North American Union Threatens U.S. Sovereignty

The problem with the Bush administration is that not enough of its officials have read the U.S. Constitution. Take, for example, Section 2 of Article 2. When dealing with foreign nations, it says that the President “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur….”

So, why is President Bush and his administration seeking to establish a North American Union that would, in effect, abolish the borders between Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America?

Moreover, it would involve our government in so many common regulatory mandates with these two nations as to render the sovereignty of the United States a memory of what national self-governance is supposed to be.

The name of this effort is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and, guess what, it has not been submitted to the Senate for its oversight or concurrence because, by some magic of governmental definition, it is not a treaty. Instead, its administration is buried in the bowels of the Commerce Department.

It does have, however, the blessing of the political and corporate elites of all three nations. A visit to the SPP website says it “was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.”

It is an attack on American sovereignty. In the smoothest and most soothing writing you will find anywhere, the website spells out the wonders of SPP. They include the North American Competitiveness Council, the North American Energy Security Initiative, the North American Emergency Management plan, and plans for “smart, secure borders.” And right now there are “working groups” whose purpose is to “improve productivity, reduce the costs of trade, and enhance the quality of life.”

And if you like snake oil, permit SPP to sell it to you by the barrel, but the boxcar, and by the tanker.

The SPP didn’t start out as an idea the presidents of the three nations started kicking around on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, but it became the official policy of the United States at a special summit convened by President Bush and joined by then Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Like so many really bad foreign policy concepts, SPP owes its origins to the Council on Foreign Relations; in this case, CFR’s Task Force on North America. Its report, “Building a North American Community” envisions the elimination of U.S. borders in just five years. Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme is a major threat to American security and prosperity.

The Marxist majordomo of this task force is Professor Robert Pastor who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada but at the borders of North America as a whole.” Oh, yeah????

This surely explains why Mexico is doing such a great job of stopping the drug smugglers or the one million Mexicans who each year consider the U.S. border a mere fiction in their pursuit of jobs President Bush keeps telling us Americans won’t take. This is pure bunk and dangerous bunk at that.

I have many Canadian friends, but it seems to me Canada took too long to discover it had some fanatical Muslims in its midst who were plotting terrible things. Frankly, I want us to cooperate against a common enemy, but I do not want to place the responsibility for America’s security in anyone’s hands, but our own.

A North American Union promises not only security, says SPP, but prosperity too. Without SPP, however, the three nations already do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.

Surely the U.S. needs Mexico’s help to improve our economy? As the economist, Robert J. Samuelson, noted in a June column, “The subtext for the United States immigration debate is Mexico. Why doesn’t its economy grow faster, creating more jobs and higher living standards?” The answer to that has something to do with the endemic corruption that infests all levels of Mexico’s governmental and business sectors. Something is very wrong when Mexico’s economy must literally depend on the billions its illegal aliens send home from the U.S.

In 2002, the then-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castanega explained to the local press that destroying the border involved “the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant. Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants.”

Bush43 is carrying out Bush41’s daft and dangerous “new world order” and his indifference to America’s illegal immigration crisis is symptomatic of the SPP objectives.

On June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba, and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. The objective is the promotion of “regional competitiveness in the global community.”

As if the floundering economies of the member nations of the European Union were not warning enough, it is proposed that the United States enter into a similar union.

A lot of corporations with global interests like this idea. Among those sponsoring the North American Union are FedEx Corporation, Mittal Steel USA, General Motors Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Campbell’s Soup Company, Gillette Inc., Merck & Company, and Wal-Mart Stores.

Since the United States is already a signatory to NAFTA and CAFTA, why is SPP necessary? Just how many treaties, agreements and protocols are necessary to promote trade and economic growth?

Just how many nets and norms, traps and snares, will ultimately undermine U.S. prosperity, drive down the wages of America’s middle class, and improve the ability of the Mexican drug cartels to deliver their goods?

Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme, hatched in some darkened cavern of the Council on Foreign Affairs, is a major threat to American security and prosperity.

