The world watches the US military escalation with concern. In addition to approximately 650 military bases worldwide, there is the invasion of Afghanistan; the false withdrawal from Iraq; the transfer of weapons, ships and the announcement of $60 billion to prepare Saudi Arabia militarily to maintain its hegemony in the region; unconditional support for Israel; the intensification of the conflict in the Korean peninsula; and the exploitation of religious and ethnic feuds in Central Asia to acquire strategic gains that threaten China and Russia. The situation in Latin America is just as worrisome: The arrival of 13,000 marines and 48 war ships in Costa Rica; the building of new military bases to support US troops in Honduras, Panama, and probably Peru; the military occupation in Haiti; and the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean. In the midst of a relative decrease in US global influence, the economic crisis enters a new phase in which the United States attempts to maintain its global hegemony and the neoliberal economic model by strengthening its war machine to ensure control of land and resources on a global scale.

In Colombia, the government’s subordination to US interests reached its highest point with the military agreement signed on October 30, 2009, when the Uribe administration, through an illegitimate move, tried to hand over even more of our territorial sovereignty by allowing the installation of 7 new US military bases. On August 17, 2010 Colombia’s Constitutional Court deemed the agreement invalid, because the proposed concessions go beyond previous agreements and only Congress has the power to grant such concessions. However, the Court ruled that previous agreements are valid and in full effect.

For the Colombia No Bases Coalition the judicial ruling against the agreement does not mean the termination of U.S. economic and military domination of Colombia. Previous military agreements such as Plan Colombia have meant the submission of our entire economic and institutional apparatus to the dictates of Washington, and the instruction of Colombian officials in training schools in the United States has produced an army that has committed an alarming number of outrages and crimes against the population. The war on drugs and terrorism has been a simple pretext to gain support for Plan Colombia, a plan whose goal of reducing drug production by only 50% actually generates high profits for traffickers.

Juan Manuel Santos has not made any fundamental changes in the military policy developed by Uribe. Santos is following the policy that has Colombia fulfilling in Latin America the role that Israel fulfills in the Middle East, that of an unconditional ally of U.S. interests. Despite the judicial ruling against the agreement, it's clear that the Santos government will maintain the policy of U.S. military intervention, although the forms this will take may vary according to some new agreement or through legal manipulations of previous agreements.

The United States military deployment currently underway in Latin America and the threats of new invasions and confrontations in the Middle East are warning signals for those of us who defend the right to national self-determination. The Colombia No Bases Coalition believes that today the efforts taken to realize a sovereign and democratic country remain completely valid, in support of which cause we will continue to invite all sectors of society --social, political, labor, peasant, student, academic-- and all of those who oppose military intervention in the hemisphere, foreign military bases and the criminalization of social protest to come together. We call for the consolidation of an alliance with all the organizations that promote the Hemispheric Campaign for Latin America as a region of peace.

Contact:
www.colombianobases.org
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http://twitter.com/colombianobases
colombianobases@gmail.com