in charge of the command and control of U.S. forces in the Caribbean and Latin America south of Mexico.47 The responsibilities added to SOUTHCOM included waters adjacent to Central and South America and U.S. military activities in the thirteen island nations in the Caribbean, several European territories, the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, a portion of the Atlantic Ocean south 28 degrees north and west of 58 degrees west, and the Gulf of Mexico.48 One reason for the transfer approval was SOUTHCOM’s argument that acquiring the Caribbean would improve counterdrug operations in the Caribbean and Latin American regions by putting one commander in charge instead of two commands with the necessary ensuing coordination. SOUTHCOM also contended that the Caribbean realignment would improve U.S. understanding of the joint capabilities of, and bilateral ties among, militaries in the expanded region. In brief, SOUTHCOM claimed that the transfer “eliminates a seam in DOD [Department of Defense] counterdrug operations and military-to-military relations in the region.”49 SOUTHCOM is one of the United States’ five regionally defined geographic combatant commands. In terms of numbers and programs, SOUTHCOM is the smallest of the unified commands. The majority of its permanently assigned and forward-deployed elements—some 6,200 men and women—are in Panama. Its headquarters consist of 700 active and reserve military and civilian personnel located principally at Quarry Heights, Panama, constituting less than 0.5 percent of the active duty strength of the U.S. armed forces. SOUTHCOM is supported from component commands from the services.50 SOUTHCOM’s roles are military and nonmilitary ones.51 These are conduct-combined counterdrug operations, search and rescue operations, engineering exercises, disaster relief operations, humanitarian

54

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

and civic assistance operations, and foreign military interaction programs, including security assistance.52 Is SOUTHCOM a new actor in the Caribbean? In the 1980s, former commander in chief General Paul Gorman complained that the Caribbean was outside his purview, but during the 1960s and the mid1970s the Dominican Republic, under the strong hand of President Joaquín Balaguer, was part of its responsibility.53 The Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, conducted a major study in the early 1980s entitled “The Role of the U.S. Military in the Caribbean Basin,” which included detailed information and analysis of the Caribbean.54 Before moving them to Guantánamo, SOUTHCOM took care of 8,677 Cuban migrants with 5,600 troops in temporary camps in Panama from September 1994 to February 1995.55 While the United States Atlantic Command (ATCOM) and SOUTHCOM’s boundaries are not watertight, one gets the impression that the latter has been excluded from the twelve annual Caribbean Island Nations Security Conferences and the tenth annual Exercise Tradewinds, both held since the mid-1980s.56 The Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 requires the U.S. military to relocate from Panama by December 31, 1999.57 On March 1995, President Clinton announced Miami as the new home for SOUTHCOM’s headquarters based on the ability of the command to effectively perform its mission, ensure quality of life for its personnel, and maintain lifecycle costs. Other advantages are well known: centrality of location, regional air-transportation service, telecommunications and mail service, and thriving business and banking environment. Miami has effectively become the capital of the Caribbean and of Latin America. Domestic politics played an important part in President Clinton’s decision, who surely considered the positive political fallout for the 1996 elections in a crucial state. But Miami’s growing Caribbean population—overwhelmingly Cuban, but also including Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and Puerto Ricans (as well as Nicaraguans and Salvadorans)—is a new factor to consider in SOUTHCOM’s political assessments of its military and nonmilitary roles. It will certainly feel the heat of the powerful Cuban-American community if it disagrees with SOUTHCOM’s actions toward Cuba. In a sense, the move from Panama to Miami could turn out to be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Miami easily defeated San Juan for SOUTHCOM’s main site, despite a hard lobby by Puerto Rico’s Governor Pedro Rosselló, a strong statehood advocate.58 Now the governor aims at transferring the U.S. Army South component from Fort Clayton in Panama to Fort Buchanan and Fort Allen.59 Unless an agreement is reached with Panama for the stay of some sort of U.S. military presence or another

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

55

southern city flexes its political muscles (as San Antonio in Texas, Tampa in Florida, and Atlanta in Georgia may do? have done?), the probability is high that U.S. Army South will be placed in Puerto Rico. General Wesley K. Clark, former commanding officer of SOUTHCOM, favored Puerto Rico when he said that “Fort Buchanan is the logical place, a very attractive location.”60 The relocation of U.S. Army South to Puerto Rico would strengthen the island’s traditional position as principal military outpost of the United States in the Caribbean and of Puerto Ricans serving as middlemen in the training of other Caribbean peoples.61 The largest naval base in the world by land mass is at U.S. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, including land not only in Puerto Rico but also on Vieques Island.62 The Vieques controversy, described by British historian Raymond Carr as “a ‘suppurating sore’ . . . a signal of American insensitivity,” remains the leading problem in U.S. military–Puerto Rico relations. It started during World War II when the navy uprooted most of the families by expropriating 76 percent of the island’s land area and, starting in the 1950s, using parts of the island for shelling, bombardment, and practice landings.63 Even the two main statehood leaders are split in their position regarding Vieques, with Governor Rosselló favoring the navy’s stance and Resident Commissioner Carlos Romero Barceló siding with Vieques’ mayor and civic groups in the Isla Nena demanding the end of the navy’s military activities. Thus, the relocation of any of SOUTHCOM’s component in Puerto Rico is not without political consequence in the present status debate started by the Young Bill (H.R. 856 U.S.-P.R. Political Status Act). Statehood supporters constantly court the Department of Defense, knowing that its veto or approval will be decisive. In fact, during the previous status debate in 1989–1991, statehood emerged as the only alternative that did not convey any change in the status quo of the U.S. military installations in Puerto Rico.64 Independence supporters, a very vocal, divided minority, are steadfast against the move and could even engage in terrorist acts in Puerto Rico and the United States as U.S. military presence grows and the statehood alternative gains force. Commonwealth supporters, now preoccupied with internal party problems and an unfriendly Congress, are lukewarm—as usual—in their position, fearful of offending the Department of Defense, but could radicalize if they perceive that the process is manipulated against their position. In their present weak position, both Commonwealth and independence supporters cannot compete with the statehood juggernaut in Washington, D.C. Referring to the relocation to Miami and the taking over of the Caribbean, Brigadier General Richard Quirk recently said SOUTH-

56

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

COM “can clearly be defined as a command in transition.”65 Possibly a transition from an army-centered to a joint-service command is in the making with the appointment of Lieutenant General Charles E. Wilhelm, of the marine corps, as commander in chief.66 But the main challenge for SOUTHCOM will be its role in the ongoing, difficult transitions facing Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, all of which share a sizeable diaspora in the United States. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are important transit places of drug trafficking toward the United States, while Cuba is not so at the present.67 The most significant transition is the growth of the United States from a regional power to the sole global power at the end of the twentieth century. In 1898, preparing to enter the next century, the United States became by military might a Caribbean country and looked nervously to Europe. Nowadays, almost a century later, imperial United States is hegemon of the region; it looks and finds no extracontinental threat to its military or economic dominion. To reach this level during the twentieth century, the United States defeated the two European states—Germany and the Soviet Union— that threatened its supremacy in the region. The two other European states of some power—Great Britain and France—became middle powers and allied with the United States, cooperating at the subregional level in the Caribbean. As one century gives way to another, the turn-of-the-century period is characterized by several ongoing transitions. The United States changed its priority of economic integration from the Caribbean Basin to North America, and now aims at the hemispheric level. CARICOM tries to integrate further into the Caribbean and into Latin America. Several countries—Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Suriname—are engrossed in their own distinct processes of transition. Some continuations appeared. As early in the century, the United States government keeps setting the guidelines and the Caribbean is pleading for preferences as private investment is not sufficient for the region’s needs. The lack of sustainable development keeps fuelling illegal and legal migration to the United States. Yet the attainment of sustainable development is no guarantee, as the U.S. experience attests, that the drug danger will disappear. The United States remains the main market for Caribbean products, including illegal ones such as drugs. On the security-military side, the United States consolidates its military activities south of the border (not including Mexico) in one unified command, SOUTHCOM. SOUTHCOM replaces ATCOM. SOUTHCOM is itself in transition as it relocates from Panama to Miami and takes over the Caribbean. The main threat has changed

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

57

from extrahemispheric to intrahemispheric. The real threat—the demand for drugs—is not extracontinental, but in the United States itself. The elimination of the drug danger is of interest to the vulnerable Caribbean countries and to the United States because it threatens the sovereignty of both. A region characterized by fragmentation is cooperating in military and nonmilitary efforts for the eradication of drug trafficking and its economic, social, and political ill-effects. An effort toward multilateralism, under U.S. military dominance, is underway in the fight against drugs and illegal migration. The U.S. security/military policy seems to be successful in integrating subregional security forces, while the economic and commercial policy falls short of its objectives. Thus, these two policies are out of phase and sometimes even in contradiction. The United States lacks a coherent policy toward the region to which it claims to belong. As one century gives way to the other, the challenge for the United States and the Caribbean is to bring them into harmony. Notes 1. The author thanks Betsaida Vélez Natal, Juan José Baldrich, Juan Giusti Cordero, Dale Mathews, Margarita Mergal, and Jorge Rodríguez Beruff for their comments to a draft of this article; David E. Lewis for providing most of the documentation related to recent economic developments; and Manuel Martínez, of the interlibrary loan office, University of Puerto Rico, for obtaining all the requested publications at short notice. 2. The term “Caribbean Basin” replaced the terms “Gulf-Caribbean” and the “American Mediterranean” utilized by geopolitical writers Alfred T. Mahan and Ellen D. Semple at the turn of the century. See Alfred T. Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power: Present and Future (1897; reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970), and Ellen C. Semple, American History and its Geographical Conditions (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1903). More recently, historian Lester D. Langley resuscitated the term when he said that it is “admittedly an awkward phrase, to show more precisely two regions—the Gulf of Mexico, bordered on the north by the United States, on the west by Mexico, and on the south by Cuba; and the Caribbean, marked on the north by Cuba, on the west by Central America and Panama, on the south by Venezuela, Colombia and the Guianas . . . and on the east by the Lesser Antilles.” Lester D. Langley, Struggle for the American Mediterranean: United States– European Rivalry in the Gulf-Caribbean 1776–1904 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1976), pp. ix–x. 3. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Press Conference with President Clinton and the Caribbean Leaders, 10 May 1997,” p. 2. Internet page numbering: http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/serarch/pressbriefings.html. 4. Of British origin, the expression was traditionally not used to describe the “specific spatial boundaries” of the Caribbean territories and Cen-

58

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

tral America. The Reagan administration regrouped “them all into a ‘unit’, or a spatial set, . . . to emphasise elements of unity, a unity which is the product of the generalisation of contradictions.” Michel Foucher, “Geographical Approaches to the ‘Mediterranean Basin’ of America,” in Pascal Girot and Eleonore Kofman (eds.), International Geopolitical Analysis: A Selection from Hérodote (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 106–107. See Neil Smith, “Caribbean Basin,” in John O’Loughlin (ed.), Dictionary of Geopolitics (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 34–36. 5. The definition includes all Caribbean islands, Belize in Central America, and French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname on the South American mainland. See Humberto García Muñiz, “Geopolitics and Geohistory in Eric Williams’ Discourse on Caribbean Integration,” in Brian Meeks and Swithin Wilmot (eds.), Before and After 1865: Essays in Politics and Education in the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, in press). 6. Gordon K. Lewis, “Las posibilidades de cambio y transformación en el Caribe durante la década de los años 80,” in Aggrey Brown (ed.), La irrupción del Caribe (Caracas: Mex-Sur Edit., Nueva Sociedad, 1984), p. 36. 7. Sidney W. Mintz argues that the Caribbean is not a “culture area.” He says: “Whether we think of language or law or cuisine (or some more impalpable segment of culture, such as the values expressed in courtship, sexual attitudes, marriage or parental behavior), the societies of the Caribbean are differentiated not only internally in terms of class, ethnicity and other criteria, but also cross-culturally.” Sidney Mintz, “Enduring Substances, Trying Theories: The Caribbean Region as Oikoumene,” Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute (Novia Scotia), no. 2 (1995), pp. 296–297. 8. Gillin includes the Hispanic Caribbean littoral in the “Latin Caribbean.” See John Gillin, “Is There a Modern Caribbean Culture?” in A. Curtis Wilgus (ed.), The Caribbean at Mid-Century (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1950), p. 134. For the racial dimension, see Harry Hoetink, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Segmented Societies (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). 9. “Latin American Caribbean” seems to imply the development of a Creole society, while “Caribbean African” relates more the plantation-African slavery complex. Mintz also noted the differences of what he called the “Hispanic Caribbean” with the rest of the region, attributing to early creolization the development of a national culture and ideology by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sidney W. Mintz, “The Caribbean as a Socio-Cultural Region,” in Michael M. Horowitz (ed.), Peoples and Cultures in the Caribbean (Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press, 1971), pp. 32–35. 10. The most comprehensive work on constitutional developments in the non-Hispanic Caribbean is José Trías Monge, Historia constitucional de Puerto Rico, vol. 5 (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994), chapters 8–10. 11. An annexationist tendency in Cuba and Puerto Rico grew out of the strength of these relations. The migration of political elites from Cuba and Puerto Rico to El Norte was a factor in the future of the two islands. The activities of annexationists within the separatist movements of Cuba and Puerto Rico in the United States is a subject that deserves further inquiry. See Edgardo Meléndez, Puerto Rico’s Statehood Movement (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), chapter 1; Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 34–53,

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

59

78. The role of the Dominicans in the independence movements of Cuba and Puerto Rico also needs research. See Frank Moya Pons, “España y Santo Domingo en el siglo XIX,” El pasado dominicano (Santo Domingo: Fundación J. A. Caro Alvárez, 1986), pp. 111–126. For an analysis of the annexationist movement in the Hispanic Caribbean during the mid-nineteenth century, see Luis Martínez Fernández, Torn Between Empires: Economy, Society, and Patterns of Political Thought in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1840–1878 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1994). 12. For a study of the historical contrasts between Cuba and Puerto Rico, see Laird W. Bergad, “¿Dos alas del mismo pájaro?: Notas sobre la historia comparativa de Cuba y Puerto Rico,” Historia y sociedad (Puerto Rico), año 1 (1988), pp. 123–142. 13. In 1895, explaining his skepticism on Betances’s Confederación Antillana, Anténor Firmin said: “That enterprise will hardly be a complete success because of the little sociological consistency within the political groups of those states already independent for some time as Haiti and the Dominican Republic, not to talk about Cuba now involved in a period of national hesitation.” Anténor Firmin, “Haiti et la Confédération Antilliene,” Lettres de Saint Thomas. Etudes sociologiques, historiques et litteraires (Paris: V. Girod E. Briere Libraries-Editeurs, 1910), p. 129. (My translation) 14. For example, see José Martí, Obras completas, vol. 1 (La Habana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1931); Frédéric Marcelin, Bric-à-brac (Paris: Imp. Kugelman, 1910); Louis S. Meikle, Confederation of the British West Indies Versus Annexation to the United States: A Political Discourse (1912; reprint, New York: The Negro Universities Press, 1969); José De Diego, “La Unión Antillana, 1915,” and “Academia Antillana de la Lengua, 1916,” Obras completas (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1973), pp. 365–374, 377. See also Pérez Jr., Cuba and the United States, and Léon-François Hoffmann, “Anténor Firmin y los Estados Unidos, Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est la Même Chose,” Op. Cit., Boletín del Centro de Investigaciones Históricas (Puerto Rico), no. 9 (1997), pp. 63–70. 15. See C. S. Salmon, The Caribbean Confederation: A Plan for the Union of the Fifteenth British West Indian Colonies (New York, London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1888); Eric Williams, “The Historical Background of British West Indian Federation: Select Documents,” Caribbean Historical Review, nos. 3–4 (December 1954), pp. 13–69; Thomas G. Mathews, “The Project for a Confederation of the Greater Antilles,” Caribbean Historical Review, nos. 3–4 (December 1954), pp. 70–107; Carlos Rama, La independencia de las Antillas y Ramón Emeterio Betances (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertoriqueña, 1980); and Emilio Cordero Michel, “El antillanismo de Luperón,” Ecos, año 1, no. 1 (1993), pp. 45–66. 16. Carlos E. Chardón, “Apuntes sobre la economía antillana: Una teoría económica de los archipiélagos, Ciudad Trujillo, 2 de noviembre de 1937,” Viajes y naturaleza (Caracas: Editorial Sucre, 1941), p. 153. (Italics in the original) (My translation) 17. Chardón based his plan on the “primitive, simple economic principle” that islands trade among themselves in what he termed an “archipelago economy.” Chardón, “Apuntes sobre la economía antillana,” pp. 153–154. In 1962, by special request, Chardón expanded and updated his proposal. See his Datos que sugieren la integración económica de una parte de la región del Caribe: La República Dominicana y Puerto Rico. Informe Preliminar (San Juan: Banco Gubernamental de Fomento de Puerto Rico, 1962). In that work, albeit “the

60

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

geographical proximity and ethnological similarity,” he blamed the Trujillo dictatorship for the lack of contacts and trade between both countries in the last decades. (p. 1) (My translation) 18. See Sir John Mordecai, Federation of the West Indies (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 19. Following the analysis of Caribbean thinkers, Mintz writes that “the counterposition of plantation and peasantry was essentially negative—a struggle between two modes of production.” Mintz, “The Caribbean as a SocioCultural Area,” p. 29. For a “counterpoint” of “oligarchic” sugar and cocoa vs. “democratic” tobacco, see Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi (ed.), Papeles de Pedro F. Bonó, 2d ed. (Barcelona: Gráficas M. Pareja, 1980), p. 363, and Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo del azúcar y el tabaco (1940; reprint, La Habana: Universidad Central de las Villas, 1963). 20. Frank Moya-Pons, “Caribbean Consciousness: What the Caribbean Is Not,” Caribbean Educational Bulletin 5, no. 3 (September 1978), p. 41. 21. See Lester D. Langley, The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989), and Gaddis Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994). 22. Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1994). 23. Mohan Munasinghe gives a definition of “sustainable development” with an economic bent: “to maximize the welfare of economic activities while maintaining the stock of economic, ecological, and sociocultural assets over time (to ensure the sustainability of income and intragenerational equity) and providing a safety net to meet basic needs and protect the poor (thereby advancing intragenerational equity).” Quoted in Dennis Pantin, The Economics of Sustainable Development in Small Caribbean Countries (St. Augustine: University of the West Indies, 1994). 24. “Statement of Ransford W. Palmer, Professor, Department of Economics, Howard University,” The Caribbean Basin Initiative. Hearings and Markup Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Its Subcommittees on International Economic Policy and Trade (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1982), p. 209. 25. For a detailed analysis, see David E. Lewis, “Esquemas de integración regional y sub-regional en la Cuenca del Caribe,” Revisión de la ponencia preparada para el “Seminario sobre el Caribe anglófono,” bajo el auspicio de SELA-Venezuela, el Consejo para las Relaciones Internacionales de Argentina (CARI) y el Instituto del Servicio Exterior de la Nación (ISEN), 5–6 de septiembre de 1996, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Europe-Caribbean connection is analyzed in Paul Sutton, “The ‘New Europe’ and the Caribbean,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 59 (December 1995), pp. 37–57. 26. George C. Abbot, “Integration and Viability in the Caribbean,” The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (November 1991), p. 342. 27. Ransford W. Palmer, “Caribbean Relations with the United States in the Twenty-First Century,” paper presented at the International Studies Association Meetings, Acapulco, Mexico, March 21–26, 1993, p. 2. 28. Elliot Abrams, “The Shiprider Solution,” National Interest (spring 1996), p. 86.

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

61

29. John Collins, “U.S. Turns Its Back on the Region,” Caribbean Week, January 18–31, 1997, p. 2. See also Norma Faria, “Caribbean on Backburner,” Caribbean Week, January 18–31, 1997, p. 4. 30. David S. Yost, “The Future of U.S. Overseas Presence,” Joint Force Quarterly (summer 1995), p. 81. 31. Hans Binnendijk and Patrick Clawson, “Assessing U.S. Strategic Priorities,” Joint Force Quarterly (autumn/winter 1994–1995), p. 12. 32. Abraham F. Lowenthal, “The United States and the Caribbean in the 1980s,” in The Political Economy of the Western Hemisphere: Selected Issues of Policy, Joint Economic Committee Print, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981), p. 69. 33. Hans Binnendijk and John A. Cope, “The Security of the Americas,” Joint Force Quarterly (spring 1996), p. 37. 34. For the experience of the Commonwealth and French Caribbean, see Dion Phillips, “The Creation, Structure and Training of the Barbados Defense Force,” Caribbean Studies 21, nos. 1–2 (January–June 1988), pp. 124–157, Humberto García Muñiz, “Defense Policy and Planning in the Commonwealth Caribbean: An Assessment of Jamaica on Its Twenty-Fifth Independence Anniversary,” The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 27, no. 1 (March 1989), pp. 74–101, and Michel Louis Martin, “French Presence and Strategic Interests in the Caribbean,” in Jorge Rodríguez Beruff and Humberto García Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 32–61. 35. Both threats, however, appeared in previous decades, but the EastWest conflict dominated then-U.S. policies. In this chapter, I will not discuss the migration issue, but Ramón Grosfoguel distances himself from the prevalent economistic explanations to recover a political perspective in “The Geopolitics of Caribbean Migration,” in Rodríguez Beruff and García Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 201–224. 36. See, for example, Edward Gonzalez, “The Cuban and Soviet Challenge in the Caribbean Basin,” Orbis 29, no. 1 (spring 1985), pp. 73–94. 37. See Ivelaw L. Griffith, “Caribbean Manifestations of the Narcotics Phenomenon,” in Rodríguez Beruff and García Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 181–200. 38. Law enforcement efforts centering on the trafficking organizations and their networks have increased in view of the difficulty of intercepting drugs in transit. See “Drug Control: Heavy Investment in Military Surveillance Is Not Paying Off,” GAO/NSIAD-93-220, http://www.access.gpo.gov/ gao/index.html, and Paul B. Stares, Global Habit: The Drug Problem in a Borderless World (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996), p. 45. For a background analysis of the U.S. war on drugs from 1960 until 1993, see William O. Walker III, “Drug Control and U.S. Hegemony,” in John H. Martz (ed.), United States Policy in Latin America: A Decade of Crisis and Challenge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 299–319. 39. Robert A. Pastor, “The U.S. and the Caribbean: The Power of the Whirlpool,” The Annals, vol. 533 (May 1994), p. 21. 40. I borrowed the term geonarcotics from Ivelaw L. Griffith, “Regional Security in the Caribbean: The Cooperation Logic and Some Challenges,” paper presented at the symposium by United States Atlantic Command and

62

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Institute of National Strategic Studies on Cooperative Security in the Caribbean, North-South Center, April 18–19, 1995, pp. 4–5. 41. Barbados and Jamaica stated that the United States compromised on new provisions in their “shiprider agreements” so that there is no diminution of sovereignty in maritime drug interdiction. See Rickey Singh, “Caricom Eyes New Anti-Drug Model,” Sunday Sun (Barbados), May 11, 1997, p. 26A. 42. “US-Caribbean Summit Disappoints,” Latin American Monitor: Caribbean 14, no. 6 (June 1997), p. 1. See also “Clinton Promises to Do His Best for the Region, but Makes Few Commitments,” Latin American Regional Reports: Caribbean and Central American Report, rc-97-05, June 10, 1997, p. 1. 43. Laura Arzeno and Ilona de la Rocha, La responsabilidad de la banca en el lavado de dinero (Santo Domingo: Colección Banreservas, 1996), p. 95. (My translation) 44. Barry R. McCaffrey, “A Former CINC Looks at Latin America,” Joint Force Quarterly (spring 1996), p. 44. 45. There are two types of commands: unified and specified. Basically, a unified command consists of the forces of two or more services; a specified command normally includes the forces of one service. A report of their evolution is found in Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Joint Unified Plan 1946–1993 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, 1996). 46. The army controlled SOUTHCOM and the navy controlled LANTCOM, but since the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, attempts have been made toward joint doctrine, training, and exercises. Service parochialism is still present, however. 47. “The Battle for the Caribbean” between both commands started in the early 1980s. In fact, SOUTHCOM fought for its own survival as LANTCOM (ATCOM since 1993) wanted to incorporate it as a subordinate command. In the latest restructuring, ATCOM opposed the realignment because the reduction of its geographic area diminished its credibility for joint training and readiness of response forces. For a background analysis, see “The Role of the U.S. Southern Command in Central America,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 2nd sess., August 1, 1984 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), and Humberto García Muñiz, La estrategia de los Estados Unidos y la militarización del Caribe (Río Piedras: Instituto de Estudios del Caribe, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1988), chapter 8. 48. “U.S. Southern Command to Assume Responsibility for U.S. Forces Caribbean Activities in Caribbean Area on June 1,” News Release, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), no. 274-97, May 29, 1997. 49. “Unified Command Plan, Atlantic and Southern Command Participation in 1995 Review,” GAO/NSIAD-97-41BR (Briefing Report, 12/05/96), www.access.gpo.gov/gao/index.html, December 1996, p. 22. 50. For further details, see “Statement of General Wesley L. Clark, Commander-in-Chief, United States Southern Command, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Military Posture, 11 March 1997” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office). See hearing reports of Senate Armed Services Committee before 105th Congress. 51. The distinction usually used between traditional and nontraditional roles is not accurate because it ignores that the U.S. armed forces have historically been involved in many nonmilitary roles in the Caribbean, such as giving assistance in times of natural disasters, intercepting bootleggers, and

A TIME OF TRANSITIONS

63

even administering countries such as Haiti (1915–1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924). The Office of the War Department established a division that in 1902 became the Bureau of Insular Affairs. The Bureau of Insular Affairs lasted from 1898 to 1939 and at one time or another it dealt with Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Panama Canal Zone, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. See Richard S. Maxwell (comp.), Records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs (Washington, DC: The National Archives and Records Services, 1971). In short, the War Department set up in the U.S. governmental structure the equivalent of a colonial office. 52. An issue of interest is which Caribbean countries’ security forces are receiving or will receive training in the controversial School of the Americas and what emphasis will be given to E-IMET. A CARICOM composite battalion serving with ATCOM forces in Haiti received exposure to U.S. tactical, logistical, and leadership training. John A. Cope, “International Military Education and Training: An Assessment,” McNair Paper 44, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, October 1995, p. 30. Internet page numbering: http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/macnair/mcnair44/ m44cont.html. 53. General Gorman wanted Cuba, the “source” of instability, within his jurisdiction. General W. B. Rosson, “U.S. Southern Command in Latin America,” Commanders Digest (October 18, 1973), pp. 2–12, and General Paul Gorman, “C3I: USCINCSO’s Perspective, 1983–1985,” Defense Analysis 4, no. 3 (1988), pp. 307–320. 54. See Robert Kennedy et al., “The Role of the Military in the Caribbean Basin (Final Report),” (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. War College, 1981). 55. “Statement of Rear Admiral James B. Perkins III, Acting Commanderin-Chief, United States Southern Command, Before the Armed Services Committee on Military Posture, 19 March 1996” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office). See hearing reports of Senate Armed Services Committee before 104th Congress, pp. 31–32. 56. See USACOM Webmaster, “Light Infantry Phase of Tradewinds ’96 Completed, 21 April 1996,” “Caribbean Forces to Complete Training on Trinidad, St. Vincent, 22 April 1996,” and “Caribbean Security Conference Set to Begin Today, 7 May 1996.” In the attendee list of a 1995 symposium on “Cooperative Security in the Caribbean: Preparing for a Shared Future,” cosponsored by ATCOM and The Institute for National Strategic Studies, two SOUTHCOM officers were listed: Brigadier General Rudolf F. Peksens and Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Morris. 57. SOUTHCOM’s role in Panama and other Latin American countries during the Cold War is criticized in Raúl Leis, Comando Sur, Poder Hostil (Panamá: Centro de Estudios y Acción Social Panameño, 1985). 58. For a comparison of both cities, see Ramón Grosfoguel, “World Cities in the Caribbean: The Rise of Miami and San Juan,” Review 18, no. 3 (summer 1994), pp. 351–381. 59. Established in 1923, Fort Buchanan is the only U.S. Army installation in the Caribbean. A last effort by Puerto Rican active and retired military personnel prevented its closing during the most recent base realignment and closure process. The future of Fort Allen, now closed, is currently in the middle of a heated public debate between the navy and opponents because the former wants to install a Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) at the fort, with a separate component in Vieques. Fort Allen was the first U.S. military

64

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

installation in the Caribbean to hold Caribbean refugees, specifically Haitian boat people. See Humberto García Muñiz, “U.S. Military Installations in Puerto Rico: Controlling the Caribbean,” in Edwin Meléndez and Edgardo Meléndez (eds.), Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico (Boston: South End Press, 1993), pp. 53–65, and Raymond Lafontant Gerdes, El Fuerte Allen: La Diáspora Haitiana (Río Piedras: Editorial Plaza Mayor, 1996.) 60. Andrea Martínez, “En primera fila Puerto Rico,” El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico), May 1, 1997, p. 7. (My translation) 61. A SOUTHCOM press officer, Joe Curtin, stated that with the transfer “Puerto Rico would become the training center for the Caribbean” and added that in mid-May officers of CARICOM’s defense armies attended a conference on military communications in San Juan. Nydia Bauzá, “Buchanan pasa a manos Ejército Sur,” El Vocero (Puerto Rico), May 31, 1997, p. 13. It is ironic that SOUTHCOM’s new role in the Caribbean is not shared by the present Puerto Rican government, which recently closed the Caribbean Office at Puerto Rico’s State Department and championed the repeal of Section 936 of the U.S. tax code that proved a valuable source of private-sector financing available for Caribbean economic development. See Richard L. Bernal and Stephen Lamar, “Caribbean Basin Economic Development and Section 936 Tax Credit,” The North-South Agenda Papers, no. 22 (December 1996), pp. 1–32. 62. Back in 1995, Roosevelt Roads and Homestead were mentioned as bases where Howard Air Base in Panama could be moved. See “General Barry McCaffrey, CINC, US SOUTHCOM,” DOD News Briefing, Defenselink Transcript, September 7, 1995, p. 8. Internet page numbering: http://www. defenselink.mil/news/#BRIEFINGS. 63. In 1980, the panel appointed by the House Committee on the Armed Services to evaluate the controversy remained unconvinced of Vieques’ indispensability for the navy and urged finding an alternate site. See Naval Training Activities on the Island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Report of the Panel to Review the Status of Navy Training Activities on the Island of Vieques of the Committee on the Armed Services, House of Representatives, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981). 64. See Jorge Rodríguez Beruff, “Strategic Military Interests and Puerto Rican Self-Determination,” in Jorge Rodríguez Beruff and Humberto García Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 155–177. 65. Brigadier General Robert Quirk, U.S. Southern Command, “Panel Remarks,” paper presented at the Conference on Cooperative Security in the Caribbean, sponsored by FLACSO–Dominican Republic and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, June 9–10, 1997, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 66. Lieutenant General Wilhelm’s appointment breaks fifty-one years of control by the army. See Robert Burns, “Mando de cuerpo ajeno,” El Nuevo Día, July 19,1997, p. 36. 67. Before the Cuban Revolution, the Italian mafia shipped heroin to the United States via Cuba. Cuban traffickers displaced from Havana after the revolution set up shop in Miami and became active players in the U.S. drug trade. See Stares, Global Habit, pp. 23, 26.

4 The New Security Agenda in the Caribbean: The Challenge of Cooperation Francisco Rojas-Aravena

The turn of the century finds the international system still in a transitional period of ongoing international changes caused by a series of factors, among them the end of the bipolar conflict, the breakup of the Soviet Union, global redemocratization (especially in developing countries), the elimination of the apartheid regime in South Africa, European integration and cooperation, advances in free trade, and the formation of megamarkets. Principles that were developed and upheld in the West became concepts of an effectively universal nature, in particular those associated with human rights, democracy, and the free market. This combination of processes continues to evolve. These changes are having a particular impact in the area of security, with implications of critical importance to the Americas. An effective process of redemocratization is being observed in this region, but the democracies are weak and in many cases have serious problems of governability. The possibility of an international conflict in the region has not gone away, but the probability of it has diminished. Control and prevention capabilities must be improved. In some areas, after the end of the Cold War, threats of a military nature virtually disappeared, but security and defense concerns still remain. Also, in some countries and specific situations, there is greater vulnerability in the area of security. There is no common definition of security for the new era in the Americas. Hemispheric and regional institutions in this field are weak and ineffective. The general framework of the region as regards economics and security exhibits a great deal of heterogeneity. Although in the political realm the key is communality of democracy, in the security realm the diversity of the subregions is the predominant feature. The Americas cannot be viewed from a single strategic perspective, or a single geopolitical perspective, or a common-threat perspective. This 65

66

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

heterogeneity is manifested in the significant subregional differentiation and the problems involved in defining shared universal concepts. By eliminating the general structural factors that shaped political decisions for almost fifty years, the end of the Cold War exposed the great diversity of the Americas and the different weights and priorities of the different factors that played a role in the definition of security in each subregion. This same heterogeneity complicated the development and building of common concepts for dealing with future threats. It is obvious that the conception based solely and exclusively on pursuit of national interests, without considering problems of a global nature, has outlived its usefulness in understanding current problems and demands. Of course this does not mean that the tradition of political realism should be abandoned as the primary approach in strategic studies and analysis. It does mean, however, placing less emphasis on the importance of measures and use of instruments of force. Nevertheless, a vision of security that meets the threats of the twenty-first century should take into consideration a number of aspects that go beyond strictly military variables and simultaneously incorporate economic, political, environmental, and cultural issues. Phenomena associated with globalization, together with maintenance of national sovereignty, must be put into a synthetic context in which domestic and international phenomena are manifested simultaneously in widely varying aspects. The international domestic nature of the phenomena will be the predominant characteristic of the new era. Hence, in the definition of policies and courses of action, responses must be comprehensive. In this order of things, cooperation plays a fundamental role, and association will be a key instrument. Integration and fragmentation are the two primary and contradictory characteristics of the post–Cold War period.1 In some regions of the world, fragmentation, disintegration, and conflict predominate, as reflected in the dissolution of federations and the creation of new national entities. In other regions, cooperation prevails, in particular with regard to economic matters. Nevertheless, this should not obscure the difficulties involved in eliminating differences in other areas relating to national sovereignty. Globalization gives rise to greater interdependence and a new type of conflict, not necessarily of a military nature. Integration and fragmentation are therefore concepts that together explain what is taking place in the current historical period of the international system.2 In the security arena, between the end of the Cold War and the mid-1990s, signals have been mixed in Latin America and the Caribbean. The end of the Cold War aroused high hopes that the main sources of friction in the region would be quickly eliminated, and at

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

67

the same time that new international mechanisms would be automatically set up to replace Cold War institutions. The Interamerican Reciprocal Assistance Treaty (TIAR) has legal force, but lacks substance and political legitimacy. The disappearance of the threat from outside the continent and the perception that democracies tend to resolve their differences without the use of force reaffirmed these positive prospects. The emergence of conflicts and tension revealed that a great deal of political will would also be required, as well as a set of effective measures for preventing the outbreak of conflicts and their possible escalation. The transfer of instability is one of the dynamic effects of international clashes, or those situations that affect a nation’s power bases and the interests of its inhabitants. Although the Western Hemisphere has been the region of the world that has enjoyed the greatest stability in recent decades, this does not mean it has not experienced conflicts. One of the most serious errors consists in assuming that certain conflicts have blown over, when in reality they are still simmering. This assumption is particularly dangerous since the hemisphere has no standard plan for security and effective conflict prevention. The Latin American region is a low-conflict area compared with other regions of the world. This is the result of the certainty and the international recognition of most national boundaries. Respect for international law also has been a central element. Nevertheless, a glance at history and at recent processes reveals that the risks of conflict exist. Unresolved border situations have generated recurrent cycles of international tension in various subregions. Because it has not overcome the colonial legacy, the region is still an area of hazard and mistrust. Mistrust breeds threats. Both increase the risks and chances of conflict.3 In the Caribbean, there are no signs of traditional territorial disputes, but there are risks associated with sovereign control of the territories of the various nations. The political and strategic situation in the Caribbean has unique characteristics that must be taken into account in a hemispheric analysis. The Caribbean, in particular the islands, comprise a unit with like characteristics and problems, although within it the various national units are clearly differentiated. The Caribbean poses a geographic imperative that intensifies the need for a subregional political-strategic vision. It is manifested in the primary concerns displayed by Caribbean heads of security and defense, as will be shown later. Consequently, operating mechanisms and programs aimed at strengthening stability take on specific features in this region. The creation and development of measures to enhance mutual confidence must incorporate specific features that take into account the particularities of this subregion.

