CAFTA

Throughout the early 1980s, JINSA supported the Reagan Administration’s assistance to the small, struggling countries of Central America as theymoved – sometimes violently and not always in a straight line – from military repression to democracy rather than communism. The five countries, plus the Dominican Republic, now have representative governments and it is in America’s interest to use the tools we have – including CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement – to bind them to us.

Throughout the early 1980s, JINSA supported the Reagan Administration’s assistance to the small, struggling countries of Central America as theymoved – sometimes violently and not always in a straight line – from military repression to democracy rather than communism. The five countries, plus the Dominican Republic, now have representative governments and it is in America’s interest to use the tools we have – including CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement – to bind them to us. They are our neighbors, and their political and economic wellbeing are important to us as matters of social policy and security necessity.

Our current fixation with the exigencies of the Middle East has caused us to pay scant attention to two worrisome trends in our own back yard. Al Qaeda and Hezbollah have been active in the tri-border region (the area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay come together), Colombia and Panama – the nexus of drug money and Islamist ideology in an area where governments are often ineffectual. As the U.S. works to dry up Saudi and other sources of funding for terrorism, the vast sums pouring through the drug cartels is tempting. And the drug lords share the terrorists’ abhorrence of prosperous and stable societies.

Furthermore, China has made political and economic forays into the region related in part to the cutoff of American military aid to countries that have not signed bilateral treaties with us regarding the new International Criminal Court (ICC). According to American military sources, Chinese officials made 20 visits to Latin American and Caribbean countries last year, and 9 countries from the region sent high-level delegations to China.

The countries of our hemisphere must believe that we value them politically and economically and the U.S. should be willing to put its trade policy where its beliefs are. There is nothing new in this. In 1984, Ambassador Max Kampelman, then-Chairman of JINSA’s Board of Advisors, spoke to a Jewish audience about the importance of Central America.

Peace with dignity and the preservation of our security and values will not come from political pandering to unsophisticated pacifist sentiment … The peace we seek, indeed the peace we require in this nuclear age, is a stable peace. It is the peace inherent in the Hebrew word, ‘Shalom,’ which means more than the temporary absence of war. It conveys a peace that encompasses the totality of relationships …

(Andrei Sakharov, in a letter smuggled out of Gorky) “Warned that ‘the world is facing very difficult times and cruel cataclysms if the West and the developing countries trying to find their place in the world do not now show the required firmness, unity and consistence in resisting the totalitarian challenge.

Add “terrorist age” to “nuclear age” and the message remains relevant two decades later.

Opposition to the CAFTA is centered on the economic impact it might haveat home and the possible exploitation of poor people abroad. Both concerns have a place in the discussion of CAFTA’s passage. But security for us and for them has a place as well. We can ill afford to have our hemispheric neighbors – still vulnerable to political and economic upheaval – believe that the U.S. will leave them on their own to be exploited by drug lords, terrorist and communists.