MERCOSUR--Chomsky Speaks about "Exciting" South American Integration

In this interview of Noam Chomsky on Foreign Policy in Focus, Chomsky explains why he is excited about Latin America and its attempts at regional integration. I have culled the relevant sections of the interview here. Enjoy!

South America

DOSSANI: Will the current crisis open up space for other countries to follow more meaningful development goals?

CHOMSKY: Well, it's been happening. One of the most exciting areas of the world is South America. For the last 10 years there have been quite interesting and significant moves towards independence, for the first time since the Spanish and Portuguese conquests. That includes steps towards unification, which is crucially important, and also beginning to address their huge internal problems. There's a new Bank of the South, based in Caracas, which hasn't really taken off yet, but it has prospects and is supported by other countries as well. MERCOSUR is a trading zone of the Southern cone. Just recently, six or eight months ago, a new integrated organization has developed, UNASUR, the Union of South American Republics, and it's already been effective. So effective that it's not reported in the United States, presumably because it's too dangerous.

So when the U.S. and the traditional ruling elites in Bolivia started moving towards a kind of secessionist movement to try to undermine the democratic revolution that's taken place there, and when it turned violent, as it did, there was a meeting of UNASUR last September in Santiago, where it issued a strong statement defending the elected president, Evo Morales, and condemning the violence and the efforts to undermine the democratic system. Morales responded thanking them for their support and also saying that this is the first time in 500 years that South America's beginning to take its fate into its own hands. That's significant; so significant that I don't even think it was reported here. Just how far these developments can go, both dealing with the internal problems and also the problems of unification and integration, we don't know, but the developments are taking place. There are also South-South relations developing, for example between Brazil and South Africa. This again breaks the imperial monopoly, the monopoly of U.S. and Western domination. China's a new element on the scene. Trade and investment are increasing, and this gives more options and possibilities to South America. The current financial crisis might offer opportunities for increasing this, but also it might go the other way. The financial crisis is of course harming — it must harm — the poor in the weaker countries and it may reduce their options. These are really matters which will depend on whether popular movements can take control of their own fate, to borrow Morales' phrase. If they can, yes there are opportunities.

Sameer Dossani, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is the director of 50 Years is Enough and blogs at shirinandsameer.blogspot.com.

MERCOSUR--Venezuela-Brazilian Ties are No Game!

There's a lot of interesting developments in the Latin American region off-late, and I'm not just saying that because Bolivia's referendum went well the country's way on Sunday. Ofocurse, well is relative, because for the detractors of the referendum, empowering the indigenous makes a nonsense of the westernising process that suits the middle class. But, that's another story.

The biggest story here is that apart from the fact that Chavez is coming under attack for extending the term of his office by way of the constitution, as far as regional integration initiatives go, more exciting things are happening. Last week, for example, the personable Christine Kirchner, President of Argentina, met up with Chavez.

The objective of the meeting was to deepen ties between the two countries. To the extent that a good 21 new cooperation agreements were signed, plus the bullet-point notes of: meeting once every three months; and alternating the meeting between Venezuela and Argentina all have lent credence to the idea that Venezuela and Argentina are getting things "right" on fostering their regional integration.

Fostering integration is very often about deepening ties between, and among the countries in the region. Perhaps here in the ECOWAS region, Ghana and Nigeria come close to doing that more often than with the other thirteen members of ECOWAS; I do sure hope we could see more Ghana-Gambia / Ghana-Senegal / Ghana-Cote d'Ivoire / Ghana-Mali interactions. If you think about the permutations that can occur between and among countries in any grouping, it is more than astronomical.

It's More than in the Eyes

Going back to the issue of developments in the region, one reads further that Brazil and Venezuela are also strengthening their regional cooperation after the 6th Bilateral Summit, which was held in the "western oil-producing state of Zulia."

Now when we talk about Brazil and Venezuela, we are in essence talking about regional hegemons--even if Venezuela has yet to be comprehensively ensconced in the MERCOSUR region.

The meeting was more than bombastic talk: it saaw the two leaders of Chavez and Lula driving through a "commnal city" named "The Labyrinth", which is...

