Brookings: Experts - Abraham F. Lowenthal

Comment on Cartagena

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:19:00 -0400

Quite apart from the distraction caused by the shenanigans of U.S. Secret Service agents with Cartagena prostitutes, most comments on the Cartagena Summit of the Americas missed the important points. They emphasized the inability of the participating presidents to agree on a final communiqué, highlighted vocal Latin American rejection of U.S. policies on Cuba and anti-narcotics strategy, and suggested that the Summit showed a confrontation between the United States and Latin America.

Actually, the Summit confirmed what most analysts have long understood: that no meaningful agreements can be reached to unite the diverse interests and priorities of more than 30 countries of such great variety. The difference between a meaninglessly vague final communiqué and no statement at all is unimportant.

Second, if there was anything significant about the extended discussion in Cartagena, it was that the presidents discussed their differing perspectives and on counter-narcotics efforts respectfully, not confrontationally, and that President Obama willingly participated in a dialogue. What a contrast from John Foster Dulles’s trip to Caracas to secure an OAS resolution condemning communism, in preparation for the CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s President Arbenz, when he immediately left the conference, not waiting to hear the Latin American presentations on their own agendas of concerns.

Finally, the most evident gap in Cartagena was between the ALBA nations—Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia, with Argentina apparently aligned—and the rest of the Latin American members. The presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador were absent for different reasons. President Morales of Bolivia was isolated, and Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner left early and in a huff when she could not garner the support for escalating tensions around the Malvinas/Falklands dispute. The ALBA nations are losing momentum; that was, for me, the big story from Cartagena.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Image Source: © Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

Disaggregating Latin America: Diverse Trajectories, Emerging Clusters and their Implications

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:56:00 -0400

From the time a 19th century French geographer labeled the countries south of the United States and Canada “Latin America,” the term has always seemed more of a reality from outside the Western Hemisphere than within it. From outside, and particularly from Europe, these nations often seem more closely related to each other than they appear to be up close. In fact, Latin American countries have long been divided by almost as much as that which unites them: different colonial heritages and histories, and radically different geographies, demographies, and ethnic compositions. They have different levels and types of economic and social development, political traditions and institutions, modes of insertion into the international economy, and international policies and relationships. Most of the countries of South and Central America and parts of the Caribbean do share common Iberian historical, religious, linguistic and cultural traditions; many have had broadly comparable relations most of the time with the industrial countries; and they all share the same hemisphere with the United States and Canada. But one should not lose sight of the many and important differences among the diverse countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The policy communities, both in the United States and in Europe, came in the 1990s to think of the Latin American countries as tending then toward convergence—mostly proceeding, at different paces, along the same presumably irreversible path of political and economic liberalization, with Chile blazing the trail. This perception is highly questionable now, as various countries pursue distinct goals with contrasting approaches and policies. Easy rhetoric about regional integration, and even such institutional steps in that direction as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), South America’s recently established diplomatic and security communities, are mainly wishful thinking or, at best, “thoughtful wishing.” Rhetorical expressions of Latin American (or at least South American) unity are often rudely contradicted in practice. Transnational integration is occurring in Latin America much more at the level of corporations and professional networks than at the level of governments and multilateral organizations. Intraregional trade agreements have not taken hold, for the most part, and intraregional trade has been declining over the past several years, in fact, both among the Mercosur countries and in the Andean Community.

Disaggregating Latin America

The countries of Latin America may best be understood and analyzed by focusing on where they fit along five distinct dimensions—three structural, and two historical and institutional—which have significant implications for how they work politically and economically, and for their international roles:

• Their levels of demographic and economic interdependence with the United States, or with other major regions including Europe and China

• Their resource endowments and their degree of openness to international competition, and the consequent nature of their insertion into the global economy

• The extent to which they face the challenge of incorporating traditionally excluded populations, including millions of marginalized and disadvantaged but increasingly mobilized indigenous people, as well as Afro-descendants and others in deep poverty who have not previously been fully integrated into the economy nor able to exercise effective citizenship

• The relative strength and capacity of the state and of civil and political institutions beyond the state, such as political parties, trade unions, religious organizations, the media and other non-governmental entities

• The vitality of such key aspects of democratic governance as separate branches of government, checks and balances, free and fair elections, independent media, accountability and the rule of law.

