Robert Pastor

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Robert Alan Pastor was born on April 10, 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He earned his bachelor's degree in History from Lafayette College and a Masters of Public Administration and Policy (MPA), with a concentration in International Economics from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also holds a PhD from Harvard in the field of political science. He served in the US Peace Corps in Malaysia where he learned Malay/Indonesian. He also was a Fulbright Professor at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico where he taught courses on U.S. Foreign Policy.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Work history 3 North American Community (Country) 4 Published works 5 See also 6 References

[edit] Personal life

Pastor is married to the former Margaret McNamara, daughter of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, with whom he has two children. He lives in Washington, DC

[edit] Work history

Pastor was the U.S. national security advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean during the administration of President Jimmy Carter from 1977-81.^[1]

Pastor was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to serve as the Ambassador to Panama.^[1] The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved his nomination by a vote of 16-3, but Senator Jesse Helms prevented the full Senate from voting. After the Republicans won control of the Senate in November 1994, Helms became Chairman of the Committee and refused to permit a vote on Pastor, who then requested that President Clinton withdraw his nomination. The main reason that Helms opposed the nomination was that he held Pastor accountable for negotiating the Panama Canal Treaties.^{[citation needed]}

He served as a Senior Fellow at the Carter Center, where he established the programs on Latin America and the Caribbean, democracy and election-monitoring, and Chinese village elections. He was also Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science at Emory University.

Pastor was Vice President of International Affairs at American University in Washington, DC from September 2002-December 2007. During his time at American, he helped establish the American University of Nigeria, transformed and expanded the study abroad program and introduced the "Abroad at AU" program, bringing students from around the world to study for a semester or year at AU. He also founded and heads the university's Center for Democracy and Election Management, and the Center for North American Studies and was Executive Director of the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform.^[1]

Pastor was Vice Chair of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, which is sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. [1]

[edit] North American Community (Country)

Dr. Pastor has been the subject of heated controversy whereby Jerome Corsi has suggested that he may go down in history as the Father of a North American Union (NAU).^[2] While Pastor has refuted any advocacy of a NAU, he does propose a North American Community, "whose premise is that all three sovereign countries benefit when each of the countries makes progress, and all suffer when one fails". He distinguishes this community from a union as being, "composed of three sovereign governments that seek to strengthen bonds of cooperation. Each government – according to its constitutional procedures – retains the power to decide whether and how to cooperate".^[3]

However, the semantics of "community" and "union" get blurred when reviewing all that Pastor has recommended for the North American region. He envisions three North American institutions to create this community: a North American Commission to lead the agenda for the continent, a North American Parliamentary Group to act as a legislative branch, and a Permanent Court on Trade and Investment for North America. The NAC would try to get the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico to "think continentally". It would propose a common currency, "a continental plan for infrastructure and transportation, a plan for harmonizing regulatory policies" North American passports and North American Customs and Immigration Officers ("customs union") to "to patrol the perimeter [of the North American continent] and reduce the documentation by half." In addition, a North American Development Fund "should be the pillar under a new Community" and administered by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, but funded by the U.S., Canada and Mexico "in proportion to their wealth". Pastor also suggests the three governments fund Centers for North American Studies where the problems of the continent could be discussed as well as promote citizens to think of themselves as North Americans. He also suggests that some studies indicate "a majority of the public in all three countries is prepared to join a larger North American country," but warns that, "Mexicans and Canadians do not want to be incorporated into the United States, and they are ambivalent about adopting the American dollar, but they are more willing to become part of a single country of North America and of a unified currency, like the "Amero,"." He goes on to describe that the "Amero" would be equivalent of the American dollar, and the two other currencies would be exchanged at the rate in which they are then traded for the U.S. dollar."^[4] He does, however, concede that there isn't much chance of a North American currency anytime soon.^[3]

Dr. Pastor also recommends that North America learn from the European Union model as they were able to drastically narrow the disparities between their rich and poor countries. He points out that, "100 years were needed to achieve real convergence in income between rich and poor regions" after the civil war as African Americans migrated from the south to the north from 1916 to 1970. He goes on to say that it would take more than a century for Mexico to close the income gap with the U.S. even if they were to grow greater than 1% more than the U.S. each and every year.^[5]

[edit] Published works

He is well published on US foreign policy, having written or edited 16 books, including "Exiting the Whirlpool: US Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean", "Democracy in the Caribbean: Political, Economic and Social Perspectives", and "Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico".

Pastor has published extensively his theories of a North American Community, including "Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World to the New".^[6]

Through the Independent Task Force on North America he has released the reports "Building a North American Community"^[7] [2] and "Creating a North American Community", both released in 2005. [3]

[edit] See also

• North American Community of Nations
• Operation Charly

[edit] References