It was been introduced by fiat, by executive action, by a “summit” of the three nation’s leaders, and the time is long overdue for the Senate to demand to exercise its Constitutional responsibility and right to determine if it wishes to give its consent to yet another “entangling alliance.”

FYI

The original protectionist;

[Gerorge] Washington was brought up and had lived all his life under a system which came as near as possible to the ideal of the modern free-trader. The people of Virginia were devoted almost entirely to a single interest, tobacco-growing, that being the occupation in which they could most profitably engage. No legislative artifices had been employed to enable them to diversify their industries or to establish manufactures. They bought in the cheapest market every luxury and most of the necessities of life. British merchants supplied all their wants, carried their tobacco, and advanced them money. Cheap labor, a single staple with wide fluctuations of value, a credit system, entire dependence on foreigners, and absolute free trade according to the Manchester theories, should have produced an earthly paradise. As a matter of fact, the Virginia planters had little ready money and were deeply in debt. Bankruptcy, as has been already said, seems to have come to them about once in a generation. The land, rapidly exhausted by tobacco, was prodigally wasted, and the general prosperity declined. Washington, with his strong sense and perfect business methods, personally escaped most of these evils, but he saw the mischief of the system all the more clearly. It was bad enough in his time, but he did not live to see Virginia with her wasted and exhausted lands stand still, while her sister States to the north passed her with giant strides in the race for wealth and population. He did not live to see her become, as a result of her colonial system, a mere breeder of slaves for the plantations of the Gulf States. But he saw enough, and the lesson taught him by the results of industrial dependence was well learned.

When the war came and he was carrying the terrible burden of the Revolution, he learned the same lesson in a new and more bitter way. Nothing went so near to wreck the American cause as lack of all the supplies by which war was carried on, for the United States produced little or nothing of what was then needed. The resources of the northern colonies were soon exhausted, and the South had none. Powder, cannon, muskets, clothing, medical stores, all were lacking, and the fate of the nation hung trembling in the balance on account of the dependence in which the colonies had been kept by the skillful policy of England. These were teachings that a lesser man than Washington would have taken to heart and pondered deeply. In the midst of the struggle he wrote to James Warren (March 31, 1779): "Let vigorous measures be adopted, ... to punish speculators, forestallers, and extortioners, and, above all, to sink the money by heavy taxes, to promote public and private economy, and to encourage manufactures. Measures of this sort, gone heartily into by the several States, would strike at once at the root of all our evils, and give the coup de grâce to the British hope of subjugating this continent either by their arms or their acts."

In the same year he wrote to Governor Randolph, favoring bounties, the strongest form of protection; and this encouragement he wished to have given to that industry which a hundred years later has been held up as one of the least deserving of all that have received the assistance of legislation. He said in this letter: "From the original letter, which I forward herewith, your Excellency will comprehend the nature of a proposal for introducing and establishing the woolen manufacture in the State of Virginia. In the present stage of population and agriculture, I do not pretend to determine how far that plan may be practicable and advisable; or, in case it should be deemed so, whether any or what public encouragement ought to be given to facilitate its execution. I have, however, no doubt as to the good policy of increasing the number of sheep in every state.1 By a little legislative encouragement the farmers of Connecticut have, in two years past, added one hundred thousand to their former stock. If a greater quantity of wool could be produced, and if the hands which are often in a manner idle could be employed in manufacturing it, a spirit of industry might be promoted, a great diminution might be made in the annual expenses of individual families, and the public would eventually be exceedingly benefited." The only hesitation is as to the time of applying the policy. There is no doubt as to the wisdom of the policy itself, of giving protection and encouragement in every proper legislative form to domestic industry.

In his first speech to Congress he recommended measures for the advancement of manufactures, having already affixed his signature to the bill which declared their encouragement to be one of its objects. At the same time he wrote, in reply to an address: "The promotion of domestic manufactures will, in my conception, be among the first consequences which may naturally be expected to flow from an energetic government."

GEORGE WASHINGTON
By
HENRY CABOT LODGE

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