Experts: Don't ignore Latin America
By Christian Bourge <a href=www.upi.com>UPI think tanks correspondent From the Think Tanks & Research Desk Published 5/1/2003 7:11 PM
WASHINGTON, May 1 (UPI) -- Washington has returned to its long-standing tradition of paying too little attention to the problems of Latin America, and this may work to the detriment of United States interests in the region, according to think tank policy analysts.
Ian Vasquez, director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that the Bush administration's level of interest in Latin America has been disappointing, especially considering the high expectations for greater engagement with the region.
"I think basically the United States is not paying attention to Latin America," Vasquez told United Press International. "In a sense, policy is being conducted in an ad hoc manner, often in reaction to events in the region. It has been that way for a long time, this is not something new for Washington."
Marc Falcoff, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writes in his recent paper, "The Return of the U.S. Attention Deficit toward Latin America," that the current treatment of Latin America by Washington policymakers is comparable to the U.S. response to the region in the early days of the cold war. Following the end of World War II, the focus of American foreign policy suddenly shifted away from war to European reconstruction, a move that took most Latin American countries by surprise.
With the exception of Argentina and Chile, most countries in the region had strongly supported America's wartime foreign policy and expected Washington's attention to swing back to the Western Hemisphere after the war, only to find themselves on the policy back burner. Although countries in the region received individual attention when crises erupted, the attention the United States gives to the nations below its southern border has never equaled the attention it gives to its post-war European allies.
When the cold war ended, many again assumed the United States would redirect attention to its own hemisphere. With the rise of the European Union and liberalization of economies across Latin America in the ensuing years, free trade between the countries of Latin America and the United States was seen as a natural course of action for American policymakers.
Today the only major example of this is the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, whic is an agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States, now almost 10 years old. The promise of economic and other types of cooperation between the United States and Latin American countries has yet to reach the level for which many have hoped.
Although President George W. Bush made it clear that he planned to make Latin America a high priority for his administration, Falcoff and other analysts say the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made it clear that this is not the case.
Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development at the liberal-centrist Brookings Institution and a nonresident senior fellow in economics there, said that before Sept. 11, there were growing signs of hope for increased American interest and involvement. The Clinton administration paid some attention to democracy-building and the liberalization of the economies in the region and President Bush promised a strengthening of ties, especially with Mexico.
"Post Sept. 11, I think their was a big shift away (from Latin America)," Birdsall told United Press International. "There has been a return to a U.S. attention deficit."
Latin American countries are facing a roster of difficult challenges. In the oil-rich nation of Venezuela, an acute political crisis has surrounded president Hugo Chávez. Argentina's economic collapse has reduced the region's richest nation to an economic shambles and resulted in the destruction, at least in the short term, of its once-solid middle class. Brazil, the largest economy in the region, faces massive international financial obligations that it will not be able to meet without international assistance.
Although Colombia has a strong commitment from the United States to help fight the country's ongoing problem with opposition guerrillas and drug trafficking, the country's handling of the war is a cause for some concern. Falcoff said in his brief that the only reason critics are not raising a bigger fuss about America's involvement in Colombia as "another Vietnam" is because they are preoccupied with attacking the administration on matters related to the Middle East.
However, not all the news on Latin America is bad. For instance, Mexico is expected to have economic growth of 3 percent in 2003. Although a much higher growth is needed for the country to ensure it economic vitality, this is high for the region.
The analysts said various dangers may arise from the American attention deficit toward the difficult challenges faced by Latin America. One fear is that the regional feeling that Latin America will always remain an afterthought for Washington policymakers may develop into a deep resentment of the United States and undermine U.S. goals for trade and economic development.
Birdsall said that during the 1990s, many people in the region came to see the United States as a beacon of political reform and economic liberalization. But the failure of Argentina's economy -- which was a poster child for economic liberalization -- and widespread opposition to the war in Iraq have had a chilling effect on that view of the United States in the Latin America.
"For political as well as economic reasons, that is now not true anymore," she said. "I think the most important implications are that we are neglecting the potential dangers associated with a rise in anti-Americanism in Latin America. That is going to make the lives of the reform politicians in the region more difficult than they would otherwise be."
Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, known as SAIS, said Treasury Secretary John Snow's recent trip to Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia indicated some hope for greater interest in Latin America by U.S. policymakers. In addition, the trip was well received in the economic community, a good sign for investment in the region.
At the annual Council of the Americas conference on Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that despite the promises by the United States that embracing democracy would better Latin American nations, many citizens there felt that had not come to pass. Powell's comments represented the first time in months that a ranking Bush administration official had publicly focused on Latin America. In addition, Snow said at the conference that it is necessary to speed up the slowed effort to enact a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005.
The Bush administration has made some efforts to bring free trade to the region, including the development of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Chile. However, some analysts questioned the administration's overall commitment to free trade there.
"I thought that (trade) policy was starting to get back on track with Chile and I think that is a really good sign of what can come out of Washington," said Vasquez. "But it is not clear how much the (Bush) administration is going to push for ratification in Congress now that it seems to be upset with Chile over its behavior regarding Iraq."
He added that it is a "tremendous mistake" to mix economic policy and the issue of free trade in the hemisphere with disagreements over Iraq. Vasquez said that tactics like punishing Chile for its opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq paves the way for dangerous and heavy-handed policies, such as ignoring countries that do not adhere to the U.S. foreign policy line.
Although there are clear economic issues at risk in the region, Birdsall said the lack of a clear security component to the problems in the region helps explain why the United States seems to be marginalizing Latin America.
"I think the costs of this for the United States have more to do with lost opportunities," she said. "The 21st century could really be the century of the Americas in terms of growing (social and economic) prosperity, growing stability, open market economies and democracy. That opportunity could be lost."