Commonwealth of the Americas?

Vancouver - - Last Friday Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, Henry J. Hyde (R-IL.), delivered a speech calling for the creation of a Commonwealth of the Americas. The speech was delivered to the first graduating class of the Democratic Sustainment Course at Ft. Benning, Georgia which has been set up to teach civilians and military personnel leadership skills based on the shared traditions of North and South America.

The Almanac of American Politics calls Hyde, "one of the most respected and intellectually honorable members of the House." He is also consistently on the cutting edge of American politics, especially in his time on the International Relations Committee where he has served admirably since 1982.

He has always been interested in, and worked on, the issues of Latin America, which have traditionally been relegated to the back burner of American foreign policy. But the end of the Cold War has prompted some reexamination of the importance that this area holds in terms of trade and security and that is where Hyde and his latest speech come in.

For Hyde this is an opportunity to, “bring into being a permanent zone of peace, prosperity, and security throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, a self-sustaining equilibrium that could well become a model for the rest of the world.”

Hyde’s vision is not one of a utopia but one of observation of the world today. Hyde points to some of the groundwork already laid, including, “the spread of democracy, the embrace of free markets, the defeat of communism and other threats to freedom, and a growing recognition that the interests of individual countries are best advanced through the cooperation and an openness to the world.”

Part of Hyde’s practicality is shown in his concern for moving forward towards a future commonwealth. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is one example of how cooperation rather than division points to further integration. Echoing President Bush’s emphasis on the FTAA as a centerpiece of US policy Hyde believes that, “good sense will prevail in the US and the FTAA will have a belated birth, but it will not be an easy fight.”

More important than trade issues are ones of security. Chief among security issues in the hemisphere are organized crime and drug trafficking. By making a hemisphere wide arrangement security issues like crime can be addressed by all nations not just one. Instead of relying on the weak governments incapable of dealing with the almost sovereign crime organizations a commonwealth could establish a, “secure environment throughout the entire hemisphere,” where responsibility is shared, “by every country in the region.”

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