What is the U.S. Strategy in Central America?
In one of his usual rants, this past Friday (March 29th) our President said that “I've ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras and to El Salvador. We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.” He then continued to post tweets about this issue over the weekend and into the new week.
As with NATO (and coincidentally, the Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, is in Washington, D.C. this week), President Trump boils down United States policy with regard to other nations to transactions. "They haven't done a thing for us," though it is anyone's guess what he thinks the "something" is that these three nations have not provided. At least with NATO, Trump has a measuring stick to grab onto: each nation in NATO should spend two percent of their own GDP on defense. That has been a rub between the U.S. and its NATO Allies for a while, but Trump is the first president to threaten to leave NATO over it. He is also the first president who seems not to understand that historic importance of NATO. That is, we formed NATO to keep wobbly European states aligned with us, even as the Soviet Union threatened from the other side. He seems to be the first president to not understand that the NATO Alliance has paid us dividends. The U.S. stations forces in Europe (and Asia, as well) not simply to "protect" those nations (that is the entire Trump understanding), but also because our forces also are provided strategic basing and access rights as we continue to pursue operations in other parts of the world. In fact, we are gaining a lot for our alliances.
However, as with NATO, Trump cannot seem to get past the idea that partnerships with other nations must always have an immediate quid-pro-quo attached. On the same day that Trump was making his pronouncements on Central American aid, I went to the U.S. State Department website to see if I could discover whether there is any actual strategy with regard to this region. I was looking for something in coherent language that would explain Trump's rationale. Instead, I found this: https://www.state.gov/p/wha/rt/strat/#.XKTbl1-PL0w.blogger. There is no telling how much longer this will be posted, and there is a good reason for that: the official U.S. policy in Central America sounds like something written by another administration.
The State Department says that this strategy "is a bipartisan, multi-year U.S. government plan promoting institutional reforms and addressing developmental challenges. The Strategy aims to protect American citizens by addressing the security, governance, and economic drivers of illegal immigration and illicit trafficking, while increasing opportunities for U.S. and other businesses." The strategy's three main pillars are "Promoting Prosperity, Enhancing Security, and Improving Governance." The plan discusses the $2.6 billion in Foreign Assistance the United States has already expended from 2015 through 2018, through the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The plan goes on to praise El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for expending $8.6 billion of their own funds in cooperation with the U.S.-backed "Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle."
The strategy discusses U.S. successes in combating the flow of illegal drugs, stem criminal and narco-trafficker violence in the region, along with efforts by the U. S. to bolster governmental institutions in these three nations. A reading of the strategy would give anyone the impression that the United States is in this relationship for the long-haul. What is most surprising is that the short document does not contain anything suggesting that the U.S. demands much in return, beyond a commitment of these nations to work to continue work with us. If one wants to come close to a statement of cracks in the relationship, you could look at the remarks made by Vice President Mike Pence in October 2018 at the "Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-conference-prosperity-security-central-america/
In these remarks, Pence brings "greetings this morning from a great champion of this hemisphere of freedom, and a great champion of the partnerships that are so well represented here. I bring greetings this morning from President Donald Trump." Pence suggests that the U.S. and Central American nations need to work together to stem the flow of immigrants, but he makes his case in diplomatic language, and in the context of continued partnership. His speech gives no indication that the U.S. was ready, on a whim, withdraw aid, aid in the amount of $2.6 billion over four years. That is about $65 million a year. That is about
Though it should not surprise anyone, Trump now tells all of us that these nations have not lived up to their end of the bargain, though I think all would be surprised if he could actually point to specific parts of this contractual strategy that these nations have violated. And to no one's surprise, Trump has left his State Department to spend the next days and weeks turning his spur of the moment decision into some kind of coherent policy. All the while, his supporters, who seem to like his "Drunk Uncle Don shows up to Thanksgiving Dinner" approach to all things momentous, will continue to support him. Who would want some smart-ass, Spanish-speaking experts in the State Department to come up with coherent strategy?
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