Policy Podcast: Merida Initiative

Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Sean McCormack, Department Spokesman

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July 2, 2008

MR. MCCORMACK: I wanted to talk a little bit about a law that the President recently signed regarding the Merida Initiative. This is funding for a joint program --I guess that’s the best way to describe it – with the Mexicans and some Central America states that are trying to fight some of the drug, violence, and the organizations that underpin this violence there.

Can you talk a little bit about the initiative, sort of the top line, the numbers involved, and then what’s the guts of the initiative? What are we talking about?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: Well, on Monday, the President signed the supplemental legislation for – to the 2008 budget. That included $400 million for Mexico under the Merida Initiative and $65 million for Central America, and an additional amount of $2.5 million each for Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This is a big step forward in our effort to cooperate with Mexico and Central America, and now the countries of Dominican Republic and Haiti on fighting organized crime and drug trafficking. It comes out of the President’s March 2007 trip to the region, and especially his meeting with President Calderon in Merida. And it’s focused on building the institutions and the capabilities of our partners in Mexico, Central America, and in the DR and Haiti, in an effort to fight organized crime and drug trafficking.

It’s a big step forward for us. It’s a new kind of cooperation on the security assistance side. It really is a collaborative package, built between all of our partners. It’s not something that we kind of thought up and then dropped on them; quite the contrary. They kind of built the strategic basis, identified the resources they needed. We had a really good sense of dialogue with them to kind of shape out this package. And then we were able to engage with our Congress, I think in a really important series of dialogues. And our Congress took a very real interest in this, engaged with our partners also, and we came up with a strong package.

MR. MCCORMACK: I wanted to get back to Mexico and explore that relationship, because I think it’s unique in our history that we have this kind of relationship with Mexico. But why is inclusion of Central America, then the DR and Haiti, important in this -- because we see the reports about drug violence ongoing in Mexico. Why do we need this wider – this wider program, if you will?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: We want to build a regional approach to the problem that starts in the source countries, the Andean countries, building off the success we’ve already had with Plan Colombia and the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, but then recognize that the transit countries are also facing huge problems. And Mexico, obviously, being on our border, experiencing the kind of violence that it’s experiencing now, needs our help. And we need Mexico’s help in order to be able to kind of create some better control along our southwest border. But the reality is that Central America’s also very exposed, because about 90 percent of all the cocaine coming out of the Andes moves up the isthmus of Central America. And the governments of Central America are institutionally weak in some key areas, and that’s what we hope to be able to work with them on.

And in the DR and Haiti, we found that as Colombia begins to have success in its air interdiction program, and Brazil also, that a lot of the drug flights coming out of Colombia actually hop into Venezuela, and then from Venezuela they either go into Africa and up into Europe or they go into Hispaniola, into either Haiti or the DR. And so we’re trying to identify how the drugs are moving and we’re trying to build regional strategies to fight it.

MR. MCCORMACK: Let me get to Mexico here. This strikes me as something – you mentioned it’s something very new in terms of the kind of cooperation. And I think it’s fair to say Mexico’s been quite hesitant to have this kind of close public cooperation. This is a big move for them, too. Where did this come from? You know, where did that, I guess, political impetus from the Mexican side come from?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: It came from President Calderon. It came from a recognition that Mexico right now faces a threat from organized crime and drug trafficking that’s dramatic. Our security cooperation with Mexico took a quantum leap under President Fox, especially along the border and the frontier. But with President Calderon, we find a willingness to take that even further. And it really is reshaping the nature of the relationship between Mexico and the United States. It’s building levels of cooperation and dialogue and trust that really haven’t existed before, so this is historic.

MR. MCCORMACK: Talk to me a little bit about the program. I want to unpack the idea of security cooperation. Is this, you know, our working with the Mexicans and the Central Americans to kick down doors and arrest guys or is this – you know, what’s the guts of the program? How wide is this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: It’s got a couple of pieces to it. I mean, there is an interdiction, kind of a counterdrug piece, to help all the countries involved and prove their capacity to control their air and sea domains and to interdict drugs as they move through the region. But there’s – a big focus of it is on institution building. It’s on building the capacities of national police and civilian institutions, both the courts, the prison systems, and civilian intelligent systems to share information among themselves and to pursue drugs as they move through the region, to arrest and break apart the institutions, the organized crime groups that work these. And then to make sure that the people who are arrested can actually be brought to court, tried, and sentenced to prison.

MR. MCCORMACK: So it’s – you know, I guess, if you will, a comprehensive strategy in trying to break that linkage among violence and drugs and weak institutions, improve governance. Is that the idea?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: It is. But there’s also a component of it that recognizes that we’re part of the problem.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: That we’re the big market for drugs, but that also we’re a source of illegal weapons being trafficked in the region. But we’re also a source of laundered bulk currency that moves into the region that helps finance some of the drug activity. And so as we work with our partners in Mexico and Central America through Merida Initiative, we’re also working with U.S. law enforcement agencies through our southwest border strategy to improve what we’re doing along our southwestern frontier, especially in regard to weapons and currency moving south.