68

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Particularities of the Islands of the Caribbean The characteristics of Caribbean nations—their geographic location, their political and strategic placement, their political-power resources, and their national capabilities—reveal a particular subregional situation that is different from that elsewhere in the Americas. The international security agenda and the kinds of threats faced by the islands of the Caribbean differ in magnitude and nature from the threats perceived in the Caribbean Basin (as a geopolitical concept the Caribbean Basin includes Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, and the islands of the Caribbean) as a whole and in South America.4 One of the primary features of the Caribbean countries is that major threats to them do not relate to military aspects or threats to their national sovereignty from a traditional perspective. The principal threats and vulnerabilities can be found in nontraditional areas, especially issues associated with economic viability and vulnerability, environmental risks, and massive displacements of population within short periods of time. Increasingly, this set of interrelated aspects requires both political and operational cooperation. The origins of the threats that are perceived by the various island nations of the Caribbean are different, but almost all of them are related to the new international security agenda. The exception is Cuba. For that country, issues of traditional security, both political and military, have been in a state of stasis since the Cold War and, in some cases, predate it.5 Changes in the global economic environment or ecological changes of a global nature impose conditions on and affect the very essence of the Caribbean nations, altering their capacity to maintain their sovereignty and their territorial integrity. In addition, new issues such as the impact of international drug mafias and illegal arms trafficking jeopardize sovereign control of national spaces and full exercise of sovereignty by each of these countries. This revalidates the criterion of the uniqueness of the islands of the Caribbean, and the need to strengthen their actions in concert.6 The Caribbean is an integrated area in which defense of national interests is expressed regionally and, on that basis, in terms of national sovereignty. The Caribbean reality has a regional slant that derives not only from geography, but also from economic vulnerabilities and cultural risks. The end of the Cold War altered the global political and strategic framework. This changed throughout the Americas as well. This change was very positive, in that it eliminated bipolar tensions that were endangering world peace and defused the threat of nuclear destruction. The foregoing notwithstanding, the Cold War situation

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

69

granted the Caribbean nations a special kind of international incorporation in which their political and strategic situation was treated as significant. With the global changes caused by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the islands of the Caribbean lost the “Cold War dividends,” although they did begin to collect “peace dividends.” This situation created a new kind of essentially economic vulnerability in these nations. Translating peace dividends into real action in this area will require consolidation of ties of association and solidarity and cooperation with these nations by the major powers. The Caribbean, due to its geographic characteristics and historical tradition, does not face disputes or controversies arising from its borders. The islands of the Caribbean do not consider themselves to be threatened by territorial claims. This means that traditional threats to defense and security are of little weight or relevance. The above notwithstanding, nontraditional threats are becoming quite serious and significant. Many of these derive from the geographic imperative of the Caribbean. This condition makes the tiny nations a transit point between the drug-producing and drugconsuming countries in the hemisphere. Combined with this are the effects of changes in the global environment and the increase both in number and intensity of hurricanes associated with the greenhouse effect. Moreover, two factors of great importance for these countries must be taken into consideration: the monoculture and the drastic changes that migratory flows may cause. This set of nontraditional threats and vulnerabilities makes unity of action more necessary than ever and reaffirms a certain Caribbean cultural identity in dealing with these problems. Consequently, the islands of the Caribbean should be viewed as a political-strategic unit. In line with this, the need to coordinate subregional policies in order to deal with security and defense issues is crucial, regardless of the nature of the political regime of each of these nations individually. The international system should support cooperative efforts and any activities motivating joint action in the Caribbean. This is because policies aimed at excluding a certain country would have significant implications for all the islands of the Caribbean since this would fracture their unity and complicate the operational implementation of policies (for example, what occurs with Cuba). Creating positive incentives for cooperation means helping all of the actors to realize the best possible results for equivalent efforts. This would help to advance the definition of international cooperation options in the implementation of policies, while simultaneously maintaining local control of a sovereign nature.

70

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Cooperation in the area of the Caribbean intensifies the need for multilateral options. Given its characteristics, it is an area where superpowers, major powers, and small countries must live together and continually monitor the actions of the numerous agents and actors who move within the sovereign territories of this group of nations. Multilateralism is emerging as an opportunity in the new international context. Its effectiveness will depend on the will to engage in cooperation. Structural barriers of a ideological and military-strategic nature associated with the Cold War have come down. No foundations have been laid, however, for creating an essentially cooperative paradigm. Making cooperation effective in all areas, including defense, is one of the central challenges facing the countries and societies of the Americas at this time. What kinds of institutions and multilateralism do the Americas need? Is old-style multilateralism on the decline, and will it ever recover? Is summit diplomacy an alternative to this process? A case could be made for either position. The essential problem at this time is how to bring about cooperation. The greatest risk for the developing, relatively weak countries in the Americas is that they will be ignored when important decisions are being made. This is the danger of failing to cooperate in dealing with the new demands, which are of a predominantly transnational character. For the island nations of the Caribbean Basin, the conjunction of global phenomena associated with the economy and the environment, on the one hand, and with phenomena related to transnational criminal activity, on the other, along with difficulties related to the lack of resources, are creating a situation of serious vulnerability for national development.7 The intertwining of these phenomena are manifested more dramatically than in other societies. Changes in one of the factors immediately trigger changes in the others. Thus, for example, economic problems increase the pressure exerted by drug trafficking, generate environmental problems, cause problems in governing, and produce related pressures at the consumer centers. Likewise, ecological damage results in a decline in tourism and with it an increase in unemployment. This promotes corruption and the coopting of desperate poor people by the international mafias. Defense Ministers in the Caribbean: Major Concerns At the Ministerial Conference on Defense of the Americas in Bariloche in 1996, the defense ministers of the island nations of the Caribbean Basin indicated, from a joint perspective and from that of the individ-

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

71

ual nations, the need for cooperation in dealing with the risks that threaten the area.8 The ministers pointed out the increasing interrelationship between economic phenomena and structural weaknesses resulting from monoculture and the enclave production model and phenomena resulting from the internationalization of drug gangs. They particularly emphasized the link between drugs and arms trafficking. They also saw a connection between the phenomena of environmental protection and the survival of island cultures and economies. The prime minister and defense minister of Antigua and Barbuda pointed out that the geographic imperative for the islands of the Caribbean is such that they have found themselves in the middle of the war against drugs. Geography has made the Caribbean a narcotics transit center. He indicated that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is grappling with “the deadly combination of arms and drugs.” The minister of security and justice of Jamaica asserted that with the growing movement of people and products across the borders and with the transfer of funds from one country to another, interdependence and concerted action would be required to deal with this new reality. He indicated that the new dangers were associated with poverty, drug trafficking, and environmental degradation. This is linked to potential destruction of the small but still important banana industry in the region. These phenomena challenge national sovereignty and threaten the cohesiveness of society. The lack of control and international agreements on ownership and transfer of small arms also exacerbates these trends, however. The prime minister of Dominica, in addition to the risks cited by the other Caribbean ministers who had spoken before him, pointed out the vulnerabilities of the subregion with respect to natural disasters. He reaffirmed strongly that he did not understand the policy of the United States and some other countries with regard to the banana industry, considering the consequences not only for his own country, but also the tendency for problems to transcend national borders. The prime minister of Grenada pointed out that a need was being perceived in CARICOM to redefine the concept of security and consequently the concept of defense. “We see that this concept must define aggression and attacks as being much more than simply military,” he acknowledged.9 Within this framework, he expressed the concern of the Caribbean community about the frequent shipments of radioactive waste in the Caribbean. He also pointed out the environmental destruction of coral reefs. Likewise, he reaffirmed the link between drugs and contraband weapons and their serious implications for the entire community.

72

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

The minister of defense of Surinam expressed his certainty that it would be feasible to bring about cooperation to ensure development without detriment to the values inherent in sovereignty, identity, and national character. The minister of public security and immigration of the Bahamas reported that the threat had changed from totalitarianism to drug and arms trafficking. The vice minister of Belize supported CARICOM’s intentions in the areas of narcotics, drug trafficking, and arms proliferation, and stressed the need for coordination and cooperation. The representative from St. Lucia indicated his preference for a joint approach in cooperation and security initiatives. He reported on the absence of threats of a military nature posed by neighbors in the Caribbean. He pointed out the strategic importance of banana production and sales for these islands. To alter this capability would be “to attack our very existence,” he said.10 The minister of national security of Trinidad and Tobago reaffirmed the geographic significance of the CARICOM countries in the war on drugs by saying, “We do indeed see it as a war.”11 Consequently, he noted the sophistication of weapons and equipment that criminal organizations are bringing into the area and the urgent need for prevention in this regard. The prime minister and minister of security of Saint Kitts and Nevis reported that “decades of economic and political progress in the region will come to naught,” emphasizing what happens to stability under pressure.12 Likewise, he also warned of the influence of the World Bank and other financial institutions. The above was closely linked to drug trafficking. This situation demonstrates that threats of a different magnitude and intensity, and arising from different sources, are being faced by nations in the Caribbean and by the economic and political community of CARICOM. Economic and ecological threats of a global nature that affect the very essence of the state are linked to arms and drugs trafficking, which in turn endangers the exercise of sovereignty and sovereign control of national space. In this regard, the ministers repeatedly emphasized the need for cooperation. Without cooperation, there would be neither opportunities nor alternatives to the panoply of present threats. By cooperating and coordinating courses of action, it was hoped that these challenges could be met. The threats outlined above relate not to military issues, but rather to a combination of economic vulnerabilities, with the need for environmental and political cooperation. The magnitude and significance of these threats are different than for the Latin American Southern Cone (i.e., Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Nevertheless,

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

73

the communality of environmental issues, drug trafficking, and other problems is leading to collaboration options in different areas. The democratic challenge is common. The ethical imperative associated with poverty unites us.13 Building governability and probity unites us in a common effort of regional stability. One of the major difficulties of dealing communally with global phenomena, transnational criminal activity, and other common threats in the Americas has been the result of an effort to focus only on the drug trafficking threat and formulate an inter-American military response. Successful courses of action must include a wide range of options. A gradual and tailored approach to formulating the proper response is important while we explore the options. Respect for national and regional autonomy is essential in defining courses of action. Cooperation with the United States has all too often yielded inadequate results due to the fact that these factors were not taken into consideration. Mutual Confidence Building14 In the Americas, a set of Mutual Confidence Measures (MCM) is being outlined; it is intended to create a climate of peace, stability, and international security. The development of MCM in the realm of defense presupposes a certain minimum degree of confidence in the field of international relations. Recognition of hemispheric heterogeneity contributes to the outlining of specific measures. Recognition of the integrated nature of the islands of the Caribbean will lead to a new way of thinking in formulating special measures that are designed to build confidence in this subregion. An increase in the predictability of policies being pursued is one of the primary goals in creating a climate of confidence. This is of special significance, given the nature of the nontraditional threats and the high sensitivity thereof, as well as the serious consequences they entail. The MCM are a central theme of preventive diplomacy. Their development will make it possible to set up a cumulative, transparent process that will result in the advent of security agreements with emphasis on cooperative aspects in the hemisphere. Their effective application will engender a code of conduct that will—through specific actions—bring the search for stability and peace in this region to fruition. Europe is an important source of experience in this regard. The developments that resulted from the Helsinki agreement in 1975 produced a body of experience from which the Caribbean can benefit.15

74

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

It is of special importance in the area of defense and its interaction with processes of economic integration. Confidence arises from activities with a high degree of intangibility, and is built up gradually. Confidence is incremental, and it can be shattered in an instant. Reversal of the process is then accelerated. The MCM are aimed at establishing a standard of relations that lends credibility to statements of intent and reveals conduct. They are designed to promote actions that will affect security, integrity, or other vital interest, and to differentiate them from other actions. It is here that the essential link between MCM and verification processes lies. Considering the colonial legacy and recurring border tensions, what is predictable is that they will be repeated if a pattern of relations is established that is rooted in mistrust, threats, and wariness. The MCM can be used as an instrument to break with this predictable future and to create a new pattern of relations cemented in collaboration. In the debate on the extent or restriction of the concept of confidence-building measures, we place a high priority on effective focusing. We believe that the use of MCM must be rooted fundamentally in the sphere of defense. Building confidence in other areas is the responsibility of politics, diplomacy, economics, and other relationships. The MCM seek to impart stability to relationships. They establish a process by which concrete satisfaction is achieved through commitments that will come to fruition in the future. The MCM are aimed at changing a history of mistrust that involves a high degree of risk, by a situation in which—on the basis of actions that we are evaluating— we generate responses that lead to stability and then to goodwill. The MCM are intended to break with the history of mistrust that characterizes relations between the countries in the region. If we keep looking to the past, we will have no options for the future. If we simply put our trust in declarations, we would make the future an act of faith. If we develop the MCM as an element of the process of creating a climate of trust, we can interact in a more transparent and predictable manner. Greater latitude will be created for diplomacy and politics. Measures of mutual confidence generate guarantees. Therein lies the difference between faith and confidence. With a foundation of guarantees, we will be able to establish an objective pattern of evaluation, regardless of our faith in the degree of compliance with which we began the process. Measures of mutual confidence are bilateral and multilateral actions intended to prevent crisis and conflict situations. They contribute to communication between the actors, and create a favorable atmosphere for establishing a framework of understanding that objectifies perceptions of immediate threat and avoids risks and elements of

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

75

surprise. The MCM presuppose the existence of differences in interests and poor confidence in relationships but, at the same time, the desire to avoid confrontation. Their application is fundamental when differences may be expressed by the use of force. In this situation an error in interpretation can trigger an unwanted conflict. Measures of mutual confidence are actions associated with a necessary reciprocity, not necessarily equivalent, but parallel in time. A rapid time sequence will produce an effect of progressivity and verification simultaneously. One step is followed by another, if and only if the other party is complying with the reciprocal commitment. Ten characteristics contribute to streamlining this instrument of international security: (1) transparency and openness; (2) predictability; (3) reciprocity and equivalence; (4) improvement in communication; (5) stabilization and expansion of relationships; (6) feasibility and realism in execution; (7) consistency with other policies; (8) verifiability; (9) assurance of social support; and (10) bilateral, subregional, or multilateral differentiation. The MCM are an instrument, a technique for preserving the peace. They do not resolve a conflict or difference of interests, but they enable communication and thereby make the courses of action pursued by the various participants more transparent and predictable. It should be pointed out that the process presupposes good faith and the desire to avoid confrontation. If these prerequisites are lacking, the MCM can be used to buy time or to obscure the true interests of one party from the others and create a false sense of security. Mutual Confidence Measures seek to avoid escalation as an automatic response. To accomplish this, it is essential to create confidence, establish networks of communication and interpretation, decode actions, and create the space for verification. Once the basic information on courses of action has been circulated and delivered, and has been backed up by deeds, it will be possible to regulate certain forms of behavior, thereby avoiding ambiguous interpretations and the outbreak of conflicts on the basis of such interpretations. Confidence breeds confidence. Confidence promotes cooperation. If there are solid commitments in diplomacy and a general climate of trust and cooperation, a system of verifiable MCM will be erected in the defense sector, and space will be created for establishing arms control and limitation measures in mutually defined areas. The MCM are not arms control measures. Neither are they arms limitation measures, nor are they disarmament measures. Development of the MCM may, however, be part of a process that includes measures of these types. It is difficult to imagine that arms control and limitation measures, much less disarmament measures, could evolve in an

76

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

atmosphere of mistrust, but very conceivable that they might evolve in situations where the MCM were being focused and used. Building Confidence in the Caribbean To strengthen cooperation and coordination of policies in the islands of the Caribbean, their political and military authority must be consistently reasserted. This was demonstrated at the Ministerial Defense Meeting of the Americas held in Bariloche, Argentina, in 1996, and likewise one year earlier at the First Ministerial Defense Meeting held in Williamsburg, Virginia. To make progress in cooperation and to counteract and avert new threats, it is necessary to establish a common conceptual framework and a set of shared definitions of institutions that guide the cooperative process. In the Americas, there is no shared conceptual framework on international security in the post–Cold War era. Although in the islands of the Caribbean rapprochement is being observed in some areas, it is critical that it be enhanced if we want to achieve higher levels of policy coordination.16 The necessary conceptual change must be capable of engendering a comprehensive security concept. This concept will link the various levels at which security is manifested: 1. Human security, which means a relationship to the basic needs of the human being and of society (food supply, public safety, health care, etc.). 2. National security, meaning the capacity for sovereign action on the part of the state and autonomous implementation of decisions. This means the capacity to exercise sovereign control over national territory and to organize the population under a single political system. National security requires a way of relating on the international level that will preserve international stability and security. 3. International security, defined as the capability of all national players and international agencies to establish a system of relations that will preserve and promote peace and prevent situations of conflict and tension, in particular those that may entail the use of force. International conditions must be established that will provide regulation and promote a pattern of conduct that respects international law and fosters cooperation. Likewise, it must help prevent tensions from harming personal safety and national sovereignty.

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

77

Coordination of policies among the Caribbean nations will guarantee leeway for their own activities in the international area. In the late 1990s, within the context of the heterogeneity of the Americas, the Caribbean nations have few forums and areas where they can agree on wide-ranging policies. This reaffirms the need to perfect instruments in the politico-strategic space of the Caribbean as a platform for concerted pursuit of policies in the hemisphere and in the world.17 The end of the Cold War is providing an opportunity to design new institutional mechanisms that reflect institutional frameworks for cooperation in subregional environments. This new institutional space will make it easier to develop common courses of action that will establish a new and essentially cooperative paradigm. To make progress in the formation of this institutional framework, the following must be done: 1. Generate an open and effective dialogue. This dialogue must involve all the actors without exception. In it, various perceptions and suggestions for courses of action must be voiced to form a basis for a common conceptual framework. This will define the guiding principles, the conceptual framework, and the specific operating mechanisms, which will entail defining a system capable of achieving a consensus on resolutions and establishing procedures for action. 2. Include in the agenda central problems and the risks and threats facing the island nations. The context for analysis of such sensitive subjects as drug trafficking should be viewed from the standpoint of global responsibility, but the emphasis of the study must be on local effects and particular implications for the subregion and each of the sovereign nations that comprise it. 3. Establish a fluid information framework. As part of the confidencebuilding process, the design of mechanisms for the sharing of information and development of policies that can identify courses of action and how they focus on common threats contributes in a critical way to the creation of a general climate of confidence. 4. Establish decisionmaking mechanisms that are flexible, but able to effectively link all participants. The rule of consensus so common in multilateralism can be enhanced with parallel mechanisms that are able to recognize different sensibilities, yet reinforce the central inclinations. Inclusion of nontraditional defense and security entities in the decisionmaking process will be important in designing the new institutional framework. 5. Establish verification mechanisms. Verification is an essential part of the ongoing process of building and strengthening confidence. Verification makes the common will more effective and helps to establish

78

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

a network that is continually being updated and enhanced with regard to the mutual agreements established, thus improving particular courses of action. The new institutional framework will be able to strengthen options for the creation of the international security conditions that are particular to the Caribbean Islands. This means that a normative framework will be established that sets forth regulations for sovereign Caribbean nations on issues of great importance to them. Among them, emphasis will be placed on the trafficking and sale of small arms. Likewise, consideration should be given to setting up a similar legal framework to deal with crimes associated with drug trafficking and environmental degradation. Cooperation and Collaborative Networks To counteract and avert new threats and new challenges requires consolidation of the processes of cooperation. Establishing courses of common action is directly linked to establishing a common conceptual framework and creating the space that would allow everyone to “learn” to think as a group. Building a network of horizontal cooperation and association capable of contributing to stability, development, democracy, and peace in the Caribbean Basin means that each challenge will have to be treated in a multidimensional manner.18 The response to the challenges and threats in the subregion must be rooted in those areas where they arise and must be graduated appropriately. To provide responses that seek to give primacy to the military, in the belief that this is the way to contribute to the resolution of security problems, may result in a situation of greater vulnerability by incorporating violence as a permanent element. This is one of the principal lessons of the Central American crisis of the 1980s and the confrontation in the Andean area in the 1990s. The challenges of the Caribbean Basin relate mainly to cooperation for full inclusion in the international economy, the establishment of international monitoring plans, the development of similar legislation for handling transnational crime, and the capability for concerted action on issues of global concern. Dialogue and concerted political effort comprise the fundamental level of cooperation among countries in the subregion and between them and the rest of the Americas. To cooperate in the economic viability of the Caribbean Basin is to help link it to processes of

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

79

decontrol of markets and economic integration. Substantial support must be lent to CARICOM efforts to ensure subregional success and inclusion in the large megamarkets and to make good on the “trade not aid” slogan. Establishing regulations for the trafficking and sale of small arms and an international code of conduct in this area will help save lives and keep violence from becoming part of the daily lives of Caribbean people. Legislating and establishing a similar legal framework for dealing with drug-trafficking crimes will contribute to the effective development of the rule of law, in particular regarding tax havens and money laundering. Concerted action and international environmental treaties are important not only to the Caribbean, not only to Latin America, but to the entire planet. All these courses of action must also be complemented with a high level of policy cooperation, with the development of training programs in the area of military cooperation, with sharing of intelligence, and with the joint patrolling of the waters and the skies of the Caribbean. Procurement of standardized equipment must be promoted, and the possibility of collective procurement and use of weapons systems must be explored. Networks for monitoring naval and air traffic must be set up. Coordination capabilities among the island nations of the Caribbean, and between them and Central and South America and with the NAFTA countries, must be improved. Systematic cooperation initiatives in each of these areas, first at the subregional level, then at the regional level, and finally at the hemispheric level, will allow a cooperative security system to be set up in the Western Hemisphere. The involvement of the Organization of American States (OAS) will be a critical factor in this area. The general climate of trust and development of specific MCMs will allow substantial progress in the operational sphere, ensuring higher levels of policy coordination and cooperation. Mechanisms should be developed for the sharing of intelligence. Likewise, consideration should be given to the creation of joint training centers. The development of a collective patrol plan will not only strengthen confidence, but at the same time will contribute to economies of scale in terms of prevention. A similar plan could be useful for monitoring maritime and air traffic.19 Advances in specific operating measures, in a context of reinforcement of the climate of confidence in the Caribbean subregion, will make an effective contribution to peace and security in the Americas. Peace and democracy in the Americas depend on the willingness of all players to cooperate and live up to national and international

80

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

responsibilities in the preservation of these assets of public concern. Stability and the capacity for subregional governability are essential for effective development of complementarity and integration. Democracy is nurtured and develops more effectively in this context. International cooperation is thereby transformed into a decisive factor for consolidating the distinctive hallmark of the Americas: a peaceful, stable, and nuclear-free region that develops under the auspices of democracy and seeks to consummate economic development with a sense of fair play. Notes 1. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). 2. James N. Rosenau, “New Dimensions of Security: The Interaction of Globalizing and Localizing Dynamics,” Security Dialogue 25 (1994), pp. 255– 281. 3. Francisco Rojas Aravena, “Latin America: Alternatives and Mechanisms of Prevention in Situations Linked to Territorial Sovereignty,” Peace and Security in the Americas, no. 13 (October 1997), pp. 2–7. 4. See The Caribbean in the Post–Cold War Era: Strategic Study of Latin America 92/93 (Santiago de Chile: FLACSO, 1994). 5. E. Isabel Jaramillo, “Cuba and the New Security Agenda in the Caribbean Basin,” Peace and Security in the Americas, no. 13 (September 1997), pp. 5–59. 6. Ivelaw L. Griffith, “Drug Trafficking as a Security Issue in the Caribbean,” Peace and Security in the Americas, no. 15 (December 1997), pp. 23–25; Pas V. Milet, “Drug Trafficking and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean,” a special report, Peace and Security in the Americas, no. 15 (December 1997), pp. 52–58. 7. Richard E. Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997). 8. See documents and discussions by Caribbean security and defense leaders at the Second Ministerial Conference on Defense of the Americas in Bariloche in October 1996. Unpublished precedings from the Ministerial conference. Available from the Argentine Ministry of Defense upon request. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. The Declaration of Santiago of the OAS in 1991; reaffirmed the democratic commitment of nations in the region. 14. Joseph S. Tulchin and Francisco Rojas Aravena (eds.), Strategic Balance and Mutual Confidence Measures in the Americas (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center, 1998), p. 337. 15. Budapest Document 1994, Towards a New Association in a New Era, Declaration of the Budapest Summit, February 2, 1995. Also, Vienna Document 1990, Vienna 1990.

THE CHALLENGE OF COOPERATION

81

16. Regional Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures in San Salvador, organized by the OAS. This conference will enable evaluation of and provide continuity to the agreements in this regard that were reached in Chile at the First Regional Conference on Confidence and Security Measures, held in Santiago in November 1995. 17. In the Caribbean area, formation of the Regional Security System has enabled significant progress in policy coordination. 18. The Peace and Security in the Americas Program created space for dialog between traditional and nontraditional players in security and defense, jointly with academics. This provided a very effective space for reflection and for elaboration of ideas and recommendations. 19. James MacIntosh and Ivelaw Griffith, “Confidence Building: Managing Caribbean Security Concerns,” studies prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Verification Research Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada, October 1996, abstract (working paper).

5 Cooperation in the Caribbean: The Cultural Dimension Rafael Hernández

When we speak of cultural exchange in the Caribbean, we tend to think mostly of folkloric festivals, primitive art, African percussion, and carnival rhythms. In addressing the problems of Antillean society, however—its foreign relations, sustainable economic development, and efforts to reintegrate itself into an increasingly globalized world without sacrificing its own identity—the cultural dimension turns out to play a central role. The treatment of issues such as the environment, natural disasters, migration, or the trafficking of controlled substances as problems of national and international security highlights the significance that these issues hold for the survival of the countries of the Caribbean. Nonetheless, the predominant focal points of the agendas of the main subregional organizations—the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)—regard them rather as problems that go beyond the scope of security not only by their nature, but also because of the instruments that are proposed for dealing with them. This chapter attempts to view these issues of Caribbean international relations from the standpoint of cultural cooperation. This dimension pertains to culture in the strict sense of the word, but also includes aspects of society such as science, technology, education, health care, and sports. The assertion of the chapter is that the cultural dimension of the Caribbean Basin forms the backbone of current cooperative initiatives, owing to its profound connection to the nature of the problems addressed and the role that it plays in promoting understanding and mutual confidence in the face of common threats.1 83

84

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

Caribbean Paradoxes and Complexities The Caribbean Sea can be characterized by its unusual geographical and geopolitical characteristics, which manifest themselves in a paradoxical set of aspects: • Despite the fact that the countries of the Caribbean are part of the hemispheric community and share with the wider region a characteristic economic, historical, and cultural makeup, they include a larger variety of ethnic and linguistic characteristics, political systems, physical scales, and degrees of sovereignty than any other subregion in the hemisphere, and even vary widely among themselves.2 • Despite their relative community of interests and problems and the fact that they are concentrated in the same geographic area, the level of subregional cooperation and integration among these countries has, when viewed overall, been low and lags behind that achieved in other parts of the hemisphere. • Although the economies of the Caribbean countries do not carry a great deal of weight on the hemispheric level, nor are they major players with regard to transfers of capital and flows of raw materials or goods between the North and the South, the role of their territory as platforms for exports, theaters of financial operations, or links in transnational production and commercial chains is significant, given their proximity to major markets, particularly that of the United States, and their strategic position between the two Americas. • Despite the fact that it does not contain world-class economic or strategic resources, the Caribbean is the route by which the major flows of raw materials and goods travel through the two largest oceans, between the major production and commercial centers of the world. • Despite the fact that the nations of the Caribbean are generally small countries with limited populations, the short sea routes between the islands and between some of them and their large continental neighbors, especially the United States, make it possible for the flows of undocumented migrants and the smuggling of controlled substances to reach relatively high levels. • Although among the Caribbean countries there are some that in their day were among the richest colonies in the world, and which have a rich cultural heritage, now the region as a whole is perhaps the poorest in the hemisphere owing to adverse

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION

85

export markets for its raw materials, the inadequate competitiveness of its few industrial products, and its relative inability to attract capital. To this framework of contrasts are added some other elements, such as: • The majority of the Caribbean countries define the perception of threat to their national interests not in terms of a neighboring country, but rather in terms of the predatory and destabilizing actions of nonstate actors such as corporations, which threaten the region’s social and natural environment, and other organizations that promote the interests of networks of transnational power and manifestations of social breakdown, such as organized crime and drug trafficking cartels. • The populations of Caribbean extraction in the major countries that border the Basin, especially the United States, are already larger, in absolute terms, than that of any large Latin American country, with the exception of Mexico; this has a multiplier effect on the flows of migration and on the formal and informal economic ties between these countries and those of the Caribbean. These elements—in particular, the fact of belonging to a limited geo-economic environment and the perception of common threats, the great similarity between the islands’ ethnocultural components, the desire not to be ignored in the global push for integration, and the strong parallels between these nations’ social problems—quite naturally create, even under conditions of relative estrangement such as those that have existed historically between the Eastern Caribbean and the Spanish-speaking Antilles,3 an area for understanding and cooperation, particularly if opportunities arise for these countries to enhance the capability and effectiveness of national policies for dealing with problems that are identified as important.4 This structural convergence forms the logical basis for adopting regional policies aimed at promoting mutual confidence. The broad nature of this convergence provides space for measures to be effective not only on the diplomatic level, but also on the economic, social, and cultural levels. The elements listed above that promote division, conflict, or alienation interact and also justify the need for a space for reconciliation of interests. Let us examine this idea in greater detail. The diversity of cultures, laws, and political systems in the Caribbean makes it advisable not to rush into imposing strict definitions or

86

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

parameters of the normative systems, cultural perspectives, and political ideas that will serve as the preconditions or bases for cooperation among the countries of the Caribbean. However, the heterogeneous nature of the region referred to as the Caribbean Basin is now a cliché. In response to this differentiation, an attempt has been made, with more or less success, to subdivide the Caribbean into subregional parts.5 The interweaving of variables such as those indicated above, however, makes it impossible to divide them up unambiguously. The subgroups that arise based on these variables (geographic, ethnolinguistic, political) are not consistent among themselves. Even from a strictly geographical standpoint, there are countries that could be included in more than one subgroup. This complexity necessitates a delineation of mutual confidence policies, one that rests not only on the above-mentioned structural convergence and that can underpin a system that deals with the region as a whole, but also on the specific features of these subgroups. Elaborating on these specific features in a multifaceted manner allows us to reflect more broadly on the conditions essential for the development of confidence-building measures in the Caribbean. Let us examine the case of the subgroup of the Gulf of Mexico, a typical example of Caribbean variegation. The following countries would be members of this subgroup: the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, and Cuba, in addition to Mexico and the United States. What these countries have in common is not just land borders or sea boundaries. These physical delimitations are rather interfaces that are traversed, to a greater or lesser extent, by political, economic, cultural, and ecological dynamics. Proximity by itself does not mean that these dynamics flow on their own. The central role of the cultural dimension makes itself particularly felt here. The majority of people in the United States, including their politicians, would not be able to locate on a map their own Virgin Islands, nor could they indicate in what direction an airplane bound for Nassau would fly. It is unlikely that the Mexicans or the Cubans are aware of what is happening on the national scene in the Bahamas. The inhabitants of the Virgin Islands are virtually invisible to the vast majority of Caribbeans, including those in the West Indies. Despite what Cuba has meant to the United States in recent decades, it is an exceptional U.S. citizen who knows about the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay. By the same token, even though Mexicans and Cubans exist within dissimilar ethnic and cultural patterns and have lived under quite different political systems, many artists, musical tastes, national figures, and values from one country are familiar and even popular in the other. The quality of bilateral ties cannot be explained by or subsumed in their geographic proximity. Historical and cultural parallels are

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION

87

usually based on more than physical closeness. The mutual confidence between two governments such as Mexico and Cuba rests— without taking any credit away from the politicians who have conducted these relationships—on a historical and cultural foundation that does not exist between these two countries and, for example, the Bahamas. Quite the contrary, it would be a mistake to conditionalize the affinities or conflicts between the United States and the Englishspeaking countries of the Caribbean because they share virtually the same language or a common mother country. In this case, the large difference of scale between the superpower and the very small countries permeates the entire relationship. Nevertheless, the elaboration of specific regional features should not be limited to the unrepeatable ontology of the bilateral dimension. Of course, an oil spill in the Gulf Stream, a major hurricane, the migration of a species of fish from adjacent waters, or the operation of a drug-trafficking ring through the Windward Passage can confront all of these countries with a common threat. This shared concern strengthens the national interest in handling problems on a multilateral basis. When we consider that relations can be influenced by factors not associated with proximity, it is first necessary to acknowledge that the national interest of a country, the cornerstone of mutual confidence, is not defined or redefined by the nation-state. Domestic factors of a societal nature are involved in the composition of this interest. The influences of the different sectors of civil society, which have different and sometimes contradictory interests from those of the state, also make themselves felt in the building of areas of greater confidence. The objective rapprochement—or distance—between countries is not necessarily confined to a government dynamic. In other words, societal factors cannot be overlooked when thinking of mutual confidence.6 Perceptions of External Threats in Intra-Caribbean Coordination Schemes: The Cultural Dimension Some authors have pointed out that the peak of decolonization and nationalism, which originally favored cooperation, wound up producing scattered projects and creating separate “national” identities. At the same time, identities such as Antillean, Caribbean, Latin American, and Third World were also reinforced as part of what then became identified with the cultural revolution.7 The vehicles for state-to-state cooperation, from the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA, created in 1965), the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM, created in 1973), to

88

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

the Association of States of the Caribbean (ACS, created in 1995), have had their cultural complements such as the Association of Historians of the Caribbean (1968), the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA, 1974), the Caribbean Conference of Churches, and the Caribbean Festival of the Arts (CARIFESTA). In general, the nongovernmental actors, from foreign companies to athletes, have historically played a prominent role in forging international relations in the Caribbean. The emergence of new forces for regional cooperation that began in the 1970s, such as the pacifist movement, the environmental protection movement, and the movement for the preservation of natural resources, has continued right up until the present.8 Coinciding with the process of gaining independence from Great Britain in the early 1970s, the new states injected new vitality into cooperation and integration. Their vision of the Caribbean was not limited, however, to the West Indian segregation; rather they assumed a broader “Caribbean” identity, opening the way for progressive communication with the rest of the islands and the nations of the larger Basin. Both the CARICOM and the Association of States of the Caribbean have given primary emphasis to the cultural dimensions of cooperation. Despite its difficulties, the cooperative effort involved in the CARICOM project has been the most sustained over time. According to its Regional Cultural Committee, the main lesson behind its durability is that: While recognizing the importance of maximizing the economic gains in order to attract funding to further enhance cultural development, concern was expressed about the threat to the cultural development of the Region by external influences to the point where prominence was accorded to economic benefits at the expense of cultural integrity and preservation.9

The relationship between culture, security, and the environment is central to the concerns regarding the mechanisms of coordination.10 Together with economic integration, free trade, and investment, the formulation of policies in the cultural, economic, social, scientific, and technological realms, the preservation of the environment, and the conservation of resources, especially those of the Caribbean Sea, are adopted as intra-Caribbean priorities.11 The crucial importance of environmental threats typically arises in the case of the mini-countries. Particularly in the area of natural disasters, situations often arise that are characterized as follows: “The greatest challenge faced by the people of Montserrat was the potential

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION

89

threat of the eruption of a volcano which had affected all aspects of the work program of the Department of Culture and indeed of national life.”12 The Special Committee of the ACS that is dedicated to cooperation in the cultural realm, chaired by Cuba, has identified areas of common interest, in general terms, as information technology and biotechnology, but especially topics that fall within this area of protection of the environment, e.g., renewable sources of energy, ocean sciences, transfer of technologies that are compatible with the ecosystem, control of waste, efficient and sustainable use of natural resources, tourism, etc.13 This problem area has also been emphasized as part of the agenda that is referred to as regional cultural policy. Among its top priorities are: “the preservation of the environment and treatment of the people, particularly the indigenous groups,” “the development of legislation or . . . modalities of protection of cultural integrity,” and “the protection of intellectual property rights.”14 As regards the first point, the human impacts of external threats are particularly relevant from the standpoint of the cultural dimension. Nongovernmental organizations that represent ethnic minorities, such as the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP), have expressed their condemnation of “the deterioration of their standards of living and the erosion of human rights.”15 In general, the question of the role that civil society plays in Caribbean international relations has acquired strategic stature in recent years.16 As some authors have pointed out, ensuring that the process of integration leads to the creation of legal institutions and frameworks for civil society to take a more active part in decisionmaking regarding the goals of regionalization is not just a good intention. It also protects the system from fundamentalist responses that, under the guise of cultural claims, tend to push for greater fragmentation, as well as the emergence of overzealous “globalist” impulses by bureaucratic sectors.17 The matter of the protection of intellectual property is also of strategic importance in a subregion whose cultural industry represents a reservoir of resources for development. One of the main problems noted in the evaluations of activities such as CARIFESTA18 is the critical role of the presence of the media, as well as the “exploitation of media rights.” Among the main topics related to cultural cooperation, the mechanisms of the ACS have also dealt with the preservation of traditional popular culture and the protection of audiovisual production and musical recordings. The protagonistic role of the media in determining the direction of perceptions and even of political decisions in strategic matters is

90

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

reflected in the Caribbean evaluations of “the importance of the community presentations as fora for the dissemination of information about the cultural peculiarities and commonalities of participating countries.”19 In general, the question of transnational control of the media and of the intellectual property rights to cultural products of the Caribbean—especially music—poses a perennial challenge not only to efforts at intra-Caribbean coordination, but also to the countries’ ability to preserve their heritage and channel resources through cultural industries. Among the cultural barriers that have divided the countries of the Caribbean, those of language have been particularly significant. The search for solutions for the removal of these linguistic impediments, in terms of education, is a central challenge to achieving mutual confidence, especially between Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking nations.20 Promoting the linguistic integration of the region can help facilitate communication with other mechanisms of coordination that have been—and are being—affected with regard to the creation of confidence, as in the case of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.21 Finally, in this area of education, as well as in that of science and technology, coordination can ensure that the scarce resources of the Caribbean are multiplied significantly. The possibility of fostering meetings among Caribbean university centers,22 and of facilitating exchange in general, may make it possible to develop an avenue for training personnel who are qualified in the particular problems of the subregion, especially the preservation of the ecological and cultural heritage, the harmonious development of tourism, and dominion over languages. The need to help delineate a regional development strategy for higher education consistent with these requirements is one of the first measures that Caribbean integration should address. Otherwise, the traditional pattern of the flight of students and professionals from the central countries will continue to drain the region’s ability to sustain itself. Conclusion The debate regarding globalization has highlighted the need to study the impacts of ethnic, technological, financial, and ideological factors and, in particular, that of the media on national situations, in the environment of a new global dynamic that is characterized by the influx of transnational cultural circuits.23

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION

91

The impact of these ethnocultural factors, along with those of a financial nature (foreign investment), an ideological nature (the crisis of alternative models to dependent capitalism), a technological nature (the spread of computers and communications), and of the media (from music to the dissemination of news) have left a particular mark on Caribbean societies. The nature of the transnational ties of these societies results in networks of interests that cannot always be identified within constellations of economic power or geostrategic interests. The existence of transnational communities, a typical ingredient of globalization, is the result of a new kind of emigration, one that keeps a channel open to the country of origin and affects its internal processes.24 The presence of tens of thousands of Haitians in Santo Domingo, of Dominicans in Puerto Rico, and of millions of Caribbeans in the United States alone has an impact on the economic and cultural dynamic of the countries of origin and on their foreign relations. As is pointed out elsewhere in this volume, this process goes beyond the countries to aim at building a “social community” of a regional nature,25 making it necessary for the actors in civil society to take part in the making of decisions in this integration process. The nature of this process will determine the evolution of the cultural identities of these countries and the relative success of integration. It is the absence of political will or of ideas regarding the institutionalization of cultural coordination (as in other realms), as well as the scarcity of regional resources, that explains the relative slowness of progress toward this kind of cooperation. In the center of this vicious circle is not the intrinsic power of cultural accumulation or the absence of heritage or talent, but rather the lack of an infrastructure and financing that could make it possible to take advantage of its cultural abundance in order to jump-start a stable and self-sustainable model for development in the Caribbean region. Notes 1. This could be a proposal for answering the question posed by Joseph Tulchin: “In the absence of violent conflict, what are the most effective Confidence-Building Measures to reduce tensions among States?” See Joseph Tulchin, “Redefining National Security in the Western Hemisphere: The Role of Multilateralism,” in Francisco Rojas (ed.), Mutual Confidence and Verification Measures (Santiago, Chile: FLACSO, P&SA, FOCAL, 1995), pp. 3–4. 2. It is calculated that since 1942 more than twenty maritime delineation treaties have been agreed upon in the Caribbean, particularly during the 1970s. These agreements are important not only with regard to national sovereignty,