"a growing agricultural community of 157 families, where an irrigation system is being developed with Brazilian technology."

There were also inspections of a 2,050 acre cattle-raising complex in The Labyrinth, supplied by what the Venezuelan leader calls "very resistant" Brazilian cattle breed.

Venezuela will, in turn, be creating a large food depot to give food security to its people, with Venezuela ready to transfer technology from the agricultural revolution the country has experienced since the sixties--all this so that Venezuela can also create its own agricultural revolution.

The long-and-short of it all is that if ever we thought Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina are playing games with rhetoric about fostering a strong and cohesive MERCOSUR, these developments better dispel that myth fast!

pictures are from http://www.venezuelananalysis.com

Bank of the South is Here, But Can Africa Bank on the Latin American Way of Regional Integration?

The new multilateral institution is considered as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and seeks to satisfy development credits demand.

Seriously, it's more than an alternative; it's also yet another expression of Venezuela and its associate MERCOSUR members of their dissatisfaction with the prevalent neoliberal system.

I've written about this Bank of the South before and I explained that the Latin Americans had something that Africans certainly didn't. Beyond blood running through their veins, it's about a radicalism and conviction so unprecedented and emanating that any of their opponents feel it viscerally that these are people not to be toyed with.

If not, how is it that despite the articulations of Venezuela against the mighty US, Venezuela has -- along with Brazil; Argentina; Bolivia; Ecuador and Paraguay -- establish this Bank of the South [I notice no Uruguay!!]. Yet, Africans have allowed themselves to be fragmented on the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements?

The fallout of the signing of a so-called EPA-lite by the East African Community and SADC (without South Africa and Namibia) just leaves one speechless--not to mention a little bit less for wear the arduous efforts of civil society -- both in the North and the South.

That said, it's important to press on to stop the discussions between the bullying EU and the other regions.

In my view, the Bank of the South initiative, a formidable alternative indeed to the Breton Woods institutions of the World Bank and IMF in the sense that "each member country would have a single vote, irrespective of size and financial contribution" (from:http://www.nationnews.com/290175804330225.php) brings into sharp relief the necessity for greater collaboration between MERCOSUR in general/Latin America specifically and other AU regionalisms to learn lessons on how they were able to resist the Free Trade Area of the Pacific in 2005, yet AU/ACP countries allowed fragmentation by the EU.

While this issue of the Bank of the South, in my view, is one of the most progressive developments in global regional integration to date--bar the ASEAN charter-- Africans ought to contemporaneously reflect on whether there is that much of a difference between the EU and the US, for them to have allowed the EU--former colonisers at that--to hoodwink many of them into an interim agreement that will most likely destroy attempts at regional integration.

You Can Bank on Something Big Happening in MERCOSUR!

There is something rather peculiar about the calibre of political leaders in Latin America that I don not find on the continent of Africa.

Somehow, it's that ability to look beyond the handouts of the IMF and the neoliberal policies that have afflicted them, and come out with a vision that is people-centred. When Africans, especially the South Africans, are keen to espouse the notion of NEPAD, and contemporraneously and ineluctably link it with the integration of Africa, somehow, somewhere, these Latin American leaders are turning agianst this type of Pavlovian attachment to what is, frankly in my view, a new colonialism, predicated on financial ties.

It is no surprise therefore to see that there's something big coming from Latin America again--specifically the MERCOSUR region.

The Bank of the South--described as "an ambitious and strategic gambit[sic--gamble??] in regional integration"--is going to radically transform how regional integration is done in that region. It only had to be the idea of the more progressive of the MERCOSUR countries--Venezuela and Argentina.

Despite a hitch between these two countries in a joint proposal against the Ecuadorians in the conception of the Bank of the South, it is clear that this Bank is going to deliver. IT is ambitious, without a doubt, and has vision unmatched in the region thus far.

In an explicit attempt to divest itself of the IMF/WB and other neoliberal financial policies, this bank, aiming to start operations in 2008, has five key characteristics:

1. bank's clients should not be large corporations;

2. rather it should give loans "to the public sector, to small producers, to local communities, to municipalities, and to states or provinces." (Toussaint)

3.Finally the document asserts that BoS should not be a behemoth like the World Bank with its 13,000 employees,

4. it should account for operations and activities on an annual basis.

