In the hours following the collapse of the World Trade Center twin
towers on September 11, 2001, the United States applied a tourniquet to
the transportation arteries that feed its national economy. The first
campaign in the war to protect the U.S. homeland was to impose an
embargo — on its own economy. Freezing its transport networks first and
asking questions later was clearly appropriate. Now comes the hard part.
While domestic policing must be emphasized, considerable threat also
exists in cross-border traffic. Chemical and biological weapons can be
more easily loaded on a boat, in a truck, or within a maritime container
than on a missile. Front-line agencies like the U.S. Customs Service,
Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Department of
Agriculture, and Border Patrol are being called upon to respond in ways
for which they have neither the staff nor the training.
Last year, 489 million people, 127 million cars, 11.6 million maritime
containers, 11.5 millions trucks, 2.2 million railroad cars, 829,000
planes, and 211,000 boats passed through U.S. border inspection systems
by air, land and sea. These agencies, as presently financed and
administered, cannot possibly eliminate every terrorist threat when
faced with such numbers for inspection. Understandably traumatized,
Washington is now swinging the pendulum from openness to control.
"Homeland defense" has become the new national security priority. While
the movement of peoples and goods between the contiguous land borders of
the United States and Canada and the United States and Mexico represent
the major cross-border movement, the "Third Border" of the United
States, namely the Caribbean, is also critical, raising important
economic and security concerns that Washington cannot afford to
overlook.
Economic Impact
The Caribbean is the tenth largest trading partner of the United States,
a major regional source of migration and visitors to the United States,
and an important destination for both North American tourists and
business investments. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, turning
off the transportation spigot that carries travelers and cargo to and
from the United States has jeopardized the future of already fragile
Caribbean economies and added to potential scenarios for regional
instability. Major sectors of Caribbean economies — air transport,
tourism, agricultural commodity exports, manufacturing, mining, and
capital markets — depend on ready access to the U.S. economy.
Tourism is the single largest earner of foreign exchange in 16 of 28
countries in the Wider Caribbean region. Even before September 11,
tourism, which directly or indirectly employs one in four Caribbean
citizens and generates income for the region in excess of US$2billion
per year, had been in decline as a result of the downturn in the global
economy. Weeks after the tragic loss of over 5,000 innocent civilians —
including at least 160 nationals from 15 Caribbean countries — the
short-term outlook for Caribbean tourism is grim. International leisure
passengers are cancelling flights in droves, air carriers have reduced
their services, cruise ships have shifted their destinations, and hotel
staffs have been retrenched. The negative multiplier effect on
businesses or investments that depend indirectly on the hospitality
industry has taken hold.
Major tourism-dependent Caribbean countries have responded quickly to
the crisis. Jamaica, which earns an estimated gross US$1.2 billion per
year and directly employs more than 30,000 people in the industry, plans
to spend an additional US$4.7 million on advertising during October and
November 2001, and the government is considering a moratorium on debt
owed by small hotels to state-owned financial institutions on a
case-by-case basis. In Barbados — where tourism contributes
approximately US$1 billion to the economy, it is anticipated that there
will be a US$30.3 million decline in receipts; a 30-35 percent drop in
the cruise business; $857,000 less in the head tax; and a drop of
US$9.21 million in tourist spending, — the government has committed
additional financial resources of US$10-12 million to the tourism
industry.
The cost of service disruptions, cancellations, air and cruise-ship
traffic decline, increased security, higher insurance rates, and
reluctance by leisure passengers to pay higher airfares are yet to be
calculated. The overall outlook for the 2001-2002 winter season is bleak
because of the unknown repercussions of the war on terrorism, the
possibility of a global recession, and a dramatic loss of tourism
revenue as U.S. and European travelers continue to postpone or cancel
their overseas vacations.
As many of the world’s countries position themselves to combat
"terrorism with a global reach" the Caribbean region will experience
economic distress in other areas as well. A decline in foreign direct
investment, regional inability to raise international finance, increased
costs for the shipment of agricultural and manufactured exports,
additional costs for insurance and reinsurance, a decline in remittances
to the region (now valued at approximately US$3 billion) because of job
losses among Caribbean nationals in the United States and Canada, and
higher energy costs, are all expected as short- and medium-term impacts
of the recent tragedy.
Offshore financial jurisdictions, already under attack by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), will come
under more intense international scrutiny regarding how they are
regulated to ensure that such sectors will not be used to fund
terrorists or terrorism. Offshore financial centers will be under
pressure to do more to meet international standards of regulation and
best practice, since a major part of the money laundering connected with
global terrorism is routed through banks in North America and Europe.
In fact, most Caribbean offshore centers are not ignoring the renewed
threats to their financial services sector and are reviewing their
accounts to ensure that they were not used directly or indirectly by
terrorist groups or individual terrorists to launder money.
Caribbean Regional Security
Terrorist acts can take place anywhere. The Caribbean is no exception.
Already the linkages between drug trafficking and terrorism are clear in
countries like Colombia and Peru, and such connections have similar
potential in the Caribbean. The security of major industrial complexes
in some Caribbean countries is vital. Petroleum refineries and major
industrial estates in Trinidad, which host more than 100 companies that
produce the majority of the world’s methanol, ammonium sulphate, and 40
percent of U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), are vulnerable
targets. Unfortunately, as experience has shown in Africa, the Middle
East, and Latin America, terrorists are likely to strike at U.S. and
European interests in Caribbean countries.
Security issues become even more critical when one considers the
possible use of Caribbean countries by terrorists as bases from which to
attack the United States. An airliner hijacked after departure from an
airport in the northern Caribbean or the Bahamas can be flying over
South Florida in less than an hour. Terrorists can sabotage or seize
control of a cruise ship after the vessel leaves a Caribbean port.