92

THE CARIBBEAN SECURITY AGENDA

but also with regard to rights to shared exploitation of resources. See Kaldone Nweheid, “Inventory of International and Environmental Agreements,” in Andrés Serbín (coordinator), Medio Ambiente, seguridad y cooperación en el Caribe [The Environment, Security, and Cooperation in the Caribbean] (Caracas: INVESF-CIQRO, Nueva Sociedad Publishing House, 1992), p. 124. 3. See Andrés Serbín and Anthony Bryan (eds.), Vecinos indiferentes? El Caribe de habla inglesa y América Latina [Indifferent Neighbors? The English-Speaking Caribbean and Latin America] (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad Publishing House, 1993). 4. An example of the importance of attempting to build policies promoting economic competence, particularly as regards competence with respect to the tourist industry in the Caribbean region, was the speech by Fidel Castro before a group of businessmen from the Association of Industry and Trade of the Caribbean and the insurance company Caribbean Association, in Trinidad and Tobago: “The development of tourism in Cuba must not be at the expense of that in other countries; quite the contrary, we want to develop it in close coordination with the countries of the region.” (Cable from Agencia EFE, Spain’s largest news service, August 18, 1995. See www.efe.es.) 5. According to Kaldone Nweheid, the Greater Caribbean can be divided into ten subgroups or areas based solely on the geographic variable: the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent territories, Central America, Spanish-speaking continental countries, the Greater Antilles, the English-speaking Eastern Caribbean, British colonies, French departments, the Dutch Antilles, the Guyanas, and Brazil. Even considering only the purely geographic criterion, countries such as Cuba could fall into more than one area. This author recognizes that this grouping does not coincide with that which would be made from the cultural or sociopolitical standpoint or from that of legal systems. (Cf. Nweheid, “Inventory of International and Environmental Agreements,” p. 104). 6. As Francisco Rojas points out, the development of Mutual Confidence Measures does not depend on the political will of states; rather, in order for this will to be made into reality, “the existence of a regional scenario that is favorable to cooperation and the coordination of policies means that confidence-building measures of greater scope could be established that would have an impact on the consolidation of a system for cooperation in matters of security.” See Rojas, Mutual Confidence. 7. Antonio Gaztambide, “The Forces of Regional Cooperation,” in UNESCO, General History of the Caribbean, vol. 5, chapter 12 (typescript, unpublished). 8. Ibid. 9. Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting of the Regional Cultural Committee, Caribbean Community Secretariat, Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis, March 11–12, 1996, p. 3–4 (italics added). 10. “Second Meeting of the Special Committee for Science, Technology, Education, Health, and Culture of the Association of States of the Caribbean. Work Program” (working draft, 1997). According to the explicit goals of the Association of States of the Caribbean, the purpose of this consultation and coordination mechanism is “to achieve sustained development in the cultural, economic, social, scientific and technological realms”; to develop the potential of the Caribbean Sea as a means of interaction between the countries and as part of the resources and assets of the region; to strengthen institutional

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION

93

structures and cooperation on the basis of recognizing “the diversity of cultural identities and the need of the area for development and normative systems.” 11. Ibid. The countries of the Caribbean are signatories to international agreements that control maritime transportation, hydrocarbon pollution, radioactive materials, toxic waste, and fishing (see Nweheid, “Inventory of International and Environmental Agreements,” p. 103). 12. See Nweheid, “Inventory,” p. 5 (italics added). 13. “Second Meeting of the Special Committee.” This is a priority within the framework of the Work Program of the AEC, as adopted at the Second Regular Meeting of the Council of Ministers in Havana. 14. Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting, p. 39. 15. Ibid., p. 6. 16. Explicit mention has been made of the need to “explore the possibility of cultural exchanges on a cost-sharing basis with Non-Governmental Organizations.” Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting, p. 23. 17. Andrés Serbín, “Impact of Globalization on the Greater Caribbean,” Capítulos del Sela, no. 46 (April–June 1996), p. 125–138. 18. The meetings of CARIFESTA have been evaluated by CARICOM as vehicles for “the fostering of camaraderie and the opportunity to exchange ideas.” Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting, p. 8. 19. Joseph Tulchin has emphasized the importance of “the omnipresence of the media in the areas of conflict” as a peculiar feature of the post–Cold War era compared to other postwar periods. See Joseph S. Tulchin, “Redefining National Security in the Western Hemisphere: The Role of Multilateralism,” Peace and Security in the Americas (September 1994), pp. 1–3. 20. “Second Meeting of the Special Committee.” The meeting of the Forum of Ministers of Culture of Latin America and the Caribbean has stated that it is necessary to integrate into the Cultural Integration System of Latin America and the Caribbean (SICLAC) all of the countries of the Caribbean, including those of the Eastern Caribbean, and to make progress in the search for solutions for the removal of linguistic barriers. Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting, pp. 24–25. 21. CARICOM “expressed concern at the perceived decrease in interest by the OAS with respect to the Culture sector,” as well as regarding “the difficulties encountered in receiving assistance from the OAS for the implementation of regional projects.” See Summary Report of the Seventh Meeting, p. 33. 22. It is estimated that in the Greater Caribbean there are 362 universities, 264 institutes of technology, and 555 centers of higher education of other kinds. Of the total, 75 percent are located in Spanish-speaking countries. See Mariana Serra and Cristobal Diaz Morrejon, “Universities in the Caribbean,” Temas, no. 6 (April–June 1996), pp. 57–65. 23. There has also been talk of the need for a new “transnational” anthropology that would be able to study these flows and circuits. Cf. A. Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology,” cited in C. J. Moneta, “The Cultural Dimension of Globalization,” Capítulos del SELA, no. 45 (January–February 1996). 24. Alejandro Portes, “Transnational Communities: Their Emergence and Importance in the Contemporary World System,” Temas, no. 5 (January– March 1996), pp. 109–120. 25. Serbín, “Impact of Globalization on the Greater Caribbean.”

PART 2 NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO CARIBBEAN SECURITY

6 The Fear of Illegal Aliens: Caribbean Migration as a National and Regional Security Threat Jorge Duany

The end of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union has promoted a major shift in thinking about national and regional security. The disappearance of the “communist threat” has reduced the need for military defense from an outside enemy in the Western Hemisphere. At the same time, the post–Cold War era has weakened the geopolitical significance of the Caribbean region for the United States and other metropolitan powers, such as Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Even though the Cuban government continues to have antagonistic relations with the United States, the island’s strategic importance has also diminished greatly. From the U.S. perspective, the Caribbean Basin has moved from being a potential source of ideological subversion and political instability to a transit zone for illegal drugs, alien smuggling, laundered money, contrabanded weapons, and other “transnational threats.” Current debates on security issues consistently identify narcotrafficking and undocumented migration as the two key concerns for the U.S. government, both highly focused on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands.1 U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War so far has concentrated primarily on preventing and controlling the illegal flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States. In this context, the Caribbean has emerged as the major transshipment point for controlled substances from South to North America. As one U.S. drug enforcement official recently put it, regardless of how one defines the Caribbean Basin, it is a leading source and traffic area for illegal drugs, money, and aliens.2 The islands’ strategic position—particularly that of the smaller countries of the Eastern Caribbean—provides an easy access route between the main drug-producing countries of South America (Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia) and the largest consumer market in 97

98

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

the world, the United States. Thus, although the Caribbean has lost much of its military importance, the region figures prominently in the “new” security agenda dominated by the war against drugs.3 Multilateral collaboration among the governments of the United States and the Caribbean Basin has become a major buzzword within academic and policymaking circles. The present juncture calls for a profound rethinking of cooperative security in the Caribbean. First, the connection between internal and external security threats must be revisited in an increasingly globalized and transnational world. Second, the implications of regional collaboration for national sovereignty should be spelled out clearly. Third, the impact of various economic development strategies on political stability has to be assessed more thoroughly. Fourth, the complex relations between state and nonstate actors (such as private entrepreneurs, nongovernmental organizations, and labor unions) are increasingly coming to the fore. Finally, the role of the military in containing nonmilitary threats must be thought through. The need for a new paradigm to understand and promote peace and security in the Caribbean becomes particularly clear in approaching a nontraditional security concern, namely, international migration. This chapter seeks to analyze contemporary undocumented migration in the Caribbean in the context of the new national and regional security agenda.4 The first section attempts to explain how and why migration came to be perceived as a security threat in the United States and other migrant-receiving countries. The second section provides a rough estimate of recent undocumented flows, both within and outside the Caribbean region. The third and fourth sections examine two case studies of undocumented migration in the Caribbean during the 1990s: from Cuba to the United States and from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. The concluding section identifies various collaborative agreements and cooperative efforts to alleviate migratory pressures in the region. My thesis is deceptively simple. Because undocumented migration is primarily a response to the continuing economic crisis in much of the Caribbean region,5 only short- and long-term measures to improve the area’s living standards will reduce the unauthorized movement of people. Hence, it is ultimately in the national and regional security interests of the United States as well as the sending countries to reduce poverty and unemployment in the Caribbean. Furthermore, transnational and nongovernmental actors should join government officials in the public debate about undocumented migration, for their voices and actions are needed to ensure effective development strategies and social-service programs. Lastly, migration policies

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

99

should be coordinated bilaterally and multilaterally in both the sending and receiving countries. Like other areas of cooperative security in the Caribbean, stemming the undocumented flow within and outside the region will require the concerted efforts of many countries, sectors, and actors within each country.6 Migration as a Security Threat Until the end of the 1980s, migration was not a priority item on the security agenda of the United States.7 Similarly, security was not a major concern for Caribbean migration scholars.8 The two fields of study—migration and security—were practically and theoretically disconnected. By the second half of the 1990s, however, migration was rivaled only by the illegal drug trade as a policy issue widely debated by government officials, journalists, and academics. Large-scale migration—especially undocumented migration—from the Caribbean Basin has risen to public visibility in the United States over the past decade, particularly since the failure of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to control the problem. Undocumented migration is now routinely viewed as a nonmilitary security threat that undermines the credibility of the U.S. government to enforce its immigration laws and regulations.9 In turn, the unauthorized movement of people across state borders often requires the use of military force to contain and return the migrants to their country of origin. Moreover, alien smuggling is one of the most lucrative illegal transnational activities (along with drug trafficking), which erode people’s trust in the legal and formal economy. Thus the constant and massive violation of national and international norms regulating the movement of people from country to country has become one of the leading preoccupations of law enforcement agencies at the end of the twentieth century. The main reason for defining migration as a new security threat in the post–Cold War era seems to be the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and other host countries. Worldwide xenophobia has been fueled by economic stagnation, increasing foreign-born populations, internal social tensions, ethnic fundamentalism, and nationalist movements. In the United States, these factors have combined with declining public services and welfare programs, the growing popularity of the English Only movement, and the common perception that massive and sustained migration from the Caribbean Basin (including Mexico) has destabilized several “border” states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York, as well as some territories such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The situa-

100

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

tion has been worsened by the avowed connection between drug trafficking and undocumented migration, often mentioned in press reports but seldom substantiated by official statistics and academic research.10 Hence, the casual linkage between “illegal aliens” and criminal activities is further strengthened in the public mind. As ever, foreign minorities are easily scapegoated for many of the socioeconomic problems of the host countries. A broad political consensus has emerged in the United States that the government has lost control of its own borders, especially its southern flank with Mexico. Wild proposals to build a long, tall wall along the southwestern frontier are now seriously considered in several quarters. Many Americans also believe that large, sudden movements of people from the Caribbean must be detained and repatriated. The Institute for National Strategic Studies states it clearly: “The U.S. is simply not willing to extend refugee status to every person fleeing from a dictatorship, such as Haiti under the junta or Cuba under Castro.”11 Since 1981, the U.S. Coast Guard has attempted to avert mass migration from Haiti and, more recently, Cuba by interdicting boats at sea. Like illegal drugs, the so-called illegal aliens must be intercepted before they enter U.S. territory and challenge the legal and moral order of American society. In this regard, undocumented migration is not just a security threat, however one defines security. The symbolic figure of the illegal alien with all its pejorative connotations—as a foreign, strange, illegitimate, marginal, and dangerous “other”—also subverts the dominant discourse on national and racial identity in the United States.12 That many undocumented migrants from the Caribbean are black or mulatto, poor, and non-Englishspeaking only adds to their legally clandestine situation. It can even be suggested that the continuing popularity of science-fiction movies and television series such as Independence Day, Alien Nation, and the various incarnations of Star Trek is linked to the widespread fear of an invasion by illegal aliens. During the past decade, immigration policies in the major receiving countries (such as the United States, the European Union, and Japan) have become increasingly restrictive. Although other legal practices have been intensely transnationalized, immigration policies are still largely driven by domestic agendas that seek to define, control, and protect the geopolitical frontiers of individual nationstates.13 In most cases, new legislation has focused on undocumented migration from the developing countries of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recently issued a series of policy recommendations to tackle the problem, many of which were later made into law.14 Above all, the

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

101

commission underscored the need to deter the unlawful entry of people into the United States. To this effect, the commission supported strict government control of land borders and airports; effective prosecution of alien smuggling; swift management of immigration emergencies; denial of public assistance to undocumented migrants, except on an emergency basis; and multinational cooperation among the migrant-sending countries and the United States. The commission also noted that quick and effective development strategies were needed to alleviate migratory pressures, but did not elaborate on this point beyond citing the so-called Asencio Report of the Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Development.15 Like previous measures designed to combat undocumented migration, such as enforcing employer sanctions or redoubling border patrols, recent U.S. policies have been characteristically punitive and repressive rather than preventive and proactive. I will return to this point in the concluding section of this chapter. In sum, migration has been increasingly perceived as a security threat to the United States during the 1990s. To begin, the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, reached an all-time high since the 1920s. In addition, the immigrants came largely from two world areas—the Caribbean Basin and Asia—traditionally underrepresented in earlier migrant flows to the United States. Cultural, linguistic, and physical differences with the dominant white population of European origin have become increasingly intolerable. Furthermore, a large proportion of the immigrants lacked legal authorization to enter U.S. territory or to remain here permanently. Finally, foreign immigrants came to the United States during a period of intense economic restructuring, characterized by growing unemployment for native workers in many areas of the country.16 Hence, recent trends have spurred a reassessment of the traditional U.S. open-arms policy toward immigration (at least from European countries) and led to major reforms in immigration and welfare laws.17 One of the main targets of these policy changes has been undocumented migration from the Caribbean Basin, particularly from Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Recent Undocumented Migration in the Caribbean During the 1990s, the Caribbean witnessed two major types of population movements: emigration outside the region, primarily to the United States, and migration within the region, especially from poorer to wealthier countries. Given the clandestine nature of undocu-

102

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

mented migration, it is impossible to give precise counts of the two flows. However, the available evidence suggests that the United States is the main destination for undocumented migrants from the Caribbean Basin, particularly if Mexico is included here. In 1992, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that 3.2 million undocumented persons lived in the United States mainland.18 (Other sources have put the number as high as 5.5 million.) Of these, about 2.2 million, or 70 percent, were presumably born in Mexico and 440,000, or nearly 14 percent, were born in other countries of the Caribbean Basin, especially in El Salvador, Haiti, Colombia, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. In the 1990s, the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted tens of thousands more Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians trying to reach U.S. territory illegally. The sheer magnitude of the undocumented flows, plus their sudden and dramatic character, has contributed to their public perception as a threat to U.S. national security interests.19 Cuba and Haiti figure prominently in policymaking and academic circles in Washington, Miami, New York, and the Caribbean region itself. For different reasons, these two countries currently have the potential of sending the greatest numbers of undocumented migrants to the United States. Since the late 1980s, Cuba’s profound economic deterioration has caused the largest flow of boat people since the Mariel exodus of 1980. Cuban scholars now calculate that between 450,000 and 1.2 million people would leave Cuba if given the opportunity to do so.20 Some analysts believe that the current U.S. policy of further isolating the Cuban government and eroding its economic bases can only deepen migratory pressures and destabilize the entire Caribbean region.21 On the other hand, Haiti’s continuing economic and political disarray—even after the return of President Aristide to power in 1994—is a breeding ground for undocumented migration. Only in 1991, when Aristide was overthrown, about 34,000 Haitians were detained and deported from the United States.22 Large numbers of Haitians still attempt to reach the coasts of Florida, despite increased controls by U.S. law enforcement agencies. In a recent meeting of security experts and practitioners, a former Haitian ambassador dramatized the Haitian tragedy by calling attention to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who would flee their country to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and eventually the United States if the political situation was not solved soon.23 Although undocumented migration from the Caribbean Basin is mainly directed toward the United States, it also affects several countries of the region. The largest number of undocumented Haitians actually lives in the Dominican Republic, anywhere from 100,000 to

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

103

500,000 according to various sources. Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans fled to Mexico and Costa Rica during the civil wars of the 1980s, just as hundreds of thousands of Colombians moved to Venezuela without legal authorization during the 1970s. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service recently estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 undocumented Dominicans lived in Puerto Rico.24 Smaller numbers of unauthorized workers went to the U.S. Virgin Islands from the British Virgin Islands and other countries of the Eastern Caribbean; to the French départements of Martinique and Guadeloupe from Dominica, St. Lucia, and Haiti; to Trinidad and Tobago from Grenada and the Windward Islands; and to the Netherlands Antilles, especially from the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Each of these destination countries has attempted to curtail undocumented migration from neighboring islands, so far without much success. Sometimes, the receiving governments have set up massive deportation programs, as in the recent cases of the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Costa Rica. Still, illegal border crossings between contiguous or adjacent territories continue to plague the Caribbean Basin. Thus, undocumented migration poses a security threat to the Caribbean as well as the United States insofar as it undermines the established laws and regulations of many countries, not just those of the powerful neighbor to the north. Racial and ethnic prejudice aside, Dominican authorities are understandably concerned with the long and porous frontier with Haiti, which is daily transgressed by illegal entrants.25 Similarly, the unlawful movement of Dominican nationals across the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico poses a security threat to local as well as federal authorities. The Cuban government has recently signed bilateral agreements with Mexico and Jamaica to regulate migration to those countries. Relations between many countries of the Caribbean Basin—including those between Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Venezuela, Haiti and the Bahamas—are strained by undocumented migration. Not surprisingly, fifteen governments of the region agreed to cooperate in preventing and prosecuting alien smuggling, as part of the Bridgetown Declaration of Principles signed in 1997.26 Undocumented migration both within and outside the Caribbean region can be expected to continue unabated—perhaps even to increase—in the near future. For one thing, the living conditions of the majority of the population in most of the sending countries have not improved significantly during the 1990s. (Some countries, such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic, have actually seen a sharp drop in standards of living.) For another, stiffer legal controls and restrictive

104

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

measures in the receiving countries may unwittingly push potential migrants into illegal channels. For instance, the new immigration law that went into effect on April 1, 1997, makes it much more difficult to migrate legally to the United States. In any case, the strong legacy of external migration, coupled with the persistence of transnational kinship networks, suggests that Caribbean people will continue to move abroad, legally or illegally. The threat of a massive, uncontrolled exodus from Cuba, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic (and even, in its own way, Puerto Rico) is a very real possibility that should concern policymakers and analysts. It is therefore useful to look more closely at two recent migratory experiences in the region to learn their lessons well and plan ahead. The Cuban Balsero Crisis The so-called balsero crisis involved about 36,000 Cuban rafters intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard at the height of the crisis between August 13 and September 13, 1994. Following President Clinton’s orders, the Coast Guard transferred the rafters to U.S. military bases in Guantánamo and Panama. The balseros were technically undocumented migrants because they left Cuba without visas in fragile small boats and makeshift vessels in order to reach Florida. Until August 19, 1994, the balseros had been welcome by the U.S. government as political refugees fleeing Castro’s regime. To many Cuban Americans, they were heroes in the Cold War against communism and the struggle to redeem their home country. However, the Clinton administration perceived the balsero crisis as a national security threat that could become “another Mariel”: that is, a prolonged, massive, and chaotic exodus from Cuba to the United States. From the standpoint of the Cuban government, the crisis also had the potential to destabilize the island’s internal security and international image, as the August 5, 1994, riots in Havana clearly showed. Both governments therefore moved swiftly to solve the crisis through a series of bilateral agreements, beginning in September 1994 and culminating in May 1995.27 The immediate antecedents of the balsero crisis are now clear in retrospect. Illegal exits from Cuba (along with temporary visits) had become the primary channel to migrate to the United States during the early 1990s. The U.S. Interests Section in Havana had denied most visa applications, granting only 3,250 between 1991 and 1993.28 These were the worst years of the so-called Special Period in Times of Peace in Cuba, characterized by a sharp decline in most indices of economic activity, a rise in social tensions, and unmet demands for

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

105

political reform.29 Migratory pressures accumulated rapidly, including wide sectors of the Cuban population, such as service workers, professionals, and the growing unemployed. Material incentives—such as the expectation of higher consumption standards—became more common than ideological dissidence as motives for migration. The U.S. policy of accepting most Cubans who entered U.S. territory illegally encouraged others who did not find the legal means to move abroad. Thus when the Cuban government decided to remove all practical obstacles to migrate in August 1994, the stage was set for another Mariel. This time, however, the Clinton administration reassessed its stance toward Cuban migrants and initiated a series of major policy shifts, such as intercepting and repatriating the rafters to Cuba. One student of Cuban migration to the United States, Félix Masud-Piloto, was forced to change the title of his book, With Open Arms, to From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants. This transformation in the official treatment of Cubans in the U.S. signaled an attempt—not entirely successful—to develop a coherent immigration and refugee policy in the post–Cold War period. More particularly, it was a political response by the Clinton administration to long-standing criticism of U.S. preference toward Cuban as opposed to Haitian boat people. Hence, analysts have begun to write about the “Haitianization” and “Caribbeanization” of U.S.-Cuban migration policy.30 For the first time since 1959, Cubans illegally leaving their country were not automatically defined as political refugees but as undocumented immigrants subject to deportation (just like Haitians, Dominicans, or Salvadorans). The ideological impact of this policy shift on the Cuban-American community remains unclear. One well-known sociologist, Lisandro Pérez, has written provocatively about “the end of exile” as we now know it.31 At any rate, the balsero crisis was solved with the September 1994 agreement between the U.S. and Cuban governments and subsequently ratified in the May 1995 migration accords. These bilateral conversations are an example of what Jorge Domínguez called “cooperating with the enemy”32: despite their ideological differences, both governments defined the balsero crisis as a threat to their national security interests and acted accordingly (although for different reasons). From the U.S. perspective, the migration agreements ensured the legal and orderly departure of Cubans and the repatriation of thousands of Cuban “excludables,” many of them remaining in the United States since the Mariel exodus. From the Cuban standpoint, the agreements effectively terminated the preferential treatment of Cuban migrants as political exiles and redefined them as illegal aliens. Both sides to the conflict benefited from the stated provision

106

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

of at least 20,000 immigrant visas per year, in addition to a special lottery for 5,000 new applications. The success of the negotiations to end the balsero crisis shows that the Cuban and U.S. governments can collaborate on common matters of regional security, such as migration, drug trafficking, money laundering, environmental pollution, and even military maneuvers.33 Still, several issues regarding Cuban migration to the United States remain unresolved. Most seriously, the migratory potential from Cuba (estimated to be between half a million and over a million persons) well exceeds the expected visa approvals over the next twenty to thirty years. Moreover, increasing numbers of Cubans without immediate family ties in the United States are seeking to migrate, but find it harder to obtain a visa. In the meantime, daily life in Cuba has become a struggle for survival for most common people. Migrant remittances now represent one of the major sources of foreign currency on the island, after sugar and tourism. Thus, barring a major change in U.S.-Cuban relations or a significant improvement in the Cuban economy, migratory pressures will continue to increase without finding a legal outlet. The current U.S. policy of further pressing the Cuban government and strengthening the embargo can only motivate more people to leave Cuba for the United States. If most of these people cannot secure visas to do so, they will use other means available to them—migrating illegally, overstaying their visit permits, seeking temporary residence abroad, or using third countries as way stations to the United States. Recent evidence suggests that Cubans are indeed displaying all of these forms of movement.34 Another problem is that the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 continues to give preferential treatment to Cuban migrants once they reach U.S. territory. Cuban scholars complain that this policy measure, developed in the midst of the Cold War, contradicts recent attempts to put all migrants on an equal footing, regardless of their national origin.35 In effect, the Cuban Adjustment Act allows undocumented migrants from Cuba to legalize their status in the United States and to quickly become eligible for permanent residence and citizenship. Moreover, it is still much easier for a Cuban or another migrant from a communist country to obtain political asylum in the United States than for, say, a Haitian or a Salvadoran. For its part, the Cuban-American community has resisted any changes in existing laws and regulations because these would undermine their self-perception as political refugees. Since 1959, most Cubans in South Florida have thought of themselves as exiles, not immigrants.36 Many of them believed that their sojourn in the United States would be temporary, and their return to the homeland imminent. Much of this exile men-

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

107

tality was based on the privileged legal situation of Cubans vis-à-vis emigrés from other countries. A third limitation of the recent U.S.-Cuban migration agreements is that they do not necessarily prevent future migration crises due to economic or political strife in Cuba or the normal operation of transnational kinship networks in the United States. Despite the Cubans’ insistence on discussing the U.S. embargo, American officials steadfastly refused to include it in the negotiations. Recent attempts to expand the Helms-Burton Act against Cuba and her international business partners suggest that the U.S. government is pursuing a double-edged policy toward Cuban migrants: on the one hand, stemming the undocumented flow of Cubans to the United States while, on the other, creating more migratory pressures within Cuba itself. The heightened tension in U.S.-Cuban relations is bound to have counterproductive effects, at least insofar as migration is concerned. A more effective strategy would be to promote greater stability and development in Cuba through a gradual lifting of the embargo, the island’s reinsertion into the regional and world economy, and support for internal reforms and a transition to a more democratic government. The Yola Journeys Unlike the balsero crisis, which suddenly peaked during the summer of 1994, undocumented migration from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico has increased steadily since the 1980s. The prolonged crisis experienced by the Dominican economy over the past decade is thought to be the main cause of the exodus.37 The first recorded yola trip took place in the early 1970s, when a small group of undocumented Dominicans tried to cross the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico in an unseaworthy vessel. Tens of thousands of Dominicans and other groups have since made the perilous journey, using Puerto Rico primarily as a steppingstone to the U.S. mainland. In the 1990s, the Immunization and Naturalization Service (INS) has detained and deported an average of between 4,000 and 6,000 undocumented Dominicans every year en route to Puerto Rico. The number of repatriated Dominicans has actually increased since the passage of IRCA in 1986, suggesting that employer sanctions have not stemmed the undocumented flow from the Dominican Republic. In 1996, the U.S. Border Patrol and Coast Guard interdicted 7,780 aliens in the Mona Passage due to better patrolling of the area both by U.S. and Dominican authorities.38 Other reasons for the increased yola activity may have been the 1996 presidential elections in the Dominican Re-

108

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

public and the approval of new immigration and welfare laws in the United States. The Dominican Republic has become an international transshipment point for alien smuggling from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as from other parts of the world into U.S. territory, especially Puerto Rico. Recent shiploads of undocumented Dominicans have included migrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, and Cuba. Migrants from as far away as China, Pakistan, Korea, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, and the former Yugoslavia have also been intercepted in the Mona Passage. Although over 90 percent of all yola passengers are Dominican, the traffic in undocumented migrants between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico has become increasingly transnational. Law enforcement authorities believe that alien smuggling has become a multimillion-dollar business with dozens of illegal networks operating in several countries of the Caribbean Basin, including the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Guatemala.39 It is no coincidence that U.S. military forces recently decided to build a new port facility on the east coast of the Dominican Republic to help prevent illegal trips to Puerto Rico carrying both drugs and aliens. In security thinking, those two activities are inextricably linked. Compared to the balseros, the daily arrival of one or two yolas on the west coast of Puerto Rico is less dramatic and newsworthy. So routine has it become that local newspapers have stopped reporting it, except when a boat capsizes or a large number of undocumented immigrants is caught. Nonetheless, Puerto Rico has become the second major entry point into U.S. territory for alien smugglers, after the land frontier with Mexico. Given the underground nature of the trips, no one knows exactly how many Dominicans have successfully crossed the Mona Passage, how many have died in the attempt, nor how many have crossed the border and moved on to the continental United States. However, the INS has variously estimated that it intercepts between 10 and 50 percent of all attempted illegal entries from the Dominican Republic. Based on this logic, an educated guess would put the total number of undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic in Puerto Rico somewhere between 60,000 and 300,000, both of which are implausibly high figures.40 My more conservative estimate, based on fieldwork in Puerto Rico, was about 20,000 for 1990, and perhaps as many as 30,000 in 1996, roughly coinciding with Robert Bach’s recent figure.41 Regardless of the precise magnitude of the undocumented flow of Dominicans to Puerto Rico, it is certainly substantial, increasing, and unregulated by U.S. authorities. The continuous violation of immigration laws undermines the capacity of the federal government

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

109

to control access to its Caribbean territories, including the U.S. Virgin Islands. Moreover, undocumented migration to Puerto Rico also raises the specter of colonial relations with the United States because the Commonwealth government does not have jurisdiction over immigration affairs; the federal government does. A recent conference on Dominican migration in Puerto Rico revealed how splintered local public officials are according to political-party affiliations. Whereas statehooders would rather not get involved in the issue, autonomists tended to reclaim more power for the Commonwealth government and proindependence supporters criticized Puerto Rico’s lack of sovereignty in immigration and other matters. Regardless of one’s political ideology, current federal legislation permits the active participation of state and local governments in many areas of public policy related to immigration.42 Increased efforts to patrol the Mona Channel between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and to control illegal departures from the Isla Verde International Airport in San Juan, have not significantly curtailed the undocumented flow. Many Dominicans continue to use Puerto Rico as a springboard to the U.S. mainland, especially New York City.43 Others manage to remain on the island after two or three aborted attempts. The traffic in undocumented immigrants has branched out into the falsification of passports, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and other documents. Although the INS has cracked down on fraudulent marriages between Dominicans and U.S. citizens, such unions of convenience are common in Puerto Rico. Few employers have been prosecuted for hiring undocumented workers in Puerto Rico since IRCA went into effect in 1986. It remains to be seen whether the new immigration and welfare laws implemented in 1997 will reduce the illegal movement of people between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Again, it would seem that such negative policy measures as denying immigrants the use of public services or reinforcing the border patrol can only have a small deterrent effect, in view of the powerful structural forces that motivate the exodus on both sides of the Mona Channel. The last section of this chapter turns to various alternative proposals designed to remove the root causes of undocumented migration in the Caribbean Basin. Toward New Collaborative Agreements and Cooperative Efforts By now, most migration scholars are convinced that international population movements cannot easily be controlled by the governments of the sending or receiving countries. Once a large-scale flow has begun,

110

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

it tends to be sustained over prolonged periods of time by social and economic factors such as transnational kinship networks and the demand for cheap labor.44 Nonetheless, the swift resolution of the Cuban balsero crisis and the persistent problem of the Dominican yoleros suggest the need for multilateral regional cooperation to reduce migratory pressures in the Caribbean. But such cooperation should move beyond formal agreements and repressive measures into collaborative efforts to improve the welfare of those most prone to move abroad. What follows is a series of practical recommendations to be considered by policymakers and analysts concerned with the security implications of undocumented migration for the sending and receiving countries. The most important policy measure is to establish appropriate development strategies to address the underlying economic causes of migration: poverty, unemployment, underemployment, declining standards of living, low wages, income maldistribution, poor public services, and related problems. Most population movements within the Caribbean Basin and elsewhere flow from the least-developed to the more-developed economies. Wide disparities in wealth, jobs, and opportunities for occupational advancement—such as those that exist between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico and the United States—encourage large-scale migration. Every year, thousands of undocumented workers move from the poorer British Virgin Islands to the wealthier U.S. Virgin Islands and from the Eastern Caribbean to the French Antilles in search of a better life. Thus, policymakers should explore every means available to foster job creation, sustain small businesses growth, provide for an equitable distribution of wealth, and ensure adequate social programs, among other objectives. A good case in point was the aggressive use of U.S. 936 funds by the Puerto Rican government to promote economic growth in the region during the 1980s. Unfortunately, such funds are no longer available. Several proposals have recently been elaborated to avoid further marginalization of Caribbean economies from the leading regional blocs within the global order.45 A special effort must be made to promote peace, stability, security, and development in Cuba and Haiti, because of their highly volatile economic and political situations. In the case of Cuba, the U.S. government would do well to reexamine its traditional Cold War policies, which have so far proven ineffective in toppling Fidel Castro’s regime. Moreover, the Cuban embargo is an obstacle to building constructive relations with other Caribbean countries. The softening of political frictions between the United States and Cuba and perhaps the normalization of their relations are better diplomatic strategies in the

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

111

long run. Even moderate sectors of the Cuban-American community, such as the Cuban Committee for Democracy, have begun to press for increased contact and negotiation between the United States and Cuba.46 As for Haiti, the United States and other countries must reluctantly maintain a peacekeeping force to ensure a smooth transition to a democratic regime and a sustainable economy. More productive investment by foreign capital and financial aid by international organizations are sorely needed to encourage the country’s economic recovery. Both Cuba and Haiti should be fully incorporated into cooperative security arrangements within the Caribbean Basin, especially those dealing with drug trafficking, money laundering, natural disaster management, and environmental pollution. With regard to migration, the existing legislation should be harmonized in the sending and receiving countries. Across the Caribbean and elsewhere, public officials often perceive immigration as a problem, whereas they usually see emigration as a solution.47 Hence, state policies in the region tend to encourage emigration while attempting to control immigration. For example, the government of the Dominican Republic approaches Haitian immigration as a security threat along its western land border but traditionally has done little to prevent illegal Dominican emigration to its eastern neighbor of Puerto Rico. Likewise, public officials in Puerto Rico often complain about Dominican immigration but rarely about Puerto Rican emigration to the U.S. mainland. The idea that emigration can serve as a safety valve for a country’s demographic and economic pressures has a long history in the Caribbean.48 The idea that immigration can threaten national and regional security is a more recent but powerful one. Yet bilateral and multilateral relations among many Caribbean countries and with the United States would certainly improve if common procedures for preventing illegal exits, repatriating undocumented immigrants, verifying travel documents, protecting the rights of legal immigrants, and so on could be agreed upon.49 My final suggestion would be to employ and strengthen existing transnational organizations to promote regional and national security in the Caribbean Basin. Despite past failures at economic and political integration, collaborative agreements and cooperative efforts can now be channeled through numerous regional institutions, such as the recently established Association of Caribbean States, the Caribbean Community and Common Market, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Caribbean Studies Association, the University of the West Indies, and the Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutes.50 Many of these institutions are strategically positioned to share assets, per-

112

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

sonnel, and information, as well as to further exchanges among representatives of the government, private enterprise, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society. It is not inconceivable that such regional cooperation may eventually facilitate legal migration within the Caribbean Basin, such that the threat of illegal aliens will no longer be a major national and security issue. Rather, as the contemporary example of the European Union suggests, the free movement of people across state borders could one day be seen as an invaluable resource for both sending and receiving countries. Notes 1. Recent essays on Caribbean security issues in the post–Cold War period include Joseph S. Tulchin, Andrés Serbín, and Rafael Hernández (eds.), Cuba and the Caribbean: Regional Issues and Trends in the Post–Cold War Era (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997); Isabel Jaramillo Edwards, “Hacia una nueva agenda de seguridad en el Caribe occidental,” paper presented at the Workshop on Cooperative Security in the Caribbean, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, June 9–10, 1997; Ivelaw L. Griffith, Caribbean Security on the Eve of the 21st Century, McNair Paper 54, Institute for National Strategic Studies (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1996); Andrés Serbín, El ocaso de las islas: El Gran Caribe frente a los desafÌos globales y regionales (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1996); Jorge Rodríguez Beruff and Humberto García Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996); Humberto García Muñiz and Jorge Rodríguez Beruff, “U.S. Military Policy Toward the Caribbean in the 1990s,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 533 (1994), pp. 112–124; and Jorge Rodríguez Beruff, “Perspectivas para la paz y la seguridad en el Caribe hacia el año 2000,” in Andrés Serbín and Anthony Bryan (eds.), El Caribe hacia el 2000 (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1991), pp. 103–137. See also Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1995: U.S. Security Challenges in Transition (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995). 2. The comments were made at “Eye of the Hurricane? A Workshop on Cooperative Security Challenges in the Caribbean Basin,” National Defense University, Washington, D.C., May 8–9, 1997. 3. The workshop on Cooperative Security in the Caribbean, organized by the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on June 9–10, 1997, confirmed this trend. See Joseph S. Tulchin, with Ralph H. Espach, “Addressing the Challenges of Cooperative Security in the Caribbean,” Peace and Security in the Americas, no. 12 (September 1997), pp. 1–8; and Griffith, Caribbean Security. 4. For a related approach to this topic, see Lilian Bobea, “Migration and Regional Security: Besieged Borders and Caribbean Diasporas” (chapter 7 of this volume). 5. Recent evidence suggests that the population of the major migrantsending countries in the Caribbean became poorer in the last decade, in-

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

113

cluding Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. See Barbara Boland, “Dinámica de la población y desarrollo en el Caribe,” Pensamiento Iberoamericano 28 (1996), pp. 57–113. 6. On the challenges of environmental security, see Andrés Serbín (ed.), Medio ambiente, seguridad y cooperación regional en el Caribe (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1992); on drugs, see Rosa del Olmo, ¿Prohibir o domesticar? Políticas de drogas en América Latina (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1992). 7. See, for instance, Andrés Serbín, El Caribe ¿zona de paz? Geopolítica, integración y seguridad (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1989); and H. Michael Erisman (ed.), The Caribbean Challenge: U.S. Policy in a Volatile Region (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984). 8. Major compilations on Caribbean migration during the 1980s included Barry B. Levine (ed.), The Caribbean Exodus (New York: Praeger, 1987); Constance R. Sutton and Elsa M. Chaney (eds.), Caribbean Life in New York City: Sociocultural Dimensions (Staten Island: Center for Migration Studies of New York, 1987); and Robert A. Pastor (ed.), Migration and Development in the Caribbean: The Unexplored Connection (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985). None of them focused explicitly on the linkages between migration and security. An exception to this trend is Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Geopolitics of Caribbean Migration: From the Cold War to the Post–Cold War,” in Rodríguez Beruff and García Muñiz, Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean, 201–224. 9. Robert Bach, “La política migratoria de los Estados Unidos,” paper presented at the conference “Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico: A Bilateral Dialogue Toward the Formulation of a Regional Immigration Policy,” University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, April 10–11, 1997. 10. For example, the U.S. Border Patrol has identified several alien and narcotics-smuggling organizations operating between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (José Flores, intelligence brief, Border Patrol Sector, Ramey, Puerto Rico, June 27, 1997). However, little research has been conducted on the relationship between undocumented migration and drug trafficking in the Caribbean. 11. Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1995, p. 180. 12. See Leo Chavez, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Migrants in American Society (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992); and Sarah J. Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 13. Saskia Sassen, “The State and the New Geography of Power: Implications for Immigration,” paper presented at the conference “Caribbean Circuits: Transnational Approaches to Migration,” Yale University, September 22–23, 1996. 14. U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility, 1994 Report to Congress (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994). 15. The commission basically recommended a program of trade and investment to create jobs, generate income, and provide technical assistance to businesses in the sending communities. To my knowledge, the U.S. Congress did not heed this advice. 16. For two opposing viewpoints on the advantages and disadvantages of continuing immigration in the United States, see Vernon W. Briggs Jr. and Stephen Moore, Still an Open Door? U.S. Immigration Policy and the American

114

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

Economy (Washington, DC: The American University Press, 1994). 17. The Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996 drastically cut public services (such as food stamps and Social Security benefits) for foreigners living in the United States, including legal immigrants and permanent residents. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 will make it more difficult for legal residents to sponsor their relatives’ migration, to apply for political asylum, and to return to the United States if deported. On the new welfare law, see Sonia Pérez and Eric Rodríguez, “Pushing Poverty: How the New Welfare Will Keep Puerto Ricans Poor,” Crítica: A Journal of Puerto Rican Policy and Politics 29 (October 1996), pp. 1, 6. 18. See Deborah Sontag, “Analysis of Illegal Immigrants in New York Defies Stereotypes,” New York Times, September 3, 1993, p. A11; for another estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, see Karen A. Woodrow and Jeffrey S. Passel, “Post-IRCA Undocumented Migration to the United States: An Assessment Based on the June 1988 CPS,” in Frank D. Bean, Barry Edmonston, and Jeffrey S. Passel (eds.), Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1990). 19. A recent poll confirmed that U.S. public opinion does not favor immigrants from the Caribbean Basin and the Middle East, particularly from Cuba and Mexico. The majority of those sampled did not believe that recent immigrants have had a positive impact on the United States. Associated Press, “Persiste, aunque menos, el rechazo a los inmigrantes,” El Nuevo Día, June 16, 1997, p. 35. 20. Antonio Aja Díaz, “Los balseros cubanos: la migración indocumentada de Cuba a los Estados Unidos,” lecture at the Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, May 2, 1997; Antonio Aja Díaz, Guillermo Milán Acosta, and Marta Díaz Fernández, “La emigración cubana de cara al futuro: estimación de su potencial y algunas reflexiones en torno a la representación de los jóvenes en su composición,” in Centro de Estudios de Alternativas Políticas, Anuario CEAP 1995: Emigración cubana (Havana: University of Havana, 1996), pp. 142–163; Ernesto Rodríguez Chávez, Emigracíon abana actual (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997). 21. Edwards, “Hacia una nueva agenda de seguridad”; for an earlier statement of this position, see Wayne S. Smith, Portrait of Cuba (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1991). 22. Félix Masud-Piloto, From Welcome Exiles to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to the United States, 1959–1995 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 130. 23. Comments by Ambassador Lionel Paquin at the “Eye of the Hurricane?” workshop held at the National Defense University in May 1997. 24. Bach, “La política migratoria de los Estados Unidos.” 25. At the workshop organized by FLACSO and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Santo Domingo in 1997, General José Noble Espejo detailed the operations of the Dominican military forces to avoid the illegal entry of Haitians to the Dominican Republic and return them to Haitian authorities. 26. The last section of the document states: “The respective governments recognize the problems associated with the practice of smuggling migrants through the region” (p. 29) and “Caribbean States intend to consider the adoption of national legislation making migrant trafficking a criminal offence” (p. 30). Caribbean/United States Summit, Bridgetown Declaration of Principles (Bridgetown, Barbados, May 10, 1997, photocopy).

