Summary: Part two of two.  This article delves into the recent history of NAFTA plus, what forces are behind it and what awaits civil society if it is not halted by concerted, organized actions.  As opposed to NAFTA, consisting of a single treaty, negotiated among the three signing parties, with at least cursory review of the legislatures, NAFTA plus is rather a series of measures being implemented by the signing of “regulation” that do not require legislative review.  Therefore it is necessary to understand what ideas are behind NAFTA plus, what future elites in Mexico, Canada and the United States have in store for the rest of us, in order to identify and work to counter measures that will challenge national sovereignty and identity in an unprecedented way.

Natural resources—part of the picture

Security for the United States goes beyond territorial or military considerations and encompasses strategic natural resources.  First on the list are oil, gas and water.  In an unusually candid moment, in response to a question by the press, Bush declared that Canada’s water was part of United States’ energy security. [29]   Water is being consumed in many parts of the United States at unsustainable rates.  One notable example is the Ogallala aquifer located in the mid-west, one of the biggest in the world, presently being consumed 14 times faster than it can be replenished by rain.

Consequently the United States has proposed “mega-projects” in the recent past that would permit the bulk transfer of water from Canada, that eternal green sponge to the north.  One project, “Grand Canal”, would transport the plentiful water from Canadian rivers and lakes to the Great Lakes where, on the US side, millions of gallons would be fed, through canals and pipes, to the increasingly thirsty mid-West states.  Another megaproject, NAWAPA (North American Water and Power Authority) would redirect water from rivers in British Columbia and the Yukon to a huge crater in the Rocky Mountains where, again on the US side, it would be taken for increasingly parched western and Mid-west states. [30]

Under NAFTA plus and the dismantling of borders, it would be difficult or impossible for Canada to prevent the transfer of water or other natural resources through trade transactions with the US.

Obviously oil too figures into American security concerns.  Since NAFTA’s start, and particularly since the first American invasion of the Persian Gulf, the US’ neighbors have become its principal suppliers of oil, natural gas and electricity, Canada in first place, Mexico in second.

Graph no. 1 [31] reveals Canada’s importance in American strategic projections regarding oil.  Canada has relatively little oil if conventional reserves are considered, 4.4 billion barrels.  But if non-conventional reserves are considered, such as its plentiful tar sands in Alberta, Canada jumps to number three in the petroleum world, with some 312 billions barrels, overtaking Saudi Arabia.  Only Iraq and Venezuela top Canada in terms of actual and potential reserves.

For the US, then, only too aware of the difficulties of controlling access to petroleum reserves in the Middle East, the notion of creating a single North American space with its neighbors, and thus guaranteeing a relative cheap flow of oil—in economic, political and military terms, suddenly wasn’t so ludicrous.

Notwithstanding it present sizable reserves, Mexico lacks a future as an oil producer, especially when compared to Canada, and especially if, under a NAFTA plus scenario, its oil reserves are openly or covertly privatized and subjected to US security concerns.  Within a US security perimeter, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Mexican government to dispose of its reserves for purposes than run adrift of American strategic concerns.  In the run-up to the war against Iraq in 2003, Mexico “acceded” to increasing it oil exports to the US, from 1.2 million barrels to 1.6 million per day (a 30% increase) when Mexico has no more than 10-12 years of proven oil reserves. [32]

In addition to oil, Mexico has abundant natural gas, is home to some of the most important reserves of biodiversity in the world, and in the state of Chiapas and its Central American neighbors, possesses the most important fresh water reserve between the Ogallala aquifer and the Amazon River basin in Brazil.  As in Canada, NAFTA plus’ harmonization of “best practices” to American standards will mean opening all sectors to market forces, making it impossible to set aside Mexican natural resources through government action.

