Broomfield
In his bid for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush promised a greater commitment to Latin America than during the topsy-turvy Clinton years. Yet the ensuing global war on terrorism and regime change in Iraq quickly relegated Latin America to the back burner of American foreign policy. U.S.-Latin American relations have been in free fall ever since.
When President Bush visits Argentina for the third Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata this week, he will need to overcome the conviction in Latin America that his administration is out of touch with the region’s core problems: poverty, corruption, bad governance and drug trafficking. Polls issued last month by a respected Chilean organization found that a majority of those living in the capitals of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay had a negative opinion of the American president.
The South American “hot spots” – namely the instability in the Andes and the Middle East connections to the “tri-border” area among Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay – are of major concern to the security-minded Bush administration, but of little interest to Latin American leaders. In September 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “There is no region on Earth that is more important to the American people than the Western Hemisphere.” However, when the U.S. National Intelligence Council issued its study on world regions early this year, there was little mention of Latin America.
With domestic difficulties weighing heavily on the mind of the president, the odds are in favor of a business-as- usual journey. Rather than forcing Latin Americans to dance to the White House tune, the president might consider changing how the United States formulates and executes policy toward Latin America. Here are five concrete steps for him to consider:
Washington needs to give the region a higher priority than it has in the past, not because it is in what some call “our backyard,” but because there are simply far too many issues – trade, border security, immigration, drug trafficking, diseases, environmental decay, terrorism and good governance – that require cooperation and commitment at the highest levels of government. It is obvious from the paltry size of the current foreign aid budget for Latin America and the Caribbean that there is a need for greater economic assistance.
Morality has to play a greater role in the formulation and execution of U.S. policy toward Latin America. The historical pattern in which the United States has resorted to force and intervention in small, weak Latin American countries because they threaten our national security is absurd and counterproductive. Even the Sept. 11 commission report from last year recommended, “We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.” Constant bullying of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro does not advance our hemispheric agenda.
U.S. foreign policy needs to shed the old habits of unilateralism. By ignoring international treaties and international law, the United States comes off as hypocritical with many Latin Americans. When the United States ignores international legal principles and norms, it destroys its ability to criticize Latin American governments that do exactly the same thing.
Washington should put an end to the current, narrowly defined Latin American policy that is based largely cocaine and terrorism. The so-called “war on drugs” is a losing cause and offers a poor solution to drug trafficking in the Americas. It is foolish to label a poor Colombian farmer who harvests coca or marijuana for economic survival as a “narco-terrorist.”
The United States supplies more arms to Latin American governments than any other world region. The hemispheric arms trade contributes more to violence and conflict, expands the power of the military as a political player, and seriously drains scarce resources from poor countries. Halting international commercial trade in torture equipment that involves more than 80 U.S. manufacturers and exporters of this “dual-use” material would be applauded south of the border.
President Bush’s interest in the democratic transformation of the world will mean very little until the deeper flaws in American foreign policy are clearly noted and addressed. Moving Latin America up a few notches on his dance card would go a long way toward improving hemispheric relations.
David W. Dent is professor emeritus at Towson University and author of the “Historical Dictionary of U.S.-Latin American Relations.”