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

115

27. See Masud-Piloto, From Welcome Exiles, chapter 9; Ernesto Rodríguez Chávez, “La crisis migratoria Estados Unidos–Cuba en el verano de 1994,” Cuadernos de Nuestra América 11, no. 22 (1994), pp. 4–25; Holly Ackerman and Juan M. Clark, The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty (Miami: Cuban American National Council, 1995); Milagros Martínez et al., Los balseros cubanos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1996); Jesús Arboleya, Havana Miami: The U.S.-Cuba Migration Conflict (Victoria, Australia: Ocean Press, 1996); and “The ‘Balsero’ Crisis Leads to a Resolution of the Cuban Contradiction in U.S. Refugee Policy,” anonymous manuscript submitted for possible publication to the International Migration Review, 1997. 28. Rodríguez Chávez, “El flujo emigratorio cubano,” in Rodríguez Chavez Emigracíon abana actual. 29. On Cuba’s economic crisis, see Tulchin, Serbín, and Hernández, Cuba and the Caribbean; Jorge Rodríguez Beruff (ed.), Cuba en crisis: Perspectivas económicas y políticas (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1995); Bert Hoffman (ed.), Cuba: apertura y reforma económicas (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1995); “Cuba: Adapting to a Post-Soviet World,” NACLA Report on the Americas 29, no. 2 (September 1995), pp. 6–48; Julio Carranza Valdés, Luis Gutiérrez Urdaneta, and Pedro Monreal González, Cuba: la reestructuración de la económica (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1997); and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, “Cuba: La reforma económica, la reestructuración social y la política,” Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Nueva época) 3 (1997), pp. 6–23. 30. One of the first scholars to foresee this trend was Jorge I. Domínguez, “Cooperating with the Enemy? U.S. Immigration Policies Toward Cuba,” in Christopher Mitchell (ed.), Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1992). See also Rodríguez Chávez, “El flujo emigratorio cubano.” 31. Lisandro Pérez, “¿Fin del exilio cubano?” paper presented at the XX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17–19, 1997. 32. Domínguez, “Cooperating with the Enemy?” 33. Edwards, “Hacia una nueva agenda de seguridad en el Caribe occidental”; Rafael Hernández, “Cuba and Security in the Caribbean,” in Tulchin, Serbín, and Hernández, Cuba and the Caribbean, pp. 125–140. 34. Rodríguez Chávez, “El flujo emigratorio cubano”; Aja Díaz, “Los balseros cubanos.” 35. Rodríguez Chávez, “El flujo emigratorio cubano”; Hernández, “Cuba and Security in the Caribbean.” 36. María Cristina García, Havana U.S.A.: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959–1994 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 37. See Jorge Duany (ed.), Los dominicanos en Puerto Rico: migración en la semi-periferia (Río Piedras: Huracán, 1990); Ana F. Selman Fernández, Glenés Tavarez María, and Rafael Puello Nina, “La emigración ilegal de los dominicanos hacia Puerto Rico,” El Caribe Contemporáneo 20 (1990), pp. 91– 100; Jorge Duany, Luisa Hernández Angueira, and César A. Rey, El Barrio Gandul: economía subterránea y migración indocumentada en Puerto Rico (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1995); and Vanessa Pascual, “Causas y consecuencias de la migración dominicana indocumentada en Puerto Rico,” unpublished manuscript, Río Piedras, Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1997. 38. Michael Wimberly, U.S. Border Patrol, Ramey, Puerto Rico (intelli-

116

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

gence brief, June 27, 1997); and Captain Randy Beardsworth, U.S. Coast Guard District Seven (personal communication, June 10, 1997). 39. See Duany, Hernández Angueira, and Rey, El Barrio Gandul, especially chapter 7, for more details. For a recent article on this topic in a Dominican periodical, see Suanny Reynoso, “En Puerto Rico se quejan de poca colaboración dominicana en viajes ilegales,” Sucesos 162 (May 1997), pp. 26–28. 40. In 1992, the INS estimated 50,800 undocumented Dominicans living in the entire United States, half of whom resided in New York State. Sontag, “Analysis of Illegal Immigrants.” 41. Bach, “La política migratoria de los Estados Unidos.” 42. Palmira Ríos, “¿Una política migratoria para Puerto Rico? Elementos para un debate nacional en torno al fenémeno migratorio,” paper presented at the Preliminary Seminar for the Conference on Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico: A Bilateral Dialogue for the Formulation of a Regional Immigration Policy, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, December 6, 1996. 43. Only one-third of the respondents in a recent study of undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic was deported from the San Juan airport, trying to reach their final destination, New York City. Selman Fernández, Tavarez María, and Puello Nina, “La emigración ilegal de los dominicanos hacia Puerto Rico,” p. 96. 44. For two recent attempts to summarize the extensive migration literature on a worldwide scale, see Aaron Segal, An Atlas of International Migration (London: Hans Zell, 1993); and Robin Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 45. See Hilbourne A. Watson (ed.), The Caribbean in the Global Political Economy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Carmen Diana Deere et al., In the Shadows of the Sun: Caribbean Development Alternatives and U.S. Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990); and Norman Girvan and George Beckford (eds.), Development in Suspense: Selected Papers and Proceedings of the First Conference of Caribbean Economists (Kingston, Jamaica: Friedrich Ebert Stifung, 1989). 46. See Mauricio A. Font, “Shift in U.S. Policy Toward Cuba,” Cuban Affairs [Asuntos cubanos] 2, nos. 3–4 (fall 1996), pp. 1, 6–7. Recent polls of the Cuban-American community in Miami show that a growing number of respondents supports some form of dialogue with the Cuban government on such matters as human rights, travel, elections, and communications. At the same time, a large majority of those polled favors increasing economic pressure on Cuba, tightening the trade embargo, maintaining no diplomatic relations, and supporting military action against the Cuban government. See Guillermo J. Grenier, Hugh Gladwin, and Douglas McLaughen, Views on Policy Options Toward Cuba Held by Cuban-American Residents of Dade County, Florida: The Results of the Second 1991 Cuba Poll (Miami: Institute of Public Opinion Research, Florida International University, 1991). 47. Among other scholars, David Bray made this point in “The Dominican Exodus: Origins, Problems, Solutions,” in Barry B. Levine (ed.), The Caribbean Exodus (New York: Praeger, 1987), pp. 152–170. 48. See Jorge Duany, “Beyond the Safety Valve: Recent Trends in Caribbean Migration,” Social and Economic Studies 43, no. 1 (1994), pp. 95–122. 49. As the Dominican Ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Vega, stated at the FLACSO–Woodrow Wilson Center workshop mentioned earlier, extradition is now the main issue in U.S.-Dominican relations. The ambassador sharply criticized the current U.S. policy of deporting immigrant criminals back to the Dominican Republic.

THE FEAR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

117

50. Two recent attempts to understand the possibilities and limitations of regional integration are Andrés Serbín, “Towards an Association of Caribbean States: Raising Some Awkward Questions,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 36, no. 4 (1994), pp. 61–90; and Lourdes María Regueiro Bello, “La integración latinoamericana: apuntes para un debate,” Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Nueva época) 3 (1997), pp. 110–134.

7 Migration and Regional Security: Besieged Borders and Caribbean Diasporas Lilian Bobea

There is a consensus in recent literature about Caribbean foreign relations that the end of the Cold War presents the region with new challenges in the area of security.1 If, during the Cold War, Caribbean geopolitics were largely defined by United States objectives, especially the neutralization of political and ideological adversaries, this new stage has seen a fundamental change in security concerns, one that obliges states in the region to orient their policies toward new or newly important challenges and conflicts. Paramount among these challenges are drug trafficking and unauthorized migration, the latter phenomenon being dichotomized into the categories of political refugees and economic migrants.2 Thus the post–Cold War period brings with it a critical change in the conceptualization both of security and of geopolitics with the recognition of new actors and processes. In present times, the Caribbean has lost the privileged condition it enjoyed vis-à-vis the United States. The change can be seen in the termination of the special immigration status for Cuban refugees, the elimination of Law 936 in Puerto Rico, a major incentive to investment in the region, and the refusal of the United States to grant parity to Caribbean manufacturers forced to compete with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Concomitant with these processes reshaping the geopolitics of the region, emerging political instabilities, as in the case of Haiti, and social polarization have provoked the exacerbation of a historically constant phenomenon: migration. Population movements have played a mayor role reshaping the perception of state boundaries, challenging the concept of sovereignty and redefining social values in communities abroad. In general terms, “never before has international migration seemed so pertinent to national security.” 3 These new trends have made migration an issue of internal security for 119

120

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

recipient states in Europe and North America. For the sending countries too, facing the potential social and economic consequences of an abrupt, massive, and compulsory reversal of the diaspora, migration must also be a key security concern. While it is clearly possible to argue, then, that migration is and should be a major security issue for states, this chapter will seek to redefine security from a perspective that goes beyond traditional, statecentric approaches. It has to do more with the precarious conditions of security for the thousands of people who embark on risky and often deadly journeys as a desperate response to lack of hope in their countries of origin. I will approach Caribbean security by deemphasizing military and strategic concerns and focusing instead on the social and nongovernmental dimension of migration and drug trafficking. Migration in the Context of National Security Issues While international migration has been traditionally considered a major element of production at the level of the global economy by economists and sociologists, the phenomenon has not received the same attention in the field of international relations (IR). The most relevant category within IR refers to millions of displaced and resettled people around the world as political refugees. One reason for the myopia of IR in this regard is its overriding concern for states and interstate relations and corresponding deemphasis of processes that transgress state boundaries and evade state control. However, in a context of increasing transnationalization of economies, policies, and culture, new political identities emerge that in some ways undermine the monopoly of the nation-state over political action.4 In questioning the domination of the nation-state, the new logic of transnationalized activities and deterritorialized identities blur the idea of “internal and external” 5 and consequently jeopardize traditional notions of security based on national interest. This approach also emphasizes the fact that nonstate actors play a more decisive role in influencing the domestic and foreign policies of states. Nonstate actors should be understood as the dynamic social networks, composed of extended families, interest groups, and political communities, located in the countries that receive Caribbean immigrants, above all the United States. They also include the clandestine transnational circuits that move people and contraband from country to country, within and without the Caribbean. In light of the importance of nonstate actors today, it is problematic to define Caribbean security from a state-centered perspective.

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

121

For many countries of the region, the various diaspora are an expression of institutional weakness and a crisis of state legitimacy. The fact is that the states of the region have been unable to guarantee the social, economic, and political security of their citizens. Here the word security has a different meaning from that employed in usual analyses of regional security. While the concept of national security and defense traditionally assumes the internal homogenization of different identities as a prerequisite for the strengthening of the state and the project of nation building, I suggest that deterritorialized constituencies, fragmented identities, vulnerable borders, and overlapping jurisdictions call into question the vision of the nation-state as the only subject of security threats.6 From this point of view, two dimensions of population movement and its effect in the security realm will be considered here: (1) the effect that the construction of transnational politics has for sending and receiving societies,7 and (2) the impacts of the uncontrolled movement of immigrants for both the receiving and sending societies. The emergence of political groups, parties, and forces in receiving nations such as the United States that try to influence domestic and international politics related to their countries of origin is not a new phenomenon, as the history of Irish and German immigrants in the United States in the last century shows. Neither are we suggesting that in most cases, developments of this sort mean a challenge against the national identity of the sending states. However, what has to be pointed out is that in traditional conceptualizations of international relations, foreign policies, and interstate relationships, the emphasis put by states on their official institutions obscures the real impacts that nonstate actors and noninstitutional logic have on the control that those states have over their territories and citizens.8 Transnationalizing Politics The increase of international population movements reflects the disenchantment, desperation, and search for alternatives of marginalized sectors confronting a crisis of political and social insertion in their countries of origin. These movements have also created transnational political groups that are increasingly influential as a bridge between the two societies, tying together diaspora and home communities through their shared cultures and interests. Several cases provide particular examples of this phenomenon. Politically active sectors within the Haitian diaspora in the U.S., for example, constitute the “Tenth Department” of Haiti, a political, social, and cultural community that has a profound effect on events in

122

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

Haiti, especially in the political transition of the past decade. The congressional Black Caucus became a voice of the expatriate Haitians, forcefully criticizing repatriation and the economic embargo. Likewise, the Dominican community in New York is gaining an important political space. In 1991, Dominicans succeeded in gaining political control of District 10 in Manhattan as a consequence of strong geographic concentration. In the 1996 elections, they elected the first Dominican member of the state assembly. Meanwhile, Dominicans in New York maintain ties to and great influence on politics in the Dominican Republic, constituting one of the most important sources of fundraising for political parties on the island. According to Graham, the multiple national context in which immigrants incorporate in political terms calls into question again the centrality of the state as “the enclosure constitutive of politics” and “which tends to equate the existence of political communities to the existence of the state.” 9 This phenomenon has been reinforced by the naturalization of many members of the community and ultimately by access to dual citizenship. The Cuban case is even more outstanding. The weight of this community has for many years determined, to a certain extent, U.S. foreign policy toward the government of Cuba. A recent controversial issue was the toughening of the embargo by the Helms-Burton Act with implications for multilateral actors. Some studies of political incorporation of migrants suggest that the diaspora political communities are linked, through their political relationship, to more than one nation-state. Pamela Graham uses the term simultaneity to refer to activities that transcend the nation-state scenario and borders, allowing immigrants to gain visibility and make themselves potentially influential. New Pressures Versus Old Conflicts—Resolution Responses Changes in the composition, directionality, and size of population movements have led to drastic changes in immigration policies in countries such as the United States, promoting changes at the level of foreign policy in the Caribbean. In his remarkable work on Caribbean maritime security, Michael Morris highlights migration issues as one of the sources of conflicts among states. The author calls attention to the impact that boat people have provoked in enforcing measures from the United States to control the flows within U.S. territorial areas and being intrusive in foreign territorial waters.

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

123

The strategies adopted to control the new Caribbean diasporas continue to rest largely on the application of inappropriate measures of conventional military responses. From the variety of options available to resolve the issue of “boat people”—illegal migrants by sea, often on crude, homemade crafts—including negotiation, summits, and treaties, the U.S. government has favored the use of military pressures and interdiction combine with economic sanctions and political pressures. As Morris correctly remarks, the persistence of mismanaged conflicts—as the case of Dominican Republic–Haiti disagreement on the massive flow of Haitian migrants to the D.R.—burdens regional foreign policies and constrains possibilities for cooperation.10 This has been particularly the case with the modification of the exceptional status of Cuban and Haitian refugees as a reaction to the “boat people” crisis. These two cases can be considered turning points, given the implications for both the ethnic communities in the United States and the political impact in the sending countries. In the case of Haiti, an interdiction program was developed successfully after 1981, when the annual outflow recorded 15,000 boat people. The diaspora reached its highest level in 1993 when approximately 40,000 people fled Haiti. U.S. authorities adopted a compulsory repatriation policy that contradicted the strategy developed to resolve the internal conflict during the political transitional crisis. Between 1991 and 1992, around 36,000 Haitians were interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to their country. The refugee crisis pushed the United States to seek a political solution through the return of deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This time, however, Washington had to look for the approval of domestic forces, and particularly the Haitian resident community, as well as a for minimal consensus from sectors of the international community, in order to implement the measures. The United States exerted pressure over other nations, including some in the Caribbean, to resettle part of the refugee population, adding new elements to the already conflictive scenario. The Unwanted and Undocumented For obvious reasons, it is not easy to quantify the volume of undocumented migrants that leave the Caribbean region. Nevertheless, the number of those apprehended in transit, repatriated, or who overstay their visas gives some idea of the dimensions of the exodus. By October 1992, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) recorded the top ten countries of origin of undocumentary migrants in the United States; four are in the Caribbean.

124

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

It is symptomatic that countries such as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, historically beneficiaries of some U.S. economic and commercial initiatives, with better economic conditions than Haiti and more political stability than Central America, still show very high volumes of immigration. Each year, thousands of Dominicans of different social classes, but especially the poor, flaunt the law and risk their lives by undertaking the perilous crossing from Hispaniola to Puerto Rico. In 1995 alone, the INS estimated that nearly 20,000 Dominicans crossed the Mona Pass each year. It appears to be a significant discrepancy between these figures and the U.S. Coast Guard estimates. According to the Coast Guard, in 1995 they intercepted and repatriated around 7,000 people in the passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.11 In 1994, the volume of Haitian citizens arrested and repatriated surpassed 26,000. In the case of the Cubans, 1994 was a year of record outflow of unauthorized immigrants: the Table 7.1 Undocumented Immigration: Ten Fastest-Growing Countries, Annual Average, 1988–1992 All Countries Mexico El Salvador Guatemala Italy Bahamas Canada Haiti Honduras Dominican Republic Trinidad & Tobago

292,000 118,000 20,000 15,000 12,000 11,000 10,000 10,000 5,000 5,000 5,000

Source: U.S. Coast Guard annual reports.

Table 7.2 Aliens Apprehended in Fiscal Year 1992 All Countries Mexico El Salvador Dominican Republic Canada Guatemala Honduras Colombia Jamaica China Cuba Source: U.S. Coast Guard reports.

1,258,482 1,205,817 7,433 7,361 6,569 5,614 4,186 2,023 1,805 1,395 965

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

125

Coast Guard intercepted around 38,500. Dominicans present a more consistent pattern for the undocumented flow. For the last five years, between 3,500 and 5,000 undocumented immigrants have been caught every year trying to cross by yola to reach Puerto Rico12 (see Figure 7.1 and Table 7.3). During the last four months of 1996 and the beginning of 1997, at least every other day one event of interdiction occurred, usually involving 20 to 100 people. As the current chronology reveals, Bahamians, Cubans, and Dominicans created a more or less permanent and evidently unstoppable flow of illegal traffic (see Table 7.4). Despite the high cost of the illegal voyages and the real physical danger they entail, many immigrants try several times before arriving unapprehended in Puerto Rico. It is not unusual for the so-called mojados to be repatriated more than five or six times.13 Given the hazards that the undocumented face, what government structures, technological resources, enforcement mechanisms, and prosecution strategies can stop the flow from the Caribbean to the United States? In the United States there is a tendency to look on processes and networks that escape state regulation and suppression as linked. That may explain the proclivity of U.S. officials to consider undocumented immigration circuits as related to other forms of international organized crime, such as drug and arms trafficking. There is not a clear correlation among these clandestine flows, however, even though the same routes and even networks might be used for some activities. Another way in which unauthorized migration and contraband flows challenge state authority has to do with the fact that more and more officials posted at points of control between sending and receiving states have been found to be part of mafias and illegal networks.14 From the perspective of the sending countries, the growing undocumented population living abroad constitutes a parallel system of loyalties and authority that escapes the legal framework and system of control that states normally exercise over their citizens. The vulnerability of borders to the thousands of undocumented migrants who transgress them puts in stark relief the two definitions of security we are suggesting here: the security of the system versus the security of individuals or, to put the same thing a different way, the security of the state in contrast to the security of nonstate actors. While states take forceful measures to control their borders, they continue to generate or tolerate conditions of poverty and marginalization that prompt illegal migration. This results in a polarization between the logic of states, which are preoccupied above all with the imperatives of regulating their territory and making their borders impermeable, and the vision of their citizens, who break the state’s

Figure 7.1 Undocumented Immigrants Apprehended Attempted to Reach Puerto Rico 5000

4000

Dominicans Interdicted by the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard, as of 11 Oct. 1996 4364

3551

3962

3835

3587

3204

3000

USBP USCG

2000

1000

0

694

FY 1992

40000

937

635

FY 1993

371 FY 1994

FY 1995

FY 1996

Cubans Interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard, as of 11 Oct. 1996 38500

35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0

2251 FY 1992

2830 FY 1993

371 FY 1994

542

FY 1995

347

FY 1996

Oct.

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

621 876 1,086 746 28 75 481 366 334 277 160 31 983 1,228 1,727 1,143

Nov. Dec.

417 1,147 1,012 40 175 60 256 227 179 713 1,549 1,251

Sept.

Jun.

315 1,031 1,311 319 324 150 174 185 98 808 1,540 1,559

Apr. May. 165 618 150 357 144 100 459 1,075

205 111 438 754

Jul. Aug. Sept. 362 20 284 666

Oct. 532 100 292 924

13 Dominican immigrants intercepted 8 miles southeast of Cabo Engano 164 Dominicans, 20 miles south of Isla Mona 3 Cubans, 12 miles south of Florida 8 immigrants from Bahamas, 8 miles east of Boca Raton, FL 5 immigrants from Cuba 10 immigrants from Bahamas, close to Miami 14 Cubans, 12 miles southeast of Isla Mona in an 18-foot boat 28 Cubans, 20 miles south of Key Largo, FL 4 Cubans, 8 miles east of Marathon Key, FL, a 12-foot boat 9 Dominicans, 8 miles west of Punta Higuero, P.R., in a 20-foot yola 20 Dominicans, 20 miles north Borinquen, P.R. 60–100 Dominicans, 7 miles south of Isla Saona, D.R., in a 50-foot yola 64 Dominicans, 17 miles north of Cabo Macoris, in a 39-foot yola 43 Chinese, 140 miles north of the Guatica peninsula, in a 64-foot vessel 108 Dominicans, 35 miles west-northwest of Borinquen, in a 50-foot yola 15 Cubans, close to Caysal Bank, in a 20-foot vessel 5 Guyanese, 20 miles east of Fort Lauderdale, FL, in a 24-foot craft 80 Dominicans, 5 miles east of Bahia Borinquen, P.R., in a 32-foot yola 5 Cubans, near Key West, FL 6 Cubans, 25 miles south of Marathon, FL

Source: U.S. Coast Guard, District 7, Miami.

Nov. 16 Nov. 20 Nov. 25 Dec. 3 Dec. 13 Dec. 16 Dec. 27 Dec. 31 Jan. 5 Jan. 5 Jan. 11 Jan. 27 Jan. 28 Jan. 30 Feb. 5 Feb. 7 Feb. 10 Mar. 7 Mar. 7 Mar. 10

Jan.

275 769 100 120 93 221 468 1,100

Nov. Dec.

Table 7.4 Coast Guard Operation Highlights—Immigrant Interdiction from November 1996 Through March 1997

Source: U.S. Coast Guard Reports, District 7, Miami.

Interdiction Turnbacks Successful crossings Attempted crossings

Event

Table 7.3 Number of Events by Month and Type of Outcome at the Mona Passage (Sept. 1995 to Feb. 1997)

177 0 46 223

Feb.

128

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

paradigmatic control through the sheer volume and persistence of their flight from the region. This distinction between state policies and social processes reflects the fact that states continue to rely on an instrumental logic and coercive strategies to confront what are, essentially, social phenomena. A more accurate definition of security would take into account the social conditions in which populations likely to migrate are forced to live. Migration, Security, and Social Processes For Caribbean countries, the surge in migration over the past two decades must be seen in relation to two processes: 1. The deterioration of social and economic conditions for the majority of the population in the region, including workers, the unemployed, and the middle classes. This deterioration has taken place in a context of globalization of production and macroeconomic reform. The increases of poverty and the openness of these economies are important push factors, as the New York Times highlighted recently in an interview with a Dominican preparing to make the dangerous trip to Puerto Rico. “It’s not that I want to go, but that I have to. I’ve got five kids, and I’m not even able to give them what they need for breakfast.” 15 2. Sociopolitical factors also stimulate exodus. They relate to the precarious articulation between the states and their societies that has created a crisis of governability and social instability reflected in the deterioration of the rights of citizenship. The position of Caribbean states toward unauthorized migration is complicated by the changing economic effects of migration for the country of departure. On one hand, the ongoing migration from the Caribbean puts in doubt the legitimacy of many governments and their models of economic development. On the other hand, these same governments are forced to recognize the important economic role played by migrant communities abroad. Thus, Caribbean states assume a contradictory discourse, criticizing illegal immigration and seeking to prevent it, despite the fact that many of their economies are sustained by remittances from migrants, both documented and undocumented. For example, in the Dominican Republic in 1986, the average remittance per capita was US$408, at a time when the per capita GNP was only US$730. In 1996 the contribution of remittances

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

129

almost equalled tourism as the main source of foreign exchange. The Dominican economy, and the economies of many if not most Caribbean societies, would not be viable without such remittances. Citizenship Versus Identity The contradiction of a state-centered approach to nonstate phenomena is evident in another area: the legal status of migrants. For many of the new immigrants, their precarious status in the receiving countries, especially the United States, leaves them in a type of legal limbo. Until recently, Caribbean states have not encouraged their nationals to become citizens of their new homelands. In the face of increasing hostility to both legal and undocumented immigrants, however, as reflected in California’s Proposition 187 and provisions of the recently signed welfare law that denies social services to permanent residents, those policies are changing. Mexico and the Dominican Republic have encouraged members of diaspora communities to become United States citizens. As Robert Smith at Columbia University has noted, encouraging migrants to obtain United States citizenship is an attempt to “institutionalize the diaspora.”16 The new atmosphere in the United States has, in a sense, forced Caribbean states to choose between retaining nominal juridical control over their overseas population and risking a diminished economic role for this group. It is telling that states are willing to sacrifice legal control in order to maintain the economic links to diaspora communities. The issue of the juridical status of immigrants raises the question of their cultural identity as well. Without making identity an abstract and essentialized category, it is worth noting that in most cases immigrants have been able to construct a new identity without assuming citizenship in the country that receives them. The contraposition of identity and citizenship indicates that, on one hand, the transnationalized populations don’t have a fixed and predefined identity and, on the other, that the states of the region lack a legal category adequate to these polynational communities. The flexibility of the self-image of the immigrants contrasts with the rigid focus on citizenship by governments. While the initiatives taken by Jamaica, Barbados, Aruba, and, most recently, the Dominican Republic regarding dual citizenship have to be seen as efforts to improve the legal status of migrants, the change is not per se a catalyst for major improvements in their social and political status in the host society.

130

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

Challenges In keeping with our focus on nonstate actors, we can observe that improved social and economic conditions in the Caribbean, while not automatically lowering migration rates, would certainly be a disincentive to migration.17 Unfortunately, in the near future the likelihood of significant economic improvement in the region is not very great. Cuts in aid programs, the redirection of U.S. investment away from the Caribbean, and the dismantling of structures such as Law 936 in Puerto Rico will put even more economic pressure on Caribbean societies. That pressure will result in more tension within these societies and a sharpening distinction between the approaches to security of the state and its citizens. We can also anticipate increased friction between the states of the region as a result of the massive displacement of undocumented populations, for example, from Haiti to the Dominican Republic or from the latter country to Puerto Rico and the United States. These frictions are made worse due to the lack of clear migration policies and noncoercive institutional mechanisms to deal with population movements. Conclusion Migration should be one of the most important issues in a more inclusive discussion of regional security that focuses on human as well as strategic concerns. News summaries of a 1996 OAS meeting on Caribbean security, however, did not even mention the question of migration.18 In the current atmosphere, bringing migration to the center of debates about security would raise several basic questions for the countries of the region. As Castles and Miller point out, the massive flow of people moving from different origins deserves more close attention from governments of sending societies because stopping unwanted immigration is increasingly regarded by receiving governments as essential for safeguarding social peace.19 Some basic points have to be made regarding these trends. For receiving countries, migration is increasingly seen as a threat to internal security. In the United States, the outcome has been the militarization of the issue. New budgets are oriented to more effective patrolling and interdiction activities. The unorthodox legal position of transnational migrant communities raises questions about the meaning of sovereignty and the

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

131

definition of borders. The U.S. INS has begun to patrol in upper Manhattan, turning this internal zone into a type of borderland. Similarly, the presence of INS, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and other U.S. officials inside Caribbean countries makes borders themselves translocal. Many of these measures have been implemented in the absence of bilateral agreements. Instead, they represent preemptive steps by the United States that militarize the issue and obviate diplomatic remedies. In the absence of reciprocal policies regarding immigration, another serious problem for sending countries is the potential effect of a “reverse diaspora.” Under immigration and antiterrorism laws approved in the late 1990s, the United States is deporting an unprecedented number of both undocumented and legal aliens convicted of crimes. According to the INS, 33,159 aliens were deported during the 1996 fiscal year. The goal expressed by authorities was to exceed 62,000 deportations during 1997.20 This “reverse diaspora” is expected to have negative impacts in societies highly dependent on remittances generated by the working community abroad and with a limited capacity to absorb a massive new demand for employment to resolve criminal cases. Taking into account the broader definition of security that we suggest here and the key role of migration within that new framework, a more aggressive effort is needed to establish a cooperative, intergovernmental approach to migration and security that recognizes the human dimension of these issues. The establishment of bilateral agreements with provisions to prevent massive deportations of people settled for years in the host societies would be one positive step toward a nonmilitary solution. Despite the recent changes in the immigration laws in the United States, few countries in the region have established mechanisms to maintain contacts with their citizens and communities abroad. Initiatives such as the one proposed by the Dominican government for “the protection of the Dominicans abroad” should be further developed. Regional Integration and Multilateral Actors As has been pointed out in the framework of the security problems mentioned, the meaning of sovereignty, both in the political and economic realms, has changed.21 The states of the region have been compelled to reconfigure institutional structures to address transnational activities. In doing so, the very concept of nation-state identity is called into question. Among the most important issues are the following:

132

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

1. The overlapping jurisdictions that dual citizenship generates 2. The reprisals against states that refuse to allow the United States to enter their territorial waters to make interdictions (in the case of Barbados) 3. The reticence of some states to agree to the extradition of their nationals despite pressure from external actors 4. The pressure on sending societies as a consequence of the repatriation of thousands of criminals from the United States (for example, the unexpected return of 5,000 delinquents to the Dominican Republic) 5. The reduction of flow of remittances following the deportation of the nonauthorized immigrants 6. The overlapping of jurisdictions, such as the United States seeking to station police and drug agents within the sending societies The migration issue reveals the weakness of civil society relative to national government throughout the region and the inability of national governments and regional interstate organizations to propel integration in the political and social realms. From the perspective of Caribbean states, regional integration could be a way to deal with the problems pointed out here. In spite of some steps toward integration, however, the situation of the region today does not encourage social and political cooperation, but instead defines integration through market liberalization that actually increases competition among Caribbean states. It is thus crucial to incorporate economic security and cooperative efforts to deal with migratory pressures into integrationist initiatives. Finally, the migration dynamic has to be seen in a twofold perspective: On one hand, it has to be recognized that “in an increasingly international economy it is difficult to open borders for movements of information, commodities and capital and yet close them to people, since global circulation of investment and know-how always means movements of people too.” 22 On the other hand, a realistic long-term reduction of international displacement of population has to be based on sustained growth and improved standards of living in less developed countries. The factors that displace people from their places of origin are the rigidities of the political and social structures of the sending societies. Durable solutions to illegal population flows should not be confined to border control but rather extended to: 1. The development of policy assistance designed to help returning migrants be incorporated into their countries through training and investment incentives

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

133

2. The investment of resources oriented to training the labor force in the region and improving their incorporation into regional labor markets 3. The design of mechanisms to promote the investment of remittances in developmental initiatives 4. Improved channels for local participation of people in policymaking and monitoring government expenditures and promotion of citizenship education to improve democracy 5. Modernizing foreign establishments to play more professional and effective roles within the international-relations system Notes 1. Anthony Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); Robert Pastor, “The U.S. and the Caribbean: The Power of the Whirlpool,” in Anthony Maingot (ed.), Trends in U.S.-Caribbean Relations, The Annals of Political Science, vol. 533, May 1994; Rosenau, James N., “Hurricanes Are Not the Only Intruders: The Caribbeanian Era of Global Turbulance” in Michael Desch, Jorge Domínguez, and Andrés Serbín, From Pirates to Drug Lords: The Post–Cold War Caribbean Security Environment (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Jorge Rodriguez Beruff, “Challenges to Peace and Security in the Post–Cold War Caribbean,” in Jorge Rodriguez Beruff, and Humberto García Muñiz, Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan Press, 1996). 2. In recent years, official documents from the U.S. government include the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the list of countries with the highest traffic of narcotics. During the last year, however, U.S. and Dominican governments have made important agreements on regulating drug traffic through the Caribbean. The Dirección Nacional de Control de Drogas (DNCD) and the DEA have established new Coast Guard posts. The DNCD obtained US$3,875,850 from the U.S. government, although the U.S. aid reduction to the Latin American military forces fell from US$222 million in 1990 to $15.8 million in 1995 (Hoy, September 28, 1996; El Nacional, November 11, 1995). 3. The suggested connection between migration and security is not new, however. Some authors concur in pointing out that emigration from countries in the Caribbean—promoted by the U.S. government during the 1960s—played a role in maintaining social and political stability in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica and helping anti-Castro Cubans to settle in Miami. 4. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (New York: The Gulford Press, 1993). 5. Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994). 6. The blurring of spatial boundaries—porous frontiers, as Stephen J. Rosow says—brings with it the decomposition of the interaction schemas among individuals, the reconstitution of their identities from the relevance that, in the vision of the migrant, take on the distinction of gender, racial,

134

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

ethnic, and class dimensions. This, at the same time, helps to conform new ways of interaction with the new social reality wherein they incorporate, transforming the social and political space that greets or refuses them. “Boundaries Crossing: Critical Theories of Global Economy,” in Stephen J. Rosow, Naeem Inayatullah, and Mark Rupert (eds.), The Global Economy as Political Space (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994). 7. Ivelaw L. Griffith suggests thinking about security in terms of “the protection and preservation of a people’s freedom from external military attack and coercion, freedom from internal subversion, and from the erosion of cherished political, economic, and social values. The Quest for Security in the Caribbean: Problems and Promises in Subordinate States (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), p. 11. 8. Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc, Nation Unbound. These anthropologists and social scientists define transnationalism as a process by which “migrants, through their daily life activities and social, economic, and political relations, create social fields that cross national boundaries.” They also point out that “by living their lives across borders, transmigrants find themselves confronted with and engaged in the nation-building processes of two or more nation-states,” p. 22. Here I assume this conceptualization for the sake of defining transnational politics as the creation and recreation of cross-national political space and institutions such as political communities, parties, and activities that connect both sending and receiving societies in the political realm. As Michael Mann, Henry Lefebre, and other authors have remarked, the historical process of subordination of the society to the state, as well as the circumscription of territorial space by the concept of the nation, was constructed through a process of cultural homogenization in which the social reality was assumed as something preconstructed and taken for granted. In opposition to this instrumental vision, the phenomenon of migration acquires significance as a catalyst of the process of differentiation and liberalization of the social space from this territorial/statal content. 9. Pamela Graham, “Political Incorporation and Reincorporation: Simultaneity in the Dominican Migrant Experience,” paper presented at the Conference on Transnational Communities and the Political Economy of New York in the 1990s, The New School for Social Research, February 21–22, 1997. 10. Michel A. Morris, Caribbean Maritime Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). 11. The circuit of smuggling involves a broader spectrum of nationals from Far East countries such as China, Pakistan, Korea, and India, in addition to those coming from the intra-Caribbean flow, especially from Cuba and Haiti. 12. While the real estimates of undocumented population and unauthorized flows tend to be exaggerated by the general perceptions of people from the receiving society, it is true that in the case of Puerto Rico, more than 90 percent of the undocumented immigrants tend to be Dominicans. The immigration service from this neighbor island reported the repatriation of 6,214 nonauthorized immigrants in 1995, 1,703 more than the year before. 13. The case of Andres Ventura del Villar, captured eleven times trying to arrive in Puerto Rico, is not so spectacular as it is pathetic. 14. In 1995, a Honduran official of the immigration service accused at least eleven people from the staff, including ambassadors, of being involved in delictual acts of falsification. The same occurred in the Dominican Re-

BESIEGED BORDERS AND DIASPORAS

135

public, where a “mafia” was dismantled inside the immigration office at the beginning of the year. In the United States, several cases of the factual participation of officials in criminal activities related to the illegal entrance of immigrants have been revealed. 15. New York Times, December 10, 1996, p. 8. 16. Robert C. Smith. “Transnational Migration, Assimilation and Political Community” in Margaret E. Graham and Alberto V. (eds.), The City and the World: New York in the Global Context (forthcoming), p. 10. The author points out the fact that the sending states’ attempts to institutionalize diasporas have come as a result of the U.S. influence in the Latin American and Caribbean region as well as the increasing importance and impact on remittances and political support for those states. 17. During the six months after the elections in the Dominican Republic and the establishment of the new government of Leonel Fernandez, the number of attempts to cross into Puerto Rico dropped from 1,559 attempts in June 1996 to 223 attempts in February 1997, according to U.S. Coast Guard reports. While this trend may also be related to the enforcement of U.S. antiimmigrant measures during the same period, it seems more likely to correlate with the expectation of Dominicans for economic and social changes. 18. Listin Diario, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, October 19, 1996. 19. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (New York: Guilford Press, 1996). 20. INS general counsel David Martin in the Village Voice, October 22, 1996. 21. FLACSO—Dominican Republic symposium “Toward a Sociopolitical Agenda to the Caribbean,” Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 1995. 22. Castles and Miller, The Age of Migration.

