Ecuador’s outgoing banker/President Guillermo Lasso, signed two agreements during his visit to Washington, D.C. last week, allowing U.S. military assets to step up sea patrols along Ecuador’s coast and operate inside Ecuador. Drug cartel terror inside the country is cited as justification for the decision. Lasso’s Foreign Minister Gustavo Manrique announced Oct. 3, that U.S. military forces will be able to once again operate on Ecuadorian territory, as soon as the Constitutional Court gives its approval.
The Ecuadorian Constitution prohibits foreign bases or military facilities on national territory, a provision adopted to prevent a repeat of the 1999-2009 cession of an air base to the U.S. military at Manta, also done under cover of carrying out “regional anti-drug” deployments. The U.S. military base at Manta was imposed on Ecuador when its economy was in freefall, quickly followed by the loss of any monetary sovereignty with the adoption of the U.S. dollar as the national currency.
To get around that “detail,” Manrique insisted that the U.S. troops will not be permanently based in Ecuador, but “will go in for short periods of time, carry out operations and leave,” and Ecuadorian naval officers will be aboard American military ships operating in Ecuadoran waters “so that sovereignty is not lost.”