By Pablo Meriguet on September 25, 2024
Ecuadorian President seeks to bring foreign military bases back to Ecuador. photo: Daniel Noboa
Last week, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa surprised Ecuadorians by announcing that he intends to reform the Constitution to allow the installation of foreign military bases. According to the Magna Carta, widely approved in a popular consultation in 2008, Article 5 stipulates that “Ecuador is a territory of peace. The establishment of foreign military bases or foreign installations for military purposes will not be allowed. It is prohibited to cede national military bases to foreign armed or security forces.”
In 1999, a US military base was established in Ecuadorian territory, popularly known as the Manta Base, where hundreds of foreign military personnel carried out territorial control, intelligence, and other activities on Ecuadorian soil, sea, and air.
At the time, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), said, in a sarcastic tone, that the only way he would agree to renew the agreement authorizing US foreign troops in Manta would be if the United States allowed an Ecuadorian military base in Miami. There was a clear and predictable silence on the part of the US authorities. The truth is that the Correa government was one of the main promoters of Article 5 of the Constitution during its ten years in the Executive. This article, which was not present in the previous Magna Carta, came to put an end to any possibility of future foreign military installations in the country…for now.
Foreign military bases: the security strategy of the neoliberal governments
The truth is that the Manta Base was not the first military base to be established in the country. During World War II, the United States built two military bases in Ecuador (one of them in the Galapagos Islands) ready for combat against its enemies. Thus, the Galapagos Islands and the continental coasts of Ecuador have been geostrategic points in US military planning for more than half a century.
However, the possibility of installing a new military base in Ecuador had not been seriously contemplated until the appearance of the first neoliberal governments. This is because neoliberalism in Ecuador, ideologically speaking, promotes a strengthening of the armed forces while weakening the State in other matters such as social investment and improvement of institutional functioning. However, the strengthening of the armed forces is thought of by Latin American neoliberalism as a function that can only happen under the tutelage and direction of the US military, which, supposedly, does not suffer from certain weaknesses such as corruption and administrative mismanagement. This reveals that Latin American neoliberalism, despite its nationalistic discourses, tends to distrust the armed forces of its countries in favor of other armies (this being one of the clear signs of its little or no sovereignist attitude).
As already mentioned, since 1999, the neoliberal governments of Ecuador ceded part of the country’s territorial sovereignty to establish a US military base in the city of Manta, in the Province of Manabí. Supposedly, the military base would help in certain national security control tasks, although it was also said that its objective was to have a control post to combat Colombian guerrillas. However, abuses by the US military against the local population were also reported, such as the destruction of small fishermen’s boats and even sexual abuse, something that has been denounced in areas around US bases across the world, including Colombia, South Korea, the Philippines, and more.
For several years, the US military personnel enjoyed a sort of diplomatic immunity and therefore never had to be accountable to the Ecuadorian judicial authorities. According to Ximena Gudiño, activist of the No Bases Coalition, “for the social organizations and the affected populations, the impacts of the Manta base have been enormous because they have meant the sinking of ships, detention of fishermen, rape and abuse of women, and it has not meant all the economic progress that had been expected.”
Under the supposed excuse of better controlling insecurity and subversive groups, the United States has established foreign military bases throughout the region to have better military, control, and intelligence positions. It currently has several (publicly known) bases in Latin America: 12 in Panama, 12 in Puerto Rico, 9 in Colombia, 8 in Peru, 3 in Honduras, 2 in Paraguay, 1 in Cuba (Guantanamo, without the approval of the Cuban authorities), and has other military installations in several countries such as Aruba, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.
In Ecuador, the previous government of Guillermo Lasso signed an agreement with the US Army to receive support for more than USD 3 billion that included modernization of military instruments, and a huge cybersecurity and intelligence program controlled by the US military in Ecuador, among other things. Before Lasso, the government of Lenin Moreno signed a military cooperation agreement with the United States for more than USD 140 million.
New and old voices in favor of a new foreign military mission
Over the last few years, the most reactionary sectors of the country have been building a “consensus” opinion that the departure of US troops in Manta worsened insecurity in the country in the long term, while some accuse that it was done to benefit drug trafficking groups intentionally.
Ecuador’s current president Daniel Noboa has become the latest and most resonant voice behind this perspective and has publicly called for a fundamental reform of the constitution. In a message posted on his social networks, Daniel Noboa said: “We will present a project of partial reform to the Constitution before the National Assembly that substantially modifies Article 5 of the Constitution that prohibits the establishment of foreign military bases and facilities for military purposes. In a transnational conflict, we need national and international responses. We are lifting the country…which they turned into the cradle of drug trafficking, which they handed out to the mafias with a false notion of sovereignty. Time has shown us that the old decisions only weakened our country.”
According to this rhetoric, any measure will do to confront the country’s criminal groups, which have now amassed a power never before seen in Ecuador. It is not the first time that Noboa has used the serious problem of crime to promote his security project. In the last referendum, all the questions proposed by the Executive that had to do with legal reforms to improve the State’s capacity to confront criminal groups supposedly were approved. However, the results of such “efforts” have not yet become palpable, which is why some analysts believe that the reform to Article 5 of the Constitution has other hidden objectives.
A new military base against China or another electoral strategy?
Many voices have been raised against Noboa’s decision. Some say that the decision, supposedly made to combat drug trafficking, actually conceals a total submission of the Noboa government to US geopolitical interests.
Correista Andrés Arauz, former presidential candidate, wrote on X “The base that the US wants is not in Manta, it is in San Cristobal, Galapagos. They are already there, but now they need to deploy all kinds of weapons of war: planes, ships, and nuclear submarines. But it is not to fight drug trafficking or to help us fight organized crime. We all know that if the US wanted to fight drug trafficking it would do it by reducing consumption, resolving internal complicity with drug dealers, regulating arms manufacturers, and confronting corruption in US ports and customs (or where do they think the drugs come in?). They need that base for World War III against China, as part of their strategy to control the Pacific. The US already had its military base in Baltra, Galapagos during World War II, for precisely the same reasons.”
However, this opinion, which was very well received by several political sectors, seems to have been (supposedly) denied by the Admiral of the US Coast Guard, Linda Fagan, who said in an official visit to Ecuador that, for now, her country does not intend to request permission from Ecuador to establish a new military base in the country.
Hence, the former Deputy Secretary of State of Ecuador, Fernando Yépez, affirms that, “The initiative [of Noboa] on foreign military bases seeks to polarize the political-electoral debate between the good guys, who support it, and the bad guys, who oppose [the reform] for [being] ‘narcos’. False and infamous discourse that pretends not to look at the disastrous misgovernment of poverty, insecurity, blackouts, and lies”.
The truth is that in the past, it was already beneficial for Noboa to show himself as the antithesis of Correism at times when his popularity was falling (as is currently happening due, among other things, to the serious electricity crisis in the country, which is causing power outages of up to 12 hours in several regions of the country).
For now, it remains to be seen whether Noboa’s announcement seeks to establish a military outpost for the United States or to foster a political polarization that will benefit him in the upcoming elections…or both.
Source: Peoples Dispatch