New Year, New Alliances

In terms of cost and scope, the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative isn't exactly another NATO. But as a new approach to shared threats in the Americas, CBSI has a greater significance than its diminutive footprint might suggest.

The cooperative security agreement was designed to help 15 of the smallest countries in the hemisphere clamp down on illicit drug trafficking and the gun smuggling, money laundering, addiction, violence and corruption that come with it. The United States and the nations of the Caribbean are expected to officially launch CBSI early next year.

Caribbean leaders first approached the U.S. in 2007 for security assistance as they prepared to host the Cricket World Cup, the world's third-largest sporting event. The initial work of identifying security weaknesses -- and the resources needed to address them -- laid the foundation for the broader security arrangement that has become CBSI. The U.S. Congress has approved $37 million of the $45 million that President Obama initially requested.

The funding for CBSI doesn't hold a candle to U.S. security aid to Colombia, which has averaged roughly $500 million each year since 2000, or the Merida Initiative, which allotted $465 million to Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 2008 to combat organized crime. But CSBI stands in sharp contrast to the chaotic state of security cooperation in other parts of the hemisphere, where ideological differences, political grandstanding, deep-seated anti-Americanism and a seemingly unlimited capacity to revive old bilateral disputes continue to thwart progress.

Peru and Chile, for instance, whose long history of recurring ill will dates back more than a century to the Guerra del Pacifico, are back at each other's throats. Each recalled its ambassador from the other after Peru claimed that Chile had bribed a Peruvian official for state secrets. Peru has since announced plans to purchase Chinese tanks and Brazilian fighter planes, contradicting Peruvian President Alan Garcia's earlier call to reduce military spending in the region to foster a South American union "without distrust and conflicts."

Meanwhile, Colombia and Venezuela can't seem to leave each other alone. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez continues to arm his country in the belief that the U.S. military will launch an invasion from Colombian territory. In turn, Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva recently announced the construction of a new military base and the activation of two new airborne battalions on the Colombia-Venezuela border, to prevent Venezuelan aggression.

The Caribbean, too, has its share of traditional security concerns. Caribbean security expert Ivelaw Griffith, provost of York College at the City University of New York, says there are currently nearly 40 territorial and border disputes in the region. But for the last several years, as Griffith recently told Congress, Caribbean leaders "have placed a higher premium on nontraditional security issues," because they have come to recognize that drug-related threats "present more clear and present dangers."

South American leadership hasn't had the same realization. Instead of focusing on the corrupting and destructive influences of the illicit trafficking of money, arms and drugs, many regional leaders have spent the last several months grousing over an agreement to increase the U.S.'s military presence on Colombian bases.

Colombian and U.S. officials have conceded that they could have managed the unveiling of this new security cooperation better. But that hasn't satisfied politicians who would rather drum up anti-American sentiment than address the mounting evidence that official corruption, lawlessness and indiscriminate gun violence is escalating throughout the hemisphere.

Unlike the Caribbean, Latin America has no multilateral body that could coordinate efforts to combat illicit trafficking or request U.S. support. For instance, Colombia, which has been reaching out to all of its neighbors for years, has cooperation agreements with just three other countries in South America -- Peru, Chile and Paraguay.

Colombia has a "huge need for intelligence sharing with Venezuela and Ecuador," said Adam Isacson, director of the Latin America Security program at the Center for International Policy in Washington. "But there is none."

Caribbean nations were in denial for a long time, too. And concerns over sovereignty, corruption and political differences do remain. But these societies have come to realize that being mere conduits for trafficking hasn't spared them from the trade's ruinous effects on public safety, the rule of law and regional security as a whole.

And they recognize now that the problem can't simply be addressed piecemeal. Jay Cope, a senior research fellow at National Defense University and an expert on security in the Americas, praised this realization in an interview. Bucking an all too common trend, Cope observed that to combat this common threat, "this group of nations has found in the first decade of the 21st century that they can work together."