We Need to Rethink, Not Rearm NAFTA

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/04-7

U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet in Washington today amid calls in the United States for tougher security on the northern border. Suggestions in the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the 49th parallel is an unruly ‘no man's land' threatening the American people, and that Canadians should need visas to enter the United States prompted the meeting.

Experts expect the two leaders to announce today a "new" border partnership to ease the flow of goods and people across the border by harmonizing security, immigration and refugee, surveillance and possibly defense policy across the continent. There's nothing new about this plan. It's the regurgitation of the defunct Bush-led Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)without the Mexican "amigo," previously played by Mexican President Vicente Fox. As the Canadian business lobby suggested to Obama, it only "takes two to tango."

Ten years ago, business lobbies of the three countries claimed the only way to keep goods, services, and investment flowing across borders in the post-9/11 security climate was through "deep integration," or the arming of NAFTA. Corporate North America entered into a pact with governments to endorse transnational military exercises and surveillance systems, no-fly lists, and other ineffective but intrusive security measures. In return , promises were made for open borders, a common and laxer regulatory environment, and a dominant role for big business in the creation of a North American economic policy that went beyond the already exhausted NAFTA.

The plan took many forms, from the 2001 and 2002 Smart Border Declarations with Canada and Mexico, a 2005 trilateral report from the Council on Foreign Relations on "Building a North American Community," and the now reviled SPP, which emerged in Waco, Texas that same year. By 2006, a hand-picked group of 30 CEOs was driving integration as the North American Competitiveness Council -- the only non-governmental advisory group for the process.

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