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In March of this year in the city of San Salvador, Republic of El Salvador, the President of
the United States, a very wise man stood with
the President of El Salvador and said, "there is a
threat that is affecting Central America. It affects all of us. We need a new partnership,"
which he calls the Partnership for Citizen Security
in Central America.
Ladies and gentlemen, I endorse, support, applaud, and am prepared to do everything
in my power to follow up on the President's commitment
to move this partnership forward.
I will do so together with all other parts of my government based upon some very simple
principles, and some of them are difficult principles.
For example, number one: We have limited resources to work with. On the 23rd of June, in the
city of Guatemala, the Secretary of State committed $290 million from the United States
Government to support this effort in the course of this year.
Not $2.9 billion, not $29 billion, $290 million.
I have to be honest with you, ladies and gentlemen, to get to this number, I had to offer her
some old money that was still available for spending this year, a little bit of new money,
and some creative thinking in terms of how we
can recycle existing funds.
I do not see, unless you think I am missing something, I do not see the likelihood of
a vast infusion of new funds coming from that element
of the United States Government that is constitutionally entitled to fund and appropriate
the taxpayers' money in the United States in the
foreseeable future.
So, my first principle is, we have to have an approach that accepts the reality that
we have limited resources.
Second principle: if you have got limited resources, how can you expand your resource
base? How can you build on the number of donors
that are prepared to support this effort?
There are some that are already very much, and in some cases, heroically engaged in this
effort.
In no particular order, I would mention the governments of Canada, Colombia, Spain, the
European Union and its Commission, the Inter-American Development Bank.
This is a core group, that has already, along with the government that I represent, committed
its resources and it efforts to address this threat.
Our challenge, principle number two, is how to build on and expand that donor base?
Principle number three, where we have fewer resources, can we, by reorganizing our effort,
distributing the workload, focusing and prioritizing, sequencing in a different way, expand the
impact of the limited resources that we have?
This is complicated stuff, ladies and gentlemen, because a government's usual response and
approach to this sort of problem is let's throw money at it.
And without naming other locations in the world, be they located in Central Asia or
the Middle East, but I will name none, we have a very
different set of realities that we must deal with in this
complicated situation.
And it does requires an approach that is almost unprecedented among governments, international
organizations, and even if you will permit me to suggest an opinion, NGOs.
Fourth principle, our starting point is that these are regional threats.
They are not country specific. These affect the entire Central American region, therefore
the solution must be regional as well.
This becomes complicated as I will explain in a moment, because again, the world for
the last sixty or seventy years has been set up on
the basis of bilateral relationships, for the most part.
If you got a problem, Government A works with Government B to solve the problem.
It is rare, but not unprecedented, but rare, that Government A works with Government B,
C, D, E, F, G, and H collectively and together to
solve the problem at the same time.
Principle number five, the threats emanate from Central America. The leadership in the
process must come from Central America. It cannot
be an externally imposed solution.
That does not work! It especially does not work when you are dealing with a limited resource
base.
Fortunately, we have an institution established by the seven governments of Central America
themselves, that already exists, and that is created and designed to accomplish just
exactly this coordination purpose.
It is called SICA, and it represents all seven of the governments of Central America and
provides, if you will, regional leadership and buy-in to what the larger international
community could do.
Sixth and finally, and I’m fairly emphatic about this point, there are two partners that
must be partners in this effort, for geographic reasons,
for political reasons, for socio-economic reasons,
for law enforcement reasons.
We talk about this as the Central America Initiative.
In many ways we probably should probably talk about it as the Meso-American Initiative
because, ladies and gentlemen, you cannot address this issue involving the seven governments
of Central America without incorporating the
governments of Colombia and Mexico into the solution.
Two countries that are in very different positions in terms of their historical development in
addressing these problems, and by no means do you treat them as exactly the same sorts
of governments in terms of their contributions.
But you have to acknowledge, you cannot solve, if that is the word I wish to use, Central
America’s crises without incorporating Colombia and Mexico into the solution.
And there is finally a lesson that I submit we have all learned over the last 30 or 40
years, but we had better remember it today.
There is no silver bullet solution.
There is no one single program, one single project, one single operation that if we do
it and do it correctly it will solve the problem.
No, ladies and gentlemen, it took us many, many years to get into this mess, and it is
going to take years to get out of it.
We have learned over time, starting, if you will, in the 1970s, that as you address these
law enforcement and drug-related threats you have
to have an approach that addresses all elements of
the problem.
From education, treatment and rehabilitation at on one end, the demand side, all the way
down through interdiction, money-laundering and
financial crimes, precursor chemicals, production capabilities, cultivation on the supply side.
You cannot focus on only one element.
If you do, the criminal organizations have proved to be masters at developing a work
around and actually using your focus and priorities as
the means by which they facilitate and improve their
own networks and their own operations.