Where these countries are found along a spectrum with regard to each of these five dimensions—rather than familiar dichotomous categories such as left or right, authoritarian or democratic, free market or statist—captures the most important variations among these many countries.

Indeed, the very term Latin America is not very useful. It is more helpful to think of subcategories, including the countries of North America (Mexico and the various nations of Central America and the Caribbean), almost all—even Cuba in some important ways—ever more closely integrated with the United States; Brazil, a nation of continental scope that has never felt itself closely and exclusively tied with the countries of South America and is now even more than before linked with Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe as well as with Latin America and the United States; the Amer-Indian regions, mostly on the Andean ridge, but also in southern Mexico, parts of Central America, and Paraguay, which are ever more shaped by their indigenous populations; and the truly “Latin” (or European) countries of the Southern Cone, with ethnic compositions, social structures, political institutions and traditions broadly similar to the countries of continental Europe. The subcategories I have suggested are not geographically defined, nor are most candidates for subregional economic integration; they are conceptual groupings, highlighting salient characteristics that make the members of each subcategory behave similarly in some important respects.

Focusing on these important differences, more than on aspirations of regional integration, is necessary to understand diverse countries that have been and are on quite different paths, reflecting their distinct pasts and shaped by different political leaders and constituencies, available resources, opportunities and ideologies.

The Universal Challenge: Reconciling Equity and Markets

In their efforts to achieve economic growth, socioeconomic equity and social inclusion, Latin American countries have all moved in recent years, from different starting points, away from the extremes of unbridled capitalism on the one hand and state-run socialist economies on the other.

Even Cuba under the Castro brothers, who still proclaim themselves Socialist with a capital S, is radically reducing the number of state employees, authorizing private ownership of housing, encouraging private agricultural production and markets as well as small businesses of many types, and otherwise experimenting with the reintroduction of material incentives and other capitalist practices. Few well informed observers doubt that in the next decade Cuba’s economy, whether through gradual reforms or rupture, will be significantly transformed, and that domestic and international investment in private enterprises will sooner or later spur a burst of economic growth. Nationalism, not socialism, is likely to be the lasting contribution of the Castro period to Cuban history.

Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has proclaimed that it is building “21st Century socialism” (a goal that Chávez did not unveil until he had been in power for several years). The Chávez government has nationalized various important companies, strongly regulated and intimidated others, and undertaken social programs and provided social services through redistributive programs (the Misiones). But Venezuela has also preserved a well-rewarded private financial sector, permitted significant other private sector activity and the continuing accumulation of private wealth, and maintained a primary trade connection with the United States while also diversifying its international relationships by cultivating countries antagonistic to the United States. Recently, moreover, in the wake of his cancer surgery and in the run-up to the elections scheduled for 2012, President Chávez appears, at least at times, to be downplaying the “socialist” discourse and concentrating on encouraging the market-oriented middle class, giving some signs of recognizing how vital their confidence and participation could be for Venezuela’s national success.

In Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua—three other members of the Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) that have employed “socialist” discourse in recent years—there are increased, if ambivalent, efforts to attract foreign investment, cooperate with international financial institutions, and coax national private investors to participate more actively. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa has explicitly downplayed the rhetoric of “21st Century socialism,” preferring the language of “buen vivir,” a concept of indigenous (Bolivian) origins connoting “living well,” in a normatively positive and sustainable way, privileging solidarity rather than competition. A similar though less clearly articulated discourse has emerged in plurinational Bolivia, where Evo Morales attempts to balance an appeal to indigenous peoples and ecological sustainability with occasional pragmatic efforts to attract foreign investment for major projects in natural resource extraction and development, a combination that sometimes leads to major contradictions and course corrections. Nicaragua under the Ortega couple, albeit in a cruder way, combines old-style “socialist” rhetoric with pragmatic policies to retain international markets, attract both official development assistance and private investment from the capitalist world, and coopt national business leaders by giving them opportunities to prosper.

The state “socialist” ideological model, in short, is giving way in practice to an evolving attempt, different in each case, to combine the goals of social inclusion, community solidarity and the integration of disadvantaged sectors with the use of capitalist instruments to expand economic growth. In all these countries, popularly-oriented economic and redistributive policies are accompanied by severely weakened legislative and judicial restraints on executive power and personal aggrandizement, populist appeals to disadvantaged majorities, systematic attacks on privileged elites and on “neoliberalism” (and behind that, the United States), and appeals to anti-globalization advocates around the world. These regimes do not foster coalition-building across social sectors nor do they seek Western Hemisphere cooperation to confront shared challenges.

