A NATO Force in Central America?

In late June, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom brought up the matter of international military support in the fight against crime. His remarks came just before the presidential debate in which several candidates talked about the possibility of increasing the level of US troops in the region to fight drug trafficking. In an interview with the Guardian,

"This is a war without quarter," Guatemala's president, Álvaro Colom, told the Guardian. "There is a lot of infiltration, a lot of corruption. We need a Nato-type force to fight back."

And later in the interviewed

He suggested the region form "a type of Nato" to fight organised crime.

I meant to write up his call for a NATO-type force at the time, but I didn't exactly know for what he was calling. It just looked like Colom was simply calling for a military force comprised of soldiers from neighboring countries.that could confront common external enemies. They would also have the authority to cross each other's borders. His use of NATO was just confusing things.

Anyway, he brought it up again this week in an interview with Adam Thompson of the Financial Times.

Mr Colom, who is now in his final year in office, told the FT that while the region’s governments have learned what sovereignty means, the drug traffickers have not: while they travel through Central America almost at will, the region’s national armies and police forces cannot cross international borders without the permission of each country’s congress.

“What good is it if the forces of one country are pursuing drug traffickers who cross a river but then have to stop to avoid an international incident?” he said. “Why not have a type of Central American Nato?”

As it is, he says, too many security operations are hampered by having to communicate between authorities to solicit and then obtain the appropriate permission. “There are procedures that interrupt operations,” said Mr Colom. “Sometimes it is just a question of minutes but that can make all the difference.”

It sounds like President Colom is stating that the Guatemalan army has been handicapped by an inability to pursue drug traffickers and organized crime across its international borders (Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras).As the army closes in on them, they dart across an international border to safety. It sounds plausible, but I can't say that I've come across a story where this has happened. The closest is the near miss on former President Alfonso Portillo who was arrested just before boarding a boat to Belize. If this has been a problem, the armies and border police could probably work something out short of forming a new Central American Treaty Organization (CATO).

If hot pursuit is a problem, they might be able work something out where there's a 24-hour hotline in place to authorize cross border operations. Another possibility might be joint operations or mixed-units that operate within so many miles of the frontier. These mixed units or operations would probably limit each population's reluctance to have another country's army operating within its border.

The region's armies need to increase their intelligence sharing capabilities, modernize their weapons (ships, planes, etc.), and increase their number of soldiers, among other things. If each country's army presently cannot handle drug trafficking and organized crime within its borders, combining these poorly prepared and equipped forces isn't going to do much good.

And this says nothing about the needed investments in social programs, the police, the courts, and state, local and federal government, etc.