home > about cfr > leadership and staff > john g. heimann > Latin America: Editorial Briefing with John G. Heimann and Julia E. Sweig
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| Speakers: | Julia E. Sweig, Senior Fellow, Deputy Director, Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations |
|---|---|
| John G. Heimann, Co-chair of an independent commission, Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region |
January 7, 2004
Council on Foreign Relations
John G. Heimann is the co-chair of an independent commission, sponsored by the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, that produced a new report, "Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region." He was chairman of the Financial Institutions Group of Merrill Lynch and a member of its executive committee until his retirement in 1999; he is also a former U.S. comptroller of the currency. Julia E. Sweig, a senior fellow at the council and deputy director of its Latin America program, directed "Andes 2020." They participated in a Council-sponsored conference call on January 7 to brief reporters and editorial-page editors at U.S. newspapers on the new report. Following is an edited transcript of the briefing.
How would you describe the major shortfalls of current U.S. policy toward the Andean region?
JOHN HEIMANN: The current policy of the United States needs major revision. The total focus at the present time is on the supply side of the drug issue, which doesn't solve the problem. There is a need to consider the consumption side. The current policy does focus on Colombia, but that doesn't solve the problem because of [the country's porous] borders. We need a serious debate on Plan Colombia [the current U.S. aid plan for Colombia], before it expires in 2005, and on what we ought to be doing in the Andean region. We need to pay far more attention to the rural poor. We need to have a multilateral approach to the drug problem; it is clearly a regional problem and therefore the attention can't be on just one country. And, of course, there is an important need to strengthen democratic institutions throughout the region.
Your report suggests that the region is on the brink of collapse. The region seems to have staggered along for quite a while. What makes you say now it is on the brink of collapse?
HEIMANN: There's serious political instability in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. And the situation isn't getting better. The question is, will it get worse? Everything leads us to believe that over time it will.
JULIA SWEIG: I just want to point to the recent events in Bolivia and the collapse of the government there, and the fact that the president in Ecuador is just barely hanging on. We've also got instability in Venezuela, and the crisis in Colombia seems to be no longer contained in that country but is in fact regionalizing. The countries in the region are barely functioning, that was our finding, and the United States and the rest of the international community needs to rethink its approach, which in our view is far too narrow.
What is going to make the Bush administration pay more attention to the Andean region? It has a very full foreign policy agenda at the moment.
HEIMANN: It certainly does, but Plan Colombia needs to be renewed in 2005, which means there has to be a debate in 2004. It is being forced by the Plan Colombia timetable.
SWEIG: In Congress, there is a constituency that has long been key to funding for initiatives in the region--the drug policy caucuses in the House and the Senate. We're very much aware of the influence of that constituency, and we believe that, especially because of the broader context of the war on terror now, the drug policy constituency is willing to take another look at the limits [on funding]. That said, it's true that in the grand scheme of things this region, although it gets a lot of funding, tends not to get the kind of senior level attention from this or previous administrations that we believe it merits.
Will the Bush administration make an effort at the upcoming Summit of the Americas to improve the situation in the Andes?
SWEIG: The agenda that it set for itself encompasses some of our own perspectives. It talks about economic growth and reducing poverty, strengthening property rights, the importance of eliminating corruption and strengthening good governance. But in summit environments, not a lot can be expected other than statements and rhetoric, as even Bush administration spokespeople have acknowledged.
Latin Americans have come to expect from the United States--both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration--either a focus on free trade or a focus on the drug war. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to recover from the losses of recent trade summits and get to the core issues that Latins find important beyond the Americans' interest in drugs and trade. That';s why you see discussion of HIV/AIDS and education and [workers'] remittances [from the United States to their native countries]--issues that are the bread and butter for broader populations in the region. Within that context, the Andes may have some role, of course, but I don't think it will be a feature of the summit discussions.
Assistant Secretary of State Roger F. Noriega suggested recently that Cuba and Venezuela are promoting anti-Americanism in Latin America. Is that relevant to the Andean region?
SWEIG: He made only a passing reference to [Cuban leader] Fidel Castro, but I do understand that this administration--and our report, too--has acknowledged a concern about Cuban influence in Venezuela. But [the report] stops there and doesn't get into the discussion about the extent of Cuban involvement in other parts of the region. Because we don't think that is the major source of instability, the report looks at what the other sources are, and Cuba's role, outside of Venezuela, is not one of them.
Given the administration's current concentration on the Iraq war and the war on terror--and the difficulty of defining what's going on in the Andes as terrorism--what are the prospects for more U.S. money being directed toward the region?
HEIMANN: It's a question of the amount of money and how it's divided up. At the present time, it's heavily skewed toward the military. I think in Colombia it's 81 percent toward the military and 19 percent toward everything else. In the region as a whole, it's about 65 percent toward the military and the remainder is everything else. We need a redirection of the present use of the money before even beginning to consider additional money.
There was considerable concern when Ambassador Noriega came in as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs that he was focused almost entirely on Cuba. Are the Andes getting an appropriate amount of attention within the administration?
SWEIG: We're concerned about the kind of attention the region gets. There are separate, compartmentalized worlds within the executive branch-- those that deal with the drug war, trade policy, migration, monitoring and combating terrorist financing. What we don't see is any sort of coordination between those different units. We hope to [have an effect] by at least pointing out the problems so that initiatives on development, trade, drugs, and terror have at least the appearance of being related and reinforcing one another, which they seem not to now.
I have the impression the administration still believes that no matter how many initiatives or programs or how much aid it comes up with, the most important thing for the region is to create the conditions for the countries to help themselves through free trade and open markets and economic reforms. Can you comment on that approach?
HEIMANN: I think we generally agree that there needs to be a domestic equivalent to whatever help the United States gives to an individual country. Take taxation, for example. The level of taxation, implementation, and enforcement of taxation in these countries is very low. Implementation and enforcement of tax collection, if nothing else, begins to create the resources in the country for economic development. Trade enters into that, and of course the report strongly encourages a regional trade agreement with the United States rather than country-by-country agreements.
To what degree does Colombia affect the rest of the region?
HEIMANN: No. 1, drugs infect the region and the borders are porous. Remember, the United States helped to finance the fight against drugs in Peru and Bolivia, and the drug trade moved to Colombia. Now that Colombia is a major exporter of drugs, the United States is providing money to try to decrease the drug production in that country, and it's moving back into Peru and there's every evidence it's also moving into some of the other countries. Drugs are a major problem, and one that corrupts society.
The report stresses the role of the elites in the region. Can you talk a little bit about that?
HEIMANN: There's a long history in these countries of a very small segment of the population controlling the resources. It differs from country to country. In some cases, it's the financial and the business community, in other cases it's the government itself, that is, the politicians who control the government who use the resources of the country for the purposes mostly of buying votes for themselves. You have to break that cycle. Because there is a need to expand democracy to all of these countries, there is a need to extend economic development to the rural areas. And the list goes on and on.
How do you enlist the elite if the reforms you suggest are not in their self-interest?
HEIMANN: It's part of U.S. policy to demand, in effect: "If you want our help, you've got to have effective tax collection implemented by your government."
SWEIG: For example, one of the report’s recommendations relates to what takes place during a negotiation of an IMF [International Monetary Fund] loan agreement. Typically in those talks there is very little, if any, discussion about the nature of the tax base— is it progressive, is it regressive, what sorts of income goes into tax revenue, how is it collected, what kind of enforcement mechanism exists. We think the [U.S.] Treasury Department ought to weigh in with the IMF during these country agreement discussions to get the issue of taxation onto the agenda.
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