Since 1999, The Netherlands has been leasing two airfields in the Caribbean to the American army. The US uses the two bases off the coast of Venezuela - on the Aruba and Curaçao islands - to monitor and intercept drug transports. The bases are part of a larger group of US military facilities set up over the past decade to fight the 'war on drugs'. The ten-year lease is now up, which means that the Dutch government has to decide whether to continue with the arrangement.

By Wilbert van der Zeijden, for NRCNext Newspaper (translated from Dutch)

The Dutch government's silence on the matter most certainly means it plans to extend the lease. The absence of a debate is lamentable as there are enough reasons to question the functionality, necessity and consequences of the US presence in the Antilles.

The arguments supporting the US presence on the islands are clear: the Caribbean Sea has been one of the main channels for illegal substances flowing from the production fields in Colombia towards the buyers in the US and Europe. According to the Antillian governments, the bases also have a positive economic side-effect: They create a few jobs.  

But there are strong arguments that support the termination of the lease too. The main question is whether the bases are still useful at all. Some drug transports have indeed been intercepted in the past, but the net effect of these interceptions is zero, according to all sides in the debate about international drug trafficking. Since the US obtained the lease in 1999, the amount of cocaine available on the North American drug market has not gone down, the price on the streets has not gone up and the quality of the drug has not deteriorated. In spite of all efforts, cocaine still flows to the North American market unhindered.

President Obama is aware of this too. He has spoken about the need for the reform of US drug policies. Shifting focus away from disrupting the drug production elsewhere to countering the problems caused by drug trade and use domestically. It seems that after decades of stubborn struggle, the US government is finally ready to move towards the more realistic European approach to countering the ill effects of drug trade and drug use. So if these bases serve no purpose anymore, why would the US - or The Netherlands - want to keep them? Surely both governments can make better use of their money in times of crisis.

There is 'reasonable doubt' about the role of the two bases in the Colombian civil war too. According to the 1999 treaty, the Antillian bases can only be used for monitoring and interception of illegal transports on the Caribbean Sea, not for missions in any way connected to the Colombian civil war. It is almost impossible however, to determine if the US is playing by the rules. The annual reports submitted by the US on what it actually does in the Antilles are below standard, lacking of any detail, if submitted at all to the Dutch government as required by the treaty.

What we do know is that the Antillian bases are part of a larger group of US bases located around Colombia. Other so-called Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) are in Ecuador and El Salvador.

And we do know that the Ecuadorian government has recently decided not to continue the lease exactly because the US was not playing by the rules. US activities carried out from the base in the Ecuadorian city of Manta included reconnaissance missions into Colombia. Most significantly, the US used it to support the Colombian military operation leading to the assassination of FARC's top commander Raul Reyes last March..... on Ecuadorian territory!

The US also coordinated fumigation programmes of coca fields in Colombia from the Manta base. These led to court cases by Ecuadorian farmers living on the border with Colombia, who saw their farms damaged or destroyed by the fumigation operations.

Such revelations are not surprising. There have been doubts from the beginning about the American claim that the drug interceptions and the military operations in Colombia would remain separate. Both Ecuador's experience and the US' reluctance to document its activities carried out from Aruba and Curaçao mean that we have to question the logic of extending the leases.

The burden of proof now lies with the US and Dutch governments. What is the added value of the bases if they do not have a positive effect on countering drug trade? And how would the US and Dutch governments guarantee that these bases and the information gathered from their operations will not be used for military purposes in a civil war the Dutch government does not want anything to do with?

Wilbert van der Zeijden is political scientist, coordinator of the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases and associate of the Transnational Institute in The Netherlands.