5. It required an annual public debate for the bank to explain its activities to the citizenry whose taxes it used

Chile and Uruguay are absent from the debate on the BoS on account of their proximity to the US, deemed not just antagonistic, but which policies are necessarily anathema to the progressive vision of the BoS.

It was going to be evident the US would complain about a project like this. If there have been muted complaints, it's probably because Rice and her cohorts are too busy trying to carve Africa, EU-style, by way of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act Forum due in Accra from 16 July this year (next week).

Either way, the Bank of the South is going to be reclaiming the state:

the Bank of the South can play a decisive role in reuniting a region divided by decades of neoliberalism. To implement the neoliberal model, its main beneficiaries—the financial institutions and monopolistic corporations—have weakened or dismantled the power of the nation state. It may be that one of the primary tasks of the BoS could be rebuilding state control and regulations
from:http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2852.cfm

It's important to just touch very briefly on how MERCOSUR is doing things, If we take the example of the BoS, we read that:

Energy will be one of the first priorities of the new bank and one of its first projects will be to finance the proposed South American Gas Pipeline, which will link Venezuela with Argentina, passing through Brazil. This will be a real regional integration project because the gas transport is oriented toward regional economic development as opposed to exporting it to markets in the developed world.

I couldn't help but shake my head in wonderment about the--yet again--Pavlovian response by ECOWAS countries towards the West African Gas Pipeline, which has CHEVRON owning a stake. Euphemistically speaking, it is the project manager.

Honestly, can ECOWAS countries not manage their own ECOWAS gas pipeline? Perhaps, it's time to start taking cue from our MERCOSUR friends!

Venezuela' s Looking at the MERCOSUR Fine Print...

Grandiloquent pronouncements against imperialism nothwithstanding, it is very easy to think of Chavez as a deluded leader who only goes to confirm that socialism is going the way of the dodo. Seriously speaking, let's face it, Chavez might attract "right-wing" criticism, but he certainly has an idea about how to bring in the role of the state. Perhaps refusing to renew the operating license for RCTV, a private Venezuelan television station may have attracted cacophony among the right-wingers who feel it spells a categorical loss of free speech. However, no-one said he had to be perfect.

Today, sounds like he's a marked man. He's particularly irked by the right-wingers of the Brazilian and Uruguay camp who feel he has little to offer beyond pronouncements of imperialism left, right, and centre. Chavez himself believes:

Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) must be reformulated, Chavez insists, since both are marked by Capitalism and fierce competition.

from: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=74234

He's currently in Iran, where he is said to have made the arguments above. Now, interestingly, if Venezuela choses to rescind his decision to join MERCOSUR, he is ready to join ALBA:

"If the Brazilian Right is stronger than the idea of integration, then we will withdraw from Mercosur ... our model is one of integration and we believe in it deeply and it is called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)."

With Rwanda and Burundi having joined the East African Community on 1 July from the quasi-defunct Economic Community of Central African States(ECCAS), it just goes, in my view, to underscore how the plethora of regional economic communities offer necessary comparative advantages--both economic and otherwise--to countries. Without a harmonisation, it is evident that countries might start withdrawing and crossing the carpet, as it were, whenever a dispute arises.

In the specific context of the African Union government, which radio reports indicate, at the time of writing, that the "gradualists" are taking the day, it brings into sharp relief the utmost importance of fine-tuning and harmonising the RECS so as to avoid situations like this one befalling Chavez and Venezuela.

People Power Through Mercosur Parliament?

You have got to give it to the Latin Americans. When it comes to people power, they certainly have got it! Remember what happened with the Free Trade Area of the Americas(FTAA), which was scheduled to take off in 2005? It was in Brussels, in 2002, that I started writing about the FTAA, and it certainly looked like it was going to happen.

But the Latin Americans got big on people power--and used it to good effect. In Wikipedia, description of the FTAA is "proposed". Never to have happened. A flop.