Moreover, terrorists with false passports and visas issued in the
Caribbean may be able to move easily through passport controls in Canada
or the United States. (To help counter this possibility, some countries
have suspended "economic citizenship" programs to ensure that known
terrorists have not been inadvertently granted such citizenship.) Again,
Caribbean countries are as vulnerable as anywhere else to the
clandestine manufacture and deployment of biological weapons within
national borders.
Over the years, there have been efforts to strengthen the region’s
security systems, particularly in countries of the English-speaking
Caribbean. The stimulus has often been directed at pursuing drug
traffickers and their money. However, despite the "third border"
concept, the United States has paid little policy attention to the
Caribbean countries as an integral part of its perimeter defence
structure. Such neglect on the part of the United States, at this time,
would be irresponsible. Caribbean countries should be encouraged to join
an international consensus and genuine partnership to guarantee as far
as possible the security of the United States and bordering countries.
(In this context, the United States will have to consider even closer
collaboration with Cuba in global security considerations, despite
current policy that brands Cuba as a terrorist state.) This
collaboration, which is in the Caribbean’s best interest, will force a
review of the current policy which allows the unimpeded flow of illegal
small arms to Caribbean countries, exacerbating serious crime problems,
as well as the "repatriation" of sophisticated criminals who might have
only the most tenuous claim to birthright or citizenship in a Caribbean
country. Ironically, U.S. Customs officials have in the past argued that
more vigilance in attempting to detect guns leaving their shores would
slow trade. The tragedy of September 11 has illustrated that it may be
worthwhile to spend time and effort intercepting the flow of small arms.
Caribbean governments are taking steps to tighten security at airports
and other vulnerable locales, but terrorism is a global problem, and the
region will have to decide on the right kind of approach to the issue.
Many Caribbean citizens may feel that the United States is once more
trying to assert its own agenda, but the recent attacks (and those that
could follow) require a sea change in Caribbean thinking about regional
security. National borders are porous to terrorism — no one need claim
responsibility for attacks — and globalization and technology have
opened up new possibilities for terrorists.
The Necessity for U.S.-Caribbean Cooperation
As cross-border trade has grown, security and those responsible for
providing it have been shoved aside. For example, despite trade more
than tripling between the United States and Canada since the inception
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the number of
customs and immigration inspectors along the border remain at pre-NAFTA
levels. The U.S. Coast Guard, which is essential to port security, is at
its lowest personnel level since 1964. The United States is now
experiencing the dark side of a transport system in which efficiency has
trumped public security. As the country mobilizes for a long struggle
against terrorism, it must face some basic realities. There will
continue to be anti-American terrorists with global reach who have the
capability to carry out catastrophic attacks. The United States must
find a way to reduce the potential use of its global transport lifelines
as conduits for terrorism. There needs to be far greater international
cooperation in policing transnational flows of people and goods. At
present, trying to distinguish the illicit from the licit at U.S.
borders is like trying to catch North Atlantic sardines in the Caribbean
Sea. Policing must move upstream. Why not place some of the U.S.
immigration and customs officials overseas with their counterparts (as
already done in some Canadian ports), so they can inspect and clear
travelers and goods destined for the United States? Such an approach
would take better advantage of law-enforcement information at the point
of departure, gather transport-related intelligence into the security
system sooner, and reduce the congestion caused by inspections at U.S.
borders.
The private sector and traveling public both in the United States and
the Caribbean also have roles to play. The overwhelming majority of
international carriers, cargo shippers, and travelers in the region are
legitimate, and they must be willing, for their safety, to embrace
tightened security measures and provide proof of their identities and
purposes as early as possible. Such cooperation would allow border
agencies to determine with more confidence what risks travelers,
carriers, and cargo might pose. Verifying the identity and purpose of
users or operators at the point of origin could be accomplished through
electronic fingerprint technology and cargo and vehicle scanning
equipment. Tracking devices, such as electronic tagging and universal
bar codes, could be adopted to insure tighter control over commerce.
This in-transit accountability would allow authorities to act on
intelligence of a potential breach in security prior to arrival at U.S.
borders as well as afterward. The work of border authorities must be
effectively coordinated and supported by analysts and data management
systems that enable more effective targeting.
The vibrancy of a globalized economy depends on the free movement of
people, goods, and services. Quarantining the transportation system in
the face of terrorism cannot be the right cure for this disease.
Strengthening traditional approaches to border management and control
will not work in an era of globalization. Similarly, it is vital for the
United States and the Caribbean to find an alternative to "hardened"
borders in order to achieve homeland security. If the U.S. government
finally adopts an approach that tries to stop and examine all people,
goods, and conveyances at its borders, as part of its now dramatically
heightened homeland security mandate, the impact on Caribbean as well as
global travel and commerce will be devastating.
The most viable alternative is collaborative "point of origin" controls
that require more credible national border management approaches within
departure countries — approaches that also serve those countries’
national interests in dealing effectively with issues such as better
facilitation of legitimate trade and travel, while thwarting the
activities of arms smugglers, drug traffickers, and terrorists. A more
collaborative spirit is required to combat the new challenges of
terrorism with a global reach. More energy must be directed toward
gaining greater control over continental maritime and aviation
commercial space. If that space cannot be made secure, the public
pressure in the United States to harden the border along the Caribbean
Sea and the Gulf of Mexico is likely to prove irresistible.
By Stephen E. Flynn, and Anthony Bryan
Source: http://www.cfr.org/border-and-port-security/terrorism-porous-borders-homeland-security-case-us-caribbean-cooperation/p4844
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