NAFTA plus—another roadmap to the FTAA

As American strategists reviewed the implications of NAFTA plus, the more sense it made.  It meshed nicely with the principal long-range US plans for the Americas, the creation of a single bloc of nations that, first, would rival the European Union and the emerging Asian juggernaut of China, Japan and South Korea.  And, second, it would be an open market of 800 million inhabitants for American industrial and agricultural goods and services.  NAFTA plus is another way of moving toward the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) that Bush had hoped to sign in early 2005.  Presently sidelined, it has not, however, been scrapped.

Mexico becomes the trial run.  If greater integration between a third-world country such as Mexico with two advanced countries is successfully, the demonstration effect on the rest of Latin America would be, according to Robert Pastor, irresistible:

How do we define, first of all, a North American vision?  And what are the steps—strategically, economically, politically—that are necessary for us to raise all of the elements of North America up?  If we succeed with Mexico in North America, then it becomes much easier to have a Free Trade Area of the Americas, because the rest of Latin America will see that free trade has actually been an avenue to the first world.  If we fail in Mexico, I don’t think we’re likely to succeed anywhere else in Latin America or, for that matter, in the developing world. [33]

Yet the successful integration of an impoverished Mexico into a North American space depends—according to Pastor—on the transfer of exorbitant amounts of cash, principally from the US, similar to the transfers that Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland received from the European Union when they joined.  Even in the unlikely event that the US would underwrite Mexico’s “development” to ease its integration into a new North America, American intentions go much further.  They reach to the confines of Patagonia and the Caribbean basin, i.e., covering more than 30 relatively poor countries, whose “development”, presumably, the US would be unwilling to finance before incorporation into the FTAA.  American strategists seemingly have a different (and cheaper) plan: proceed as quickly as possible in constructing a new North America bloc, limiting short-term economic and political costs, and leave uncomfortable aspects, such as Mexico’s abysmal asymmetry vis-à-vis the United States, for a remote and undefined future.

The Independent Task Force

The rapid creation of a single North American is now being charted by government strategists basically in the US.  Yet an important input into the process has been a series of recommendations, released in May 2005 by the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America (ITF).  The ITF brought together a select group of business leaders, academics and ex government officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico to strategize on the future of the three countries under deep integration, within a context of heightened American security concerns.

ITF participants were chosen by a coordinating organization in each country.  In Canada it was the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; in Mexico, the Mexican Council of International Affairs (Comexi), and in the US, the Council on Foreign Relations.  Robert Pastor was Vice Chair of the American group.

Thirty-one persons participated in the ITF from the three countries, and only one, Carlos Heredia from Mexico, had a different profile.  Once a part of the activist civil society sector where he worked for 20 years, and today member of Comexi and advisor to the Michoacán state government, Heredia joined the deliberations for the third and final meeting of the ITF.  Still, far from bringing to the deliberations lessons learned among the Mexican grassroots, a vantage point that could challenge the basic premise of deeper integration—NAFTA’s supposed success—Heredia’s presence may have served solely to legitimize an elitist discussion group.  His tepid comments regarding ITF’s final recommendations are circumscribed to pointing out that “North American integration must work for the average citizen”, and that “reforms to reduce poverty and inequality in Mexico must start from within”. [34]

ITF had three meetings, in Toronto (October 2004), New York (December 2004) and Monterrey (February 2005).  Following deliberations, a final report made recommendations to the three governments on future deep integration.   A confidential summary of the Toronto meeting, leaked to the public, highlights that, at least for these elites, no topic is to be left unturned, notwithstanding its sensitivity:

Several participants divided their suggestions for more intensive cooperation into those that are politically feasible today and those than, while desirable, must be considered long-term goals.  One implication of this approach is that no item—not Canadian water, not Mexican oil, not American anti-dumping laws—is “off the table”; rather, contentious or intractable issues will simply require more time to ripen politically. [35]

The candor of the confidential memo disappears in the more circumspect public declaration after the final meeting in Monterrey.  Yet the guidance of the ITF undoubtedly had an impact on government strategists.  The six basic ITF recommendations for North America integration are:

·         Immediately create a unified North American Border Action Plan.

