MILITARY AID OR KILLER DEAL: U.S. WEAPONS TRADE AND MILITARY TRAINING IN THE CARIBBEAN, 1790 - 2001 Guest Speaker: Dr. Humberto Garcia Muñiz

MILITARY BUILD-UP AND WEAKENING ECONOMIES CAUSE INSTABILTY

If you study the Southern Command, you will see that the Southern Command is receiving most of the money of all of the other Commands. Which is a surprise because most of military aid went in reality to Eqypt and Israel -- over 90%. The Caribbean in reality is less than 2% of the budget. But 2% in a small island is a large amount. So the Southern Command is receiving most of it and what surprises me is that U.S. traditional policy towards the hemisphere has been to spend less money in the hemisphere in order to be able to spend more in defending itself in other places. This change in a sense coincides with NAFTA, with the Free Trade Agreement between (U.S.) Canada and Mexico which will later be extended to all of Latin America. But in terms of the Caribbean, the problem is that the Caribbean is marginalized -- the Caribbean doesnąt get private investment because the economies are too small. The market is too small, so unemployment is always there. So if you are selling to the security sector while the economic sector is getting weaker, you are going to have instability.

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