Andean Group - August 2009 (ISSN 1741-4466)

One of the oddest aspects of the regional row over the proposed US bases in Colombia is the US administration's lukewarm enthusiasm for the project. This reserved US attitude suggests that perhaps the US does not view the deal's enhanced access to the seven military bases in Colombia as the strategic necessity that the current Colombian government does.

There are plenty of pieces of evidence which can be assembled into an argument to demonstrate that the US wants to change, fundamentally, its alliance with Colombia. We do not believe that that the US has taken a decision to end its alliance with Colombia which has been in place since the start of Plan Colombia in 1998. What does seem clear, not only to us but to vitally interested parties such as Brazil, is that the new US administration is reassessing its strategic relationships in Latin America and this entails a review of relations with Colombia. At this point, it is far from clear that President Barack Obama has concluded that an alliance with Colombia is essential for US foreign policy in the region.

Indeed there is considerable anecdotal evidence to suggest that Obama sees the US's key regional relationship as being with Brazil. Obama has been lavish in his praise of President Lula da Silva and pointedly unsympathetic to President Alvaro Uribe: Obama made the almost casual aside during Uribe's visit to the US in June that it is unwise for presidents to remain in office beyond two terms, citing George Washington as an example of a leader who knew that it was better to retire rather than remain in power. Such a remark should have shown Uribe that the US foreign policy winds were veering.

The most substantial piece of evidence to suggest that the US is not convinced about the need for the bases is that no senior US policymaker has yet made a case for them. It is the Colombian government which is arguing that US access to the bases is essential. Indeed the Colombian military has been lobbying the US to use Colombian bases ever since it became clear that US's existing lease at Manta, Ecuador would not be renewed this year. Peru even made a brief attempt to offer itself as a site for a US base, but senior US military officials dismissed that idea because Peru was too vulnerable a location.

The lack of a senior US advocate for the bases in Colombia has complicated US relations with the rest of the region. No-one is clear what the US and Colombia have agreed. The fact that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had to interrupt the first visit by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to Washington for five years to meet Jaime Bermúdez, Colombia's foreign minister, on 18 August, to discuss the deal with Colombia, shows how tricky the bases issue remains.

The US National Security Adviser, General Jim Jones, did go to Brazil in early August to brief the Brazilian government, which had started to express doubts about the need for the bases. What Jones said about the bases was subtly different from what the Colombians had been saying. Jones said that the bases would do two things: provide US humanitarian assistance to the region and combat drug trafficking. The Colombians said that US presence would help in the fight against terrorism.

The Colombian government asserts that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) are narco-terrorists. To be fair, post-Jones US statements on what the US personnel deployed on the bases will do adds in counter-terrorism.

The Colombian government leaked a draft of the agreement on 14 August which suggests that that the main activity of the US forces working from Colombia will be intelligence gathering. The Colombian draft suggests that far fewer than the maximum number of US personnel allowed to be deployed in Colombia (800 military personnel and 600 contractors) will actually be based in Colombia. The leaked draft also specifically commits the US to seeking permission from Colombia's neighbours before using the intelligence generated by the US personnel deployed in Colombia for operations in neighbouring countries.

The Colombians stress that the deal which will allow US forces onto seven military bases in Colombia will not create US bases in Colombia. The US has avoided saying that it is replacing US Southern Command's Forward Operating Location (FOL), which it had at Manta, Ecuador, with the new deal. Southern Command says that its Fols are at Comalapa (El Salvador) and Aruba, in the Netherlands Antilles. Ecuador, which ended Manta's role as a Fol, claimed that Manta was a US base and that, under the terms of the 10 year lease, its government had no knowledge of what operations the US carried out from the base. The Colombians stress that in their deal with the US they will know exactly what the US is doing.

The Colombian government has changed its original line that the US bases deal was a sovereign issue. President Alvaro Uribe toured seven countries in the region in early August to explain the purpose and scope of the arrangement but satisfied only Peru and Chile enough for their governments not to ask further questions.

These further questions are to be posed at a special presidential summit of the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Unasur) at Bariloche, Argentina on 28 August. President Uribe has accepted an invitation, after ducking the last Unasur summit, in Quito, on 9 and 10 August. This summit coincided with President Rafael Correa's inauguration and Ecuador's assumption of the Unasur presidency.

It is not clear whether the US and Colombia will have finally committed themselves to an agreement on the bases by the time of the Unasur meeting. On 17 August the State Department said that the final text had been agreed but was now being reviewed by both sides. The Colombians appear to want the deal signed before the Unasur meeting.

Our guess is that Brazil is using Unasur to underline its status as the regional power. If Unasur becomes the regional security forum, and Brazil's foreign minister has already floated the idea that it should run the region's anti-drug trafficking policies, not only Colombia but also Venezuela will have to clear their extra-regional security agreements with it. Brazil wants to know exactly what Venezuela has agreed with Russia, though Brazil has made less of a fuss over this deal than Colombia's proposed agreement with the US. The clever point is that if Colombia allows Unasur to vet its deal with the US it will establish a precedent that would force Venezuela to reveal what it has contracted with Russia. The US, which has Venezuela as it third or fourth biggest oil supplier, would also like a clear understanding of Russia's (and other countries') links with Venezuela. 

• FTA

One card the Obama administration has yet to play in its relationship with Colombia is rallying support for the free trade agreement between the US and Colombia. The US has implemented a deal with Peru but congress has failed to approve the same deal with Colombia. Gallingly for Uribe, this has left Colombia in the same (secondary) status as Ecuador. Once the US economy starts to recover, Colombian exporters will want the best possible access to the US.