Time to close the US bases in the Antilles

Since 1999, The Netherlands has been leasing two airfields in the Caribbean to the American army. The US uses the two bases off the coast of Venezuela
- on the Aruba and Curaçao islands - to monitor and intercept drug
transports. The bases are part of a larger group of US military
facilities set up over the past decade to fight the 'war on drugs'. The
ten-year lease is now up, which means that the Dutch government has to
decide whether to continue with the arrangement.

The Dutch government's silence on the matter most certainly means it
plans to extend the lease. The absence of a debate is lamentable as
there are enough reasons to question the functionality, necessity and
consequences of the US presence in the Antilles.

The arguments supporting the US presence on the islands are clear:
the Caribbean Sea has been one of the main channels for illegal
substances flowing from the production fields in Colombia towards the
buyers in the US and Europe. According to the Antillian governments,
the bases also have a positive economic side-effect: They create a few
jobs.  

But there are strong arguments that support the termination of the
lease too. The main question is whether the bases are still useful at
all. Some drug transports have indeed been intercepted in the past, but
the net effect of these interceptions is zero, according to all sides
in the debate about international drug trafficking. Since the US
obtained the lease in 1999, the amount of cocaine available on the
North American drug market has not gone down, the price on the streets
has not gone up and the quality of the drug has not deteriorated. In
spite of all efforts, cocaine still flows to the North American market
unhindered.

President Obama is aware of this too. He has spoken about the need for the reform of US drug policies.
Shifting focus away from disrupting the drug production elsewhere to
countering the problems caused by drug trade and use domestically. It
seems that after decades of stubborn struggle, the US government is
finally ready to move towards the more realistic European approach to
countering the ill effects of drug trade and drug use. So if these
bases serve no purpose anymore, why would the US - or The Netherlands -
want to keep them? Surely both governments can make better use of their
money in times of crisis.

There is 'reasonable doubt' about the role of the two bases in the
Colombian civil war too. According to the 1999 treaty, the Antillian
bases can only be used for monitoring and interception of illegal
transports on the Caribbean Sea, not for missions in any way connected
to the Colombian civil war. It is almost impossible however, to
determine if the US is playing by the rules. The annual reports
submitted by the US on what it actually does in the Antilles are below
standard, lacking of any detail, if submitted at all to the Dutch
government as required by the treaty.

What we do know is that the Antillian bases are part of a larger group of US bases located around Colombia. Other so-called Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) are in Ecuador and El Salvador.

And we do know that the Ecuadorian government has recently decided
not to continue the lease exactly because the US was not playing by the
rules. US activities carried out from the base in the Ecuadorian city
of Manta included reconnaissance missions into Colombia. Most
significantly, the US used it to support the Colombian military
operation leading to the assassination of FARC's top commander Raul Reyes last March..... on Ecuadorian territory!

The US also coordinated fumigation programmes of coca fields in Colombia from the Manta base. These led to court cases by Ecuadorian farmers living on the border with Colombia, who saw their farms damaged or destroyed by the fumigation operations.

Such revelations are not surprising. There have been doubts from the
beginning about the American claim that the drug interceptions and the
military operations in Colombia would remain separate. Both Ecuador's
experience and the US' reluctance to document its activities carried
out from Aruba and Curaçao mean that we have to question the logic of
extending the leases.

The burden of proof now lies with the US and Dutch governments. What
is the added value of the bases if they do not have a positive effect
on countering drug trade? And how would the US and Dutch governments
guarantee that these bases and the information gathered from their
operations will not be used for military purposes in a civil war the
Dutch government does not want anything to do with?

Originally published in NRCNext Newspaper (translated from Dutch)