[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 29, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1849-S1851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, before I left the Foreign Relations 
Committee very recently and going to the Finance Committee, I was 
chairman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. I will address 
the Senate this morning with regard to those responsibilities and to 
our hemisphere. I will suggest that we must reinvigorate our 
partnerships in this hemisphere as we begin a new century. If we work 
to nurture the political and the economic relationships among the 
nations of the Western Hemisphere, I am convinced that the next century 
will be the century of the Americas--a time of unparalleled peace and 
prosperity.
  The reason for my remarks, however, is that there are threats, 
serious threats, to the stability of the democracies in our hemisphere. 
We need to confront them together--neighbor helping neighbor.
  There has been a great deal of discussion recently on deciding what 
event adequately defines the last century. Some would say victory over 
Hitler in World War II, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first man 
to walk on the Moon, or the invention of computers. You would make a 
good case for each one of these.
  But I believe the history of the 20th century cannot be defined by 
one of these singularly remarkable achievements. The greatest 
development was not an event at all but a slow and steady march over 
time. For me, it was the spread of democracy around the world, a 
movement in which the United States played a leading role.
  Consider the following: According to the Freedom House, of the 192 
sovereign states in existence today, 119 are considered true 
democracies. In 1950, a date I referred to in the earlier debate, only 
22 countries were democracies--22; today there are 119. This means that 
nearly 100 nations have made this incredible transition over this last 
half century. I witnessed much of this great transformation as Director 
of the U.S. Peace Corps under President Bush. Nowhere did I see more 
dramatic change than in our own backyard.
  In 1981, 18 of the 33 nations in the hemisphere were under 
authoritarian rule. By the beginning of the 1990s, all but one--Cuba--
had freely elected heads of state. It was the springtime of democracy.
  In the new century ahead, we must nurture and protect this freedom 
around the world but with great attention on our own hemisphere. Our 
welfare is inextricably tied to that of our neighbors in the region. We 
share common geography, history, and culture. Together we possess 
unbound potential for regional economic prosperity.
  To harness this potential, we must continue to extend political and 
economic freedom to the entire hemisphere. The stakes are very high. If 
we are successful, I am confident the 21st century will be remembered, 
as I said, as the century of the Americas. But if we neglect our 
responsibilities, we could realistically witness a balkanization of 
Latin America and a stagnation in our own economy.
  The task is daunting, and becoming more so by the day. Freedom in the 
hemisphere remains fragile and uncertain.
  Under the Clinton administration, we have failed to respond to the 
new challenges facing the region--allowing emerging threats to fester 
in places such as Colombia, Haiti, and Panama. As a result, some of the 
hard-fought victories for freedom in Latin America are weakened and in 
jeopardy.

[[Page S1850]]

  Let me take a minute or two to focus on three core components of 
health in the Western Hemisphere. I mentioned a moment ago that there 
are serious threats to these new democracies. I also mentioned there is 
enormous potential in the hemisphere.
  If you took the whole Western Hemisphere combined, it is the largest 
consumer base in the world. There is enormous potential here. Most 
people do not realize that trade in this hemisphere today is already 
larger than all of our trade in Europe, almost double our trade with 
the European Union. Trade in this hemisphere is significantly larger 
than our trade with the Pacific rim. If you were to ask most Americans, 
they would undoubtedly say our greatest trading partner would be 
Europe. It is third. The Western Hemisphere is first; the Pacific rim 
is second; and a long way back is the European Union.
  That tells me where we have to be highly focused in the context of 
the health of the hemisphere. As I said, in the early 1990s, we could 
look across this area and see all these new democracies. But as we look 
today, after about 9 years of this wonderful achievement, there are 
some pretty serious issues on which we need to be focused, and we are 
not.
  You see, for democracy to be successful, it has to be more than just 
an election of a head of state. For democracy to be successful, it has 
to have a sound judiciary; in other words, a way for disputes to be 
resolved peacefully and civilly.
  This is incredibly important to trade and to relations between the 
countries. I will give you an example. Who is going to make an 
investment in a country for which there is no appropriate judiciary to 
resolve differences? Not many because you have put it at too high a 
risk. Investment does not go to high risk; it runs from it. Investment 
goes to security; it seeks it. In too many of our new democracies, we 
have not focused on helping build an appropriate judiciary.

