Sign up to receive SPP updates:
RSS feed.  |
ABOUT THE SPP | BACKGROUNDERS | MEDIA | VIDEO/AUDIO |
SPP resources SPP Summit - New Orleans SPP Summit - Montebello Teach-in |
“Plan Mexico” counter-productive and militaristic, says new report tying it to the SPP May 6, 2008 While Canada has its own bad security deals with the United States – joint no-fly lists, common biometric ID cards, cooperation with a draconian detention and deportation system for migrants – U.S. Congress is about to authorize a doozy with Mexico that has critics sounding alarm bells. “Soon the U.S. Congress will vote on the [Merida] Initiative, popularly referred to as ‘Plan Mexico,’” writes Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program at the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, in a new primer. “The little-known appropriations request… has been presented as an unprecedented effort to fight burgeoning drug trafficking and violence related to organized crime in Mexico. But the ‘regional security cooperation initiative’ goes far beyond cooperation in stopping the flow of illegal drugs. “It would fundamentally restructure the U.S.-Mexico binational relationship, recast economic and social problems as security issues, and militarize Mexican society.” It is also intimately linked to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, says Carlsen. “Through the SPP, the Bush administration has sought to push its North American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats, promoting and protecting the free-trade economic model, and bolstering U.S. global control, especially in Latin America where the State Department sees a growing threat due to the election of center-left governments,” she writes. “While international cooperation to confront terrorism is a laudable and necessary aim, the Bush national security strategy entails serious violations of national sovereignty for its partner countries, increased risk of being targeted as U.S. military allies, and threats to civil liberties for citizens in all three countries. Moreover the counterterrorism model, exemplified by the invasion of Iraq, has by all accounts created a rise in instability and terrorist activity worldwide.” Carlsen then quotes Thomas Shannon, sub-secretary of Western Hemisphere affairs with the State Department, who referred to this process of jointly securing the so-called joint economic space as “armoring NAFTA.” To read the full report, which outlines in bullet form what is wrong with Plan Mexico, click here.
|
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 |
NACC
Workers
Water
Energy
Military
Safety & regulations