8 Drugs and the Emerging Security Agenda in the Caribbean Ivelaw L. Griffith

The drug phenomenon in the Caribbean is not simply a problem of social deviance; it affects the roots, stems, branches, and fruits of societal existence in the region, striking at the very maintenance of civil society. In other words, drugs present a threat to the security of Caribbean states. But what really is it about the issue of drugs that makes it a security matter? One useful way to respond to this question is to probe the dynamics of the region’s security landscape and examine the manifestations of the drug phenomenon. Doing this obliges us to come to terms with several realities of the contemporary Caribbean. This chapter addresses four of those realities. Reality Number One: Security Is Multidimensional Increasingly among scholars and policymakers around the world, the traditional realist conceptual lenses used to view security are being replaced by other, nonconventional, often eclectic, ones. Yet, for scholars dealing with the Caribbean, the nonconventionality itself has been the convention. Security has not been seen just as protection from military threats. It is not just military hardware, although it involves this; it is not just military force, although it could involve this; and it is not simply traditional military activity, although it certainly encompasses it. Security is multidimensional, with military, political, economic, and environmental dimensions. As might be expected, there is variation among countries as regards the perception of the scope and gravity of threats and apprehensions. The Caribbean approach to security has also differed from the conventional approach when it comes to the issue of the security “theater.” Evidence of this lies in the fact that security not only is concerned with 137

138

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

protection from actual and potential external threats, but the internal arena is also part of its purview. Moreover, the prevailing view does not focus only on the state as the unit of analysis. Nonstate actors are equally important. Indeed, some nonstate actors hold or can mobilize more economic and miliary assets that some states in the Caribbean. For instance, the operating budgets of Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and other cruise operators in the Caribbean are bigger than the budgets of several of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries combined. In addition, some of the nonstate actors in the region act in ways that are inimical to the security interests of states in the region.1 Even a cursory examination of the region’s landscape would reveal a second reality: that the nature, scope, and gravity of drug phenomenon justify the assertion made by the West Indian Commission in 1992: “Nothing poses greater threats to civil society in [Caribbean] countries than the drug problem, and nothing exemplifies the powerlessness of regional governments more.” 2 As a matter of fact, as will be seen later, in many respects the situation has worsened since 1992. Reality Number Two: Drugs Are the Primary Threat There is near-universal agreement among Caribbean officials that the top security concern in the region relates to drugs. The drug phenomenon involves drug production, consumption and abuse, trafficking, and money laundering. However, it is trafficking that best highlights the region’s strategic value. Aspects of the region’s geography make it conducive to drug trafficking. Most Caribbean countries are island states. Some are plural island territories; one—the Bahamas—is an archipelago of 700 islands and 2,000 cays. This island character permits entry into and use of Caribbean territories from scores, sometimes hundreds, of different places from the surrounding sea. The Caribbean also has the misfortune of being geographically close to South America, a major drug supply source, and to North America, a major drug demand area. On the supply side, the world’s cocaine is produced in South America, and a significant amount of its heroin and marijuana also comes from South and Central America. On the demand side, the United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s single largest drug-consuming nation. In 1995, for example, the U.S. drug czar estimated that about 300 metric tons of the approximately 575 metric tons of cocaine available worldwide in 1994 were consumed in the United States.3

DRUGS AND SECURITY

139

Nevertheless, the drugs trafficked through the Caribbean are not all destined for North America generally or the United States specifically. As the European Union has acknowledged, Europe is also a huge drug-consuming area. Despite the relatively great distance between that continent and the Caribbean region, the Caribbean is a major conduit for cocaine, heroin, and marijuana bound for Europe. Several reasons explain this. One is proximity between the Caribbean and South America. A second reason relates to commercial, communications, and other linkages between Europe and the Caribbean that facilitate trafficking.4 A glimpse at drug seizures in the mid-1990s provides a picture of the scope and scale of trafficking. In January 1993, 2,761 pounds of cocaine—worth some US$17 million—were seized in St. Vincent following a raid on a residence in Glamorgan, just outside Kingstown, the country’s capital. In July 1993, 26.5 kilos of cocaine, worth about TT (Trinidad and Tobago)$35 million, were seized at Cali Bay, Tobago, following transshipment from Venezuela. In Antigua, over 150 kilos of cocaine bound for the United Kingdom were seized on a private boat during spring 1994. Trinidad and Tobago had its biggest single cocaine seizure in June 1994 when a 41-foot cabin cruiser was intercepted with 226.2 kilos of cocaine—worth an estimated US$18 million—in plastic fuel drums. The cruiser was bound for Antigua. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 860 pounds of cocaine worth about US$10 million were seized in August 1994. That same month, two seizures in St. Martin netted 2,185 pounds of cocaine. Two months later, fishermen found 1,766 pounds of cocaine on a small uninhabited island between St. Barthelemy and St. Martin. Added to that, in November 1994, 1,320 pounds of cocaine were seized in Guadeloupe. Also in November 1994, 121 pounds of cocaine were found in the home of the two sons of the then deputy prime minister of St. Kitts–Nevis, Sidney Morris. This discovery precipitated a crisis that has affected the country’s governability—the smallest independent nation in the Americas. In the Dominican Republic, 1,073 kilos of cocaine, 305 kilos of marijuana, 1,444 grams of crack, and other drugs were seized during 1993. In 1994, the seizures were 2.8 metric tons of cocaine—a 160 percent increase over 1993—and 6.8 metric tons of marijuana. In 1995, about 3.6 metric tons of cocaine were seized. Jamaica’s marijuana seizures in 1993 were 75 metric tons, up from 35 metric tons the previous year. Cocaine seized in 1993 was 160 kilos, down from a 1992 high of 490 kilos. During 1994, 179 kilos of cocaine, 47 kilos of hashish oil, and one kilo of heroin were seized, and 886 traffickers were arrested. Cocaine seized in Jamaica during 1995 tripled that seized in 1994: 571 kilos.5

140

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

Yet, as noted above, trafficking is not the only critical narcotics problem confronting Caribbean states. The others are drug production, consumption and abuse, and money laundering. As regards production, although the three main “danger drugs” in the Caribbean are cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, only marijuana is produced there. Cultivation also varies from place to place. Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and St. Lucia are among the countries with the highest production levels. A look at a few cases provides an appreciation of the production problem facing the region. Jamaica’s subtropical climate makes the entire island ideal for marijuana cultivation. Traditionally, marijuana has been harvested in two main annual seasons, of five-to-six-month cycles. However, the indica variety matures in three or four months, making four harvests possible. Large-scale cultivation of five-to-fifty-acre plots were once common, but because of eradication measures, most cultivation is now done in plots of one acre or less. Marijuana cultivators also have been using new strategies. As Jamaica’s national security minister reported to parliament, they now interplant marijuana with other crops and cultivate the product in almost inaccessible places.6 Economic pressures, the lucrativeness of the drug market, and the balloon effect of countermeasures in Mexico, Belize, Jamaica, and South America are among reasons that other Caribbean countries have taken to significant marijuana production (and export). One gets a sense of the increased production elsewhere in the region by tracking crop destruction. In Grenada, for example, 10,862 plants were uprooted in 1992, 9,323 in 1993, and 20,000 in 1994. In Dominica, 11,880 plants were burned in 1992, 11,140 were burned in 1993, and close to 49,000 were destroyed in 1994. The 1995 figure was 126,000. In St. Lucia, 87,760 plants were reportedly destroyed in 1992, with 1993 witnessing a dramatic number destroyed: 181,500. The 1994 figure was 81,923. The amount for 1995 was almost three times that of 1994: 235,000 plants. Authorities in St. Vincent and the Grenadines seized 7 million marijuana plants and some 8,000 pounds of processed marijuana between February and March 1995 alone.7 The problem of narcotics consumption and abuse in the Caribbean involves mainly marijuana and cocaine, with heroin becoming problematic in a few places. Drug consumption and abuse in the Caribbean are not limited to any single social class or economic or ethnic group, although the consumption of certain drugs is higher in certain groups. Marijuana, for example, is predominantly a working class drug of choice. Crack cocaine is widespread among lower and middle-class people because it has the attributes of being “hard” and

DRUGS AND SECURITY

141

a “status” drug, but yet is cheap. Heroin, on the other hand, is a rich man’s drug. Apart from the cost factor, the impact of heroin abuse in the region has been mitigated by a fear of needles. Like production, drug abuse differs from place to place. The greatest concern is in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and in parts of the Eastern Caribbean. Although marijuana is abused in many places, it has had a long history of accepted socioreligious use, dating from the introduction of indentured workers from India following the abolition of slavery. Indeed, ganja—the term by which marijuana is popularly known in the Caribbean—is itself a Hindu word. Marijuana’s socioreligious use pattern has changed over the years. This use is now associated primarily with the Rastafarians, Afrocentric socioreligious sects that repudiate cocaine and heroin use, but consider ganja a biblically sanctioned herb. However, not only Rastafarians use ganja. Cocaine and heroin abuse in the Caribbean is a spillover from the illicit trafficking in these substances. Crack cocaine is readily available in many places. According to the United Nations International Drug Control Program, evidence of crack production in the Caribbean first came from Trinidad and Tobago. This problem is found mainly in high-transit states. Needless to say, cocaine addiction can lead to singularly devastating acts, as in Guyana where a thirty-year-old deranged crack addict murdered six people, including his own mother, in a machete attack in December 1994 at Buxton-Friendship, a village along the Atlantic Coast.8 Money laundering is another aspect of the narcotics phenomenon. Indeed, it is partly the money laundering “reputation” of the Caribbean that made Anguilla the choice for Operation Dinero, a major money-laundering undercover operation that ran from January 1992 through December 1994. By the time the operation ended, U.S. and British authorities had seized nine tons of cocaine and US$90 million worth of cash and assets, including expensive paintings, including Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Beggar. They also made 116 arrests and gathered a wealth of intelligence on worldwide drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations.9 Geography helps drug-money laundering, but it is not critical to it. This is because other factors generally dwarf geography. Caribbean countries possess some of these factors. While they are considered as assets or requirements for economic growth and development by Caribbean political and corporate elites, they have become part of the money-laundering infrastructure for drug operators. They include relative political instability, bank secrecy, low or little taxation, and relatively well-developed telecommunications. Indeed, these factors are

142

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

vital to one sector that is critical to the economies of many naturalresource-poor Caribbean countries: the off-shore financial services sector. This sector is deeply implicated in money laundering in some places.10 The drug dilemma does not constitute a security matter simply because of the multidimensionality of drug operations—drug production, consumption/abuse, trafficking, and money laundering. It does essentially for four reasons: • These operations have multiple consequences and implications—such as marked increases in crime, systemic and institutional corruption, arms trafficking, and effects on the tourist and garment industries, which are critical to the economic buoyancy of many countries. • The operations and their consequences have increased in scope and gravity over the last decade. • They have a dramatic impact on agents and agencies of national security and good governance, in military, political, and economic ways. • The sovereignty of many countries is subject to infringement, by both state and nonstate actors, because of drugs. As far as crime is concerned, the drug operations described above are illegal, and they lead to or require other criminal conduct, including theft, fraud, assault, and murder. These have been increasing in most Caribbean countries over recent years. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, for instance, 75 percent of the burglaries and a significant proportion of the robberies in 1993 were attributed to drugs. In Guyana, the situation developed major crisis proportions in 1998, and was dramatized following the issuance of a travel advisory by the Canadian government. In September 1998, the government was obliged to introduce joint army-police patrols to curb the drugs-driven crime explosion. By 1999, over a hundred people had been arrested in the joint operations. Puerto Rico, which was designated in November 1994 as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, had 980 murders during 1994, 60 percent of which were drug related. The murder rate there increased in 1995 by 11 percent, with crime overall increasing 5.2 percent, forcing the governor of the island to activate the National Guard to help cope with the drugs-crime crisis. Puerto Rico had 868 murders during 1996, 80 percent of which were drug related. In Jamaica, there were 561 reported murders in 1991. By 1995 the figure had jumped to 790, up from 690 in 1994. Firearms were used in 58 percent of the 1995

DRUGS AND SECURITY

143

murders, and the weapons used in those murders were used mostly in drug-related cases.11 Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago told journalists in New York in September 1997 that “75 to 80 percent of all crimes in Trinidad and Tobago today are drug related.”12 Drug criminality has no economic, social, or political boundaries. As with drug criminality in other parts of the world, drug crimes in the Caribbean are not all random and individually perpetrated. There is organized criminal activity, both within Caribbean countries and linking drug operators in the region with some outside the area. The most notorious organized crime is prosecuted by groups called “posses” in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, and “yardies” in Britain. The posses are comprised mainly of Jamaicans or people of Jamaican descent. However, increasingly there are alliances with people from other Caribbean countries and from South and Central America. Drug-related criminal activity within some Caribbean countries is complicated and aggravated by the activities of Caribbean nationals who are convicted, sentenced, and later deported from elsewhere. Many of these deportees are posse members or former posse members, and most of the deportations are made from the United States. Jamaica, for example, had nearly 1,000 deportees in 1992, over 700 of whom came from the United States, Canada, Britain, and the Cayman Islands. Close to 600 of the deportees had been implicated in drug-related offenses. During 1993, 923 deportees were returned to Jamaica; 64 percent of them were implicated with drugs. The 1994 figure was 1,434; in 1995, it was 1,563, a 9 percent increase; in 1996, it was 1,158.13 However, Jamaica is not the only nation facing a deportee nightmare; the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and countries in the Eastern Caribbean also face them. Especially for the Eastern Caribbean countries, the (re)introduction of criminal behavior into those societies by deportees has a dramatic and traumatic effect. This is because, invariably, the deportees become involved locally in drug trafficking and other criminal activity with very sophisticated methods and more firepower than some local police forces can muster. As one government official noted, “They leave our islands as high school criminals and are returned to us as post-graduate criminals.” Drug-related criminality in the region has given rise to an increasing problem related to witnesses. Witnesses are not only being intimidated, but murdered. This has necessitated the development of witness protection programs. These programs are not only costly, but logistically problematic given the small size of the islands and their communities. The natural inclination of authorities in many countries facing this problem is to seek external assistance, both to manage

144

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

programs in-country, and to provide foreign havens for witnesses who give testimony in critical cases. However, due to a variety of financial, constitutional, and political problems in potentially sympathetic countries—both within and outside the Caribbean—the prospects for significant witness relocation are not realistic. Moreover, because of the combined effect of corruption and the networks of the criminal organizations and individuals implicated, the integrity of witness relocation has been compromised on occasion, such that relocated witnesses have been murdered. Yet the corruption that helps to undermine witness protection particularly and the exercise of justice generally is not limited to witness protection. For a variety of reasons, including relative economic deprivation, poor working conditions, poor salaries, and the lucrativeness of the drug trade, there is a particularly pernicious corruption in parts of the Caribbean. Corruption is not dangerous merely because it reflects social deviance. It is so because in many places the corruption is not just sporadic, but institutionalized and systemic. It cuts across agencies in many places, affecting the police, customs, courts, tax agencies, political parties, legislators, the military, and other entities. Corruption by customs, army, criminal justice, and other government officials compromise these agents of governance, with the result that (1) their capacity for effective action is undermined, (2) the interests of the nation become subordinated to financially driven dictates of individuals and groups unconcerned about the general public good, and (3) citizens progressively lose confidence, either in the government as a whole, or in specific governmental institutions. In this context, not only do legality and morality lose their meaning, but citizens become inclined to resort to “citizen justice”—vigilantism—because they perceive governments as having a diminished capacity for rendering justice. It is important to observe, however, that drug-related corruption is not merely a public-sector phenomenon; the private sector is also involved. The owners and operators of banks, cambios, taxi companies, shipping agencies, farms, warehouses, and other businesses are often directly implicated. And, importantly, especially given the fact that the private sector is being presented as the sole engine of economic growth, private-sector corruption is just as injurious to moral rectitude and good governance in the region.14 Beyond the above-mentioned implications and consequences, the impact of drugs extends to the economic arena. One area pertains to the impact of trafficking on the agricultural and garment manufacturing sectors, which are critical to the economies of several Caribbean

DRUGS AND SECURITY

145

countries. Agricultural exports are vital to all Caribbean islands states, and garment manufacture is important in many, including Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.15 These industries are often used to smuggle drugs. Manufacturers and shippers in these industries have, consequently, been faced with huge financial burdens in order to provide deterrent as well as detective security measures to reduce the vulnerability of their exports to trafficking. In Jamaica, for example, it is estimated that security measures by the apparel industry add 8 percent more to operating costs.16 This has an impact on profitability, employment, revenue generation, and other matters. There is often an additional financial cost to these industries that relates to fines imposed against shippers and operators by U.S. and other authorities when drugs are found on carriers from the region. One of the most dramatic fine episodes in the last few years involved the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC). It was on March 15, 1993, when flight GY 714 arrived in New York from Guyana with 117 pounds of cocaine in the plane’s panelling. There was a US$1.8 million fine for this infraction, which led the GAC to offer a million-dollar (Guyanese) reward for information that would lead to the arrest and successful prosecution of the people involved in the affair.17 That was the first time a Caribbean airline was forced to resort to such desperate and dramatic action to deal with air trafficking. The case is yet to be solved. Another economic factor pertains to general resource allocation by Caribbean countries. The nature, scope, and gravity of the challenges presented by drugs require significant amounts of already limited resources to be allocated to combating drug operations and the problems they precipitate. It is both a dramatic indication of the severity of the problem as well as a sad testimony to opportunity costs involved in resource allocation to note that in some countries the budgetary allocations for security dwarf those for health, housing, and roads. To use Jamaica as an example again, Dr. Carlton Davies, secretary to the cabinet, told this writer in an August 12, 1996, interview in Jamaica that for the last several years, Jamaica’s budgetary allocations to national security have been the second largest, after education and ahead of health, housing, and other critical social areas. For the budgets since 1994, the top three allocations have been as follows (figures in Jamaica dollars): • 1994–1995: education, $5.6 billion; national security, $3.92 billion; health, $3.24 billion

146

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

• 1995–1996: education, $8.2 billion; national security, $4.6 billion; health, $3.2 billion • 1996–1997: education, $10.18 billion; national security, $4.71 billion; health $4.42 billion In Barbados, to cite another case, defense expenditures have climbed progressively between 1995 and 1998. The allocations have been as follows (in Barbados dollars): 1995–1996: $4.6 million; 1996–1997: $4.9 million; 1997–1998: 5.3 million.18 Hence, the drug dilemma has wide-ranging economic ramifications. This is exactly what Prime Minister P. J. Patterson sought to convey on September 27, 1996, in declaring open the Regional Drug Training Center: “The drug menace is intimately bound up with our economic survival. It affects the yam farmer, the worker in the apparel sector, the hotel employee, the coffee grower, the entertainer who performs in foreign lands, the Jamaican traveller abroad.”19 Realities Number Three and Four: Capabilities and Cooperation The nature and gravity of the drug dilemma highlight another reality in the Caribbean: Caribbean countries cannot by themselves cope with the threats presented by drugs. Several reasons explain this. First, the drug phenomenon is transnational. Collaboration is therefore a practical necessity if not always a political desire. President A.N.R. Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago made an observation in 1991, when he was his country’s prime minister, about the necessity for security collaboration that still captures the reality of the situation: It is becoming increasingly apparent that no single state, large or small, can in isolation ensure its own security from subversion or external threat. In this era of interdependence of states, and the globalization of activities relating to almost every sphere of life—economic, cultural, and criminal to name but a few—the preservation of national security can no longer be seen in purely national terms.20

Second, Caribbean countries have such capability limitations—financial, technical, manpower, training, etc.—as to preclude the conduct of successful narcotics countermeasures individually. However, the resource problem is now aggravated by the fact that due to budgetary and economic constraints and the political and popular antipathy toward foreign aid, among other things, in some places foreign assistance from some states is declining.

DRUGS AND SECURITY

147

Yet, capability limitations are not only being experienced by Caribbean countries; all states fighting drugs in the hemisphere— indeed, in the world—face them. The Plan of Action that was issued following the May 10, 1997, United States–Caribbean Summit in Barbados captured this reality: “We recognize the need for greater cooperation of security forces in the region to deal with illicit drug trafficking, alien smuggling, illicit trafficking in arms, and threats to stability. We agree that no single nation has the ability to deal effectively with the threats to the security of the region, and that coordination, cooperation, and combined operations are necessary.”21 The reality of the necessity for cooperation should not mask another reality: that cooperation itself presents several challenges. One of these challenges stems from the capability limitations mentioned above. The capability challenge does not arise merely because of the actual money, equipment, and other constraints. It does so mainly because inherent in the capability disparities of cooperating states is the need for those with fewer limitations to give relatively more to the cooperative effort. This is not always achievable. Sometimes political leaders in the relatively better-off states in the partnerships are unwilling to commit to collective efforts because they are unsure that there will be commensurate national-interest returns. Often, domestic factors such as political leadership changes, elections schedules, public opinion, or timing act to make it difficult for states to honor pledges, or to make new commitments. But beyond the capability challenge to cooperation there is the sovereignty challenge. The capability disparities among partnership countries in any group themselves are a reflection of power asymmetries within the group. Sovereignty tends to be more closely guarded by the smallest and least-powerful states in the group, for understandable reasons. It therefore behooves the larger partners to be mindful of sovereignty sensibilities in dealing with the group, in relation to both the decisionmaking and project implementation sides of cooperation. There is yet another challenge: the bureaucratic politics challenge. Although all Caribbean states and their partner states adopt the interagency approach to fighting drugs, this challenge is not to be overlooked. Whether we like it or not, there will be jurisdictional turf battles involving army and police, foreign ministry and national security ministry, army intelligence unit and police intelligence, and so forth. These battles and difficulties can undermine counternarcotics pursuits within a single country. Thus the potential dangers involved when several countries and agencies are involved are all the greater. All partnership actors and agencies should be constantly mindful of

148

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

these dangers, and act to subordinate the individual ego or agency interest to achieving the greater common good: fighting the enemy— within, around, and without.22 Conclusion At the beginning of the 1990s, the United Nations General Assembly special session that examined the narcotics phenomenon declared: The magnitude of the rising trend in the illicit demand, production, supply, trafficking, and distribution of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances [is] a grave and persistent threat to the health and well-being of mankind, and the stability of nations, the political, economic, social, and cultural structures of all societies, and the lives and dignity of millions of human beings, most especially our young people.23

This declaration is ever more valid as we reach the end of the decade. Moreover, that 1990 General Assembly special session highlighted the truly transnational and international character of the narcotics phenomenon. Thus, the drug dilemma in the Caribbean is merely the manifestation in one region of a truly global threat. Yet the fact that the Caribbean is having a shared experience with the rest of the world in this matter is no consolation; it is a pernicious experience. Neither is it a consolation that the threat does not exist with uniform severity throughout the region. The scope and severity may vary from country to country, but as the United States drug czar General Barry McCaffrey remarked poignantly in his speech before the 1997 regular session of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, “The drug problem is a shared agony throughout this hemisphere.”24 Notes 1. Vaughan A. Lewis, “Small States, Eastern Caribbean Security, and the Grenada Intervention,” in Jorge Heine (ed.), A Revolution Aborted: The Lessons of Grenada (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Ivelaw L. Griffith, The Quest for Security in the Caribbean (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993); Ivelaw L. Griffith, “Caribbean Security: Retrospect and Prospect,” Latin American Research Review 30 (summer 1995), pp. 3–32; Jorge Rodríquez Beruff and Humberto Garcia Muñiz (eds.), Security Problems and Policies in the Post–Cold War Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1996). 2. West Indian Commission, Time for Action: Report of the West Indian Commission (Black Rock, Barbados: West Indian Commission, 1992), p. 343. 3. General Barry R. McCaffrey, “Lessons of 1994: Prognosis for 1995 and Beyond,” presentation at the SOUTHCOM–National Defense University

DRUGS AND SECURITY

149

Annual Strategy Symposium, Miami, April 1995; United Nations, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1995, E/INCB/1995/1, January 1996. 4. Ivelaw L. Griffith, Drugs and Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Siege (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); European Union, The Caribbean and the Drugs Problem (Brussels: European Union, 1996). 5. United States State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1994 (Washington, DC: U.S. State Department, 1995); Griffith, Drugs and Security. 6. Government of Jamaica, Parliament, Presentation of the Hon. K. D. Knight, Minister of National Security and Justice, Budget Sectoral Debate, June 7, 1994, available from the office of the Speaker of Parliament, Kingston, Jamaica. 7. Ivelaw L. Griffith and Trevor Munroe, “Drugs and Democracy in the Caribbean,” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 33, no. 3 (November 1995), pp. 357–376; U.S. State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1994. 8. Griffith and Munroe, “Drugs and Democracy”; European Union, The Caribbean and the Drugs Problem; Griffith, Drugs and Security. 9. Jim McGee, “U.S. Set Up Fake Bank to Trick Drug Lords,” Miami Herald, December 17, 1994, pp. 1A, 14A. 10. Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1994); Ivelaw L. Griffith, The Money Laundering Dilemma in the Caribbean, Working Paper No. 4, Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, September 1995. 11. Mireya Navarro, “Puerto Rico Reeling Under Scourge of Drugs and Rising Gang Violence,” New York Times, July 23, 1995, p. Y11; Ronald Goldfarb, “Start the Clean-Up: In Puerto Rico an Effective Humane Response to DopeDealing,” Washington Post, May 19, 1996, p. C3; Planning Institute of Jamaica, Economic and Social Survey 1995 (Kingston: Government of Jamaica, 1996); Griffith, Drugs and Security. 12. Michael D. Roberts, “Panday: Crime Is Number One,” New York Carib News, October 8, 1996, p. 5. 13. Government of Jamaica, Presentation of the Hon. K. D. Knight; Jamaica Constabulary Force, Annual Report of 1995 (Kingston: Government of Jamaica, 1996). 14. Ron Sanders, “Narcotics, Corruption, and Development: The Problems in the Smaller Islands,” Caribbean Affairs 3 (January–March 1990), pp. 79–92; Louis Blom-Cooper, Guns for Antigua (London: Duckworth, 1990); Griffith, The Quest for Security; Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean. 15. Ramesh Ramsaran, “Small Economies, Trade Preferences, and Relations with Latin America: Challenges Facing the Anglophone Caribbean in a Changing World Economy,” paper presented at the Seminar on Mercosur and the Caribbean, Council for International Relations, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 5–6, 1996. 16. Caribbean Textile and Apparel Institute, The Jamaica Garment Industry (Kingston: Caribbean Textile and Apparel Institute, 1996). 17. Anand Persaud, “117 Pounds of Cocaine Found on GAC Plane,” Stabroek News, March 18, 1995, pp. 1, 2; “GAC Offering G1M Reward for Cocaine Find Leads, Stabroek News, March 19, 1993, p. 1. 18. “Big $$ for Defense,” Barbados Advocate, March 14, 1997, p. 1. 19. Government of Jamaica, Speaking Notes for the Hon. P. J. Patterson at the Opening of the Regional Drug Training Center (Twickenham Park, St. Catherine: Government of Jamaica, September 27, 1996).

150

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

20. A.N.R. Robinson, Address by the Hon. A.N.R. Robinson to Regional Conference on Subversion and National Security (Port of Spain: Government of Jamaica, May 31, 1991). 21. U.S.-Caribbean Summit, Caribbean Plan of Action, Bridgetown, Barbados, May 1, 1997, section 8. 22. Ivelaw L. Griffith, Caribbean Security on the Eve of the 21st Century (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996). 23. United Nations General Assembly, Political Declaration, 27th Special Session, A/RES/S-17/2, March 15, 1990, p. 2. 24. General Barry R. McCaffrey, “Remarks to the 21st Regular Session of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission,” Office of the National Drug Control Program, Washington, D.C., April 9, 1997, p. 6.

9 Initiatives for Cooperative Regional Security: Reintegrating Cuba into Regional Projects Isabel Jaramillo Edwards

The time has come, the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax Of cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings. —Lewis Carroll1

Cuba in the Hemispheric Context The relationship between the United States and Cuba is the impediment to the reintegration of Cuba in a hemispheric context and—as it now stands—is the least propitious framework for implementing measures to build trust in the region. Cuba’s perception of threat is linked to the fact that the United States pursues a policy that has not substantially changed in its hostile nature. Attempts by dominant conservative sectors to step up the embargo and extraterritorial application of domestic law in violation of international law, attacks on sovereignty and on universally recognized business practices reinforce this perception. The United States is not prepared for the reintegration of Cuba into the hemisphere. Cuba, on the other hand, approaches the problem from a selective perspective with initiatives that correspond to specific areas and opportunities, and are flexible to changes in the regional environment. The lack of balance in relationships within the hemisphere is especially evident in the case of the United States and Cuba. Cuba has been marginalized in a hemispheric context that consists of an interAmerican system in transition, but also in the framework set up by the 151

152

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

United States at the Summit of the Americas as an alternative and complementary scenario. Total reintegration of Cuba into the hemisphere depends on its reintegration into the inter-American system.2 Marginalization of Cuba—both in the system and at the Summit of the Americas—is not consistent with the aim of cooperation that would seem to underlie proposals to reformulate the currently prevailing relationships within the hemisphere.3 Those demands imposed on Cuba to modify its position as a prerequisite to rejoining the system actually render initiatives that could be made in this direction impossible. These terms, which are being dictated to Cuba, would be unacceptable to any sovereign nation in the hemisphere. The very idea of having to satisfy conditions in order to rejoin the inter-American system is unacceptable to Cuba and eliminates any possibility of negotiation. This, in turn, impedes the possibility of Cuba’s reintegration into the system’s economic mechanisms in particular. This fact affects not only Cuba, but also other countries that would benefit from Cuba’s participation in this context.4 One deciding factor would be the political willingness of countries in the system to allow Cuba to return to it. The rationale behind Cuba’s rigid stance with respect to its reintegration in the inter-American system is directly linked to the rigid stance of the United States, which has not changed its policy in this regard. If the United States does not soften its position, Cuba will have no reason to do the same. Abandonment of a hostile attitude on the part of the United States would create a climate of trust. Cuba is strategically important in the hemisphere. Its relevance is linked to its location at the center of maritime channels of communication that are increasingly vital to commerce in the context of growing globalization. This strategic position makes a relationship with Cuba critical for every country in the hemisphere. In the case of South America, for example, Cuba is a steppingstone to the North American and Caribbean markets. Latin America and the Caribbean are very flexible in their policies toward Cuba. Canada believes that U.S. policy contributes to instability in the region. These differences further complicate the regional scenario. On the one hand, there is an intensification of bilateral relations between Cuba and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and of Cuba’s participation in the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). On the other, there are dynamics in the mechanisms of political coordination that bear the marks of U.S. hostility to a greater extent than do bilateral dynamics. The security interests of the United States emphasize economic issues, and this is what has shaped its policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean5—this is the logic of the North American Free Trade

REINTEGRATING CUBA

153

Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative. The attempt to place obstacles in the path of Cuba’s reintegration into the international economy and to marginalize it is not only a policy inconsistent with the idea of free markets, and causes regional instability and insecurity, but also has an impact on U.S. interests. The argument of the need for changes in the Cuban political system (the “democracy obstacle”) is one that can be manipulated and will be used time after time as a means for applying constant pressure from within. Cuba has made significant changes in its economy and society. The recently approved Law on Foreign Investments promises to engender future changes in Cuban society. Within the context of global and hemispheric changes during the restructuring of the inter-American system—including the changes that are under way in Cuba—a scenario should be considered in which flexibility on both sides prevails for the purpose of creating stability and security in the hemisphere. The Hemispheric Agenda From the strategic standpoint, the most relevant items on the hemispheric agenda are migration, drug trafficking, environmental destruction, terrorism, corruption, the proliferation of high-tech weapons, and nuclear security. Migration Steps taken to normalize migration between Cuba and the United States on the basis of mutual interest—in September 1994 and then in May 1995—were a landmark in that they opened up the possibility that agreements could also be reached in other areas where the two governments share a common interest. Drug Trafficking In this area, problems stem from two main obstacles: militarization of the war against drug trafficking and the interventionism implicit in the application of domestic law extraterritorially, which causes disputes in the hemisphere. Despite the admission of the U.S. Department of State that there is no evidence of money laundering in Cuba,6 its acknowledgement of the Cuban government’s efforts to reduce drug trafficking and to cooperate in bilateral operations,7 and the willingness exhibited by the

154

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

Cuban government to conclude an agreement with the United States in the war against drugs, the U.S. policy toward Cuba has prevented agreements of this type from materializing. Unfortunately, the relationship is thus far defined only by an exchange of selective information on specifically defined events in time, a system nonconducive to the establishment of cooperative relations beyond specific situations. The logic that “worldwide drug problems require cooperation among producer, consumer, [and transit] countries as well as a sense of shared responsibility”8 is not borne out by the policies of the United States, which, as everything indicates, lacks the political will to build agreements with Cuba in this area. In this regard, this area is no different from the talks on migration that, as a specific topic, would open the road to rapprochement based on mutual national security interests. Nonetheless, it would appear that the inclination of technical agencies of the United States concerned with this topic, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration,9 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Coast Guard, etc., would be to take a different approach from that imposed by the lack of political decisiveness on the part of the Department of State. Cuba has repeatedly demonstrated a political will to move forward in this area and fully supports a World Conference on Drug Trafficking. Cuba has proposed—and it was agreed upon at the XVI Meeting of Customs Commissioners of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal—that subjects relating to the war against drug trafficking should be standing topics at meetings of customs commissioners.10 Environment With regard to environmental degradation, from the standpoint of foreign policy and security the focus is on the concern for the waste of global resources, demographic problems, and unsustainable patterns of consumption in industrialized nations that are the root of most forms of environmental degradation and waste of natural resources, both for the present and in the future. The approach from the security standpoint is based on the growing gap between rich and poor nations, which may widen due to the growing scarcity of natural resources due to environmental deterioration, which in turn aggravates potentially unstable situations. From the point of view of national-security strategy, the area of the environment is linked—in U.S. foreign policy—to the subject of sustainable development. The treatment of topics such as drugs, corruption, and environment—from the points of view of security and foreign policy—is oriented toward cooperative strategies between governmental and nongovernmental organizations at the national and regional level, and a

REINTEGRATING CUBA

155

commitment to focus long-term political strategy on emerging risks in these areas. In the case of Cuba and the United States, the fact that they share a common geographic area creates a commonality of problems that could be handled by cooperation, if the U.S. government would separate its political position on Cuba from its environmental policies and initiate an open bilateral relationship with Cuba in this area.11 Among potential areas of cooperation would be the preservation of biodiversity, prevention of oil spills and hazardous-waste leakage, protection of coastal habitats, management of fishing resources, and laws on the environment, meteorology, and climatology.12 Another concern of the Cuban government is pollution in the Gulf of Mexico related to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, the storage of nuclear weapons in Puerto Rico, and transportation of these weapons across the Caribbean Basin. Selected Military Aspects Cuba is no longer a security threat in the traditional military sense. The danger Cuba poses to the region lies in instability and the possibility of social upheaval. A line of thinking has emerged from the U.S. Department of Defense that can be classified as more realistic in reference to Cuba and characterized by a marked interest in Cuban military affairs.13 In 1992 the United States stopped its policy of notifying Cuba of military exercises and maneuvers carried out in the area, the very antithesis of confidence-building policies. Regular U.S. naval exercises in the area, such as Solid Shield, Ocean Venture, etc., and smaller maneuvers, although they have taken place off the coast of Puerto Rico and Virginia, continue to use Cuba as a theater of operations.14 Moreover, the fact that the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base has become an international refugee center and a site where preparatory operations for the deployment of troops are carried out, as was done for the intervention in Haiti in 1994, contributes to regional insecurity. For its part in reducing bilateral tensions, Cuba proposes a line of communications between the military leadership of Cuba and the United States in Guantánamo. This is an extremely topical question. Recently a meeting took place between Cuban and U.S. military officials at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The meeting was revealed and harshly attacked at a recent session of the U.S. Congress by a group of the most antagonistic Cuban Americans. The fact of this disclosure and the overreactive response it elicited reflect a political environment that hinders progress toward a relaxation of tensions, and severely damages the development of confidence-building measures

156

NONTRADITIONAL THREATS TO SECURITY

that are of vital interest to the U.S. Department of Defense and to Cuba. As for perceptions of threat, capabilities, and intentions, from the Cuban point of view there is no clear perception of the actual intentions of the United States with regard to genuine cooperation (partnership and cooperative security). It is perceived that proposals for cooperative security on the part of the United States are based on convenience and remain at the level of rhetoric, without progressing into the area of concrete proposals that would have genuine consequences and yield definite, positive results in the case of Cuba.15 Cuba is willing to engage in international dialogue on subjects related to security, both with its Caribbean neighbors, as has been shown, and with the United States. To create a scenario favorable to mutual understanding in bilateral and multilateral relations, efforts must be made to build trust, because trust and mutual understanding are fundamental elements in the development of a truly secure hemispheric environment. Notes 1. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (London: Penguin Books, 1962). 2. Cuba continues to be an active member and participant in the PanAmerican Health Organization. 3. The idea of cooperation is present both in OAS restructuring proposals and in the Summit of the Americas in Miami. 4. This is the case of the Caribbean. 5. The lifting of the embargo against Vietnam, for example, corresponds essentially to specific geopolitical and economic circumstances. 6. U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Department of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (Washington, DC: GPO, March 1991), pp. 25–26. 7. Ibid., pp. 184–186. 8. Mathea Falco, “Passing Grades,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 5 (September/October 1995), pp. 15–20. 9. High-ranking Drug Enforcement Agency employees attended the VIIth meeting of Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies (HONLEA), corresponding to the group of countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Cuba on October 9–13, 1995. HONLEA was called by the UN and is an auxiliary branch of the Narcotics Commission of the UN Social and Economic Commission. 10. The next one will be held in Ecuador in 1996. 11. See proposal: The Environment in U.S.-Cuban Relations: Opportunities for Cooperation (Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue, April 1995). 12. Ibid.