There are many differences among these ALBA cases. Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, operate in large measure as traditional Central American/Caribbean caudillos, manipulating personal ambitions and relationships with little regard for ideological coherence or legal constraints. Hugo Chávez brings a special combination of charisma, audacity, social resentment, military authority and tactical flexibility to his leadership, which is overwhelmingly personalistic, and therefore vulnerable if his health deteriorates. Rafael Correa is a U.S.-educated Ph.D. who is drawing on civil society activists to build technocratic bureaucracies, while continuing relentlessly to attack discredited elites and institutions. Evo Morales builds upon and exacerbates long-standing and deep-seated ethnic and regional cleavages within Bolivia and cultivates transnational support from NGOs, while striking out against real and imagined foreign enemies whenever he feels that domestic circumstances require an external foe.

Two Broad Groups

With all these and other variations, however, the “Bolivarian alternative” countries share deep suspicion of markets, free enterprise and globalization generally, and especially of the institutions of liberal representative democracy, where horizontal accountability is sought through separate and independent branches of government, checks and balances, and the rule of law. These Bolivarian experiments with “refoundation” and plebiscitary governance have been made possible by the thorough discrediting of previous regimes and, in most cases, have been financed directly or indirectly by windfall profits from natural resource endowments that allow immediate and broader distribution of expanded national income.

In the rest of Latin America, with the possible exception of Argentina, the ALBA approach has not lately been gaining further traction, and it is less likely to do so as the ALBA countries experience growing internal difficulties that will be further compounded if and when energy prices drop. But in many of the other Latin American countries there is emerging, to differing degrees, an amalgam of market-oriented, socially responsive and redistributive policies, combined, however, with an embrace (stronger in some cases than in others) of markets, capitalism and globalization. In these cases, moreover, there is a much more institutional approach to governance and accountability, combined with concerted efforts at consensus-building and international cooperation rather than polarization. Such attempts are evident in Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and now in Peru. Peru’s recently elected president, Ollanta Humala, originally aligned with the ALBA approach, was finally elected and thus far appears to be governing in ways much closer to the mainstream approach.

In these countries, highly diverse in many other respects, there is a shared tendency to give high priority to achieving macroeconomic stability; to demonstrating openness to foreign private investment, although often on improved terms, especially in the mining and petroleum sectors; and to achieving previsibilidad (i.e stability of expectations about the rules of the game and about agreed procedures for changing these). These countries, at least in their stated goals, are all emphasizing policies to reduce and alleviate poverty through economic growth and expanded employment, conditional cash transfers, higher minimum wages, social programs and, in some cases, progressive taxation. They all aim to diminish socio-economic inequities; make conditions safer for the private sector by reducing polarization; expand access to and improving the quality of education and infrastructure; and strengthen accountable political, judicial and law enforcement institutions.

Implementation of this broad program varies greatly from country to country, in part because state capacity differs so widely. It has been called a “global social democratic” path by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s scholar-statesman. It is being funded in some countries by windfall income from high commodity prices, and is also made possible in part by the relatively mild impact in South America of the international financial crisis. This was a silver lining that resulted from the fact that their financial institutions and fiscal policies had been greatly strengthened in response to recent debacles. But it is also made possible, as Cardoso argues, by structural and political preconditions, including the prior diversification of economic production and the development of effective, albeit imperfect and uneven, institutions and practices of democratic governance. In several countries—Mexico, the Central American and some Caribbean nations, and still to some extent in Colombia—these advantages are being undermined, however, by organized crime, much of it related to drug-trafficking organizations.

There are also important differences, of course, in leaders’ backgrounds, political coalitions and specific programs. The presidents range from former guerrillas and leftist insurgents to former military officers, business tycoons and an ex-bishop; from internationally educated cosmopolitans to highly provincial figures; from very experienced politicians to newly minted ones. The political coalitions are grounded in some countries in the most modern and economically advanced regions, while in others, their base of support comes primarily from the most impoverished provinces, sometimes of indigenous ethnic composition. The scope of state enterprises in these countries varies widely, with some of the largest and most powerful state enterprises (Petrobras in Brazil, PEMEX in Mexico, and CODELCO in Chile, for example), operating in the most market-friendly nations. In all these diverse countries, however, the shared central challenge is how to combine the dynamics of market capitalism with improved social inclusion. Nowhere has the perfect solution yet been fashioned. Even in Chile, which had seemed the poster child for social democracy, strong pressures are building to expand effective participation; to redress class privileges, embodied in the country’s secondary and higher educational systems; and to extend to the middle class rights previously exercised only by economic and social elites.

