U.S. Military Presence On Ecuador's Coast

Courtesy Of: The International Herald Tribune
Original Source: The Associated Press
Published: February 5, 2007
http://iht.com

MANTA, Ecuador: The U.S. military's...outpost in South America— some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time.

...President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush now has few reliable allies.

"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil," Correa said recently.

...Many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. is trying to draw them more deeply into the Colombian conflict...

...Although U.S. officials deny that Manta's planes spy on leftist rebels in Colombia, they do intercept drug flights and eavesdrop on radio communications there.

"There is a widespread feeling that Washington is carrying out an extensive, mostly security, anti-drug program with Colombia, with little regard for the severe consequences — growing violence and refugees — on Ecuador," said Michael Shifter, deputy director of the Interamerican Dialogue think tank in Washington.

The Bush administration's efforts to maintain the U.S. role as Latin America's No. 1 commercial and military partner have suffered badly with leftist presidents winning office from Venezuela to Bolivia and now Ecuador, where many resent Washington's tough bargaining for trade pacts that lock in preferential terms for U.S. industries and seem anything but "free."

"Washington tends to alternate between being indifferent, so distracted with more urgent priorities and, when it does pays attention, being overbearing." said Shifter.

Located on the coast some 260 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, Manta is well situated for its mission. But the U.S. military, which got the Manta lease after it was forced to abandon Howard Air Base in Panama in 1999, would be wise to start looking elsewhere, according to Anna Gilmour, a Latin American analyst with Jane's Defense Information Group.

Colombia is not a good option — U.S. troops based there would be at great risk of attack from the same leftist rebels Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is fighting with U.S. training, logistics and intelligence support.

Nor are its neighbors: Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Alan Garcia of Peru and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil have shown no interest in basing U.S. military units on their soil.

The region's leftist governments have already turned away from U.S. defense contractors, going instead to Russia, France and Brazil for military hardware. Venezuela said last week it hopes to buy Russian anti-aircraft missiles to protect its oil industry.

The Bush administration upset many in the region when it emphasized bilateral trade pacts and denigrated the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, a package of trade benefits offered in exchange for cooperation against drugs. The act expired Dec. 31, though the administration extended it for six months.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, has said ATPDEA "isn't charity" but rather "just compensation" for commitments to battling drug trafficking.

Chavez, for his part, has called the drug war "the excuse that imperialism obtained a few years ago to penetrate our countries, to oppress our peoples and to justify its military presence in Latin America."

...some 6,000 Department of Defense employees are assigned to the region, many of them in Texas and Florida, where their bosses are headquartered at the U.S. Southern Command.
That is a small sliver of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. troops deployed around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia.

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