MR. MCCORMACK: You also had a recent trip with Deputy Secretary John Negroponte down to the region. I think you stopped in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Is that right?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: Correct.

MR. MCCORMACK: What did you see there? What’s the state of the relationship among the – well, between the United States and those three countries individually? And what’s the state of the region? How do you see it?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: Well, first, this is a region that’s on the move. Central America has really done some dramatic things. And if you look back over the past seven years during this Administration and you look at the Central American Free Trade Agreement, if you look at the three countries that have Millennium Challenge Compacts with the United States, if you look at the Merida Initiative, and if you look at what the Mexicans have been able to do in the region through their plan, Pueblo Panama, and what the European Union is doing right now as they negotiate a free trade agreement with Central America, you see a region that is confident, that’s reaching out beyond its borders, that’s building trading relationships and security assistance relationships, that is building demographic and cultural relationships, but also, which internally is integrating, on the customs side, on the immigration side, and in their security assistance.

And this is hugely important for the United States, it’s hugely important for Central America, but it’s also why, at this point in time, Merida is so important. Because the big threat this region faces as it consolidates its democratic institutions and as it consolidates its market approach to the global economy, is organized crime.

MR. MCCORMACK: And how did you – you know, if you can just go down the list to do a quick check on the state of democracy in those individual states in terms of elections and how they’re coming along in the institution-building.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: For the most part, it’s strong, in the sense that this is a region that’s committed to democracy. And it’s a region that recognizes that power needs to alternate democratically, that it needs to be governed by constitutional processes. Now of course, a lot of these countries went through horrific internal conflicts, you know, during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. And some of what is happening right now is kind of a playing out --

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: -- of some of the trauma that these countries went through.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: But we’re starting to see alternation of power. We’ve seen it in Guatemala, we’ve seen it in Nicaragua, and we could – we’ll almost certainly see it in other countries in Central America. The important thing is – is that people understand and recognize the importance of democratic institutions and constitutional procedures to create some stability in the political framework in these countries, so that economic policy can kick in, so trade policy can kick in, and we can begin to see the drop in poverty levels and inequality levels that the region needs.

MR. MCCORMACK: Okay. Let me finish up. I’m going to throw you a hanging curveball here. One of the – one of the knocks on this Administration that you always hear, and I hear it as a question when I get the question is that, you know, we’ve somehow ignored the region and that relations between the United States and – throughout the region as a whole and individual states has somehow slid backward. So go ahead and take a cut at that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: Well, from our point of view, this Administration has probably been more engaged in our hemisphere than any administration since that of John Kennedy and the Alliance for Progress. What we’ve been able to do on the trade side -- ten free trade agreements in eight years, building a string of free trade agreements from Canada to the tip of South America all along the Pacific Coast -- is unprecedented. It creates a huge platform for the entire Americas to jump off into Asia, but also to have a really interesting conversation with our Americosur countries that still haven’t been able to commit themselves to this broader free trade agenda.

We’ve doubled our foreign assistance to the region. We’ve forgiven about $19 billion worth of debt if you account what we’ve done in the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank to the five poorest countries in the region. We’ve increased our Peace Corps spending by 30 to 40 percent. Each year, there are 500 more Peace Corps volunteers in the region than previously. The President has traveled more to the region than any president in U.S. history. He’s received more Latin leaders in the White House than any president in U.S. history.

This is an Administration that has made a political commitment, a development commitment; but also, more importantly, I think, has really changed how we seek to engage in the region. We recognize that democracy and markets are important, but they’re important for a reason. And what – that reason is promoting social justice and promoting social inclusion. And we really have kind of, I think, fashioned the sea change in how the United States relates to the region. And it might not be well understood now, but it will be.

MR. MCCORMACK: Let me follow up, then. So why the bad rap? Is this just one of these examples, as Secretary Rice says, that today’s headlines aren’t the same as history’s judgment? What’s your assessment? Why – because that’s a pretty impressive record if you go down and look at the numbers.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: Well, first, there’s a lot going on in the world and --

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: -- and a lot of it’s really dramatic.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: And so naturally, the press moves to the problems. They move to the drama.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: And what we’ve been doing in the region has been quiet, it’s been consistent, and it’s been building on itself.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: And so we haven’t had these kind of huge spikes of crisis or confrontation; quite the contrary. We’ve been slowly building a record of success. But also, this is a region that’s changing a lot and it’s changing really dramatically. And it’s not well understood. Even in the region, the region is still struggling to understand what’s happening to itself.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: But the important thing is, is that we’ve understood the change and we’ve understood the drivers behind that change, which are democracy and markets. And we’ve linked ourselves to that process. And so again, as the Secretary has noted, as the President has noted, we’ve built a positive agenda in the region that’s focusing on countries and helping countries be successful.

MR. MCCORMACK: Tom Shannon, thanks a lot for joining us. I really appreciate it and it sounds like history’s judgments are going to be a little bit different than today’s headlines, I guess.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SHANNON: I think so.

MR. MCCORMACK: All right. Thanks a lot.