INTEGRATION-SOUTH AMERICA: Cardoso’s Plan Reaches Final Phase

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Commentary Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 31 2000 (IPS) - Brazil’s President Fernando Henrique Cardoso will launch the final stages of his historic plan to unite South America this Thursday and Friday at a regional summit of heads of state in Brasilia.

The consolidation of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), in spite of its deficiencies, and Brazil’s geographical and economic weight serve as the foundation for turning the region into an “integrated space” and improving its insertion into the international community.

Cardoso makes an important contribution to the process through the friendships he has developed with the presidents of neighbouring countries, through the negotiations he led in putting an end to the 50-year border conflict between Ecuador and Peru, and through the frequent visits he exchanged with his counterparts throughout the region.

Some of these friendships, such as the one he shares with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, date back to the 1960s, when Cardoso lived in exile and reached world renown as a sociologist and researcher. Today his academic prestige gives him an edge in the international arena.

Now an experienced politician, he began as an alternate senator in 1978, winning the seat outright four years later. He had always said he aspired to be Brazil’s minister of foreign affairs.

He reached that position in October 1992, but served just seven months before moving to the finance ministry to spearhead the stabilisation plan that put an end to two decades of runaway inflation – an achievement that assured him the presidency in 1994 and re-election in 1998.

“Presidential diplomacy” is a sign of the current era of globalisation. Heads of state personally guide foreign policy and seem to meet with each other more frequently. But Cardoso, by vocation, takes this one step further.

His government strengthened Brazil’s traditional positions on international issues: fighting against foreign interference and in favour of the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts.

Such policies have reinforced trust in Cardoso’s brand of diplomacy, which insists on refusing hegemonic pretensions and even rejects the term “leadership” when discussing Brazil’s role in South America.

Foreign minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia believes that only now, with the greater consolidation of the region’s democracies, are the conditions ripe for the political and economic integration of South America. The timing is appropriate, then, for the 12 presidents of this continent to meet this week.

But a number of obstacles remain. ‘Plan Colombia,’ designed by President Andrés Pastrana to fight the Colombian drug trade, has turned into a divisive issue for the region.

Pastrana has emphasised that his plan also involves programmes for alternative crops to replace the coca and poppy fields used in drug production, and contributes to developing the peace process with guerrilla organisations.

Colombia will receive 1.3 billion dollars in aid from the United States, largely for military purposes, and Plan Colombia has the strong support of President Bill Clinton, who made an official visit to that country on Wednesday.

Political observers predict Plan Colombia will be the most controversial issue at the South American Summit in the Brazilian capital. It proved to be a heated topic in the talks held earlier by delegates in drafting the so-called Brasilia Communiqué, to be signed by the presidents Friday as the summit’s final declaration.

There is widespread fear that the decades-long civil war in Colombia will escalate as a result of Plan Colombia, and will spill into neighbouring countries. Brazil and Ecuador have already stepped up police and military presence along their borders with Colombia even though Pastrana will not implement the plan until January.

But criticism of US interference in Colombia does not hide the fact that the production and trade of illegal drugs – with the violence that accompanies it – have hurt South America’s economic development, as well as the region’s internal and external diplomatic relations.

Brazil intends to impose a democratic clause for participation in the South American community, like the one that governs Mercosur.

This will be a challenge for some, as Colombia’s democracy lives under constant threat from the war, and events in Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru in the last year and a half prove their democracies are not at their strongest.

The most demanding diplomats include Bolivia and Venezuela on the list of questionable democracies because they have former military coup leaders as presidents.

In the economic sphere, the South American trade blocs – Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations – suffer internal disagreements and conflicts that have prevented their consolidation into customs unions and impeded the development of full free-trade relationships.

Given these difficulties, the Brazilian government proposes, as a basic route towards finalising the “South American space,” the building of an infrastructure for integration, which would involve the development of trans-border roads, waterways, gas pipelines and electrical lines.

The idea was developed in 1996 by Eliézer Batista da Silva, who headed the privatised Vale do Rio Doce Company, turning it into one of the leading mining companies in the world. He also has also served as Cardoso’s secretary of strategic affairs.

A major obstacle for the infrastructure plans – which some calculations indicate would have a price tag of at least 200 billion dollars – is the southern continent’s financial weakness, a factor that also stands in the way of Brazil’s regional leadership.

The problems affecting plans for South American consolidation, which implies relative autonomy from Washington, include a conflicting option: closer trade ties with the United States. This is an increasingly attractive alternative, especially given Mexico’s recent economic growth.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of Mexico, the poorest partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and the United States, is already nearing Brazil’s GDP in absolute terms even though Brazil’s population is 60 percent larger.