Latin America, in sum, is not a unified region. Its heterogeneous countries differ significantly in several ways. But despite their many differences, they cluster at present into two broad groups. One comprises the “Bolivarian alternative” countries: profoundly suspicious of globalization, markets, liberal representative democracy and cooperation with the well-established world powers, but all groping in different ways to attract resources and markets from the capitalist countries. The other is a highly diverse set of nations that are trying to adjust to globalization by seeking access to the dynamic energies and resources provided by capitalist enterprises, while counterbalancing capitalism’s negative effects on equity and social inclusion through redistributive policies and by strengthening the institutions of democratic governance. These two clusters are more fuzzy than distinct, more “works in progress” than ideological models, and are responding tactically both to domestic pressures and to international constraints and opportunities, rather than conforming to consistent templates.

What Shapes the International Relations of the Latin American and Caribbean Countries?

These broadly differing approaches have important international policy implications. This is most evident in the recurring tendency in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador to seek confrontation with the United States as one aspect of their domestic strategies for popular legitimacy. To the extent that these confrontational tactics are mostly symbolic, and often contradicted in practice by pragmatic cooperation, they have limited geopolitical importance as long as the U.S. government (and European governments when relevant) responds to provocations with the “rope-a-dope” technique made famous by Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring: letting the punches fall unanswered, without causing real damage, while the puncher tires. An interesting question is whether a more beleaguered Chávez, or perhaps another severely challenged ALBA leader, might eventually seek more concrete and genuinely threatening international cooperation with an extra-hemispheric power against the United States. This is an unlikely, but plausible, scenario.

The most important determinants of Latin America’s diverse international relationships are less ideological than structural and geoeconomic, however. First and foremost, there is an overwhelming distinction between the closest neighbors of the United States—Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean—and the nations of South America. During the past fifty years, the society and economy of the United States have become ever more intertwined with those of Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, primarily as a result of massive migration, authorized and unauthorized, to the United States and of growing functional economic integration, particularly of labor markets, finance and production processes. The frontier between the United States and its closest neighbors is extremely porous. People, goods, money, and ideas flow easily back and forth across formal boundaries. Sixty percent of Mexico’s population have relatives in the United States, where nearly a fifth of Mexico’s population is employed, and more than half a million U.S. retirees, in turn, reside in Mexico. Some fifteen percent of those born in the Caribbean and Central American countries alive today have also moved to the United States. In Mexico, remittances from the diaspora amount to some $25 billion a year (more or less, depending on the state of the US economy), almost as much as direct foreign investment. In Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, remittances exceed foreign investment and international economic assistance combined. Campaign contributions and votes from the diaspora are crucially important in home country politics, while the votes of naturalized immigrants play an increasingly important role in U.S. elections. Juvenile gangs and criminal leaders socialized on U.S. streets and in U.S. jails are wreaking havoc in their countries of origin, in many cases after being deported from the United States, while Latino gangs contribute to violence in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and elsewhere. Historical notions of “sovereignty” have much less real meaning in such circumstances, even as they are still vociferously articulated on both sides.

The issues that flow directly from the growing mutual interpenetration between the United States and its closest neighbors—human, drug and arms trafficking, immigration, the environment and public health, medical tourism and portable health and pension benefits, natural disasters, law enforcement and border management—pose particularly complex challenges for policy on both sides. These “intermestic” issues, combining international and domestic facets, are difficult to handle because the democratic political process pushes policies, both in the United States and in the neighboring countries, in directions that are often diametrically opposed. That makes it difficult to secure the intimate and sustained international cooperation required to manage difficult problems that transcend borders. The difficulty is compounded in those countries—Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti, in particular—with very weak state capacity. All this in turn makes the international relations of these countries different in kind from those of South America’s nations.