·         Create the institutions necessary to sustain a North American community.

·         Adopt a common external tariff.

·         Stimulate economic growth in Mexico.

·         Develop a north American energy and natural-resource security strategy.

·         Deepen educational ties. [36]

The first recommendation incorporates overriding American security concerns and is the sine qua non for the others.  The confidential Toronto memo says clearly, “members [of the ITF] generally agreed that Task Force recommendations will be taken most seriously to the extent that are placed in the context of heightened concern about security: for example, increasing regional cooperation on energy could be presented as addressing security-related concerns.”

Pursuant to the first recommendation, the ITF states, “The governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States should articulate as their long-range goal a common security perimeter for North America.  In particular, the three governments should strive toward a situation in which a terrorist trying to penetrate our borders will have an equally hard time doing so no matter which country he elects to enter first.” [37]

Three months after the ITF’s recommendations were made public, on June 27, 2005 the three countries signed “a battery of close to 300 regulations [...that] contain the standardization of policies for monitoring travelers and goods arriving from third countries, including systems for visa issuance, categorization of “high-risk travelers” and “trustworthy travelers”, and the future implementation of a smart card for those wanting to transit swiftly through the common borders of the region”. [38]

The increasing close ties and coordination among the security and intelligence apparatuses promoted by these regulations are concerned not solely with “external threats”, but also “internal insecurity”.  Today in Mexico the greatest insecurity comes from narcotics trafficking and the crime wave it has provoked on the country’s border with the US.  In light of the increasing integration of the security forces, a quick response has followed.  As part of the 300 “regulations”, Mexico and the United States have agreed to fight organized crime bilaterally, by creating intelligence branches that operate along the common border. [39]   Taken together with the placement of US migratory and customs agents in Mexico’s airports, these measures will assuredly open the way for US security and intelligence agents to work in Mexico, as they always have, but now overtly and with legal cover.

The fly in the ointment

Conservative analysts who have delved into deep integration are almost unanimous in identifying the main stumbling block to the greater integration supposedly awaiting the three countries—the abysmal difference between living standards in Mexico and in its other two partners.  Migration concerns are paramount because, according to these analysts, Mexico will be unable to advance towards a probable North American common market (with unrestricted labor mobility), if its endemic poverty—purportedly the root of migration—is not markedly reduced.

Apart from dissenting from such integrationist fatalism, we have elsewhere taken issue with simplistic explanations of Mexican emigration. [40]   A restatement of the problem would underscore the lack of employment, of opportunities to work, or more simply to survive, particularly in the countryside, as the main reason behind migration, and not the relative levels of poverty vis-à-vis the US, nor the differences in salaries.  Plainly put, people migrate to the US because there is gainful employment, a salary, a way to survive and assure minimum conditions for one’s children.  This could be done in Mexico, by generating work opportunities, but with very different economic policies in place, geared toward the domestic market.  Present policies, based on open trade and little or no protection for Mexican producers, manufacturers and vendors against foreign competition—i.e., the very policies NAFTA has vigorously promoted—will only perpetuate a vicious circle of job destruction, increasing levels of poverty and thus the need to implement survival strategies, one of which is to migrate.

In such circumstances, insinuations of unrestricted Mexican migration within “North America” is little more than yet another promise of future prosperity that Mexican leaders have traditionally extolled for domestic consumption.  During the 70s, after the discovery of abundant oil reserves, the then president assured Mexicans that the mayor task at hand would be “administering abundance”; in the 90s, NAFTA would be the key for crossing the threshold and entering the developed world; today NAFTA plus is the new redeemer, promising full First-World membership.

Fanciful tales are useful when reality is decidedly harsher.  Greater integration of Mexico with the US will deepen the tendency observed over almost 12 years: greater advantages for few “winners”, greater poverty for everyone else.

