A new Marshall Plan to ease Central America’s agony — and benefit the U.S.
At the end of World War II, much of Europe lay in literal ruins. As many as 20 million people were dead. Millions of survivors were displaced from their home countries. Factories, office buildings, roads and bridges were wrecked. Famine loomed.
The U.S. government, having played a large role in defeating Germany, could have chosen to declare its job done and leave Europeans to rebuild Europe. Instead, this country opted to restore economic health and prevent political upheaval. Americans had learned the hard way that our security and prosperity were inseparable from events in Europe.
In 1948, President Harry Truman launched the Marshall Plan, named after Secretary of State George Marshall. Over more than a decade, it provided 16 countries a huge amount of aid — equal to 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, which would be nearly $1 trillion today. The effort did much to bring prosperity and democracy to a bloodied continent. It also helped stem the tide of communism in early years of the Cold War.
For years, Central America has endured a humanitarian crisis. It was easy for Americans to ignore, but now we realize how civil strife, poverty and organized crime in our backyard endanger us. Conditions have become so desperate that people are leaving El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as never before.
From 2014 through 2017, reports The Wall Street Journal, immigration authorities in the U.S. and Mexico apprehended more than 335,000 migrants from El Salvador alone. Since 2014, the number of U.S. asylum applications from those countries has quadrupled. Thousands are making their way through Mexico toward our southern border, hoping to be admitted.
Many are running for their lives. El Salvador has the highest homicide rate on the planet. “Migrants from all three countries cite violence, forced gang recruitment, and extortion, as well as poverty and lack of opportunity,” reports the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. Vicious criminal gangs live off drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, and governments hobbled by corruption can’t stop them. About 60 percent of Hondurans and half of Guatemalans live in poverty.
Given the dire circumstances in Central America, strict border security is a neverending challenge for Washington — and a partial solution at best. “You have asylum seekers saying I’d rather be in jail in the U.S. than killed in my own country,” Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, told the Journal.
The U.S. should address the migrant crisis at its source. These countries need improved governance, economic growth and public safety. In the early 2000s, Washington largely succeeded with Plan Colombia, which helped end a leftist insurgency and overcome the power of criminal drug cartels in a country once hopelessly out of control. A similar effort would help Central America.
President Donald Trump instead has threatened to slash U.S. aid to countries that fail to stop outmigration. That would be self-defeating. The U.S. should build on the Alliance for Prosperity, which was undertaken with support from President Barack Obama and a Republican-controlled Congress. The program initially allocated $750 million a year in economic and security aid, conditioned on recipient governments making progress on corruption control, policing and human rights. It’s a good start, but more may be needed.
Daniel Runde, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says much of the violence comes from gangs that metastasized after the U.S. deported tens of thousands of hardened gang members to the region. It would make more sense going forward to put such criminals in U.S. prisons, where they would present no threat to their own countries or ours. “I’d rather have them here and throw away the key,” he says.
The U.S. can also provide assistance and counsel on how to improve police agencies and courts, combat corruption, strengthen institutions of civil society, protect property rights and collect taxes. That would require a sustained bipartisan commitment over years if not decades. If it succeeds, it would not only stem the flood of migrants northward; it would pay lasting dividends to the peace and security of the Western Hemisphere.
The alternative? More chaos, more crime and more caravans. Ignoring Central America, it turns out, isn’t an option.