Unlike the Latin Americans, the AU countries and their relations, by way of the ACP Group, with the EU on the EPAs continues apace as if regional integration à la européen would be the best transplant for the African continent.

It seems like the Africans haven't quite gotten round to the effect of people power in the way our Latin American friends have. So sophisticated they appear to be in this regard that they have, as an article maintains, considered the:

...initiative to implement mechanisms of people's participation in the Parliament of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) similar to the street parliamentarianism in Venezuela

Is it any surprise that it is Venezuela that is proposing this idea?

The mind boggles;-)

The Arab World, through GCC, Gets Serious with MERCOSUR

Looks like Mercosur is hitting it big off-late. First, it's going to be opening its parliament this month. Now, we're getting fresh news that the Arab world that had heretofore been rather lethargic on expressing itself in collaboration with other regional blocs, is now entertaining no less than a free trade area that will be completed by June with MERCOSUR.

Oh baby.

This is good stuff for the Gulf Cooperation Council that rarely features in this part of the world:

the free trade agreement between the Mercosur and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) should be concluded up to the end of June of this year. The GCC includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman. This week the Emirates were visited by one of the presidents of the Mercosur, the Uruguayan Tabaré Vasquez.

Thankfully, the leitmotiv behind this alliance is not one solely predicated on free trade; there is talk about other things, too:

Another point presented by the secretary general at the Arab Chamber was the integration of productive chains within the bloc, especially in the automotive, energy and petrochemical industry sectors. "It is not enough just to seek trade, it is also necessary to seek productive integration, otherwise there may be an imbalance in exports and imports," he declared

Wow. There's a turn-up for the books: not enough just to seek trade!

The secretary general of the Arab Chamber is talking about productive integration.

That's certainly one to look out for! With MERCOSUR and its associated countries talking about energy, this type of integration is probably a trend that needs to be looked out for...

good weekend!

MERCOSUR's Parliament, a Test of Accountability to its Citizens?

Let the celebrations begin!

MERCOSUR's first-ever Parliament will open on 7 May...

at Uruguay’s Legislative Palace and in its first year will have an operational monthly budget of 30.000 US dollars (from:http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=10337&formato=HTML

This is fantastic news coming from a regional bloc that was coming under criticism for losing focus on its regional integration efforts.

Here's what we know from the article above about the Parliament:

1. Montevideo was chosen as the seat for the group’s Parliament

2. the ceremony is scheduled in Uruguay (the country has rotating Chair)



3. the Mercosur Council, (Foreign Affairs and Economy ministers) still have to decide on the 2008/2010 budget during a meeting scheduled next May in Paraguay

4. The Parliament bill will be split, half of it according to the number of legislators from each country and the other half based on GDP of each member

5. Legislators will not be paid for their work in the regional parliament and the basic staff in 2007 will be limited to 25.

I guess my title might have been a bit premature, considering the parliament only opens in some eight days, but, still, it's worth ruminating over the extent to which a regional parliament will make MERCOSUR more accountable to its citizens.

This news comes on the heels of the (very) personable Mrs Kirschner, First Lady of Argentina, wooing Mexico's President Felipe Calderon into getting into Mercosur, which currently comprises: Argentina; Brazil; (Associate members) Chile/Bolivia; Paraguay; Uruguay; and venezuela.

Here's a quick list of websites of regional parliaments:

African Union / Pan-African Parliament:http://www.pan-african-parliament.org/index2.htm

European Union:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/default_en.htm

ECOWAS:http://www.parl.ecowas.int/

Andean Community:http://www.comunidadandina.org/ingles/sai/estructura_6.html

Don't Cry for Uruguay, Truth is She Never Left MERCOSUR!

Don't feel too sorry for Uruguay just yet.

There's an article in mercopress, maintaining that:

Uruguay and Paraguay, junior members of Mercosur have lately been at odds with Argentina and Brazil claiming the block has become a two members club, with little benefits for the smaller partners and therefore the need to establish agreements with third countries

.

Uruguay has been entertaining the US on discussions over free trade, prompting speculation in other MERCOSUR quarters that it is not as committed to the MERCOSUR project as it claims to be.

