[R-G] The North American Union Farce

[Anthony Fenton]

The North American Union Farce
by Laura Carlsen
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? 
context=viewArticle&code=CAR20080303&articleId=8247
Global Research, March 3, 2008
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) - 2008-02-27

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It's got millions of rightwing citizens calling Congress, sponsoring  
legislation, and writing manifestos in defense of U.S. sovereignty.  
It comes up in presidential candidates' public appearances, has made  
it into primetime debates, and one presidential candidate—Ron Paul— 
used it as a central theme of his (short-lived) campaign.

Not bad for a plan that doesn't exist.

The North American Union (NAU) conspiracy theory is an offshoot of an  
all-too-real trilateral agreement called the "Security and Prosperity  
Partnership" (SPP). Cultivated by xenophobic fears and political  
opportunism, the NAU soon outstripped its reality-based progenitor.  
The confusion between the two today has made it difficult to sort out  
the facts. A little history helps.

The Impossible Leap from SPP to NAU After the North American Free  
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into force in 1994, the three  
governments began to talk about expanding the scope of the agreement.  
Mexico , in particular, hoped to negotiate a solution to the border/ 
immigration problem. However, the process was brought to a grinding  
halt by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center .

In a 2005 summit of then-Presidents George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and  
Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco , Texas , plans for "deep  
integration" between the three countries finally progressed with the  
official launch of the SPP. In the post-September 11th political  
context, immigration was off the table and U.S. security interests,  
along with corporate aims to obtain even more favorable terms for  
regional trade and investment, dominated the agenda.

As the executive branches of Canada , the United States , and Mexico  
conspired to expand NAFTA behind the backs of their unconvinced  
populaces, an independent task force sponsored by the Council on  
Foreign Relations floated the idea of deeper integration under the  
name of the North American Community. Their paper, published in May  
of 2005 and financed by Archer Daniels Midland, Merrill Lynch, and  
Yves-Andres Istel, was not authored by an underground network of  
conspirators against U.S. sovereignty, as NAU critics would have us  
believe, but by a staid group made up mostly of former government  
officials and big business representatives.

This group envisioned regional integration as the creation of a  
"community" with shared commercial, security, and environmental  
purposes. It proposes sacrificing national policy tools to regional  
goals in areas such as creation of a common security perimeter, a  
permanent NAFTA tribunal to settle disputes, expanding NAFTA to  
restricted or excluded sectors, and adopting a joint resource  
agreement and energy strategy. Indeed, some of these recommendations  
could very well present threats to democracy in all three countries.  
But the report does not include adopting a common currency or a  
single regional government and in fact states that a "union" along  
the lines of the European Union is not the right approach for North  
America .

The CFR paper was an academic exercise with pretensions of reaching  
policymakers. While some of its recommendations were later taken up  
in the Security and Prosperity Partnership talks, particularly  
suggestions on ways to improve transnational business, many of them  
were unanchored by reality and quickly went the way of the vast  
majority of policy recommendations.

The SPP, on the other hand, established working groups, rules,  
recommendations, and agreements that have had a huge and largely  
unknown impact on rules and policies. It is a complex web of  
negotiators who work without congressional oversight, public right-to- 
know, or civil society participation. The corporate world, however,  
has ample representation; the SPP advisory body called the "North  
American Competitiveness Council" reads like a "Who's Who" of the  
largest transnationals based on the continent.

While the lack of transparency and the U.S. corporate and security- 
dominated agenda of the SPP are cause for great concern, they are not  
evidence of a plot to move toward a North American Union. Among the  
most bizarre assumptions of NAU scaremongers is the contention that  
the SPP will threaten U.S. sovereignty and erase borders. The idea of  
a regional union that effaces U.S. sovereignty is light-years away  
from George W. Bush's foreign policy of unilateral action and disdain  
for international law and institutions. On the contrary, the precepts  
of the Bush administration's foreign policy point to a return to the  
neocon belief that the world would be a better place if the U.S.  
government just ran everything.

Real and Conjured Threats

A poli-sci undergrad can tell you who will prevail if Canadian,  
U.S. , and Mexican negotiators get together to set out a common  
agenda. (Hint: it's not Mexico or Canada .)