  Law enforcement: In many of these new countries, law enforcement had 
previously been the responsibility of the military. In Nicaragua, 
Honduras, many of these countries, in Guatemala, it was the military 
that established order. As we all know, that can be without due 
process. It can be orderly, but you better not cross it. You better not 
have a disagreement. In other words, you have a condition in which 
citizens or guests are not safe or could be threatened. Whenever that 
happens, you have a deterioration of economic mobility and stability. 
Investments move away from those kinds of situations, not to them.
  Substantial progress has been made in each of the countries I 
mentioned to move to a civil form of law enforcement, but this is a 
daunting task. Look at Haiti today; with the investment that has been 
made, which is approaching $3 billion, and an attempt by the United 
Nations to train a civil law enforcement--not a military, a civil law 
enforcement--it just does not exist. Do we really believe there is a 
judicial process that would allow an investor to come in and put a 
high-stake investment in the country and if there were a dispute of 
some form between the government and that country or between two 
parties or a native Haitian and a foreign investor that there would be 
a competent, capable way for that dispute to be resolved? No. 
Therefore, the investments don't flow. When the investments don't flow, 
you have a deteriorating economy. When you have a deteriorating 
economy, then you begin to destabilize everything you have talked about 
in terms of democracies. They begin to wobble; they can disappear.
  Today we have a President of one of the more significant countries of 
Latin America, Peru, who is flouting the constitution. The constitution 
says a President, as in the United States, may be elected President for 
two terms. That is not enough for Fujimori; he wants three. Push the 
constitution to the side; push freedom of the press to the side; ignore 
the fundamentals of fair elections. Does that remind you of democracy? 
Does that suggest that the institutions of democracy--constitutional 
law, civil law enforcement, a fair and sound judiciary--are in order? 
You would be hard-pressed to answer that question yes.
  Venezuela has a new popular President who has essentially moved 
everything to the side and who shaped the government in his own view. 
The question is still out there, but those are not very encouraging 
signs. They are worrisome. Where is that all going to lead? Does that 
make people who believe in constitutional law, civil authority, 
comforted? Answer: No, it does not. I want to come back to this point, 
but we must remember that about 13 percent of our oil energy today 
comes from Venezuela.
  Colombia: Colombia is in the middle of a raging war. CNN has not 
found it. There are more refugees in Colombia than there were in 
Kosovo. No one is speculating on the number of dead. It is 35,000 
people. And an insurgency driven by narcotics--not ideology, 
narcotics--controls 30 to 40 percent of the country and is on the 
outskirts of Bogota. We and this administration have been talking about 
this old traditional republic that has been a great ally, supplying 
over 5 percent of our energy, and we have yet to get the assistance 
through this Congress. We have sent Ambassador Pickering, we have sent 
General McCaffrey, legislators, myself and others. We know we have to 
help protect that democracy that sits in the middle of Venezuela and 
Ecuador and Peru and Panama, the entire Andean region.

