This situation will bear watching :
Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the U.S.wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.Correa has refused to renew Washington’s lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
There are three likely outcomes here, provided Correa doesn’t change his mind. In increasing order of likelihood they are:
1. The U.S. will comply with international law and its own word (embodied in a contract) and leave Ecuador when the lease is up.
2. Correa will be killed.
3. There will be a coup. (see, e.g., Allende’s Chile).
Actually, the latter two have a pretty much equal probability.
Correa is doing us a favor by kicking us out of his country. We aren’t doing the world any favors by having bases all over the world, and we aren’t doing ourselves any either. We are stretched too thin and we don’t have the money anymore. At some point, Britain recognized that the jig was up and withdrew from Empire voluntarily, after having its ass kicked in a few places to drive the lesson home. We don’t seem to be learning. My guess is that Correa won’t be in power by the time that lease expires, and the poor Ecuadorians will be stuck with a right wing government for several years.
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