Officially described as "... a White House-led initiative among the  
United States and the two nations it borders—Canada and Mexico—to  
increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries  
through greater cooperation," the SPP poses a much more palpable  
sovereignty threat to NAFTA's junior partners. Canadians have been  
the most active in opposing the SPP, not out of fear of a mythical  
NAU but because of real threats to their ability to protect consumer  
health, natural resources, and the environment. SPP rules would force  
open oil production in environmentally sensitive areas and channel  
water supplies to U.S. needs. Likewise, Mexican civic organizations  
have protested against SPP pressures to privatize Mexican oil and  
allow greater U.S. intervention in the Mexican national security system.

Both these fears have been born out in Mexico in recent months.  
President Felipe Calderon is expected to announce a plan to privatize  
segments of the state-owned oil company PEMEX any day now. Plan  
Mexico (also called the Merida Initiative) currently before the U.S.  
Congress goes farther than any other measure in the history of the  
binational relationship toward developing a common security  
perimeter, within which U.S. government teams and private defense  
companies would train security forces, coordinate intelligence- 
gathering, and provide defense equipment for use against internal  
threats. Few countries in the world have been willing to take this  
kind of risk.

As for moving toward a borderless North America , the years since the  
SPP began have witnessed a hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border never  
seen before in modern history. Fifteen thousand Border Patrol agents,  
6,000 members of the National Guard, and a border fence powerfully  
belie any suggestion that the U.S. government aims to eliminate  
borders as it moves toward a secret North American Union.

Right Wing Red Herring?

How, then, to explain the fact that the NAU conspiracy has gone viral  
among rightwing populists in the United States ?

How to explain how a baseless myth has garnered the support of  
millions, made it into presidential candidates' debates, and become  
the subject of 20 state resolutions and a federal one?

Given the absolute lack of factual data to support the existence of a  
secret plan to create a North American Union, it's tempting to assume  
that the NAU scare was put forth as a red herring to divert attention  
from real issues facing the country. By channeling the insecurities  
of white working-class Americans into belief in an attack on U.S.  
sovereignty, the NAU myth obscures the very real globalization issues  
raised by NAFTA—job loss, labor insecurity, the surge in illegal  
immigration, and racial tensions caused by the portrayal of  
immigrants as invaders. This is convenient for both rightwing  
politicians and the government and business elites they attack  
because real solutions to these problems would include actions  
anathema to the right, including unionization, enforcement of labor  
rights, comprehensive immigration reform, and regulation of the  
international market. Instead, these options are shunted aside with  
the redefinition of the problem as a conspiracy of anti-American elites.

But espousing a conspiracy theory to contradict another conspiracy  
theory would be absurd. It's unlikely there's a central kitchen that  
cooked up the NAU red herring. The NAU myth taps into deep-rooted  
traditions and fears of many Americans and so, it has found a broad  
audience. This audience is predisposed to defend imagined communities  
from external threats, rather than face the complex task of  
unraveling the contradictions within their real communities brought  
about by a model of economic integration that generates insecurity  
and inequality.

In this context, outrage over a nonexistent NAU should not be  
confused with growing criticism of the Security and Prosperity  
Partnership. The SPP has proceeded to change national regulations,  
and create closed business committees without the participation of  
labor, environmental, or citizen voices. SPP negotiations provide a  
vehicle for more of the corporate integration that has eliminated  
jobs, impoverished workers, and threatened the environment across  
borders.

It has also served to extend the dangerous Bush security doctrine to  
Canada and Mexico , despite its lack of popularity in those countries  
and among the U.S. public. Its latest outgrowth, the $1.4 billion- 
dollar Merida Initiative or Plan Mexico would extend a militarized  
model of fighting the real problems of drug-trafficking and human  
smuggling that would lead to greater violence and heightened  
binational tensions.

The NAU is a red herring. It serves to divert attention from domestic  
problems that have more to do with layers of contradictory policies  
and unmet challenges than any kind of anti-U.S. conspiracy.

It's time to separate out false threats from real threats. A good  
place to start is to demand transparency in trinational talks (April  
21-22 in New Orleans ) and informed public debate on regional  
integration.

Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen at ciponline.org) is Director of the Americas  
Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) of the Center for  
International Policy. The Americas Mexico Blog can be found at  
www.americasmexico.blogspot.com.

  Global Research Articles by Laura Carlsen