  This is a reflection of our inability--and it is not just this 
administration, as a people--to understand how important our own 
backyard is. We tend to get focused off someplace else. I am not saying 
those are not significant priorities, but for Heaven's sake, if it is 
at your back door, you better be paying attention. Bogota is a 3-hour 
flight from Miami.
  Talking about Mexico and the enormous problems they have had, I 
admire their leadership. They are struggling. But as President Zedillo 
said to me: There is no threat to the security of the Republic of 
Mexico that matches the corruption and the intrusion of narcotics. He 
is surrounded by it.
  So we have Colombia, Mexico, then Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, then 
Georgia and New York and Chicago, right at the back door. You have to 
open the door.
  In Paraguay--knock on wood--constitutional law was protected because 
it was an example of people in the hemisphere paying attention. The 
Vice President of the country was assassinated, and it looked as if 
constitutional law was gone. I have deep memories of this. The people 
of Paraguay overthrew a dictator, Stroessner. I was at the first 
inauguration of a freely elected President. If you had seen the faces 
of these people who had accomplished freedom, everybody ought to go 
through that. Everybody should have that opportunity. If you told me at 
the time that within a handful of years it would come to the point 
where their Vice President was assassinated, and it looked as if it was 
all going to collapse, I wouldn't have believed you, but it almost 
happened.
  The institutions that make a democracy really be a democracy are not 
in place, and we have lost a lot of time--too much time. The nefarious, 
evil nature of narcotics has intruded the entire hemisphere--all of 
it--and it is marching. Its ultimate goal leaves nothing but ruins 
behind it. It corrupts the institutions of democratic principle, and it 
is doing it in country after country--in our own backyard.
  We have been celebrating--and this is my third point--enormous trade 
opportunities. In the nineties, we have experienced it all across the 
country, across the hemisphere; it is staggering. It helps build a new 
middle class; it brings economic prosperity to people who have never 
enjoyed it. As an example, I can remember years ago, in Guatemala, 
about all that was being raised was corn and beans for self-sustenance. 
Now, they are truck gardening in fruits, with huge markets for them. 
Who do you see in the fields? You see 18- and 20-year-old young 
Guatemalans with a great job, and you know where that leads because we 
are from America. We know what happens. They start becoming 
independent. They stop relying on government. They start thinking for 
themselves. That needs to be nurtured.
  The trade opportunities are boundless, but we have been knotted up; 
we have been unable to expand these trade agreements. What is 
happening? Did you read the newspapers yesterday?

[[Page S1851]]

 The European Union signed the treaty with Mexico, and Mexico is 
entering into treaties with Mercosur, the southern cone of South 
America, and we are tied up in a knot here. So we are inviting this 
huge economic base to become the customer of other regions of the world 
because we can't seem to get it together.
  Now, I assume my time is nearing the end.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 7\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. COVERDELL. My point is that a core component of new democracy in 
the world occurred right in our hemisphere. There was a marvelous 
achievement--to survive the institutions that make democracy work have 
to be put in place, and we have not done a good job on this. It has 
been sporadic, it is destabilizing, and we can see it. We have to only 
pick up a newspaper--Peru, Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia, and the list 
goes on.
  No. 2, we have an enormous and powerful adversary in the narcotic 
cartels. They don't care about a single child anywhere, they don't care 
about any human life, and they do not care about any country. They are 
as evil a scourge as the world has ever seen. And they are fueling a 
criminal syndicate in the United States that is more powerful than 
anything with which we have ever dealt. Undoubtedly, somebody listening 
to this saw Godfather I and Godfather II--amateurs, rank amateurs 
compared to what we are dealing with. The economic opportunity is 
limitless, boundless, sitting right in our backyard, as I have said. 
Simply open a door. And we have let it get all frayed; we have not 
stayed attentive.
  So, as I say, we can get focused in our own home if we can create, I 
call it a doctrine of the Americas, where all of us as neighbors demand 
certain standards, that they be upheld, and that constitutional law is 
a part of this hemisphere, that civil law enforcement is what we have 
grown to expect, and a fair judiciary must be in place. The 
Constitution cannot be just thrown across the desk and into a trash 
can. We all should be together demanding that kind of activity. If we 
will pay attention to this evil force and respond to it--not simply 
cover our eyes, but respond to it--we can keep it from doing enormous 
damage not only in the U.S. but across the hemisphere.
  They are ruining governments. It will leave democracy in shambles. 
Mark my word. It must be confronted vigorously. It is a huge threat to 
our security. If we will pay attention to the trade opportunities and 
be vigorous about it, if we will do these three things, they will call 
this century the century of the Americas, and all of us will be 
rewarded tenfold in every country, and we will be an enormous force for 
world peace. Conversely, ignore all of these things and it will breed a 
problem and a trouble that will haunt us throughout the century.
  I am for a century of the Americas. I get excited about it. I think 
we have to, as a nation, make a step forward; we have to be bold and we 
have to pay attention.
  Mr. President, I yield back whatever time remains. I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senator is recognized to speak for up 
to 60 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair. I don't intend to take that amount of 
time.

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