THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 157, August 20, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
SABOTAGING AMERICAN NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
By Alan Caruba
THE PROPOSED "SECURITY & PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP OF NORTH AMERICA": A GRANDIOSE SCHEME TO
ESTABLISH A NORTH AMERICAN UNION THAT WOULD ABOLISH AMERICA'S NATIONAL BORDERS WITH MEXICO &
CANADA -- THE SPP, A VERY BAD FOREIGN POLICY CONCEPT HATCHED WITHIN THE BOWELS OF THE COUNCIL ON
FOREIGN RELATIONS, IS A MAJOR THREAT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, & SOVEREIGNTY OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FULL STORY:
The problem with the Bush administration is that not enough of its officials have read the United States Constitution. Take,
for example, Section 2 of Article II. This provision of the Constitution says that the U.S. President, when dealing with foreign
nations, “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, the arrangement would involve the U.S. government in so many common regulatory mandates with Canada and
Mexico as to render the national sovereignty of the United States of America merely 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 U.S. Senate for its oversight or concurrence because, by some magic of governmental definition, it is not a
treaty. Instead, the Partnership's administration is buried in the bowels of the U.S. Commerce Department.
It does have, however, the blessing of the political and corporate elites of all three nations. A visit to the SPP Internet website
(www.spp.gov) 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, not by the barrel, but by the boxcar and the tanker.
The SPP didn’t start out as an idea the national leaders of the three nations started kicking around on March 23, 2005, in
Waco, Texas, but, on that date, it became the official policy of the United States government at a special summit convened
by President Bush and joined by 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 American 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.
The U.S.A. needs Mexico’s help to improve the American economy? As the economist, Robert J. Samuelson, noted in a June,
2006, column,
“The subtext for the United States immigration debate is Mexico.
Why doesn’t Mexico's 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.A.
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.”
George W. Bush is carrying out George H.W. Bush’s daft and dangerous “new world order,” and the former's indifference to
America’s illegal immigration crisis is symptomatic of the SPP objectives.
On June 15, 2006, 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 with Canada and Mexico.
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 Relations, is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
It has been introduced by fiat, by executive action, by a “summit” of the three nation’s leaders, and the time is long
overdue for the U.S. Senate to demand that it be allowed to exercise its constitutional right and responsibility to
determine if it wishes to give its consent to yet another “entangling alliance.”
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Culture, Patriotism, & American National Identity
Immigration, Illegal Aliens, & U.S. Border Control
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
The Anglosphere -- The English-Speaking World:
The U.S.A., Britain, Canada, Australia, & New Zealand
Canada: America's Northern Neighbor & Ally
Latin America -- Economics, Politics, Political Regimes,
& Relations with the United States of America:
Problems & Opportunities for the U.S.A.
International Politics -- War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
The United Nations, Its Agencies, & U.S. National Interests
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2006
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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