REINTEGRATING CUBA

157

13. On the Cuban military, see Edward E. Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, Storm Warnings for Cuba (Washington, DC: National Defense Research Institute, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Rand Corp., 1994); Nestor Sanchez, The Military and Transition in Cuba, Reference Guide for Policy and Crisis Management (Washington, DC: International Research 2000 Inc., March 17, 1995). 14. It should be pointed out that the characteristics of maneuvers and exercises have changed in accordance with the restructuring of the U.S. armed forces and the technological changes that this involves. They are largely simulated exercises with a smaller number of personnel. 15. What has been periodically established between the United States and Cuba is cooperation on specific problems, over the short term, without being formalized by genuine agreements.

PART 3 TOWARD A COOPERATIVE SECURITY FRAMEWORK: PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

10 Toward a New Political Framework for Migration in the Caribbean Robert L. Bach

The end of the Cold War has changed both the policies of the former combatants and the theoretical and ideological weapons of researchers and scholars. Gone are the policy preoccupations with nuclear missiles aimed at opposing camps. Missing as well is the hegemony of “security studies” over international relations and regional political economy. Former political and theoretical opponents now face a common dilemma: What comes next? Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it the euphoric declaration of the end of ideology, the dominant policy challenge has become how to reduce and eliminate restrictions on aggregate economic growth. Trade expansion and liberalization dominate discussions of development among international institutions, banks, governments, think tanks, and universities. Import-export figures, reduced tariffs, free-trade agreements, and elimination of government subsidies to protected economic sectors now define policy targets. In short, the end of the Cold War has thus far been a transition from an era of statism to a period of market fetishism. Policy preoccupations with expanding markets, opening trade opportunities, and eliminating regulatory hurdles, however, do not help to respond to problems that arise from these efforts. For example, income inequality has increased along with accelerated aggregate economic growth. Trade liberalization and financial restructuring have eliminated wage subsidies that had prevented the middle and working classes from becoming poor. Most ominously, newly accumulated wealth, increasingly in the hands of unlawful organizations, has made possible a level of lawlessness that challenges, if not undermines, the legitimacy of many states. Even critics of current policies are limited to market-oriented alternatives. Proposed relief for disadvantaged economic sectors simply 161

162

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

promotes greater access to new markets. Efforts to reduce income inequality only expand microenterprises so the poor can become better market participants. Further, the response to unlawful activities often calls on legalization in order to impose “market discipline” on the illegal exchanges. Even well-meaning advocates for the marginalized and dispossessed stand without alternatives to the market, calling for greatly expanded migration flows or haplessly defending illegal immigration as a “right” similar to the “right” of capital to move across international boundaries. In this context, governments faced myriad difficulties in crafting and implementing policies that both respond to current conditions and that contribute to longer-term solutions. Some observers believe that states are now even powerless to take effective action against these encompassing transnational organizations—both legal, such as multinational corporations, and illegal, such as drug cartels—and activities. This chapter explores government action toward one policy dilemma among the many that have emerged in this post–Cold War era. During the last decade, migration from the Caribbean has risen from a regional development issue to one that calls on and commands the attention of the security interests of states. The chapter examines the development of new migration policy options that represent significant departures from previous Cold War–era strategies and that offer the foundation for a new constructive framework for responding to the conflicting pressures in a new regional political economy. Transformation in Caribbean Migration Frameworks Policies toward migration take place within broad “political frameworks” defined by regional and global strategies. Before the end of the Cold War, policies toward migration had evolved into a fairly predictable set of options. Migration was, and was seen as, a secondary or derivative security issue. It served as both an instrument of Cold War tactics, and a much less visible element in a global containment doctrine. On occasion, when it erupted into uncontrolled outflows, migration also raised temporary security scares. Nowhere was this better understood than in the case of Cuba and its thirty-five-year history of successive migration crises. Migration also had a clear economic role within Cold War global strategies. Policies sought to support economic partnerships with regional allies and to protect clear spheres of influence by providing access to channels of legal immigration. Large-scale Caribbean migration to the United States took off in the 1960s at a time when the

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

163

region both experienced accelerated economic growth, foreign aid, and investment and competition with Soviet influence increased sharply. In the post–Cold War era, the United States and the Caribbean states have to find new reasons to remain partners. Regional cooperation must adapt to new concepts of security and to new economic possibilities and problems. The Caribbean suffers from the same promise and peril that the end of the Cold War has brought to other geopolitical regions. The new era’s market reforms have let loose the power of economic enterprise and the explicit promise of growth and prosperity. Growth, increased trade and investment, and sharing of technologies all stimulate and promise greater linkages among nations. Increased travel and tourism are essential ingredients to forging these linkages. Yet, economic integration also means that social and political problems within states have a direct impact across state boundaries. A few years ago, editors from the Economist caught the core of the dilemma of the post–Cold War era when they wrote that the new world order consisted of two “powerful and contradictory trends . . . integration among nations, and disintegration within nations.” Pressures first from the debt crisis and then from internationally imposed fiscal controls have led to domestic instabilities. Rural residents have abandoned their lands and moved to cities, where their presence puts tremendous pressure on urban governments to provide basic services, frustrates efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in food supplies, and, in some places, causes social instability. Disintegration within nations also involves the breakdown in civil order and the risk of rising social instability. Privatization has spawned nongovernmental actors who are accumulating sufficient wealth and power to seriously challenge the legal structures of many Caribbean countries. This new wealth and power are now sufficient in many places to undermine the monopoly of the means of violence that historically defines the legitimacy of state control. Some can now seriously challenge the authority of popularly elected authorities. Using huge amounts of cash from trade in drugs and guns, these groups are in a position to define the societal rewards that, along with coercion, compel citizens to participate in illegal activities. The causes and consequences of these problems are also different. For example, they include crime, violence, and corruption rather than direct attacks, threats, or blockades. Regional drug cartels and global illegal networks and organizations fuel the availability of large amounts of money to domestic narcotics traffic, gun and weapons trafficking, and the smuggling of people.

164

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

The dilemma for government policy in this new era is to simultaneously promote and expand the international exchanges that involve legitimate travel and productive trade, while attempting to control them without intrusive measures that would impede the central positive goal. Yet, for many observers, states have lost the power to control their borders, influence their economies, and solve social problems within their borders. International business, world financial markets, and even nongovernmental organizations are now the primary policymakers in the region. This basic tension between integration and disintegration should make resolution of migration issues and problems of crossing boundaries in general a priority for the region. Economic integration will increasingly create social and economic pressures for expanded travel, tourism, and migration. Increasingly, a temporary and even permanent move abroad will become part of an expanded market of economic opportunities and sustenance and these migrations, as normal market activities, will carry citizens across borders seeking to improve themselves and responding to job opportunities. Yet without constructive legal frameworks within which these activities can take place, many people will have to turn to simple illegal actions—crossing borders without permission or authorization and acquiring fraudulent documents—to achieve their ends. Migration too will become a challenge to the legitimacy of the nation-state, to its institutions, and, therefore, to the existence of a civil society rooted in law and principle. It will fuel corruption, violence, and fear as it delegitimizes state authority and as illicit organizations help organize alternatives. No longer will states perceive the flows as normal migrants trying to find a job or seeking to reunite with a family member. One of the greatest challenges facing migration policies in the twenty-first century, therefore, is to craft migration policies that incorporate the need to foster legitimate economic exchange with a vigorous defense against and resolutions of problems associated with illegal cross-border traffic. To meet this challenge requires constructing a new overarching framework for migration policy in the region, which involves, to some extent, reinforcing and reasserting the power of legitimate authority in democratic states. A New Political Framework for Migration The principles of a new political framework for migration in the Caribbean may be found in an emerging, broad vision of regional interests. As set forth in the Summit of the Americas and other initiatives,

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

165

the focus is on increasing cooperation, stability, and security. The framework highlights a broad set of “principles of prosperity” for the region that includes expanded bilateral trade, increased investments in both physical capital and human resources, and tourism. It also involves a commitment of the region and the hemisphere to the value of open, free exchange. To realize any of these principles for prosperity, states must build and protect a legal and institutional framework that allows market activities to succeed. If private business cannot trust the rules of investment, markets will not simply grow by themselves. If merchants cannot trust the fairness of trading procedures, markets will not simply sprout prosperity. If communities cannot trust the rules for who belongs and who does not, the security and confidence that underlie social stability and public tolerance will not take root. Ultimately, if citizens cannot depend on the democratic rules that governments set out to protect, few will enjoy the prosperity sought throughout the region and hemisphere. U.S. migration policy encompasses four principles drawn from this broader strategy that help to define specific actions taken in the region. These principles have emerged both from hard choices made during a series of migration crises and from an explicit effort to reinforce the nation’s commitment to legal immigration. These principles form a comprehensive, interlinked approach that, together, constitute a framework for future regional cooperation in managing migration. Protecting Individual Security The United States is committed to a framework that focuses fundamentally on the safety and dignity of individuals. Tragically, induced by economics or politics, the Caribbean has become a zone in which illicit activities and the organizations that profit from them routinely mistreat individuals and families, reaching the deplorable extremes of torture, death, and virtual bondage. Thousands of individuals routinely are placed in harm’s way. The policy challenge to states has been to reinforce a long-standing concern for human rights and to broaden the policy instruments available to ensure protection. In the Cold War framework, protection of individual safety focused on the development and defense of a doctrine on “the right to leave.” Its purpose was to overcome the repressive ways in which some states held targeted groups captive behind the “iron or bamboo curtain.” In today’s world, another, perhaps larger, problem has emerged in which people are able to leave but only in chaotic, threatening circumstances, such as attempting to

166

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

cross the Florida Straits in inner tubes or the Mona Passage in yolas. The means and risk of departure are now as life-threatening and liberty-depriving as the full repression of the right to leave. The policy objective is to broaden the approach to protection of human rights by restoring, maintaining, and expanding of the rule of law in the countries of origin and in the ways that people enter neighboring nations. This approach includes protection of institutions and principles meant to create and to defend a doctrine on the “right to leave,” but it also involves a broader approach that reduces the risks and consequences of unorganized departure. Recent experiences with Cuban and Haitian mass outflows have attempted this broadening of policy options by adding to rescue, safe haven, and settlement—traditional policy responses—a vigorous effort to resolve problems at the point of departure. In the case of Cuba or Haiti, much of the migration policy was devoted to preventing unsafe departure, rescuing those who had tried anyway, and responding to anyone who feared that their return would lead to persecution. The goal was to deter individuals from taking the personal risks of flight into the Florida Straits by restoring democratically elected officials to office in Haiti, negotiating an orderly migration agreement with Cuba, and eliminating inducements to dangerous boat trips by reforming long-standing special asylum procedures for Cuban nationals. These recent policy changes have sparked two prevailing criticisms. First, some observers believed that these actions were simply extensions of the “anti-immigrant” sentiments in the United States. For example, they cite the change in policy toward Cuban migration in 1994, in which Cuban rafters were treated like other asylum seekers, as evidence of this sentiment and its influence on a restrictionist migration policy. These critics seem to ignore, however, that the resolution of the Cuban migration crisis in 1994 involved an increase, not a decrease, in the annual number of Cuban citizens now able to reunite with their family members in the United States. These policy changes have also dramatically reduced the number of attempts to leave the island by life-threatening means. Second, others have alleged that these policy actions have militarized migration policies. These critics, however, have not fully appreciated the changed role of the military in the current regional political economy. Security in the region is no longer defined by formal clashes among states. Rather, to solve new problems and to protect the security and well-being of individuals in dangerous situations requires an uncompromising effort to rescue individuals at risk and to protect them in a safe haven, even at great expense, logistical difficulty, and political turmoil and hostility. There are no institutions in

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

167

the United States or elsewhere with the capacities, resources, and skills that can respond to mass migrations in a similarly effective manner. The need to turn to the military, however, is exceptional, as are the various crisis-driven efforts to protect individuals. The new policy options are effective, essential elements of the emerging framework, but they also express the success and failure of cooperation among states in the region. Military involvement signifies failure of civilian leadership throughout the region to prevent these tragic situations. It also signals the willingness of civilian leadership to respond with sufficient collective force. A second principle for the region, therefore, must be to take steps to foster longer-range cooperation that ensures safe, legal, and productive migration. Enhancing Economic Security Efforts to reconstruct a sustainable economic base for the Caribbean is both more important in the long run and a greater challenge than the emergency responses that underscore the essential values of regional policy. The post–Cold War era, however, has deflated the superpowers’ interests in the region, taken away its strategic significance, and, by doing so, eliminated one of the primary reasons the United States and others have provided the Caribbean trade and investment concessions. The loss of U.S. interest in the region has been so widely observed that, at one point, senior U.S. foreign policy officials meeting with Caribbean leaders sought specifically to counter the perception. At a background press briefing, one official said, “With regard to the major topics discussed, one could say in a way, the meeting was the message, and that the President wanted to indicate that despite the end of the Cold War he remains very concerned and engaged with the problems of the Caribbean.” The economics of the Caribbean and of migration are particularly difficult challenges. Over the next decades, the Caribbean faces the huge burden of creating over 3 million new job opportunities for people entering the labor market just to maintain in the year 2010 the same unemployment levels of 1980. This will require very high levels of new investment within a projected time frame that rivals the NAFTA commitment to Mexico. The Caribbean governments have expressed a very clear awareness of the need to adapt to changing global realities, including gradually ending dependence on a few commodities, particularly sugar and bananas, and to diversify into other products. Their concern, of course, is that as they diversify into other products, that they have markets for their products. Presently, roughly 40 to 50 percent of the

168

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

region’s trade is with the United States, which makes job creation and investment diversification a critical issue of regional cooperation. One of the most important sources of job creation involves tourism. Roughly one out of every three jobs is related to tourism, much of it originating from the United States. The concentration of new investment in tourism, however, combined with a decline in traditional sources of employment in agriculture and mining, has led to growth of the informal sector and a visible increase in social marginality throughout the islands. High and sustained levels of unemployment, along with changes in the structure of jobs available to a primarily young labor force, combine to give a steady push to emigration. There are no easy solutions to these problems. Aggregate economic growth alone will not reduce the inequality and limited opportunities that stimulate emigration. While the seemingly endless debates on whether development and aid can cut into the underlying basic problems and root causes of emigration continue, states cannot stand by and wait. Regional cooperation increasingly must involve a strong emphasis on reducing social inequalities and insecurities, sustaining democracy through good governance, and fighting corruption as a means of promoting economic sustainability. States cannot be lulled into believing that migration itself offers an effective development strategy. Dependence on migration as a safety valve, a means of reducing the demand on new jobs, and a way to create a remittance flow makes countries particularly vulnerable to the diverse and voluble sources of changes in immigration policy, including U.S. domestic politics. Securing Legal Migration Options Beyond long-term development and emergency responses to extraordinary circumstances, a new framework for migration depends on sustaining normal, routine methods of safe, orderly, and productive migration. For several decades, that framework has supported a large, vigorous, and mutually advantageous legal immigration. The Caribbean and the United States are bound together by many relationships including, first and foremost, shared commitments to democracy and free markets. But none is as fundamental as the connection that has been forged by a century of migration. The regular flow of people back and forth is inextricably connected to the region’s prosperity, its identity, and its future. All nations, all communities benefit from the relationships forged through migration. Nations share the prosperity and opportunity, the deeper understanding, and the goodwill that results from these migratory experiences.

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

169

Figures in Table 10.1 show the levels of legal migration from the Caribbean since 1992. The United States consistently admits nearly 100,000 people from the Caribbean legally and permanently each year. One of the largest contributors, the Dominican Republic, alone sends 40,000 people on average each year to live in the United States legally. This flow establishes a strong tie between families and communities in both countries. Of course, far more Dominicans travel and study in the United States each year as temporary residents. This constructive, legal framework, however, is threatened by an illegal flow that reaches nearly comparable levels. As the flow becomes a mix of legal and illegal activities, real or perceived, policymakers find it more difficult to defend and to sort out the legal from illegal activities. The result is that the image of migrants is distorted from a normal process of family reunification to a threatening challenge to U.S. laws and social norms. Combatting Illegality Clearly the most serious issue involving migration in the region today is the corrosive connection that has developed between organized crime and migration, especially whatever links, if any, exist between migration and drug trafficking. The link may be elusive empirically, dependent as much on law enforcement investigative information as on statistics and academic fieldwork. For states in the region, however, there is little question that connections to crime and corruption are the most important problems in efforts to protect their citizens and to promote self-sustainable development. Illegal, undocumented migration, organized by smugglers and depending on official corruption, undermines trust in government. It threatens the lives of the people attempting hazardous treks, and it reinforces organized smuggling in a way that weakens the economic incentives of open market relations. Table 10.1 Legal Immigrants Admitted to the United States, by Year of Entry Year of Admission 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Caribbean

Dominican Republic

97,413 99,438 104,804 96,788 116,801

41,969 45,420 51,189 38,512 39,607

Source: U.S. Immunization and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1996, U.S., p. 33.

170

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

Illegal immigration today, and with it drug trafficking and gun running, are more than threats to public safety or national security; they challenge the character and existence of Caribbean civil society. It corrupts labor markets, it brews social intolerance, and it fuels hardships throughout low wage communities both in the sending and receiving communities. Further, as noted above, there are few greater challenges to the prosperity and opportunity that come from legal migration than the large-scale violation of the rules that result from illegal immigration. The problem with discussions of illegal migration has always been that they lose perspective quickly. It is not the migrants themselves that are the problem—and far too much scapegoating and intolerance have won the day of public opinion. Rather, the problem is the conditions of employment, the circumstances of daily existence in housing and schools and neighborhoods, and a pervasive, objective incentive to rely on deceit and fraud to conduct everyday activities, including the wholesale fraud of immigration policies and laws. Still, in the United States today, nothing shakes the confidence in legal immigration more than to learn of crimes committed by the foreign-born, especially when they have entered the United States illegally. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates, for example, that the cost of incarcerating immigrants from all nations who committed a serious crime was over $1 billion nationwide last year. It is important for the American people to know that its government is not allowing people to come to the United States, commit a serious crime, and stay. Several years ago, the Clinton administration began to reimburse state governments for the costs of incarceration of foreign-born criminals. Although the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 authorized reimbursement, no previous administration or Congress had appropriated the money to actually repay states. In 1997 alone, the federal government reimbursed states $500 million nationwide, about half of which went to the state of California. Even this amount, however, represented only slightly more than half of the total costs of incarceration each year. Several years ago, the U.S. government also embarked upon a nationwide effort to increase the removal of immigrants who had committed crimes and had served their time in jail. As the administration launched a national initiative in 1994 to rebuild an effective immigration system in the United States, it found that “the back end of the immigration system,” the ability to remove someone for violating the law, was largely ineffective. Although some effort had been taken to try to keep people from immigrating illegally, once someone got into

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

171

Table 10.2 Removals to Selected Countries of the Caribbean from the United States, FY 1997

Antigua Aruba Bahamas Barbados Bermuda British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic Grenada Guadeloupe Haiti Jamaica Martinique Montserrat Netherlands Antilles St. Kitts–Nevis St. Lucia St. Vincent & Grenadines Trinidad & Tobago TOTAL

Total

Criminal

26 3 59 50 8 6 2 73 38 2,690 16 2 485 1,792 1 0 3 22 21 24 251 5,572

18 3 48 43 5 3 2 64 22 1,968 9 1 262 1,227 1 0 1 17 13 19 167 3,893

Noncriminal 8 0 11 7 3 3 0 9 16 722 7 1 223 565 0 0 2 5 8 5 84 1,679

Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, unpublished table, FY 97 Removals by Country, October 19, 1999.

the United States, even if they had been arrested and had an order of deportation, it was unlikely that the INS had the resources or capacity to remove them. In some situations, illegal immigrants who had committed serious crimes were released from jail and onto the streets before the INS was even informed of their sentence. In the past several years, the administration has worked hard to increase its removals and to concentrate its priority on those who had committed serious crimes. The number of removals has increased from a yearly average of 35,000 or so previously to over 111,000 for fiscal year 1997. About half of those removed have been criminals. Figures in Table 10.2 show the distribution of these removals throughout the Caribbean for the last fiscal year. The largest number were removed to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, and in both cases the share of the returned group who had been convicted of a crime in the United States was significantly higher than average. For the Caribbean, this dramatic increase in removals has generated serious concerns about the reintroduction of convicted felons into sending communities. It has also raised core questions about

172

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

commitments to regional cooperation and security. For example, migration and crime obviously create costs within the United States and risks to U.S. citizens and communities. How much of this impact, however, should be a shared responsibility between sending and receiving communities? Who is responsible for the criminal act? Does simply removing a person from the United States resolve the problems? The dilemma of returning criminals to their country of origin in the Caribbean is not a new issue. For years, criminal alien returns have been a recurring issue between the United States and Cuba. Even now, almost twenty years after the 1980 Mariel Cuban boat-lift, the cost of incarcerating the criminal population, and the unwillingness of the Cuban government to accept their citizens back, remains one of the problems in U.S.-Cuban relations. Although these problems extend to all the countries in the Caribbean, the migratory flow between the Dominican Republic and the United States is becoming an example of both the comprehensiveness of the problem and the possibilities for crafting policy solutions. On average since fiscal year 1993, the INS has deported over 1,500 people each year to the Dominican Republic. Although this induced return flow is only a small fraction of the approximately 40,000 Dominicans who migrate legally to the United States each year, and far surpasses any threat of massive deportations or loss of remittances. Still, the number of criminals in this return flow creates difficulties for receiving communities. In fiscal year 1997, 1,942 convicted felons were removed to the Dominican Republic. The typical person from the Dominican Republic deported in the last five years is a single man who was thirty-one years of age at the time he was removed. Compared to other nationality groups, Dominicans who are removed are older, more likely to be married, and have lived longer in the United States. Over one-third of those removed (37.7 percent) entered the United States illegally; another 10 percent were admitted with a nonimmigrant, legal visa but subsequently overstayed the period of legal residence. Nearly another third (31 percent) were legal permanent residents of the United States. The reason for their removal overwhelmingly involved drugs. Just under half of the single men deported for criminal offenses were convicted of selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or hallucinogens, according to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) figures reported on each deportee. Another 20 percent or so had been arrested and incarcerated for burglary, larceny, and stolen vehicles. A near majority of the deported have known felony convictions, and the overwhelming number of them are drug-related, aggravated felonies.

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

173

One of the most troublesome issues for the Caribbean states receiving these returnees is the extent to which people who have resided in the United States for a long time are now being sent back where, because of their long absence, they face hardship in reintegrating into the local communities. Although more Dominicans have lived in the United States longer than other groups of returnees, few of those removed have lived in the Dominican Republic since they were very young, have grown up, and now face huge problems of reintegration upon return. Among the Dominicans returned in fiscal year 1997, for example, over half had lived in the United States for less than seven years. Of course, even a small group facing difficulties of reintegration can cause problems for Caribbean governments. Still, for most countries of the region, the people who are removed from the United States have generally entered as adults, run afoul of the law through involvement in drug-related activities, and are returning to communities from which they left only a few years before. The solution for the United States, the Dominican Republic, and the entire region is to do more to prevent the problems and to restore integrity to the immigration laws and systems that govern throughout the region. New institutional security measures have already begun to take shape in the Caribbean to attack the problems associated with migrant smuggling and illegal immigration. For example, in 1998 tentative, yet encouraging steps have been taken in the Dominican Republic that are capable of disrupting migrant smuggling networks and cutting off paths to illegal and dangerous migration. These efforts are designed to require documents for tourists and visitors that increase security at airports and, if implemented correctly, simultaneously make it easier, not more difficult, for legal travelers to reach their tourist destinations. The United States and the Dominican Republic have also taken steps to enforce laws against smugglers who encourage and assist desperate people to attempt the dangerous trip in small boats across the Mona Passage from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. Many of these people are smuggled initially from far beyond the Western Hemisphere. Some originate as far away as China, Russia, and the Indian subcontinent. For US$35,000, for example, people are smuggled in near bondage from China to South America, through the Dominican Republic, and into the United States. These steps are not simply law enforcement efforts against illegal immigration. They represent a fundamental effort to protect public safety. As such, they also reflect the fundamental trust that citizens place in their democratic governments.

174

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

Boats are not the only risk. Some people attempt illegal entry by flying across the Mona Passage or directly to the U.S. mainland. U.S. consular personnel in the Dominican Republic are unfortunately understaffed and terribly underfunded and, with an increasing work load and the growing sophistication of fraudulent documents, their task is increasingly demanding. New U.S. immigration law, for instance, requires every legal immigrant to have a sponsor in the United States who is financially responsible. The consular officer will have to gauge whether the sponsor and the intending immigrant have the financial resources to remain financially independent in the United States. If illegal, fraudulent entry continues, it could slow down and impede the processing of applications for legal immigration. Conclusion Migration is not solely a security issue and few states, including the United States, deal with it in that framework. Also, a complete migration policy is not limited to civilian law enforcement. Economic desperation and deprivation are forms of compulsion to move that no imaginable level of law enforcement can totally prevent. Migration policy must include a supportive foundation for legal immigration as a healthy exchange of family members that strengthens communities within the United States and in the source countries. It should be the goal of regional policy to protect safe and legal immigration, and to ensure its productive role in each country. Yet, in today’s world, law enforcement is a necessary component. The region cannot wait for long-term solutions to be implemented to take on the new security threats, including the narcotics traffic, the trade in guns, and the smuggling of large numbers of people on small boats and through fraudulent use of each nation’s legal and administrative systems. The regional and even hemispheric answers to migration issues, of course, depend on the pace and character of development. They also require a significant change of perspective. Over a year ago, Mexico’s president Ernesto Zedillo described both challenges most clearly. He said that people leaving Mexico to solve their personal economic problems in the United States were taking with them the skills and energies that the nation needed to solve its collective problem. Mexicans, he said, must begin to find solutions to their economic problems at home in Mexico, building a better future for Mexico. His statement was not against emigration. It was an acknowledgement, however, that for both Mexico and the United States to benefit

A NEW POLITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION

175

from legal immigration, people must have real choices whether to leave, stay, or return. Reaching that goal of generating real choices depends on a collective ability to create a new post–Cold War framework that expands economic opportunities and strengthens democracy throughout the region and hemisphere.

11 Initiatives for Cooperative Regional Security: The Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System Brigadier General Rudyard Lewis

There seems to be a consensus that ideally the whole security agenda in the Caribbean—the illegal drug trade, gun smuggling, disasters, the brain drain, illegal immigration, etc.—should be approached on a regional or, as some suggest, global basis. I am personally convinced that most of the issues under discussion require a regional approach for solutions, but there are some factors that make the regional approach difficult and demand an initial buildup of confidence, and perhaps also some new approaches to the concept of sovereignty at the national level and the desire not to lose control over one’s turf at the official level. The Caribbean region is a complex of governmental systems and cultures, which makes the integration process long, slow, and sometimes frustrating. Basically, what needs to be established is the political will for cooperation, for ceding small elements of “sovereignty” for the good of the region as a whole. There are some initiatives under way in the Caribbean. While there is some sense of belonging to a wider Caribbean community, primary loyalties are confined to national interest. This lack of full participation and loyalty displayed by regional leaders apparently developed from their experiences of past attempts with integration. It is quite evident that there is an underlying distrust, in some cases aggravated by differences in political ideologies and disparities in economic development. Unified Response The decade of the 1970s ended with turbulent political instability in the region. It was the emergence of the revolution of March 1979 in Grenada that caused anxiety among the political leaders in the 177

178

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

region, particularly those in the Eastern Caribbean. This development was a decisive factor and led to the formation of the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS) in 1982. The establishment of the RSS was based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which was designed as a framework for security cooperation in the Eastern Caribbean. In theory, the MOU stated that in the event that a member state deemed its security threatened, it has a right to request assistance from any or all of the member states. The members of the RSS in turn agreed to prepare contingency plans and assist in the event of threats to national security. Security Mechanisms The impact of the attempted coup d’état in Trinidad and Tobago in July 1990 served to reactivate and reemphasize Caribbean governments’ concern with the threat to their sovereignty. It was envisaged that a comprehensive regional security mechanism was required to safeguard the representative parliamentary democracy that is a heritage of the Caribbean states. Hence, from the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Heads of the Caribbean Community, held in Jamaica from July 31 to August 2, 1990, came the following conclusions on the matter of regional security. 1. First, a committee of member states should be established to give further consideration to the question of regional security, taking into account the experiences of the RSS. 2. Further, the heads of government were adamant that the security of all member states of the community needed to be strengthened and agreed that there was a pressing need to review the existing arrangements in support of regional security in order to provide a basis for security to all member states. 3. The heads of government committed themselves to the establishment of a regional security mechanism that would, among other things: • Assist member states in clearly defined situations that threaten their sovereignty • Form part of a regime of enforcement of all maritime jurisdictions • Enhance member states’ enforcement capability in the war against narco-traffickers

INITIATIVES FOR REGIONAL SECURITY

179

While there is no doubt that it was the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) heads’ intention to establish a regional security mechanism, the agreed upon recommendations have not been realized. Interestingly, the threat of illegal drugs to regional security was addressed by the West Indian Commission, the final report of which notes that “nothing poses greater threats to civil society in CARICOM countries than the drug problem and nothing exemplifies the powerlessness of regional governments more. That is the magnitude of the danger that drug abuse and drug trafficking hold for our Community.”1 The report went on to list a number of recommendations for urgent action to address the threats illegal drugs pose to the region. It is well known that these recommendations were not implemented. Though several factors may have contributed to this inaction, it should be noted that within three years of the West Indian Commission Report there was a change of government in the majority of the CARICOM member states. Conceptual Approach Having given a broad overview of the prevailing factors that will affect initiatives for cooperative regional security, it is necessary to outline a conceptual approach for confidence-building initiatives. Recognizing that while expressed political commitment may be given to regional security issues, it is evident that other national priorities may supercede. Confidence-building initiatives in the region should adopt a “bottom-up” approach by building on existing mechanisms in the region, particularly those mechanisms that have demonstrated the potential of what can be achieved by pooling scarce resources from within the region. The point of departure for the bottom-up approach is at the operational level, not only because this builds confidence and credibility but more importantly because it sends a positive message to the political directorate. This in turn is translated into political support. Since its inception seventeen years ago, the RSS has made provisions for several confidence-building initiatives in support of the following areas: 1. Coast Guard Operations. The RSS Coast Guard conducts coordinated patrols on a weekly basis within the territorial waters of individual member states. In addition, joint maritime operations

180

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

are conducted with the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs, and the Royal Navy. 2. Combined Counternarcotic Interdiction. Combined counternarcotic interdiction operations are conducted on land by the law enforcement agencies in the region. These operations are supported by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Particular mention should be made of successful operations recently conducted in Grenada, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia. 3. Disaster Response. The RSS supports the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Relief Agency (CDERA) by coordinating the response and mobilization of the Caribbean Defense Response Unit (CDRU), a key element of the Caribbean Disaster Response mechanism. 4. Annual Exercises. Exercise Tradewinds is conducted annually in the region and involves the RSS member states, CARICOM Defense Forces, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. In Tradewinds ’97, the Dominican Republic participated for the first time. Current Initiatives The United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) Regional Meeting on Drug Control in the Caribbean was held at Bridgetown, Barbados, from May 15 to 17, 1996. The meeting endorsed the recommendations for a Plan of Action in respect to maritime cooperation in the Caribbean. Further, the meeting recognized that in the area of maritime drug-trafficking interdiction, successful mechanisms, initiatives, and working cooperation already exist among states of the region as well as among states outside the region. The RSS was requested to develop a plan for a framework to oversee all maritime aspects of drug operations in the Caribbean with respect to the development of subregional coast guards. In addition, the RSS was requested to continue the development of a subregional framework for its member states. Geographical, Political, and Legal Considerations The geographical and political diversity of the Caribbean island states necessitates the maritime agreements that currently exist between the states in the region and states outside the region. For example, in the region there are the RSS member states, the departments of France,

INITIATIVES FOR REGIONAL SECURITY

181

the British dependencies, the Dutch dependencies, and Cuba. These legal complexities within the Caribbean are not adaptable to the development of a fully integrated regional coast guard. Therefore, in accordance with the proposal by the CARICOM group at the UNDCP conference, it was agreed that the Caribbean region should be divided into three subregions as follows: 1. Northern Zone: The Northern Zone will consist of Jamaica, Belize, the Bahamas, Dependent Territories, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. 2. Central Zone: The Central Zone will consist of the RSS member states, Dependent Territories, and the French Antilles. 3. Southern Zone: The Southern Zone will consist of Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, the Netherlands Antilles, and Cayenne. Despite this disparity, the Caribbean law enforcement agencies have recognized that maritime cooperation in the fight against illegal drug trafficking must move beyond bilateral agreements and other sectoral agreements. The time has come to develop and adopt a unified strategy as a demonstration that Caribbean law enforcement agencies are fully united in the fight against the scourge of illegal drug trafficking. However, it will be necessary to ensure that the conceptual approach used in forming a unified strategy is fully supported by the participating Caribbean states. All evidence supports the argument that illegal drugs pose the most significant threat to the stability of the Caribbean region, and one that knows no borders or boundaries. However individual states’ perceptions of this threat are influenced by their geographical location in the transit zones between the producers in South America and the major markets in North America and Europe. Consequently, a framework to oversee all maritime aspects of drug operations in the Caribbean with respect to the development of subregional coast guards must consider this reality. In order to formulate an effective maritime framework, it will be necessary to consult with individual Caribbean states, as well as with France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Expansion of Existing Cooperative Systems The proposed expansion of the RSS to incorporate other CARICOM member states and the proposed cooperation agreement between the

182

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

RSS member states and other CARICOM states are two of the regional mechanisms considered most suitable to strengthening the regional security response. Evidence of this security response was demonstrated by the participation of the CARICOM battalion in the peacekeeping operations for the restoration of democracy in Haiti. I have invited my colleagues from the non-RSS member states of the CARICOM region to provide liaison officers to the RSS Headquarters, which would serve to improve relations between RSS and non-RSS forces as well as to advance the concept of expansion of the RSS to include other CARICOM forces. Having integrated the remaining CARICOM forces into the RSS by way of bilateral cooperation agreements or as full members, the next logical and practical step would be to enhance relations between the RSS and other forces within the hemisphere and beyond. With regard to the sensitive nature of developing a security mechanism to include the constabulary and military forces of the region, it would be prudent to ensure that any expansion be gradual. There are no quick solutions to the security threats facing the region, and while assistance from donor countries may be required, it is necessary to avoid the perception that money is a panacea and that simply throwing handfuls of it at the problem will cause it to disappear. Potential Role of the United States in Cooperative Policies The region is well aware of the difficulties facing the U.S. administration with its domestic issues, other foreign policy considerations, and the year 2000 elections. The banana issue, for instance, has engaged much discussion during recent years and bears out the need for the region to negotiate collectively in the future. While the United States has a major role to play in the cooperative security policies of the region, there is a need to adopt a different approach. Decisions made in Washington, however well-intentioned they might be, will not be optimally effective without input from the Caribbean region. Collaboration and cooperation will avoid the duplication of efforts and would harmonize regional goals and objectives. It is necessary to underscore the fact that most senior officials in the RSS have benefited from extraregional training opportunities, have at least fifteen to twenty years of experience in problem solving, and are well qualified to advise on matters unique to the region. The geographical location of the United States and its historically good relations with the CARICOM make it well suited to play a major role in cooperative regional policies. While bilateral agreements may

INITIATIVES FOR REGIONAL SECURITY

183

be the doctrine of U.S. foreign policy, much more mutual benefit can be achieved in the region through multilateral agreements and the support of regional initiatives and organizations such as the CDERA, the RSS, and CARICOM. As General Wesley Clark, former commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, has said, the time has come to close the gate instead of raising the fence. Through our collective efforts, CARICOM nations can contribute significantly toward this end. In order to begin the process, the necessary financial and technical resources are required so that these initiatives can be put in motion. The United States and other developed countries can best assist in closing the gate by providing the necessary oil for the Caribbean security forces to put the gate in motion, and once the gate is closed to assist in ensuring that it remains so. The nations of the Caribbean, including the United States, should not address these transnational security threats by raising the barriers between themselves. Instead we should strengthen the institutions and police forces responsible for regulating the legal and beneficial flow of goods. Note 1. Time for Action: The Report of the West Indian Commission (Bridgetown, Jamaica: The West Indian Commission, 1992).

