Should Obama, If Elected, Make a Clean Break With Bush's Latin America Policy?

In the last decade political change has swept across most of Latin America. Much of the region - including the majority of South America - is now run by left governments. These governments have also become much more independent of the United States - in their foreign policy they are more independent than Europe is. Washington's dream of a hemispheric "Free Trade Area of the Americas" is now dead and buried. The attempt to replace this with bilateral "free trade" agreements is losing steam every day.

Much of this is a result of the democratic choices of the Latin American electorate. In country after country - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela - voters rejected the "Washington Consensus" economic policies after more than two decades of unprecedented economic failure. Similarly, by popular demand, the government of Ecuador has announced that the Washington's most prominent military base in the region will close when its lease expires in 2009.

The administration's reaction to this new Latin American reality has been characterized by denial and hostility. It supported military coups in Venezuela (2002) and Haiti (2004). It has funded opposition groups in countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela, provoking further friction. The United States has clearly been a destabilizing force in the region, undermining democracy.

The Bush administration has tried to divide the left-of-center democracies into "good left" (Brazil and Chile) versus "bad left" (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and sometimes Argentina). The goal has been to isolate the "bad left," especially Venezuela. But this is a fantasy-based foreign policy.

Brazil's President Lula da Silva, for example, of the "good left" has consistently defended Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez against Washington's attacks, and joined with Venezuela in its major initiatives such as the Bank of the South. Brazil has also recently stepped up its commitment to Cuba, a country with which Lula's Worker's Party has long had ties - more deeply rooted historically, in fact, than Chavez of Venezuela. Cuba is another example of failed U.S. policy toward Latin America. Washington has maintained an economic embargo and other hostilities against Cuba for nearly half a century. This has succeeded only in winning condemnation from the rest of the world, expressed in many overwhelming votes in the United Nations, and sowing more distrust in Latin America.

The "divide and conquer," Cold War strategy in Latin America has only succeeded in further reducing Washington's standing in the region, which is now lower than it has ever been.

Obama would have a chance to make a fresh start. But would he? So far there has been little indication that he would.

He has adopted some of the same hostile rhetoric toward Venezuela, pledged to maintain the embargo on Cuba, and even showed support for Colombia's March 1 raid into Ecuador. This was a violation of sovereignty and a dangerous regionalization of Colombia's conflict - supported by the Bush administration - that was publicly rejected by nearly every government in the hemisphere.

Against these statements, Obama's expressed willingness to possibly meet with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro do not offer much cause for optimism, and indeed there is not much hope for change among Latin American diplomats here in Washington.

Of course, Latin American governments are sophisticated enough to know that U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric is oriented to right-wing Cuban Americans in South Florida. Indeed, if there were 800,000 American voters who believed that Elvis Presley were still alive, and they were concentrated in one swing state with 27 electoral votes, we might expect to hear some campaign speeches accommodating these eccentric views.

So maybe Obama is just kidding when he adopts the Bush administration's rhetoric and policy stances on Latin America. For now, at least, that is the best hope we can hold on to.

This op-ed was distributed by McClatchy Tribune Information Services on August 12, 2008.

Comments

[BusGreg]

When, not if, Barack Obama is elected he ought to distance himself from ALL of the bush regime's policies. The only thing bush has accomplished is the degradation and erosion of OUR constitutional rights, the depletion of our National Treasure, the loss of respect from the majority of the rest of the world and he has set the Country back 8 years when it comes to alternative energy and global warming.
As far as South America is concerned, dialogue with the leaders of those sovereign nations makes infinitely more sense than the bellicose rhetoric of bush and even his predecessors!

[joebiz]

CONT.

My second question is whether leftist dictators are the moral equivalent of right wing dictators? Is a Chavez or Castro better for a nation and the region than say, a Pinochet or Somoza? Is there such a thing as a "good" dictator?

And, does the US have a moral imperative to remove or deny the legitimacy of dictators of any political ideology?

In a post Saddam Hussein Iraq, dictaroships should not be permitted, regardless of the political ideology, if they deny their populations the basics human righs we share in this country. We should support democracies that allow for freedoms of speech, of assembly, freedom to receive an education, of health care, of legal redress, rights for minorities and the indiginous, and the all encompasing basic human rights.

[joebiz]

Good post.

The post doesn't mention Chile and Mexico's economic and political apperture.

But one question is central to the thesis: how much responsibility and influence does the United States have over the internal politics of a Latin American nation-state? In other words, at what point is Latin America responsiblible for it's political future and economic choices barring US intervention?

Almost every country in Latin America has been ruled by a military dictarorship. I would submit that the majority were not US driven. Most were "regimes of exception" or internal political issues in which the military must intervene to restore the national "patria" or Fatherland. An alien concept to our constitutional mandate.

For example, Argentina suffered through five military dictatorships; Peru five; Brazil and Chile, three each; Central American had five distinct military juntas. The region all together had over 38 military dictatorships. In some, but not most, the US played no part.

[ceti]

Most in fact of these dictators were indeed supported by the US. Some of the most genocidal regimes as well. The similarity between the oligarchies in Latin America and the US that has needed reliable allies sharing similar ideologies and cultural backgrounds has been at the root of this convergence of interests -- in addition to the obvious corporate connections.

Yes Latin America must -- and is -- taking responsibility for its political future and economic choices, which what we are seeing today. In fact, Latin America holds out hope for the world in what is happening and being accomplished there.