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(a)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.Americas Program, Center for International Policy
