US Threat to Cut Military Aid to Bolivia is a Good Thing Twice

According to today's New York Times, the Bush administration's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year includes a drastic 96% cut in US military aid to Bolivia. The Times reports this as a threat to Bolivia's new government and a great deal of the article is spent speculating about how the cut might provoke Bolivia's military leaders to do dangerous things: "But the cut holds the potential to anger Bolivia's powerful military establishment, which has been responsible for a long history of coups."

In fact, the threat should really be seen as a double victory for Bolivia.

Just Saying No to US Immunity for Human Rights Violations

First, the reason for the threatened US cut is because Bolivia has stood firm against the demand from the Bush administration that it grant US officials and soldiers immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Bolivia is one of 139 nations that signed the Treaty of Rome, which set up the Court in 1998. A respected Bolivian judge, Renee Blattmann, also sits as a member of it. The treaty's goal, according to its Preamble, "is to establish an independent permanent International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole."

That is a possibility not to the liking of the Bush administration, which fears that members of the US military and the administration itself could be prosecuted over acts such as torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration has been pressing its opposition to the ICC and in 2002, the GOP-led Congress approved the American Service Members Protection Act, which prohibits the United States from providing military aid to any nation that does not agree to grant the US immunity. It is that law that the administration is citing for the reason for the new cut aimed at Bolivia.

The position of the new Bolivian government could not be more clear. A year ago, now-President Evo Morales labeled US sanctions as "blackmail" and threatened nationwide protests over the issue. Sacha Lorenti, the new ambassador designate to the US and then president of Bolivia's National Human Rights Assembly, also said last year, "Bolivia would be the only country in the world to agree to such a pact that also has a judge on the court. We believe in the fundamental principles of international law."

Here is an article on the topic I published last year with Bolivian journalist Luis Bredow, which included my interview with Lorenti.

Just Saying Goodbye to the School of the Americas

Second, according to the Times report on the Bush cut, nearly half of the money Bolivia would lose, $792,000, would be to finance sending Bolivian military officers to the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia (somewhere between 50 to 100 officers per year).

This is very good news for Bolivia. The School, nicknamed "The School for Assassins" by its opponents in the US religious community, is a notorious training ground for the worst in military behavior. According to the group School of the Americas Watch, the SOA's graduates include the perpetrators of both the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador and the assassination of that country's Archbishop, Oscar Romero (among many other examples).

The SOA's Bolivian graduates also include former dictator Hugo Banzer and Army Captain, Robinson Iriarte de La Fuente. It was Iriarte de la Fuente who, in April 2000 during the Cochabamba water revolt, was captured on film shooting live rounds into an unarmed crowd. A seventeen-year-old boy, Victor Hugo Daza, was shot and killed with a bullet through the face. Video of the shooting, posted by PBS, can be seen here.

The other funding that would be lost to Bolivia, according to the Times, would be for "civil defense supplies and other nonlethal equipment" – in other words tear gas and other anti-riot gear that the US has long contributed to Bolivian governments. Something most Bolivians would also not consider much of a loss.

A Victory Twice Over

What this all comes down to is not that soldiers denied a trip to Georgia will suddenly start plotting an anti-Morales coup. In reality, the threatened cut from Washington is a double victory. Bolivia stands form in its commitment to global human rights (alongside such radical states as the UK, Italy and Iceland) and in exchange it no longer sends it soldiers to learn the latest techniques in interrogation, from the administration that has made interrogation and torture a double package of its own.

The good news will be if the US remains true to its threat and cuts off that aid.