[R-G] SPP: North American roulette

[Anthony Fenton]

a RE-CIRCULATION	

Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. and its licensors
All Rights Reserved
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

March 30, 2006 Thursday

SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. A19

LENGTH: 1023 words

HEADLINE: North American roulette;
The three caballeros meet over high stakes today, trying to reconcile  
U.S. security concerns with prosperity for its neighbours

BYLINE: STEPHEN CLARKSON, MARIA TERESA GUTIÉRREZ HACES AND BLANCA  
MARTÍNEZ LOPEZ

BODY:


While Canadians these days may identify Cancun with the hazards of  
tourism, this resort is the site of a different kind of security  
concern today, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper joins presidents  
George Bush and Vicente Fox for a summit devoted to the Security and  
Prosperity Partnership of North America.

Few Canadians respond to the acronym SPP, but Mexico's policy  
analysts certainly have. They are deeply worried about the tri- 
national effort to reconcile the contradiction between the United  
States' security concerns and its two neighbours' prosperity  
anxieties. Many see ASPAN (the SPP's Spanish acronym) as a dagger  
poised to strike Mexican sovereignty in its heart.

These observers share the widespread conviction NAFTA has failed,  
whether as a social policy to reduce poverty and staunch the loss of  
Mexican labour to the U.S., or as an economic tool to solve the  
problems facing the agricultural, energy and transportation sectors,  
or even as a political instrument to contain Washington's unilateral  
behaviour. Prototypical of those who cherish Mexican sovereignty, one  
senior legal scholar summed up ASPAN with a single dismissive epithet  
- annexation.

Those around President Vicente Fox, however, speak enthusiastically  
about the Partnership's genesis.

The original breakthrough apparently occurred in 2003 in the U.S.  
National Security Council, where reason (the need to improve security  
for a United States economically integrated with its two neighbours)  
prevailed over passion (anger with Canada and Mexico for not  
supporting the Iraq war). After a long gestation in the three  
capitals, the SPP agreement was signed a year ago in Waco, Texas. In  
June, a large trilingual document was published outlining dozens of  
specific measures to be negotiated and implemented by government  
officials within defined time lines.

Seen from Los Pinos, Mexico's presidential compound, U.S. border  
concerns can be more an opportunity than a threat, now that U.S.  
security is inseparable from Mexican commerce. Within the Fox  
administration, leading officials see ASPAN as an urgently needed  
means to lock in a strengthened NAFTA so it cannot be rolled back by  
future governments.

When Congress passed a tough bioterrorism law, Mexican legislators  
called for retaliatory legislation to block exports of U.S. goods at  
the border. But Mr. Fox's officials decided the better part of valour  
was compliance. Faced with the tough new U.S. requirements, these  
officials worked intensively with Mexican food exporters'  
associations to help them adapt certification and packaging to  
conform to Washington's new specifications. This effort climaxed last  
December when the bioterrorism law came into effect and no Mexican  
produce was blocked at the border for non-compliance.

It was a defining moment for the Fox administration, which has drawn  
a double conclusion that also resonates in Ottawa: On the one hand,  
accept the Americans' security imperative as the paradigm within  
which the continental periphery has to operate; on the other hand,  
use co-operation on security to get inside the U.S. policy loop by  
negotiating the regulatory corollaries that apply to trade.

According to Mexican agricultural officials, during NAFTA  
negotiations, Washington had refused to bind the U.S. Food and Drug  
Administration, which had long been a "black box" whose arbitrary  
rulings could block the entry of food products coming from Mexico.  
Thanks to the ASPAN talks, the U.S. Trade Representative's office  
prevailed on the FDA to specify, for the first time, the  
certification standards governing Mexican food imports. If Mexican  
avocados are no longer vulnerable to unilateral FDA rulings, the Fox  
administration feels it has gained a vital competitive advantage over  
rivals in Latin America, Asia, even Europe.

This week, officials were polishing reports they will deliver in  
Cancun on such obscure issues as facilitating documentation for trans- 
border flights of private aircraft. It is a far cry from the more  
visionary ideas of a security perimeter or a customs union many in  
the business community are advocating for North America. But, as a  
result of this bureaucratic bustle, we can expect the meetings today  
and tomorrow will endorse a myriad incremental changes leading  
implicitly toward the same objectives.

Nevertheless, a triple spectre of uncertainty will loom over Cancun's  
glistening beaches when the three politically weakened participants  
gather for their palaver:

* George Bush gets lamer every day as demonstrators protest across  
the South against conservative Republicans' attempts to criminalize  
undocumented Mexican immigrants;

* Stephen Harper could be out of his new job even before the U.S.  
President gives his final, mission-accomplished salute from  
Pennsylvania Avenue;

* Vicente Fox is not only in the last months of his six-year mandate,  
but polls consistently predict his successor will be the populist  
Lopez Obrador, who has strongly criticized NAFTA, but whose position  
on ASPAN remains unknown.

So, while this week's summiteers will undoubtedly claim to have  
reconciled security for the U.S. with prosperity for its neighbours,  
it is also possible tri-national solidarity will soon be under huge  
strain.

This, then, is the high-stakes, tri-national game that the Mexicans  
call ASPAN, the American and Canadian governments call SPP, but we  
could call North American roulette. It's a my-way-or-the-highway  
attempt by the three countries' executive branches to forge - behind  
closed doors - a regulatory regime standardized along U.S.-defined  
lines for the continent.

With no involvement by the three legislative systems, and with  
minimal publicity to forestall the civil-society resistance that  
almost stopped NAFTA before it started, this summit's camaraderie  
will not ensure its results from another Cancun peril - storm damage.

Stephen Clarkson is a political economy professor at the University  
of Toronto; Maria Teresa Gutiérrez Haces is a political economist at  
the Institute for Economic Research at the Autonomous National  
University of Mexico, and Blanca Martínez Lopez is a policy analyst  
in Mexico City.

GRAPHIC: Illustration