In 2009, Ecuadorians voted in a referendum to remove all US military presence from the country. Now, thanks to an agreement signed in the dying days of Guillermo Lasso’s corruption-tainted government, US troops are coming back.
Just ten days ago, I reported in my post, “Back to Business As Usual: The US Is Once Again Vigorously Stirring the Pot in Its Own ‘Backyard‘”, that the US is seeking to escalate its war on drugs in Latin America, as a pretext for trying to regain strategic dominance of the region. It is doing so one country at a time, with the apparent ultimate endgame being direct, overt military intervention against Mexico’s drug cartels — on Mexican soil.
In mid-September, the head of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Army Gen. Laura Richardson, visited Peru, a country that is in the grip of arguably its worst political crisis of this still-fledgling century. A few days later, the Peruvian government, which has virtually zero democratic legitimacy and is under investigation for human rights violations, signed an agreement with US Homeland Security Investigations to collaborate in transnational criminal investigations through the establishment of a Transnational Criminal Investigation Unit (TCIU).
Now, less than a month later, Peru’s Andean neighbour, Ecuador, is on exactly the same path. Last Friday (Sept 29), the country’s outgoing President (and former senior banker) Guillermo Lasso held a closed-door meeting with senior officials of the US Coast Guard and Department of Defense in Washington. The outcome of that meeting was two status agreements, one that will allow the deployment of US naval forces along Ecuador’s coastline while the other will permit the disembarking of US land forces on Ecuador’ soil, albeit only at the request of Ecuador’s government.
All with the ostensible aim of combatting drug trafficking organizations.
Obviously, that is not what this is really about. If Washington were serious about tackling the violence generated by the drug cartels, the first thing it could do is pass legislation to stem the southward flow of US-produced guns and other weapons. But that would hurt the profits of arms manufacturers. And if it were remotely serious about tackling the major cause of the drug problem — the rampant consumption of narcotics within its own borders — it would never have let Big Pharma unleash the opium epidemic. And once it had, it would never have let the perps walk free with the daintiest of financial slaps on the wrists.
The primary goal of this latest escalation in the US’ decades-old war on drugs, as with all previous escalations, is to achieve or maintain geostrategic dominance in key, normally resource-rich regions of the world while keeping the restive populace at home in line — or in prison, generating big bucks for the prison industrial complex.
Radio Silence
From what I can tell, this latest escalation has so far received little media coverage in Ecuador and almost zero coverage in the English-language press, apart from one solitary article in the Washington Examiner:
The State Department has not publicized the agreements in any of the more than 30 press releases issued since Wednesday, but a State spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Friday that it had signed status of forces agreements and maritime law enforcement agreements. Senior representatives from the Department of Homeland Security’s military branch, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Defense Department attended the signing.
The maritime agreement allows U.S. military vessels to be present in the waters off the northwestern coast of South America, which Colombian drug cartels use to move cocaine. The ability to move military vessels into the area will “strengthen cooperative law enforcement activities and build mutual capacity to prevent and combat illicit transnational maritime activity,” according to State.
The second agreement was a less common one, according to Adam Isacson, who heads defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America and has worked on Latin American issues since 1994.
Status of forces agreements outline the terms by which members of a foreign military, in this case the Defense Department, can operate or are expected to conduct themselves while in another country.
“That doesn’t mean we’re doing it, but it means we can and it means that they’re making a very clear signal to us that they want us more involved,” Crenshaw said.
History Repeating
Presumably, the reason why this story is getting such little attention, not even affording a press release by the State Department, has a lot to do with recent Ecuadorian history. You see, Ecuador is one of the few countries in the world to actually successfully close down all US military bases on its territory and force all US soldiers to withdraw. In 2009, when the US Air Force’s 10-year lease on the Manta base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast came up for renewal, Rafael Correa’s government held a referendum on the issue. The people overwhelmingly voted for the base to be closed.
According to article in the Washington Examiner, the US withdrew all of its forces from Ecuador. In reality, they were evicted…
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Nick Corbishley 