Honestly, how can anyone feel that Uruguay is not that committed when, as Xinhua, Chinese news agency maintains:

Uruguay signed a bilateral trade and investment framework agreement with the United States in January, a step analysts said put the two countries closer to a possible free-trade agreement

To boot, London's Financial times reports that:

Uruguay may downgrade its status in Mercosur, giving up its full membership, if the South American trading bloc stops the country reaching a bilateral trade deal with the United States

This type of doublespeak can only compound the apparently-conspiratorial sentiment by the rest of the MERCOSUR bloc that feels Uruguay is selling out--and to no less than the United States!

Comments like the following don't help either:

“Uruguay must find a way of making a bilateral trade deal with the US,” Uruguayan Economy Minister Danilo Astori was quoted in the newspaper on Friday as saying.

“Our small country is trapped, a prisoner of the collective wishes of the group, and this is causing us serious harm.”

Let me just quickly go back to what Andrew Hurrell says about an aspect of regional integration:

REGIONALISM…can also be seen as panacea for smaller countries when they find themselves weak in the face of strong countries. – CF Latin America (MERCOSUR); AFRICA (ECOWAS; COMESA; SADC; etc..)

i. Hegemony (existence of hegemon within a region may undermine efforts to construct inclusive regional arrangements involving all or most of the states within a region)

FOUR WAYS IN WHICH HEGEMONY MAY ACT AS POWERFUL STIMULUS TO REGIONALISM:

a. FIRST, sub-regional groupings often develop as a response to the existence of an actual or hegemonic power. Formation is a means by which to improve BOP vis-à-vis locally dominant state (CF: ASEAN > Vietnam; GCC > Iran; SADC > South Africa; MERCOSUR > USA

b. SECOND, regionalism can emerge as an attempt to restrict the free exercise of hegemonic power thru creation of REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS. (cf: specific project of regional integration in EU arose precisely as preferred means of dealing with GY (armament + ecnc rehabilitation by tying it into integrated network);

c. THIRDLY, tendency of weaker states to seek regional accommodation with local hegemon either in the hope of receiving special rewards (BANDWAGONING)

d. FOURTHLY, hegemon itself may seek to actively become involved in the creation / construction of REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS. Alternatively declining hegemony may compel hegemon towards the creation of COMMON INSTITUTIONS to pursue its interests, to share burdens; to solve probs; and to generate int’l support & legitimacy for its policies

Now, if Uruguay goes threatening to downgrade its membership in the event that its other members refuse to allow it to have a bilateral deal with the US, you have got to wonder whether this small country is into MERCOSUR for a bandwagoning spree--ready to collect whatever it can whenever it can, yet feeling reluctant to follow the leftist policies of its bigger brother Venezuela, and Brazil.

Furthermore, this type of development, to me, calls into question the major big difference between MERCOSUR and many other regional organisations that appear to be motivated merely by economic reasons. It's about the institutions!

Other than the Secretariat, a Parliamentary Commission, inter alia, what else is there that can lend some support to a a more comprehensive regional bloc--as exemplified by even the African regional economic communities of ECOWAS, which has a Parliament, and a ECOWAS Community Court

An interesting paper by Celina Pena and Ricardo Rozemberg looks at some of the institutional deficiencies around and within MERCOSUR, maintaining:

The lack of an independent technical body is, undoubtedly, one of MERCOSUR’s clearest institutional deficits. The creation of working subgroups or technical committees with national officials was not effective beyond the transition period with respect to the designing of quadripartiteinstruments. Constructing an independent technical body could turn out to be a necessary condition in order to overcome current limitations, but not enough, because its recommendations are not binding and therefore are subject to the member states’ representatives’ political decisions.In any event, a new MERCOSUR technical body might just contribute to the preparation of negotiations with third countries and regions, and to the presentation of technical proposals on issues of the internal agenda where common interests exist

All these differences apart, it's clear, in my view, that if Uruguay is feeling hemmed in, and restricted, one could easily assume that a lack of motivation by some of the smaller members on where MERCOSUR is going is one of the reasons.

Uruguay, it looks, might have to do some serious soul-searching before countries decide eto expel it!