12 The Cooperative Agenda of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Caribbean Brigadier General Thomas Keck

The U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) can clearly be defined as a command in transition. The move of the command from Panama to Miami in late 1997 came concurrently at a very significant point in our history, given that the responsibility for most U.S. military activity within the Caribbean has been transferred from Atlantic Command to us at approximately the same time. It’s significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it demonstrates one of our key initiatives to increase cooperative regional security. It effectively merges the focus of our military deployments and assistance for all countries south of the United States mainland. This also aligns us (the Caribbean and Latin America) with other government organizations, the Organization of American States, the Summit of the Americas, and the Defense Ministerial. One of the ultimate objectives of this new alignment is the increased cooperation then made possible against one of the greatest threats to regional security anywhere—drug trafficking. We are now able to track drug production from its source through its intended delivery anywhere in the hemisphere and do so without worrying about command lines and whose area of responsibility the drug traffickers happen to occupy at the time. The traffickers, as we have come to know, respect no borders. As more and more of the countries of this hemisphere join in the fight against drugs, we must try to make the most of the assets we all have. For the United States, a single, unified command headquarters controlling U.S. forces is a very positive step in that direction. We know we have big shoes to fill and are doing our homework with the Atlantic Command to insure that the transfer of responsibility is transparent to our partners in the Caribbean. We feel honored to have been entrusted with this additional responsibility, and believe that the 185

186

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

security forces of our neighbors will be pleased with the focus and attention from SOUTHCOM. As General Wesley Clark, former commander in chief of U.S. Southern Command, has said, “Regional engagement is what we do!”1 Beyond the regional implications of initiatives such as this change to our Unified Command Plan, we believe that while respecting sovereignty, military cooperation is an important component of any nation’s security strategy. Such cooperation must first be exercised within one’s own country, and only then expanded to the regional level. The benefits of any such initiatives are numerous. On a national level, military cooperation is important because it promotes, supports, and enhances democracy and stability. Democracies have legitimate defense needs; a capable, professional military and police force provide the stability necessary to enhance democracy and economic expansion. On the regional level, cooperation among democratic countries can then bolster prosperity and enhance security on the hemispheric level. If there is one lesson I’ve learned while working in the region, it’s that the problems in the Caribbean are too vast and complex for any one country (including the United States) to face alone. Over the years, the U.S. Southern Command has been involved in a number of such cooperative measures. Last year approximately 3,000 deployments, totaling 56,000 military members, were sent to Latin America for operations, training exercises, and military-to-military interaction. There have been, for example, multilateral exercises, such as: the annual UNITAS exercise that highlights maritime cooperation; Fuerzas Aliadas–Cabanas, concentrating on peacekeeping operations and human rights cooperation; and Fuerzas Unidas–PKO, held last year in Argentina and this year in Uruguay, focusing on peacekeeping operations. The peacekeeping experiences held previously in the Caribbean will add significant, realistic credibility to regional exercises if the armed forces of the Caribbean choose to participate. Outside of the training arena and entering real world peacekeeping operations, SOUTHCOM has been intimately involved in the Military Observer Mission to Ecuador and Peru, with the goal of maintaining the peace along the two countries’ disputed border. In addition, there have been humanitarian, civic assistance, and disaster relief exercises and operations, such as the recent flood relief operations in Costa Rica. There have been regional counterdrug surge operations, such as the recently concluded Green Clover and the ongoing Laser Strike initiatives. Finally, we have been actively engaged in a series of military-to-military exchanges between the Latin American countries and the United States. One example is the recent visit to

U.S. ARMED FORCES IN THE CARIBBEAN

187

Panama by fifty-five members of the Honduran National War College. These are to name but a few of the many efforts on our part to help with regional military interaction. We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish to date within Latin America and are now looking forward to the opportunity to offer the same level of interest, commitment, and support to the Caribbean following the transfer of these operational duties. The beauty of SOUTHCOM’s operations in the Caribbean is that this type of cooperation is nothing new to Caribbeans; it’s been practiced as far back as 1958 with the formation of the West Indies Federation. From those early days of what would become Caribbean independence, regional security has been a much-discussed issue with some now very tangible products to show for it. I want to emphasize how successful the Regional Security System (RSS) has proven to be. While there is always room for improvement, the RSS has become for many a model for regional security initiatives. 1997’s Defense Ministerial in the United States brought the concept of the RSS to the attention of many Latin American countries that were totally unaware of its existence. Having learned something about it now though, we are all looking more closely at such initiatives. The example of the RSS and the long history of mutual cooperation in the region will be held as models for all countries in this hemisphere to study. The second Defense Ministerial of the Americas took place in Bariloche, Argentina, during the first week of October 1998. The solidarity of the Caribbean was clearly noted. Then U.S. secretary of defense, Dr. William Perry, met with the seven Eastern Caribbean nations during a special bilateral meeting. The future of cooperation in this region and hemisphere has never looked brighter—but we have work to do. Cooperation, confidence- and security-building measures, and transparency will be crucial to meet the significant challenges we face. Note 1. Comment made during a lunch presentation at the Peace and Security in the Americas workshop in St. Michaels, Barbados, on October 21, 1996.

13 The New Caribbean Security Agenda Wattie Vos

This chapter seeks to identify and discuss the threats the region as a whole and each of our countries faces as we enter the twenty-first century. Once identified, we citizens of the Caribbean can together establish a framework for prevention, engagement, and commitment on a mutual and cooperative basis. As we look to the future, I believe we face three separate but related threats: economic disasters; the use of drugs and alcohol and their abuse; domestic violence and related public health problems. Economic Disasters First, we face a threat from the consequences of poorly managed economies and the dispersion of economic opportunity. Some of these consequences include the risk of an increase in crimes against tourists, domestic violence, and an increase in child abuse, and the ever present threat of substance abuse, both alcohol and narcotics, and their immediate implications, including driving under the influence of these substances. If the region as a whole does not work cooperatively from a planning through an implementation stage, then the problems of economic decline and their accompanying debilitating consequences will follow. The spread of these types of crime is socially harmful and has an economic destabilizing effect. So far, Aruba, my home country, has been very fortunate. Only ten years ago, Aruba faced an unemployment rate of 38 percent and the absence of any significant viable industry. Through the hard work of the people of Aruba and the dedication of the government, a rescue plan was developed and then successfully implemented. In 1996 189

190

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

we were at full employment and have spent much time and effort, through the able leadership of my colleagues, to continue to diversify our economic sector and thus to provide for greater opportunity for all our citizens. This strategic economic approach has led us to low incidence rates in each of these threat categories. Despite our robust economy and our successful economic planning, we cannot rest. We are not satisfied with low incidence rates. Because even if the incidence rates are low, there still are victims, people who have suffered. That is why we have established treatment and referral systems that are accompanied by strong public education campaigns designed to support both prevention and treatment. Drug Cartels Second, we face a threat from the drug cartels, both in their overt or covert use of Caribbean resources and recently their attempts to manipulate democratic systems to advantage their positions. In the past five years or so, I believe these cartels have extended their interests from transshipment and money laundering to creating consumption-based markets in the Caribbean and seeking to influence the outcome of elections by attempting to orchestrate and exploit public perception. The threat the drug cartels pose can be seen in the lost dreams of every single child, boy or girl, who has been addicted to drugs, or whose parent is an addict. This assault on the future of children everywhere is a global assault on their human rights that should not be tolerated by any country in this region, or in the world. Aruba has never condoned any drugs organization to operate in or from our country. The government of Aruba does not tolerate it now and will never tolerate it. We will under no circumstances allow the drug cartels and their related associations to harm a single child, parent, or citizen in Aruba. Public Health Threats Third, we face a threat from the increase and extension of public health threats, whether the threat is HIV-AIDS, cholera, or the extremely lethal Ebola virus. The transmission of any of these diseases, and other yet to be discovered diseases, poses a very real threat to each and every one of us. In today’s world, and certainly in tomorrow’s

THE NEW SECURITY AGENDA

191

world, the creation and transmission of disease is something we should all be concerned about, not only for the implications to our populations, but also because an outbreak of any of these diseases will have perilous economic consequences. Public health threats can have serious consequences for any country. Not only could they affect the relationship with neighbors or with tourists, but the existence of public health threats will have extremely grave and debilitating effects on domestic populations, harming the family and the community alike and also placing real and costly demands on the public-health infrastructure of the country. From Aruba’s perspective, we are once again fortunate. We have not seen the sad and dangerous effects caused by these diseases. Although I say that we are fortunate, I also know the value and importance of prevention. That is why our government supports a public education program related to AIDS prevention. The topics discussed and described above are the three major threats I believe we face. A Framework I would like to outline some actions that can serve as a framework for the future, a future that is constructed on prevention and commitment. Fundamentally, it is vital that each of the Caribbean governments gets connected to a global or regional information system. President Clinton has set the standard for leading his country into the twentyfirst century by encouraging each school in the United States to have access to, and be on, the Internet. In the Caribbean, we should follow that lead in general, and specifically, we should communicate on a more frequent and a more substantive basis. To that end, I suggest the design and creation of a worldwide web site to which each Caribbean government could assign information about their success in fighting the aforementioned predicaments and the solutions applied. This exchange of information would present solutions for the problems at hand, or at least initiate confronting these problems and working on solutions based on the knowledge drawn from the collective experience of our counterparts. Furthermore, I would encourage the continuation of dialogue such as that which prevails at Peace and Security in the Americas workshops on an annual basis. I think all of us in government understand the vital role conferences play as catalysts in our respective and collective policy processes. I hold the strong conviction that if the leaders and the people of the Caribbean work together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.

14 A Call for the Redefinition of Regional and National Interests General José E. Noble Espejo

Owing to their geopolitical situation, the nations of the Caribbean are involved in a range of specific threats to security, such as emergencies caused by natural disasters, drug trafficking and criminal activities, money laundering, migratory pressures, and threats to the environment. However, only in the cases of emergencies and environmental incidents are we alone involved. In the other cases—those of drug trafficking, crime, money laundering, and migration—the threats work within the regional system but they do not affect us internally. Because the Dominican Republic is located so close to the continental territory of the United States, it is difficult for us to avoid being influenced by U.S. policies. In response, the Dominican Republic has adopted an attitude of collaboration and cooperation, some of the elements of which can be listed here. • With regard to economic integration, we have made the necessary efforts through the vehicle of the LOME IV Convention. • In cases of emergency, we have worked with the coast guard of Puerto Rico and the units of the U.S. Southern Command. • In drug cases, we have worked with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. • In cases of money laundering, we have worked with the U.S. Department of Justice. • We have conducted frequent operations, such as Operation Halcon with Puerto Rico, regarding migratory policies. • We also frequently take part in purely military exercises per se, such as the annual exercise with the countries of the Caribbean, and exercises with U.S., British, and French forces to increase the operational readiness of the troops that take part in multinational operations. 193

194

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

Reflections on the Regional Security Agenda First, when one looks at all the specific cases of threats, it can be seen that they all have one thing in common, and that is that they are tied in one way or another to problems in the economic sector. In addition, if in each of these cases effective economic measures were taken to combat the threats, the political and social dangers they pose would be reduced. Second is the fact that crime is international in nature, and therefore the most successful means for combating it is through international cooperation instead of each nation acting individually. Third, when each of the countries acts to cooperate with the regional security measures, it has to make contributions that come from its internal national budget in the area of defense and security spending. Cooperation, therefore, affects the country’s social spending; however, it is weakness in this area that is the cause of crime. The most appropriate course of action would be to create a joint fund to combat these ills, considering of course all of the applicable regulations and legal standards. In such a fund, the usual practice of making individual contributions would not be followed, but rather the assets seized from the criminals themselves would be used, particularly in the area of drug trafficking. Such a strategy would require fewer resources on our part and would better provide for the expenses of a regional war against drug-trafficking criminals, a struggle that depends on acquiring and using sophisticated technology. Under such a plan, we would use their own vessels and aircraft against them, and would invest only in operational costs, training, and maintenance. I must emphasize the point that we must ascertain and communicate frankly about the extent to which there is a real will to totally eradicate these ills and not just keep them under control. Regarding the argument that most current agreements are bilateral when they should be multilateral, I think it would be helpful to redefine the concept of multilateralism. I prefer the term multirelational instead of multilateral when referring to these actions or agreements. When agreements are made on a many-to-one or one-to-many basis, they have to be viewed in bilateral terms and dealings are simplified. This point has been made clear by Jonathon Weiner (U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) when he insisted that bilateral relationships are historically more easy to establish and maintain.1 A multirelational agreement is many-to-many, in which attention is paid to all of the factors that apply to a problem. In these cases, each party does what it can to correct the problem and to compensate

REDEFINITION OF REGIONAL AND NATIONAL INTERESTS

195

for the weaknesses of another party, without requiring moral equivalency and without an exact reciprocal response. Rather it is a situation in which to that party is transferred what it needs, a transaction that serves as a potential measure of multiple confidence within the negotiating group. The Dominican Republic lacks the necessary resources to maintain various specialized agencies to combat international crime. Because the armed forces are one of the national institutions with the highest degree of discipline, the country prefers to use them in nontraditional roles, even though such actions are not part of the usual mission for these forces. For example, instead of creating a coast guard unit, the Domincan navy is asked to use its existing vessels to assist governmental and nongovernmental institutions. In none of these cases do the armed forces as an institution direct these operations; the military simply takes on these added responsibilities. As a result, the armed forces lose their effectiveness owing to the fact that the servicemen, after participating in these activities for a long period of time, lose their operational readiness. This expanded role of the military therefore ultimately compromises the very status and effectiveness of the military. All countries base their status as nation-states on their individual national interests and goals. The commitments they make to other nations bind them to the defense of those interests, but within the context of a relationship in which there exists an affinity of interests rather than collaboration. A harmonious and fruitful relationship is reached only when the interests of the two countries can overlap, or the interests of one country are subordinated to those of another, owing to the deterrent capability of the latter. We Dominicans have gotten used to viewing the concept of security through the lens of threats, basically the threat to each of our interests. This was the regional trend during the Cold War, but now that it is over, I propose a reevaluation. More than just defending individual interests, we must seek to define new interests, and to consider joint interests that pertain to all of the actors involved. We would get further, even though it might seem utopian, in solving international problems by emphasizing regional over national interests. Note 1. Jonathon Weiner’s comment was made during discussions at the Peace and Security in the Americas workshop in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on June 9–10, 1997.

15 Maritime Counternarcotics Agreements: The Cop on the Beat Captian Randy Beardsworth

The U.S. Coast Guard is a unique agency within the U.S. government. We have our roots in the Revenue Cutter Service of the earliest years of our republic, established under the secretary of the Treasury to apprehend smugglers and collect tariffs for our struggling young nation. We now operate under the Department of Transportation and are part of the armed forces. We are both a regulatory agency and a law enforcement agency, and we still apprehend smugglers, just as we have done for well over 200 years. The U.S. Coast Guard has various missions that correspond well with security concerns commonly at play in the Caribbean region. • • • • • • • •

Search and rescue Maritime law enforcement Alien migrant interdiction Marine environmental protection Merchant vessel safety Aids to navigation Military readiness Fisheries

About three-quarters of all illegal maritime migration into the United States comes through Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the Caribbean, we expect about 150–300 migrants a month to depart Haiti, about 75–100 migrants a month to depart Cuba, and about 1,500–2,000 migrants a month to depart the Dominican Republic. We are convinced of a strong correlation between migrant smuggling, drug smuggling, and other criminal activities, especially across the Mona Pass and other avenues into Puerto Rico. According to the August 1996 Interagency Assessment of Cocaine Movement, for example, 197

198

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

28 percent of the drugs produced within South American countries flow to or through the Eastern Caribbean. The most powerful tool that we can collectively wield to combat narco-trafficking is close cooperation among our countries so that these narco-traffickers cannot seek refuge, with absolute impunity, in any of our territorial seas. This cooperation comes in a number of forms. • • • •

Sharing of information Close coordination during breaking cases Combined operations And, last but not least, maritime counternarcotics agreements that allow us, collectively, to stop drug smugglers from their blatant violation of the sovereignty of all of our nations. We currently have fifteen bilateral agreements in the region, nine of which are “model” agreements.

The following are the six elements of the standard agreements. Most nations that have signed these agreements have agreed to the first four elements. • • • • • •

Shipboarding Shiprider Pursuit Entry Overflight Order suspect aircraft to land

My mission is not to convince anyone to change their minds about these agreements, but I do want to describe these agreements from a perspective many security officials in the Caribbean may not have experienced—the perspective of “the cop on the beat.” The Cop on the Beat In 1976 I was captain of a patrol boat operating in the Caribbean. At that time you didn’t need a lot of high technology, or for that matter a lot of international cooperation. The trade was solely in marijuana, and all you had to do was get within fifty yards of the bad guy and you could smell it. Cocaine was only beginning to come into the United States. From 1990 to 1993 I was captain of a larger cutter. By that time the trade was predominantly cocaine, and it was extraordinarily well

MARITIME COUNTERNARCOTICS AGREEMENTS

199

hidden. The smugglers had become sophisticated and clever. My biggest frustration during those years was the impregnable wall around the territorial seas of the countries in the region; the only ones who could penetrate that wall seemed to be the bad guys. Today, as chief of law enforcement for the Seventh Coast Guard District in Miami, I have seen tremendous improvement in regional cooperation. Today, when I get a call that a cutter wants to board a vessel, I ask myself three questions: What flag is the vessel? Do we have a bilateral agreement? and How close is the vessel to whose territorial sea? Let me walk you through an example of why these questions are important and how these bilateral agreements really work. Let’s assume a Coast Guard aircraft sights a vessel southeast of Jamaica at 1 P.M. The vessel is heading toward the Dominican Republic at 12 knots. At this point the vessel is about 200 nautical miles (NM) from the Dominican Republic’s territorial sea and about 100 NM from Haiti’s territorial sea. That gives us about 17 hours and 81/2 hours respectively before the vessel will enter someone’s territorial seas. If we had a shiprider agreement with the flag state of this vessel and if we could articulate suspicion, we could board the vessel immediately on behalf of the flag state. If we found illegal narcotic smuggling activity, we would seek direction from the flag state as to disposition while the situation was “frozen” in international waters. In this example, we do not have a shiprider agreement with the flag state, so we must go through the ad hoc process of getting permission from the flag state to board. Once the vessel is sighted by the Coast Guard aircraft, the cutter must plot and run an intercept course. Depending on relative position and speed, this could take from a few minutes to a few hours. Let us assume that two hours have passed. The cutter then asks a series of questions of the master of the vessel in order to determine vessel nationality, last port of call, next port of call, cargo, master’s name, nationality of the crew, etc. During this inquiry, another hour has passed. The cutter then passes this information and the reason why this vessel is suspicious to the U.S. Coast Guard command center in Miami. This is where I come in. I’m briefed and, if I concur that the vessel is suspicious, we continue to brief up our chain of command. Meanwhile, another hour has passed. The command center then briefs Coast Guard headquarters, who in turn briefs the U.S. State Department, who then convenes an interagency telephone conference to ensure there are no problems with approaching the flag state for permission to board. By this time, another two hours have passed. The State Department then calls the U.S. Embassy in the flag state and asks them to contact the appropriate official in the flag state

200

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

government who can authorize us to board this vessel on their behalf. Another hour has passed. The U.S. Embassy officer calls the flag state official, but there is no answer. He waits another hour—still no answer. Yet another hour has passed. Thus far, eight hours have passed, and the embassy officer will continue to try to contact the flag state official. Meanwhile, back on the ship—if the suspect ship were to enter Dominican Republic waters, I would not worry because the Dominican Republic has authorized the U.S. government, through a maritime counternarcotics agreement, to board this suspicious vessel on its behalf. However, the drug traffickers are bright fellows and know this fact. Therefore, the traffickers decide to head to Haiti, with whom we do not have a comprehensive agreement. Eight and one-half hours after sighting this suspicious ship, it enters Haitian territorial seas, we lose track of the vessel, and, presumably, the load of cocaine finds its way ashore. Had we had a maritime counternarcotics agreement with either the flag state or, in this case, with Haiti, the vessel would have been boarded and the narco-traffickers would not have violated anyone’s sovereignty. This is a fictitious but not uncommon scenario. Let me give you two real-life examples that occurred recently. First, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter observed a “go-fast” loitering in the territorial seas of a country with whom we do not have a counternarcotics agreement. The cutter then tracked a low-flying, unidentified small aircraft approaching from the south that circled the “go-fast” for a few minutes then departed back to the south. The “go-fast” remained in the area long enough to pick up bales from the water and then proceeded into the island with the drugs. We could do nothing except notify the island’s government, which was unable to respond in a timely manner. In the second case, we came across a suspicious St. Vincent flag vessel as it approached Haitian territorial seas. Because we had an agreement with St. Vincent, we were able to stop the vessel in international waters before it entered Haitian territorial seas. Once stopped, we asked St. Vincent how they wanted to proceed. St. Vincent then gave us permission to divert the vessel to Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba, where a dockside search revealed that the vessel had recently been carrying cocaine. Unfortunately, we were just a little late. Conclusion In summary, I will make six points about why these counternarcotics agreements are important:

MARITIME COUNTERNARCOTICS AGREEMENTS

201

1. With an agreement, a country has access to manned, equipped, maintained, technologically capable, experienced ships and their boarding teams. 2. The laws enforced under the agreement are the country’s laws. 3. The country chooses the disposition of the case. 4. The agreement is a tool to enforce a country’s laws on vessels flying their flag. 5. The agreement is a tool to pursue smugglers when a country doesn’t have a resource readily available. 6. If there is no suspicion, then there is no boarding. I conclude with a quote from a speech given by Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj on October 17, 1996. Let me state emphatically that the greatest threat to our sovereignty comes from the drug lords. These are international criminals who have no respect for sovereignty or boundary lines. They do not stop at our borders or anyone else’s borders with their poison. The truth is they cannot carry on their deadly trade without violating our border and sovereignty. If the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, cannot fight the drug barons alone, how can we? Drug traffickers are international criminals and can be defeated only with international cooperation.

Epilogue This short chapter was based on an oral presentation narrowly focused on the Central and Eastern Caribbean maritime counternarcotics agreements. At the time of the presentation both Jamaica and Barbados were strongly opposed to negotiating such an agreement. Much has changed since 1996. The United States has concluded maritime counternarcotics agreements with Colombia, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Suriname. The agreements with Haiti, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua await ratification and implementation. There is also a draft regional maritime counternarcotics agreement under discussion. The Colombian agreement allows for expeditious verification of ship registry and permission to board. While not “model” agreements, the agreements with Jamaica and Barbados allow for increased cooperation and streamlined procedures for various authorizations. Remarkably, the United States and Jamaica have conducted a number of successful combined operations, known as Rip Tide under their agreement. Another important change since 1996 has been a marked shift in the threat from slow-moving freighters to “go-

202

PRACTITIONERS’ VIEWS

fast” boats. This shift in the threat reduces, from several hours to often less than one or two hours, the time available in which to get authorization to board a vessel and argues forcibly for effective maritime counternarcotics agreements. Note Editors’ note. In the spring of 1999, the fifteen member countries of CARICOM, along with Antigua, threatened to suspend existing shiprider agreements in protest of U.S. actions in the World Trade Organization aimed at punishing the European Union for its trade preferences for bananas imported from former colonies in the Caribbean. In chapter 16 of this volume, the editors discuss the significance of this “issue linkage” for regional relations.

PART 4 CONCLUSION

16 Looking Ahead: Regional Relations in the Post–Cold War Era

Joseph S. Tulchin & Ralph H. Espach As the twenty-first century begins, the Caribbean Basin has come under increasing tension. The trends in specific security issues described in these chapters—migration, drug trafficking, Cuba’s growing isolation—continue as our authors predicted they would. Human migration and the smuggling of illegal goods have existed in the region in one form or another for centuries, and are likely to continue throughout the foreseeable future.1 The troubling fact, however, is that the nations of the Caribbean have made scant progress in addressing these issues cooperatively. Bureaucratic, cultural, and other obstacles at the domestic level, economic hardship, ideological stubbornness, and even mother nature continue to hamper efforts at greater cooperation. In some cases there has even been backsliding. Across the region—including in the United States—there is a dearth of political vision in regional relations. Nevertheless, the nations of the region—with the exception of Cuba—continue to share a commitment to democracy and support for liberalized economic relations. Interstate relations remain peaceful, and economic ties continue to increase. Also, the regional security policy of the United States remains largely incoherent, still fragmented along issue lines and institutional divisions, and therefore relatively flexible. As a result, the window of opportunity for improved regional relations is still open, even if the road to greater understanding and cooperation seems increasingly difficult. In Washington, the Caribbean remains marginalized with the exception of Cuba, a political three-ring circus crowded with international and domestic special interests. With the decreasing popularity of NAFTA and international free trade in general, the Clinton administration spends little of its political capital on trade issues important to the Caribbean, such as NAFTA parity, and Congress remains 205

206

CONCLUSION

disinterested. In his recent visit to Central America, the president showed sensitivity to regional concerns over immigrant status and free trade, but it was clear that these are not issues over which he chooses to contend with congressional Republicans, especially looking toward the elections in 2000. Even a popular aid package for countries ravaged by Hurricane Mitch has been held up by partisan arguments over whether this money will or will not come from Social Security funds, a hot domestic issue of the election season. Without direction from above, U.S. policy toward its Caribbean neighbors continues to be formulated at the lower, more operational and issue-specific levels. This creates a tendency for short-sightedness and inconsistency among the policies of different agencies. However, this type of policy formulation—relatively devoid of ideological design and less captive to wider political considerations—is not necessarily negative for regional relations. As we discussed in the introduction, fragmentation and ambiguity leave space for Caribbean policymakers to pursue their interests by designing and promoting a framework for increased issue linkage and more balanced negotiation. The capacity for issue linkage is increasingly evident. In early March 1999, the fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) suspended their shiprider treaties in protest of the U.S. case against the European Union for the concessions it gives to banana imports from former colonies, mostly those of the Eastern Caribbean. As discussed in Captain Beardsworth’s chapter 15, these shiprider agreements are a key facet of U.S. regional antidrug operations, and their suspension sets back the results of years of negotiations and pressure. Because U.S. regional policy is fragmented, however, and lacks the direction from higher levels needed to coordinate various agencies, this act of protest is unlikely to affect U.S. trade policy toward Europe. U.S. trade policy is overseen by the Department of Commerce and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, neither of which is beholden to the Executive Office of National Drug Control Policy or to the military. Also, the corporate interests behind the U.S. complaint over European banana quotas are powerfully connected in Washington. If forcing Europe to drop the quotas would risk a deluge of illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic or Haiti, or would risk turning the control of an island microstate over to narcotraffickers, then the scenario might be different. Economic hardship in the microstates of the Eastern Caribbean, however, simply does not raise alarm in Washington, especially considering that other regional friends of the United States—Ecuador and Costa Rica, principally—actively support this U.S. action.

LOOKING AHEAD

207

Nevertheless, even if it fails to affect current U.S. policies, the action is a significant move for the CARICOM. As Lester Bird, the prime minister of Antigua, said, “We have to have some kind of leverage . . . To have the United States move against these tiny islands . . . that is reprehensible.”2 The key question for Caribbean policymakers is in what manner and in what policy areas can that leverage be most effective? If linking trade policy with Europe to antidrug trafficking operations is not successful, then it might be more effective to link two issues that are more similar in nature and are handled by more closely related agencies. For instance, the sort of information sharing and coordinated operations the U.S. desires to fight drug trafficking could be negotiated on the Caribbean side with similar steps to reduce the flow of small arms from the U.S. into the region, or to better monitor the movement of convicted criminals. If the pursuit of U.S. trade interests is going to damage regional economies that are dependent on banana exports, then instead of suspending cooperation against drug trafficking—to the delight of the smugglers—why not push for changes in U.S. trade and economic policy where the causal and institutional ties are more direct? Such objectives could include NAFTA parity, increased incentives from the U.S. government for investment in these economies, or assistance for economic development projects. These islands face increasing competitiveness in the banana market, and cannot continue to depend on this single crop— and European charity—to sustain their economies. Whatever leverage the CARICOM can establish by working cooperatively would be better applied to inducing U.S. cooperation in economic development activities and the promotion of alternative exports or industries, instead of defending an industry ill-suited to compete in the global market. In other areas as well Caribbean nations are feeling the strain of membership in the regional international community. The attorneys general of twelve Caribbean nations signed on to a document urging their governments to withdraw their membership from the Inter-American Human Rights Convention and the U.N. Treaty on Civil and Political Rights. Interference from the monitors of these treaties, they argue, is compromising their judicial sovereignty by asking them to delay state executions while the cases are under review. Disputes such as these are natural as countries increase their international participation and integration. However, if they grow increasingly frequent and contentious, and if the CARICOM, the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), or the governments themselves cannot establish appropriate mechanisms for mediation, they can undermine the legitimacy of regional cooperation. The key is not to hope to avoid all disputes or to

208

CONCLUSION

solve the sovereignty dilemma, which has always been a source of contention in international affairs. Instead, the countries of the Caribbean should seek legitimate forums or mechanisms for the resolution of such problems in a way that does not compromise the integrity of regional agreements or institutions. Most likely existing regional institutions such as CARICOM or the ACS can serve this function. The legitimacy and effectiveness of the forum is a crucial issue, because consensual agreement on contentious issues may be the source of future leverage in negotiations with extraregional actors like the United States. If we refer to NAFTA or the European Union as possible models, we see that private settlement-dispute mechanisms—litigation, mediation, and arbitration—have come to play an important role in regional integration. The anachronistic stalemate between the United States and Cuba continues to impede the development of regional cooperation. In December 1998 the U.S. announced limited measures to allow increased travel, communications, and financial flows to and from the island, and momentum is slowly building for a review of overall U.S. policy toward Cuba. However, it remains extremely unlikely that the embargo policy will undergo revision anytime soon. For its part, the Cuban government has hardened its stance toward the United States and tightened its repression at home. The sentencing to prison of four prominent dissidents in March 1999 drew a strong international reaction, including from important trading partners Canada and Spain and from the Vatican. This trend, if it continues, does not bode well for stability within Cuba and it further complicates the reintegration of the island into regional affairs. If the United States continues to soften gradually its approach toward the Castro regime, Cuba’s democratic Caribbean neighbors, its European trade partners, and Canada will expect the Cuban government likewise to loosen its domestic controls and respect basic international standards of human rights and political freedoms. In Cuba and especially in the United States, the forces that promote antagonism and restriction in the bilateral relationship are hardline ideologues who still view the world through the prism of the Cold War era. As the years pass, this viewpoint is increasingly isolated politically, at least in the United States. Over the next decade, further policy revision on at least one side is a certainty. Any such change in Cuba—whether the economy becomes a thriving economic competitor to the industries of other Caribbean nations, or the country lapses into political chaos—carries potential threats to the security of the region. To minimize these threats, Cuba’s neighbors must continue to build economic, political, and especially security ties that build mutual confidence, and to encourage

LOOKING AHEAD

209

Cuba to participate in regional international initiatives.3 In the longterm future, a thriving, stable Cuba cooperatively active in regional initiatives and institutions could significantly increase the leverage of the region in its extraregional affairs. Haiti’s political and economic crises, rife with violence, also continue unabated and unresolved and pose a multidimensional security threat to the region. If the country slips into another civil war, the outflow of Haitians—already a major issue in regional relations—will likely multiply. As with other issues, the nations of the Caribbean have much to gain from increasing their awareness and cooperative involvement in the Haitian situation, and contributing to its stabilization. The participation of an inter-American contingent of peacekeeping troops in Haiti was a significant step toward improving the region’s leverage in negotiating such actions with the United States. Before any such potential crisis develops is the best time for the establishment of relations and confidence, both with the Haitian authorities and among other regional partners, including the United States, that could serve useful ends regardless of how the situation unfolds. As with the issue of narco-trafficking, the Caribbean should work to establish a common position on how the situation in Haiti should be handled, and to promote cooperatively that position in Washington. Building a coalition with African-American political organizations, which were remarkably influential in the U.S. reaction to the Cedras regime, could be useful in many ways. Otherwise, if Haiti lapses into another crisis and the nations of the Caribbean Basin cannot offer a design for active international response, the United States is likely to respond unilaterally, which would undermine the legitimacy of regional multilateral cooperation. The principal message of this book is that the time is ripe for the nations of the Caribbean to become proactive in expanding cooperative regional security. Some progress has been made, and the region seems to be finding its voice through CARICOM and other regional projects. When establishing its leverage and negotiating position vis-àvis extraregional actors, the region should be pragmatic and operational in its thinking. It should seek not merely to protest the actions of others, but to construct feasible multilateral approaches to security threats. The management of international affairs in the Caribbean Basin in the postcolonial, post–Cold War era requires active participation by the nations of the Basin. Only through active assumption of international responsibilities can they create the space for themselves in the international community that they need to defend their interests. If they fail to meet this challenge, they will be condemned to marginal irrelevance or unwanted external interference.