In 10 years things have worsened for 94.5 million Mexicans.  The application of orthodox economic policies has benefited only 10% of the population.  Actually, not even 10% have benefited.  The average monthly income of this richest 10% of the population is 11,186 pesos [US$ 1,000 approx.], which certainly is far from being a high salary.  This demonstrates that the truly rich are those within the top one or two percent, in other words at most two million Mexicans [of a total population of 102 million].  They are the ones who truly have benefited from 24 years of neoliberalism. [41]

Conclusion

The building of a new North American space is rapidly progressing, yet lacking civil society consultation and legislative oversight.  By doing away with treaties or accords, the three chief executives are achieving deeper integration through NAFTA plus by signing “regulations”, thus foregoing the bother of seeing their plans bogged down in one of the legislatures.

The primary objective, a trinational security perimeter, is being consolidated.  Future steps include the construction of a new economic space, beginning with a customs union, then a common market (further liberalizing labor mobility between Canada and the US, but restricted from Mexico), and finally, a monetary and economic union. [42]

The final step will bring deeper changes in the long term, such as adopting a single currency—already baptized the “amero” by Pastor—but undoubtedly equivalent to the US dollar. [43]   A single currency would destroy one of the last shreds of sovereignty in the hands of Mexican and Canadian economic authorities, i.e., monetary and fiscal policy.  Although officials from Canada and Mexico might be invited to the Federal Reserve for management of the “amero”, such a presence would hardly be more than symbolic. A common currency would give American authorities complete control over the economy of the lesser partners, a scenario that, at least for Mexico, would “cap off a truly colonial absorption”, according to investigator Alejandro Alvarez Béjar of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. [44]

Costs would be enormous in terms of sovereignty and identity for the lesser partners.  Deep integration would mean foregoing an independent future.  For Mexico it would forever cancel the Bolivarist dream of a united Latin America, with Mexico’s natural cultural reference, the rest of Latin America.  The identity to be forged would be spurious and forced.  Unsurprisingly, this key aspect has been foreseen.  The confidential memo of the ITF’s Toronto meeting talks of a “shared North American identity”, of the need to develop a “North American brand name—a discourse and a set of symbols designed to distinguish the region from the rest of the world”.  The document insists that efforts will be required

within the educational system and the mass media.  One Member suggested launching a trinational education project that would develop internet-based learning modules on topics such as North American history.  These supplements to the standard curriculum in each country could be reinforced through contests and events aimed at building relationships among young leaders across North America, and through a series of North American Centers in all three countries.  [...] Robert Pastor [...] offered to develop this proposal further. [45]

The right of Mexicans to decide the future of the Mexican nation is at stake.   This is not an effort, such as the European Union, to join together the good will of countries which, to a greater or lesser extent, accept the principle of equality.  Mexico and Canada are rapidly integrating with a country that is in practice opposed to negotiating fundamental differences, particularly with weaker countries.  How are the inevitable differences of perspective, concomitant with asymmetry, to be handled with a country that sees as a  “vulnerability” that its “security and strength as a nation state will be challenged” by those who use terrorism, but also by those “who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora [and] judicial processes”. [46]

The task before civil society in all three countries is enormous.  It faces a concerted effort to understand regulations signed to date, and their implications, in order to fight for their suspension. Still, motives for optimism exist.  Actions implemented under the guise of NAFTA plus by means of regulations have proceeded unchallenged thus far, but their validity lacks treaty status.  As such, modifying or canceling these undemocratic regulations would seem to be within reach of an informed, organized and mobilized civil society and, hopefully, a united trinational civil society.

In the sixth month of 2005, the Zapatistas of Chiapas decreed a “red alert” to call attention to the need of reflecting on a domestic reality in which “our elected officials are destroying our Nation, our Mexican homeland”. [47]   Given the swiftness of unfolding changes with no public oversight, another “red alert” must be sounded to detain NAFTA plus.  As UNAM investigator Alvarez Béjar insists, “the North American Community will be Mexico’s most important challenge in the twenty-first century”. [48]

End notes:

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