Holiday in Ecuador
by Clay Risen

If Colombia is going to be our next Vietnam, then the US government is well on its way to making Ecuador our next Cambodia.

Passing largely under the radar of public attention, the US Southern Command recently put the finishing touches on its new base near the Ecuadorian coastal city of Manta, a combined air and naval station price tagged at $80 million. The base, along with a similar facility in El Salvador, will be used as a so-called "Forward Operating Location" for drug interdiction efforts, primarily to support P-3 surveillance aircraft operating over Colombia.

This in and of itself is more than a little noteworthy, given that the "Powell Doctrine" was supposed to make mission creep a thing of the past, and that it seems the Pentagon has effectively bypassed public opposition to military involvement in Colombia. Taken in the context of US political and military machinations in South America, however, it is positively alarming.

For one, the military has made it no secret that, in the wake of base closures in Panama, it plans on maintaining its presence by building new ones in other countries (In this way, the Pentagon has a cover — they aren't really new bases, they're just replacements). Along with the newly opened FOLs, smaller facilities are being built in Curacao and Aruba, and there are ten more facilities planned for Ecuador, three of them in the jungle of eastern Ecuador. If the Pentagon wants to play musical chairs like this, it's a trend we can only expect to grow.

But perhaps a more striking aspect of the Manta base agreement is its funding source. US officials deny that the money for the base comes from Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion military aid package to Colombia that includes training, advisers, equipment and helicopters. But the Colombian defense minister, Luis Fernando Ramirez, has made statements to the contrary, saying in interviews that the funding is coming wholly from the aid package. Separately, retired Ecuadorian Army Colonel Jorge Brito called the Manta facility the "eyes and ears of Plan Colombia."

Neither possibility is pleasant. If the Pentagon officials are correct, then the funding for the bases must be coming from elsewhere, meaning that there is an unidentified source of funds for a future military expansion. If Ramirez is correct, on the other hand, it would be an unauthorized expansion of the Plan and a classic instance of "mission creep." (In fact, the United States has already begun to use the base for other purposes, such as interdicting illegal immigrants.)

"Mission creep" is no idle threat. Though the funding for the Manta facility more than likely falls within the well-defined limits of military budgeting, its low-key nature and high cost may very well foreshadow more and more aggressive efforts. Unlike in Bosnia or the Persian Gulf, the drug-related nature of our presence in Latin America can be beefed up by the president by up to $250 million a year without Congressional approval through a process called "emergency drawdown," which allows military resources to be appropriated for humanitarian or counter-narcotics efforts.

In any case, the outlook isn't good. Ecuador's northern border abuts Colombia's Putumayo province, a major coca-producing region and a stronghold for leftist guerrillas. There are already hundreds of refugees streaming across the border, and Ecuadorian army units have come into contact with Colombian rebels who have set up staging areas on the southern side of the border. Adding US troops to the mix would only fuel the conflict's expansion across the border, and increased guerrilla activity in the Ecuadorian interior, so close to the nation's oil pipelines, would be all we would need to send in the tanks in the name of protecting our "national interests."

In the 1960s, we went to war in Vietnam because we believed in the "Domino Theory," thinking that if Vietnam went communist, then so would Southeast Asia, and eventually all of East Asia would follow suit. It took 13 years and several million dead to realize we were wrong. But in the aftermath, we learned that there was truth to the "Domino Theory," albeit in a different form. First we send in advisers, then trainers, then a few army units for protection; eventually shots are fired and things snowball toward larger and larger deployments. Ironically, we were so afraid of dominoes that we couldn't see our own falling. The question is, will we be able to recognize it this time around?

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.