210

CONCLUSION

Notes 1. See Jorge Domínguez, “The Powers, the Pirates, and Internationals Norms and Institutions in the American Mediterranean,” in Joseph S. Tulchin, Andrés Serbín, and Rafael Hernández (eds.), Cuba and the Caribbean (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1997), pp. 3–20. 2. Associated Press, “Antigua Suspending Treaty to Help U.S. Drug Fight Because of Banana,” March 9, 1999, pulled from CNN-Interactive web site at http://www.cnn.com. 3. For a discussion of the role of confidence-building measures in constructing regional cooperative policies, see Joseph S. Tulchin and Francisco Rojas, Strategic Balance and Confidence Building Measures in the Americas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

Index

Abrams, Elliot, 50 Abrams Proposition, 50 ACS. See Association of Caribbean States Act of Havana, 48 AEC. See Association of States of the Caribbean agricultural sector, 144–145 AIDS, 190–191 Albright, Madeleine, 9 Alliance for Progress, 3 American Airlines, 40 Anguilla, 140 annexation, 47, 58n11 Antigua, 71, 202, 206 Antilles, 47 anti-terrorism, 131 Argentina, 70, 76, 186, 187 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 102, 123 armed forces. See military forces arms control, 75–76 arms trade, illegal, 32, 79, 97, 207; drug trafficking, link to, 71, 72, 125, 142; illegal migration, link to, 125; impact on sovereignty, 68, 71, 78, 163 Aruba, 129, 189–191 Asencio Report, 101 Asia, migration, 100, 101, 108, 134n11 Association of Caribbean States (ACS), 11, 18, 49, 83, 111, 152, 208 Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutions, 111–112

Association of Historians of the Caribbean, 88 Association of Industry and Trade of the Caribbean, 92n4 asylum, political. See refugees Bach, Robert L., 19, 108 Bahamas: crime, 32, 33, 35; drug and arms trafficking, 35, 72, 138; migration, 103, 124t 7.1, 125, 127t 7.4; regional security integration, 86, 181 Balaguer, Joaquín, 54 balsero crisis, 104–107, 110 banana trade, 15, 71, 72, 167, 182, 202, 206–207 Barbados, 52, 62n41, 129, 132, 146, 201 Barbuda, 71 Barceló, Carlos Romero, 55 Bariloche, Argentina, 70, 76, 187 Batista, Fulgencio, 32 Bay of Pigs, 32 Beardsworth, Randy, 19 Belize, 46, 72, 140, 181, 182 Belize Defense Force, 182 Bennett, William, 37 bilateral agreements, 131, 198– 202 bilateral relations, 14, 74, 86–87, 98, 104, 152, 194 biodiversity, preservation of, 155 biotechnology, 89 Bird, Lester, 207 birth certificates, 109

211

212

INDEX

Black Caucus (U.S. Congress), 122, 209 Black Power, 29 “blowback,” 31–34, 42 “boat people,” 173; balsero crisis, 104–107, 110; Haitian, 64n59, 105, 122–123; yola journeys, 107–109, 110, 125, 166. See also immigrant communities; migration, illegal Bolivia, 97 borders, 100, 101, 125, 132, 186, 201. See also sovereignty boundaries: public perceptions of, 119 Bouterse regime, 29 Brazil, 108 Bridgetown Declaration of Principles, 45, 52, 103, 114n26, 180. See also Caribbean Plan of Action British Caribbean, cultural grouping, 46 British dependencies, 181 British Virgin Islands, 103, 110 Brown, Lee, 37 Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, 194 Burnham, Forbes regime, 29 Buxton-Friendship, Guyana, 141 Calvani, Sandro, 39 Canada, 152, 180 capitalism, dependent, 91 Caribbean: culture, 46, 58nn7–9, 87–90; diplomatic strategies, 11–12, 15–16, 52, 202, 206–209; economy, 78–79, 207; geopolitical definitions, 9, 45–48, 58n8, 84–87, 92n5; Islands, 45, 69, 70–72, 79; marginalization of, 12, 48, 110, 151–153; regional institutions, 111–112 (see also individual institutions); regional integration, 47, 131–133, 152; regional security integration, 111, 130, 178–187, 191, 194; security threats to, 68–70, 70–73, 138, 193–194; strategic importance of, 49, 53, 69, 97–98, 167; subregional integration, 17, 47–48, 59n13, 84; subregional security, 69, 77–80,

88–90, 180–182 (see also Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS)). See also drug trafficking; immigrant communities; migration “Caribbean-African” culture, 46, 58n9 “Caribbean Basin,” geopolitical definitions of, 7, 46, 57n2, 58nn 4–5, 68, 86 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), 3, 45, 48, 49–50, 52 Caribbean Community, Heads of the Conference of, 178 Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), 4, 83; cultural cooperation, 87–88, 92n10; diplomatic relations, 11, 50, 56, 207–208; drug and arms trafficking, 71, 72, 179; regional integration, 47–48, 49, 78; security cooperation, 63n52, 64n61, 111–112, 112n3, 178–179, 180–183; shiprider agreements, 13, 52, 62n41, 198–202, 202n2, 206 Caribbean Conference of Churches, 88 Caribbean Defense Response Unit (CDRU), 180 Caribbean Disaster Emergency Relief Agency (CDERA), 180, 183 Caribbean Festival of the Arts (CARIFESTA), 88, 89 Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA), 47, 87 Caribbean Island Nations Security Conferences, 54 “Caribbeanization” of U.S. immigration policy, 105 Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP), 89 Caribbean Plan of Action, 52, 146, 180. See also Bridgetown Declaration of Principles Caribbean Regional Drug Training Center, 35, 146 Caribbean Sea, 84, 88, 93n10 Caribbean Studies Association (CSA), 88, 111

INDEX

CARICOM. See Caribbean Community and Common Market CARIFESTA (Caribbean Festival of the Arts), 88, 89 CARIFTA (Caribbean Free Trade Association), 47, 87 Carr, Raymond, 55 Castles, Stephen, 130 Castro, Fidel, 29, 92n4, 110 Cayenne, 181 CBI. See Caribbean Basin Initiative CDERA (Caribbean Disaster Emergency Relief Agency), 180, 183 CDRU (Caribbean Defense Response Unit), 180 Central America, 45, 97, 124, 138 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 32 Chardón, Carlos E., 47, 59n13 China, 108, 124t7.2,7.4, 134n11, 173 cholera, 190 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) (U.S.), 32 Cistern Cay, 33 citizens, 125, 144 citizenship, 122, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135 civil society: drug threat to, 138, 179; illegal migration threat to, 169–170; influence on regional integration, 87, 89, 91, 92n6, 93n16, 112, 132 Clark, Wesley K., 55, 183, 186 Clinton, Bill (William Jefferson), 45, 52, 54, 104 Clinton administration, 8, 12–13, 170; Cuban balsero crisis, 104–105; drug trafficking policy, 16, 28; foreign policy formulation, 6, 9, 206–209 (see also United States, policy formulation) coast guards, regional and subregional, 179–181, 193. See also U.S. Coast Guard cocaine, 32, 33, 138–139, 140–141, 145, 198 COIP (Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples), 89 Cold War, 3–4, 29–30 “collective consciousness,” 25–26

213

Collins, John, 50 Colombia, 31–32, 34, 35, 97–98, 102, 103, 108 Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Development, 101 Commonwealth Caribbean, 49, 51 communism, 3, 29, 31–34, 51, 97, 106 Confederatión Antillana, 59n13 confidence-building initiatives, 80n16, 177, 179. See also Mutual Confidence Measures constabulary forces. See police forces Constatine, Thomas A., 28 Cooperative Security in the Caribbean, 112n3 coral reefs, 71 corporations, 85, 162, 206 corruption, 41, 168; criminal networks, 37, 70, 125, 135n14, 163, 169; drug trafficking, 35, 51–52, 139, 142, 144; public perceptions of, 30, 36 Costa Rica, 103, 186, 201, 206 coup d’état, 178 “crack” cocaine, 28, 139, 140–141 Creole society, 58n9 crime, 15–16, 31–34, 36, 37, 40, 72; cooperation against, 57, 98, 194 (see also under drug trafficking; migration, illegal); deportation of criminals, 116n40, 131, 143, 170–173, 171t 10.2; as result of drug operations, 142–146, 163 criminal networks, multinational, 7, 68, 85, 108, 120; binational gangs, 36, 41, 143; corruption by, 37, 70, 125, 135n14, 163, 169; drug operators, 143, 144 CSA. See Caribbean Studies Association Cuba, 18, 19, 97; culture, 46–47, 89, 93n20; drug trafficking, 31–32, 34, 56, 64n67, 154–155; economy, 15, 92n4, 102–106, 110, 113n5; embargo of, 106, 107, 110, 116n46, 122, 151; interdiction, 124–125, 124t 7.2, 126fig, 127t 7.4; migration, 101–103, 104–107, 108, 133n3, 134n11, 172, 197; politics,

214

INDEX

56, 110, 155, 208–209; regional integration, 18–19, 69, 92n4, 103, 111, 151–157, 181; subregional grouping, 86–87; U.S. relations (see U.S.-Cuba relations) Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, 106 “Cuban card,” as leverage, 31 Cuban Committee for Democracy, 111 Cuban emigrant communities, 32; influence on U.S. policy, 54, 56, 111, 116n46, 122, 155; U.S. public opinion on, 114n19 Cultural Integration System of Latin America and the Caribbean (SICLAC), 93n20 culture, 18; national identity and, 87, 129; regional policy, 89–90, 92n10 Customs Commissioners of Latin America, Spain and Portugal, XVI Meeting of, 154 Davies, Carlton, 145 DEA. See Drug Enforcement Agency decisionmaking, 26fig, 39, 77 Declaration of Santiago, 73, 80n13 decolonization, 87 Defense Ministerial. See Ministerial Conference on the Defense of the Americas defense ministers, 70–73 democracy, 30, 73, 80, 80n13, 168, 178, 182, 186 dependent capitalism, 91 Dependent Territories, 181 deportation, 103, 105, 116n49, 120 deportation, of criminals, 116n40, 131, 143, 170–173, 171t 10.2 deterritorialized constituencies. See transnational communities developing countries, 100, 101, 132 diaspora. See immigrant communities; migration “diaspora, reverse.” See deportation Direccion Nacional de Control de Drogas (DNCD), 133n2 disasters: natural, 69, 71, 87, 88–89, 111; response to, 180, 186, 193 disease, 190–191

DNCD (Direccion Nacional de Control de Drogas), 133n2 document falsification, 109, 135n14 Dollar Diplomacy, 3, 48, 49 domestic law, extraterritorial application of, 151, 153–154 domestic violence, 189 Dominguez, Jorge, 105 Dominica, 71, 103, 140 Dominican emigrant communities, 131; political activities, 54, 56, 122, 129; in Puerto Rico, 91, 103; remittances to sending state, 128–129 Dominican Republic, 29, 46, 56, 101, 129; corruption, 135n14; drug trafficking and use, 34, 51, 56, 133n2, 141; economy, 104, 110, 113n5, 128–129, 135n17, 145; migration, 124–128, 130, 133n3, 197; migration, from Haiti, 111, 114, 114n25, 123, 130; migration statistics, 102–104, 107–109, 114n25, 116nn40, 43; migration tables and figures, 124t 7.1–t 7.2, 126fig, 127; migration to Puerto Rico, 111, 134nn12–13, 135n17, 173; regional integration, 47, 103, 123, 193–195; regional security integration, 180–181; repatriation of criminals, 17t 10.2, 116n49, 132, 143, 171, 172–173; smuggling of aliens, 108, 113n10, 173 Dominicanyorks, 41 drug cartels, 36, 85, 162, 163, 190 Drug Control in the Caribbean, Regional Meeting, 180 drug czars, 37–38, 138, 148 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 16, 28, 34, 90, 180; Caribbean operations, 35, 130, 133n2, 193; Cuba, 154, 156n9 drug markets, 16, 51, 56, 57, 97–98, 138–139, 181, 190 drug production, 97, 138–139, 140, 181, 197 drug trafficking, 15–16, 37, 51–53, 138–146; arms trade (illegal), link to, 71, 72, 125; cooperative security, 14, 57, 79, 111, 146–148,

INDEX

178–181, 185, 201; corruption, 31–35, 41, 51, 52, 139, 144, 163, 190; law enforcement activities, 35–38, 133n, 138–139, 145, 180–181, 194; maritime counternarcotics agreements, 197–202; migration (illegal), link to, 100, 108, 113n10, 125, 197; militarization of enforcement, 14, 16–17, 142, 153–154, 195; and money laundering, 141–142; policy recommendations, 38–42, 194; as security threat, 51–53, 57, 71–73, 78, 142–146, 194; sovereignty, impact on, 57, 68, 102, 190; transit areas, 56, 69, 71, 84, 97, 133n2, 138–139, 181, 198; volume, 34–35, 139, 197. See also specific drugs drug use, illegal, 27–28, 138; in Caribbean, 140–141, 179, 189; education against, 37, 190 Durkheim, Emile, 26 Dutch dependencies, 181 Eastern Airlines, 40 Eastern Caribbean, 29, 97, 110, 141, 143, 198 Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS), 19, 80n16, 178–180, 181–183, 187 Ebola virus, 190 economic conditions, 15–16; effect on crime, 52, 144; in migration framework, 167–168; migration impact of, 56, 98, 104, 107, 109–110, 119, 124; remittances by migrants, 128–129; as security threat, 68, 70 economic policy: aid, 7, 130, 146; development, 29, 49, 60n23, 110, 132–133, 167–168; diversification, 189–190, 207; employer sanctions, 101, 107, 109; integration, 88, 163–164, 193; investment incentives, 64n61, 119; market liberalization, 132, 161–162; sanctions, 106–107, 110, 116n46, 122–123, 151 Economist, 163 Ecuador, 108, 186, 206

215

education, 90, 93n22, 191; in citizenship, 133; against drug use, 37, 190 elections, 41, 190 elites, 25–27, 26fig, 47; corruption among, 31–34, 35, 58n11; in decisionmaking path, 39–40 El Salvador, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106 embargos: of Cuba, 106, 107, 110, 116n46, 122, 151; of Haiti, 122 employer sanctions, 101, 107, 109. See also migration, security measures English Only movement, 99 environment: international treaties, 79, 93n11; regional cooperation on, 88–89, 111, 154–155, 197; risks to, 68, 69, 70, 71, 78 Espejo, Noble, 19, 114n25 ethnic groups, 29, 41, 89–90, 99–100. See also immigrant communities; race Europe, as drug market, 16, 139, 181 European Union, 139, 206 “excludables,” in migration, 105 Exercise Tradewinds, 54, 180 exiles, political, 106–107. See also immigrant communities; migration, preferential treatment exports, 15, 49, 50, 52, 56, 85, 106, 145, 167 extradition, 116n49, 132 extraterritorial application of domestic law, 151, 153–154 Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, 112n3, 114n25, 116n49 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 35, 154 Federation of the West Indies, 47, 187 Fernandez, Leonel, 135n17 financial aid, 111 financial services sector, 15, 142 fines, for poor drug security, 40, 144 Firmin, Anténor, 59n13 fishing, 93n11, 155, 197 Florida, 7, 102, 106 Florida Keys, 35

216

INDEX

Florida Straits, 166 force, use of, 37, 66, 67 foreign exchange, 129 Fort Allen, 55, 63n59 Fort Buchanan, 54–55, 63n59 Fort Clayton, 54–55 Forum of Ministers of Culture of Latin America and the Caribbean, 93n20 fragmentation, in international system, 66 France, 35, 46, 56, 181 free trade, 88 Free Trade Area of the Americas, 50, 153 French Antilles, 46, 110, 181 French departments, 180 From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants, 104 Fuerzas Aliadas-Cabanas, 186 Fuerzas Unidas-PKO, 186 fundraising, by emigrants, 122 GAC (Guyana Airways Corporation), 145 gambling, casino, 32, 33 ganja, 141. See also marijuana garment industry, 142, 144–145 “geonarcotics,” 51, 61n40 Gillin, John, 45 globalization, 66, 90, 91, 128, 132 “go-fast” (boat), 200, 201–202 Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, 62n46 Good Neighbor policy, 48 Gorman, Paul, 54 government. See states Graham, Pamela, 122 Great Britain, 35, 47, 56, 179–180, 181 Green Clover, 186 greenhouse effect, 69 Grenada, 29, 71, 103, 140, 177, 180 Grenadines, 140 Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, 54, 104, 155, 200 Guatemala, 103, 108 Guianas, 46 “Gulf of Mexico,” subregional grouping, 86–87, 92n5

Guyana, 181; drugs, 51, 140, 141, 142; migration, 127t 7.4, 143; politics, 29, 51, 56 Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC), 145 Haiti, 29, 46; “boat people,” 59, 64n59, 105; drug trafficking, 51, 56, 133n2, 200; economy, 102, 110, 113n5, 124; interdiction, 123, 124, 124t 7.1, 134n11; Maritime Counternarcotics Agreements, 201; migration from, 100, 101, 102–104, 108, 111, 114n25, 197; migration to Dominican Republic, 123, 130; peacekeeping forces in, 111, 182, 186, 209; politics, 51, 56, 119, 133n3; regional security integration, 47, 111, 181; U.S. military intervention, 63n51, 155, 166–167 Haitian emigrant communities, 54, 56, 91, 121–122, 123 “Haitianization,” of U.S. migration policy, 105 hashish oil, 139 Havana, 31–32, 104 hazardous waste, 71, 155 Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies, VII (HONLEA), 156n9 Heads of the Caribbean Community, Conference of, 178 Helms-Burton Act, 106–107, 122 heroin, 31–32, 138–139, 139, 140–141 hierarchy of preferences, 26fig, 27 “Hispanic Caribbean,” 58n9 Hispaniola, 124 HIV-AIDS, 190–191 Homestead, Florida, 32 Homestead Air Reserve Base (U.S.), 64n62 “homogeneity, myth of,” 45 Honduran National War College, 186–187 Honduras, 102, 135n14 HONLEA (Heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies, VII), 156n9 Howard Air Base, 64n62

INDEX

human rights, 34, 89, 186, 190, 207; in migration, 165–166; and militarization, 16 hurricanes, 69, 87 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, 114n17 Ilsa Verde International Airport (San Juan, Puerto Rico), 109, 116n43 immigrant communities, 89, 170; influence on U.S. policy, 38, 54, 56, 58n11, 91, 111, 116n46, 122, 155; legal status of immigrants, 111, 129, 135n16; migration impetus of, 85, 104, 107, 110, 120; political activities, 6–7, 18, 120–123, 134nn8–9; public services for immigrants, 114n117, 129; remittances to sending states, 106, 128–129, 131–133, 135n16; U.S. public opinion on, 99–100, 102, 114n19, 129, 166, 169. See also migration; transnational communities Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS): migration statistics, 102–103, 107–109, 116n40, 123–124, 169t10.1, 170–172, 171t 10.2 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (U.S.): jurisdiction and patrol locations, 131 immigration laws and policies, 104, 114n17; enforcement, 14, 16, 170, 174 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), 99–101, 107, 109, 170 India, 108, 134n11, 173 indigenous groups, 89–90. See also Caribbean, culture; ethnic groups information, in decisionmaking path, 26fig, 27 information sharing, 77, 79, 89, 191 information technology, 89, 191 INS. See Immigration and Naturalization Service Institute for National Strategic Studies, 100

217

institutional constraints, in decisionmaking, 26fig, 27 intellectual property rights, 89–90 Interagency Assessment of Cocaine Movement, 197–198 Inter-American Defense Board, 21 Inter-American Defense College, 21 Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, 148 Inter-American Human Rights Convention, 207 Inter-American Reciprocal Assistance Treaty (TIAR), 67 interdiction: drug war strategy, 38, 51, 180–181; migration law enforcement, 100, 102, 107, 123, 130–131, 197; statistics, 124–125, 124t 7.2, 126fig, 127t 7.3–7.4; support by Caribbean states, 52, 62n41, 132, 180–181. See also deportation; migration, illegal; repatriation Internet, 191 investments, 49–50, 56, 64n61, 85, 88, 91, 111, 119, 130; incentives, 132, 167; for migration control, 113n15, 165 IRCA. See Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Isla Nena, Puerto Rico, 55 “issue linkage,” in diplomatic relations, 11–12, 15–16, 202, 206–207 Jamaica, 30, 103, 178, 181; crime, drug related, 142–143; deportation of criminals to, 143, 171, 171t10.2; drugs, 41, 140, 141; economy, 113n5, 145; migration, 71, 102, 124, 124t 7.2, 129, 133n3; security threats, 71, 145–146; shiprider agreements, 52, 62n41, 201 Jamaican emigrant communities, 54 jobs, 110, 113n15, 164, 167–168. See also unemployment Johnson Doctrine, 48 Joint Force Quarterly, 50 judiciary, and militarization, 16 “July 26” movement, 29

218

INDEX

Kennan Corollary, 48 Kennedy, John F., 3 Kennedy-Kruschev Treaty, 32 Korea, 108, 134n11 Langley, Lester D., 57n2 language barriers, 90, 93n20 Lansky, Meyer, 32, 33 LANTCOM (now ATCOM). See U.S. Atlantic Command (ATCOM) Laser Strike, 186 Latin America, 67, 72, 152; migration, 100, 108; military relations, with U.S., 53, 185–187 Latin American, as cultural identity, 87 “Latin American” Caribbean, 29, 46, 48, 58n8–9 Law 936. See Section 936 law, domestic, applied extraterritorially, 151, 153–154 Law on Foreign Investments, 152–153 leather goods, 52 legitimacy. See states, legitimacy crisis Lehder, Carlos, 33 Lewis, Rudyard, 19 living conditions, 103, 110, 128 89, 132 Lome IV Convention, 193 Luciano, Lucky, 32 Mafia, 32–33 Mahan, Alfred T., 1–2, 12–13 Maingot, Anthony P., 48, 181 Manhattan, 122, 131 marginalization, of Caribbean, 12, 48, 110, 151–153 Mariel, 104, 105 marijuana, 32, 33, 138–139, 139, 140–141 Maritime Counternarcotics Agreements, 197–202. See also shiprider agreements market liberalization, 132 marriages, fraudulent, 109 Martinique, 103 Marxism, 29 Masud-Piloto, Felix, 104 McCaffery, Barry R., 8, 38, 148 Medellín Cartel, 31–32, 33

media (communications), 89–90, 91, 93n19 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), 178 Mexico: Cuba, relations with, 103; drug trafficking, 97, 140; economy, 7, 15; emigrant communities, 114n19, 129; migration, illegal, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108, 124t 7.1–7.2; skill drain, 174; subregional grouping, 86–87; U.S. relations, 9, 16, 20–21 Mexico, Gulf of, 53, 155 Miami, 32, 33, 40, 54, 57 Miami River, 32 migration, 41, 56; agreements U.S.Cuba, 18, 104, 105, 106, 153; case studies, 104–109; causes, economic, 15–16, 98, 102, 105, 107, 128, 135n17, 168; causes, social/political, 85, 91, 104, 108, 110, 119–120, 135n17; economic integration framework, 163–164, 167–168; economic measures to combat, 98, 113n15, 130, 132; legal status of migrants, 111, 129, 135n16; political and social perception of, 100, 119, 120, 134nn8–9; political framework for, 161–173; preferential treatment, 106, 119, 123, 162; regional cooperation on, 17–18, 98–99, 101, 109–112, 130, 168–169; remittances to sending state, 106, 128–129, 131–133, 135n16; as a right, 162, 165–166; as a safety valve, 111, 133n3, 168; as security threat, 68, 71, 99–101, 111, 122–123; U.S. statistics, 169t 10.1 migration, illegal, 51, 52, 53; crime, link to, 169–174; danger to migrants, 124–125, 166, 173–174; drug trafficking, link to, 18, 100, 108, 113n10, 125, 169, 197; economic causes, 98, 119; multilateral cooperation against, 57, 103, 114n25; security measures, 101, 107, 109, 122–123, 130, 173–174; as security threat, 97, 119–121, 130–131, 133nn3,7; smuggling business, 99, 101, 103,

INDEX

108, 113n10, 114n26, 134n11; statistical tables, 124t 7.1–7.2, 126fig, 127t 7.3–7.4; statistics, 101– 103, 107–108, 116nn40,43, 123– 127, 134n12, 197; transit areas, 84, 107, 108, 109, 197. See also deportation; interdiction; repatriation militarization, 30, 98; of drug law enforcement, 14, 16–17, 108, 142, 153–154; of migration law enforcement, 14, 16–17, 99, 108, 122–123, 130–131, 166–167 military forces, 10, 53; joint exercises, 54, 180, 193; joint training and assistance, 21, 55, 63n52, 64n61, 79, 186; nonmilitary use of, 40, 41, 195; regional security cooperation, 182, 185–187, 195, 197–202. See also U.S. military forces Military Observer Mission, 186 Miller, Mark J., 130 Ministerial Conference on the Defense of the Americas, 70–72, 76, 185, 187 minorities, ethnic, 89, 99–100 Mintz, Sidney W., 9, 58n7, 60n19 missile crisis, 32 mojados, 125 Mona Passage, 103, 107, 108, 109, 124, 127t 7.3, 197; dangers of, 166, 173–174 money laundering, 35, 52, 97, 111, 140–141, 193 monitoring agreements, 75, 77 Monroe Doctrine, 48 Montserrat, 88–89 morphine, 31–32 Morris, Michael A., 122–123 multilateral: actors, 131–133; relations, 57, 87, 98, 99, 101, 183 multilateralism, 14, 70, 74, 77, 194 multirelational, 194–195 Munasinghe, Mohan, 60n23 Muñoz Marin, Luis, 29 murder, 35, 141, 142, 143, 144 musical recordings, 89–90, 91 Mutual Confidence Measures, 73–76, 79, 85–86, 87, 91n1, 92n6. See also confidence-building initiatives

219

“myth of homogeneity,” 45 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Bureau for International, 194 Narcotics Commission, of the U.N. Social and Economic Commission, 156n9 narcotics trafficking. See drug trafficking National Crime Information Center (NCIC), 172 National Defense University, 51 national interest, 65–66, 87, 120, 177, 195 nationalism, 87, 99 natural disasters, 69, 71, 87, 88–89, 111 naturalization, 122 natural resources, 88, 154–155 NCIC (National Crime Information Center), 172 Netherlands, 35, 181 Netherlands Antilles, 103, 181 Nevis. See Saint Kitts and Nevis New Scotland Yard, 35 New York (city), 100, 109, 116n43, 122, 131, 145 New York (state), 116n40 Nicaragua, 29, 201 nongovernmental organizations, 89, 93n16, 112, 154–155, 164, 206 nonstate actors, 85, 88, 98, 120–121, 125, 138, 163 Norman Cay, Bahamas, 33 North America, as drug market, 138, 181 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 15, 49, 50, 119, 152–153, 207 Nweheid, Kaldone, 92n5 OAS. See Organization of American States OECS. See Organization of Eastern Caribbean States oil, 50 oil spills, 87, 155 Olney Declaration, 48

220

INDEX

Operation Dinero, 140 Operation Halcon, 193 opportunity costs, 26fig, 27, 40, 42 Organization of American States (OAS), 79, 80n13, 80n16, 111–112, 130, 185 Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), 111–112, 138 organized crime, 34, 35–38, 37, 125, 143. See also criminal networks pacifist movement, 88 Pakistan, 108, 134n11 Palmer, Ransford W., 49, 50 Panama, military relations, 14, 53, 54–55, 57, 104, 185, 186–187 Panama Canal, 8, 13, 54 Pan-Caribbeanism, 47 Panday, Basdeo, 143 passports, 109 Pastor, Robert, 51 Patterson, P. J., 146 Peace and Security in the Americas Program, 14, 21, 81n18, 191 peacekeeping operations, 111, 182, 186, 209 Pedro Cays, 35 Perez, Lisandro, 105 Perry, William, 187 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996, 114n17 Peru, 97, 186 Pindling, Lynden O., 33 plantation society, 58n9, 60n19 polarization, social, 119 police forces, 10, 16, 41, 182, 183 political asylum, 106 political parties, 29 politics: instability, 119, 128, 166–167, 177–178; local participation, 133 pollution, 93n11, 111, 155 Pons, Frank Moya, 48 posses, drug, 36, 41, 143 poverty, 71, 73, 98, 110, 125 preventive diplomacy, 73 “principles of prosperity,” 164–165 private enterprise, 40, 144–145 privatization, of security, 40 Proposition 187 (California), 129

public assistance, 101, 110, 114n17 public health, 190–191 Puerto Rican emigrant population, 54 Puerto Rico, 46, 110, 193; drugs, 34–35, 141, 142; migration, illegal, 103–104, 107–109, 111, 113n10, 197; migration from Dominican Republic, 124, 125, 126fig, 130, 134nn12–13, 135n17, 173; politics, 54–56, 109; regional integration, 47, 64n61, 181, 193; U.S. relations, 54–55, 108–109, 119, 130, 155 Quarry Heights, Panama, 53 Quirk, Richard, 19, 56 race, 18, 29, 100, 101 radioactive materials, 71, 93n11 rafters. See balsero crisis Rastafarians, 141 Reagan, Ronald, 3–4, 16, 45 reciprocity, in diplomacy, 75 “recolonization,” by drug enforcement agencies, 35 refugees, 106, 119, 120, 155; Cuban balseros, 104, 105; Haitian “boat people,” 64n59, 123; preferential status, 120, 123 Regional Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures, 80n16 Regional Culture Committee (of CARICOM), 88 Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR), 63n59 remittances, by emigrants, 106, 128–129, 131, 132, 133, 135n16 repatriation, forced, 100, 105, 107, 111, 122; of criminals, 18, 132, 171–173; of Haitians, 123; statistics, 124–125, 134nn12–13 RIP TIDE, 201 Robinson, A.N.R., 146 Rojas, Francisco, 92n5 Roosevelt Corollary, 48, 49 Roosevelt Roads, U.S. Naval Station, 55, 64n62 Rosselló, Pedro, 54–55 Royal Navy, 179–180

INDEX

RSS. See Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS) Russia, 108, 173 Saint Kitts and Nevis, 72, 139 Salvadorans. See El Salvador San José, 45 San Juan, Puerto Rico, 54, 64n61, 109, 116n43 School of the Americas, 63n52 science-fiction, and perception of aliens, 100 Section 936 (U.S.), 4, 110, 119, 130 security, 40, 66; conceptual framework for cooperation, 76–78, 81n18, 179–180; regional cooperation issues, 40–41, 65–66, 98, 146–148; regional security integration, 111, 177–183, 185–187, 194 security forces. See military forces security threats (to individuals), 120, 121, 124, 125, 165–167, 173, 190 security threats (to states), 70–73; economic, 189–190, 194; migration multidimensional nature, 137–138. See also sovereignty; migration shiprider agreements, 13, 52, 62n41, 132, 198–202, 202n2, 206 simultaneity, in migrant political activity, 122 slavery, 58n9 Smith, Robert C., 129, 135n16 smuggling, aliens. See under migration, illegal social outcomes, 26fig, 27 social problems, 26fig, 30–31, 37, 128 social services, 129 South America, as drug producer, 97, 138–139, 140, 181, 197 Southern Cone, of Latin America, 72 sovereignty, 21, 39, 50, 76, 119; challenges to, 68, 71, 72; dispute resolution mechanisms, 207–208; drug trafficking threat to, 57, 142, 201; immigration jurisdiction and, 109, 130–132; maritime delineation treaties, 91n2;

221

regional cooperation, 10, 98, 131–133, 147, 151–152, 177, 178; and repatriation of criminals, 18, 132; and shiprider agreements, 52, 62n41. See also states Special Period in Times of Peace (Cuba), 104 sponsors, for immigrants, 174 St. Lucia, 72, 103, 140, 145, 180 St. Vincent, 140, 180, 200 standard of living, 89, 103, 110, 128, 132 states, 138, 181; conflict, between, 122, 130; corruption, effects on, 144, 169; legitimacy challenges, 41, 104, 120–122, 125, 128–129, 135n16, 161–164; migration, illegal, 99, 100; transnationalization issues, 121, 128–129, 131–133, 134nn8–9, 161–162. See also sovereignty sugar, 106, 167 Summit of the Americas, 152, 164, 185 Suriname, 29, 47, 51, 56, 72, 181, 201 “sustainable development,” 60n23, 154 tariffs, 7, 47, 52 tax havens, 79 technology, used in crime, 32, 72 “Tenth Department” of Haiti, 121–122 territorial integrity. See sovereignty textiles, 52 Thailand, 108 “The Role of the U.S. Military in the Caribbean Basin,” 54 Third World, 29, 30, 87 TIAR. See Inter-American Reciprocal Assistance Treaty tourism and tourists, 15, 18–19, 70, 168; crime, effects on, 142, 190; foreign exchange from, 128–129; migration impetus from, 164, 165; regional cooperation, 90, 92n4, 106, 163–164 trade, 50, 113n15, 165; concessions, 49, 167; effects of, 71, 161–162; embargos, 106, 107, 110, 116n46,

222

INDEX

122, 151; routes, 84, 139; subregional, 59n17, 60n17; tariffs, 7, 47, 52; U.S. programs for, 49, 119 Tradewinds, Exercise, 54, 180 Trafficante, Santos, 32 training, 90, 132–133 transnational communities: identity issues, 90–91, 93n23, 129, 130–131, 133n6; kinship networks, 104, 107, 110, 120; political activities of immigrants, 6–7, 120–123, 134nn8–9. See also immigrant communities transnationalization: of drug threat, 146, 148; integration of state and society, 120–121, 131–133, 133n7 transnational organizations, 111, 162 Trinidad and Tobago, 145; drugs, 140–142; migration, 102, 103; politics, 41, 178; regional security cooperation, 72, 146, 181, 201 trust: in government, 41, 144, 165, 169; between governments, 73–76, 79, 156 Tulchin, Joseph, 91n1, 93n11, 93n19 U.N. Treaty on Civil and Political Rights, 207 UNDCP. See United Nations International Drug Control Programme unemployment, 70, 98, 105, 110, 168, 189–190 UNITAS exercises, 186 United Nations General Assembly, 148 United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), 39, 141, 180, 181 United States, 46, 130, 135n14; drug law enforcement, 35, 37–38, 133n2, 153–154, 180, 181; as drug market, 16, 51, 56, 57, 97–98, 138; economic policy, 56, 57, 152–153; hegemony, 2–3, 5, 48–51, 56; immigration law enforcement, 14, 16, 130–131, 166–167, 170, 174 (see also under militarization);

immigration policy, 101–107, 109, 116n49, 122–123, 153, 165–174; immigration statistics, 101–103, 106, 108, 116n40, 116n43, 169, 169t 10.1; policy formulation, 5–10, 50, 57, 183, 205–207; public opinion, anti-immigrant, 99–100, 102, 114n19, 129, 166, 169; regional security integration, 57, 86; security interests, 13, 50, 52–53, 97, 152–153 (see also U.S. military forces; U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM)) United States-Caribbean Summit, 147. See also Bridgetown Declaration of Principles University of the West Indies, 111–112 U.S. Army South, 54–55 U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 54 U.S. Atlantic Command (ATCOM), 47, 53, 54, 57, 62nn46, 185 U.S. Border Patrol, 107, 113n10, 126fig U.S.-Caribbean relations, 31–34, 48–51, 57, 131, 197–202 U.S. Coast Guard, 19, 100, 133n2, 154; interdiction of migrants, 100, 102, 104, 107, 123; migration statistics, 124–125, 124t 7.1–7.2, 126fig, 127t 7.3–7.4, 135n17; regional cooperation, 179–180, 197–202 U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, 100–101 U.S.-Cuba relations, 46, 172; balsero crisis, 104–106, 167; Cuban immigrant community, 38, 54, 56, 111, 116n46, 122, 155; isolation policy, 38, 102, 110–111, 116n46, 133n3, 151–156, 162, 208–209; migration agreements, 18, 105–107, 153, 166 U.S. Customs, 40, 180 U.S. Department of Defense, 7, 53, 55, 155–156 U.S. Department of State, 7, 153–154, 199 U.S. Executive Office on Drug Policy, 8

INDEX

U.S. Homestead Air Reserve Base, 64n62 U.S. Interests Section, 104 U.S. military forces: bases, 13, 54–55, 63n59, 64nn62–63, 104, 155; communication with Cuban military, 155–156; migration law enforcement, 123, 166–167; restructuring of, 53, 62nn45–47. See also U. S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) U.S. military intervention, 63n51, 155, 166–167 U.S. military relations, with: Latin America, 53, 185–187 U.S. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, 55, 64n62 U.S.-Puerto Rico Political Status Act (Young Bill H.R. 856), 55 U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, 54–55, 108–109, 119, 130, 155 U.S. Section 936, 4, 110, 119, 130 U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), 8, 14, 19, 104, 193; relocation of, 45, 54, 185; responsibilities of, 53–57, 62n47, 62n51, 63n52, 64n61, 185–187 Vega, Bernardo, 116n49 Venezuela, 50, 103 Ventura del Villar, Andres, 134n13 verification mechanisms, 75, 77 Vesco, Robert, 33 Vieques Island, 55, 64n59, 64n63 Vietnam, 108 Virgin Islands (U.S.), 35, 50, 86, 103, 110, 142, 197 wages, 110 “war on drugs,” 16, 37–38

223

waste, hazardous, 71, 155 wealth, distribution of, 110, 161, 163 weapons, 79, 155. See also arms trade Weiner, Jonathon, 194 welfare law, 129 Western Hemisphere, 67, 79, 153–156 West Indian Commission, 138, 179 West Indies, Federation of the, 47, 187 West Indies, segretation, 88 Wilhelm, Charles E., 56 Williams, Eric, 46, 48 Williamsburg, Virginia, 76 Windward Islands, 103 Windward Passage, 87 With Open Arms, 104 witness protection programs, 143–144 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 112n3, 114n25, 116n49 workforce, 133 workforce, skilled, 18, 174 World Bank, 72 World Conference on Drug Trafficking, 154 World Trade Organization (WTO), 15, 202 xenophobia, 99–100 “yardies,” 143 yola journeys, 107–109, 110, 125, 166 Young Bill (H.R. 856 U.S.-Puerto Rico Political Status Act), 55 Yugoslavia, 108 Zedillo, Ernesto, 174

About the Book

Since the end of the Cold War, the security agenda of the Caribbean Basin has changed dramatically from the containment of communism to a set of transnational threats—drug trafficking, migratory flows, economic crises, natural disasters—that demand cooperative, multilateral policies. This in turn, argue the authors of Security in the Caribbean Basin, calls for a redefinition of such basic concepts as sovereignty and the nature of national and regional security interests, and a reevaluation of such basic issues as the role of the military in a democracy and the nature of the region’s ties to the United States. Addressing these concerns, and offering both scholarly analysis and operational perspectives, the authors provide a theoretical and practical framework for the development of a more cooperative security system in the region. Joseph S. Tulchin is director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His numerous publications include Argentina and the United States: A Conflicted Relationship and Cuba and the Caribbean: Regional Issues and Trends in the Post–Cold War Era. Ralph H. Espach is program associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Specializing in inter-American relations, particularly in the area of security, he is coeditor of Strategic Balance and Confidence-Building Measures in the Americas.

225

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Lee H. Hamilton, Director Board of Trustees Joseph A. Cari, Jr., Chair; Steven Alan Bennett, Vice Chair. Public Members: Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary, U.S. Department of State; James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; John W. Carlin, Archivist of the United States; William R. Ferris, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities; Lawrence M. Small, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Richard W. Riley, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education; Donna E. Shalala, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Private Citizen Members: Carol Cartwright, Daniel L. Doctoroff, Jean L. Hennessey, Daniel L. Lamaute, Paul Hae Park, Thomas R. Reedy, S. Dillon Ripley, Nancy M. Zirkin. Designated Appointee of the President from within the Federal Government: Samuel R. Berger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Wilson Council Albert Abramson, Cyrus A. Ansary, J. Burchenal Ault, Charles F. Barber, Theodore C. Barreaux, Joseph C. Bell, Jim Blosser, John L. Bryant, Jr., Conrad Cafritz, Nicola L. Caiola, Raoul L. Carroll, Scott Carter, Albert V. Casey, Peter B. Clark, William T. Coleman, Jr., Michael D. DiGiacomo, Frank P. Doyle, Donald G. Drapkin, F. Samuel Eberts III, I. Steven Edelson, John H. Foster, Barbara Hackman Franklin, Chris G. Gardiner, Bruce Gelb, Jerry P. Genova, Alma Gildenhorn, Joseph B. Gildenhorn, David F. Girard-diCarlo, Michael B. Goldberg, William E. Grayson, Raymond A. Guenter, Robert R. Harlin, Verna R. Harrah, Eric Hotung, Frances Humphrey Howard, John L. Howard, Darrell E. Issa, Jerry Jasinowski, Brenda LaGrange Johnson, Dennis D. Jorgensen, Shelley Kamins, Anastasia D. Kelly, Christopher Kennan, Steven Kotler, William H. Kremer, Kathleen D. Lacey, Donald S. Lamm, Harold Levy, David Link, David S. Mandel, John P. Manning, Edwin S. Marks, Robert McCarthy, C. Peter McColough, James D. McDonald, Philip Merrill, Jeremiah L. Murphy, Martha T. Muse, Gerald L. Parsky, L. Richardson

227

228

THE WOODROW WILSON CENTER

Preyer, Donald Robert Quartel, Jr., Edward V. Regan, J. Steven Rhodes, Edwin Robbins, Philip E. Rollhaus, Jr., George P. Shultz, Raja W. Sidawi, Ron Silver, William A. Slaughter, Timothy E. Stapleford, Linda Bryant Valentine, Christine Warnke, Pete Wilson, Deborah Wince-Smith, Herbert S. Winokur, Jr. About the Center The Center is the living memorial of the United States of America to the nation’s twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson. Congress established the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1968 as an international institute for advanced study, “symbolizing and strengthening the fruitful relationship between the world of learning and the world of public affairs.” The Center opened in 1970 under its own board of trustees. In all its activities the Woodrow Wilson Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, supported financially by annual appropriations from the Congress, and by the contributions of foundations, corporations, and individuals. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center staff, fellows, trustees, advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations that provide financial support to the Center.