Brazil is an increasingly influential country with a population of more than 190 million and the world’s seventh or eighth largest economy, likely to become the fifth largest (with the United States, China, India and Japan) by mid-century or sooner. It has largely opened itself to international economic competition, dramatically modernized its vast agricultural sector, developed industries with continental and even worldwide markets and expanded the global competitiveness of its engineering, financial and other services. Brazil has also slowly but steadily strengthened both its state and its nongovernmental institutions. And it has forged an increasingly firm centrist consensus on broad macroeconomic and social goals, including the urgent need to reduce gross inequities and alleviate extreme poverty; to continue to expand its large, expanding and influential middle class (now numbering some one hundred million persons); to improve the quality of and access to education; and to improve productivity, infrastructure, citizen security and efficiency. Achieving these gains will be far from easy, especially with the country’s fragmented parties and governance, but at least there is a high degree of national consensus about where Brazil should be headed.

Brazil is playing and will play a growing role in international negotiations on trade, climate change, the environment, public health, food security and intellectual property. It is an active leader of the Global South; works closely with China, India and South Africa on several issues; and is cultivating ties with the Muslim world and with Africa. It is also one of the influential and growing BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations, the darlings of international investors and geopolitical analysts. It is taking an ever more prominent leadership role in South America, a lead role in UN efforts to stabilize Haiti, and has been active (though not always effective) in the United Nations, the G20 group of the world’s most important economies and in other multilateral global and regional fora.

The fundamental challenge at this stage for relations between Brazil and the United States, as well as with the EU nations, is to overcome conflicting domestic political imperatives, vested interests and policy gridlock on both sides in order to build greater synergy on major global issues: by strengthening regimes for trade, finance and investment; developing and implementing measures to cope with climate change and to develop alternative renewable energy sources; preventing and responding to pandemics; curbing nuclear proliferation; and reforming international governance arrangements. All this will require conceptual clarity, constructive diplomacy, and consistent tact by all involved.

The countries of the Southern Cone are neither as connected to nor as integrated with the United States as its closest neighbors, nor are they as globally influential or as important for Europe as Brazil. Chile is the Latin American nation most fully engaged in the world economy, with strong political institutions and entrenched democratic practices, but it remains, after all, a small to medium-sized country. Chile’s international influence, based on its soft power, is considerably greater than its size, military power or economic strength alone would command. It presents issues and opportunities, both to the United States and to European nations, comparable to those posed by long-time allies, grounded upon broadly shared interests. Argentina, by contrast, has had great difficulty over the years in building broad consensus, fortifying institutions, opening up its full economy to international competition and achieving the stability of expectations that is so important to overcome short-termedness (cortoplacismo) and to facilitate economic development and consistent international engagement. For both European countries and the United States (equidistant from Buenos Aires), Argentina always seems like a natural partner, but almost always disappoints. Uruguay is in some ways an extension of Argentina, but it acts internationally much like Chile, largely because of its well-developed political institutions.

The Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) to differing degrees are plagued by severe problems of governance and with the challenge of integrating large numbers of historically excluded people, living in poverty or extreme poverty, and in many cases from indigenous or Afro-descendant backgrounds. Poverty, compound inequities, mass exclusion, rising ethnic and class consciousness, market economies and electoral politics have made all the Andean nations, in different ways, politically unstable. Colombia has long had democratically elected governments and constitutional governance, but it has also faced a prolonged insurgency and pervasive corruption, weakening its institutions. Peru has seemed politically stable through several consecutive presidential elections, but its political parties have weakened more each time; the prospects that an anti-system “outsider” will triumph has been high time after time, and has produced the election in the past twenty years of three such outsiders (Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala), all of who won because of their appeal in the most disadvantaged regions of Peru.

All these countries are mobilizing new participants in both politics and the economy, in many cases challenging established institutions and elites, and in some cases fostering efforts at “refoundation.” They tend, to differing degrees, to favor populist politicians who systematically weaken parties and other institutions, preferring to communicate directly with the public.

Implications for North America and Europe

First, the United States and Canada need to take more seriously the accelerating process of functional integration between them and their closest neighbors in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. New attitudes, approaches, policies and institutions are required to manage this increasingly complex but highly asymmetric interdependence.

Second, the countries of North America and Europe must adjust to Brazil’s new strength and stature by developing global cooperation with Brazil on a wide variety of issues, by no means confined to the Western Hemisphere.

Third the Andean countries present, especially to the United States but also to Europe, tough issues that include (in most cases) resource nationalism, narcotics trafficking, authoritarian governance and violations of human and labor rights, as well as international tensions arising from the ties some have been developing with global adversaries of the United States and Europe. For both the United States and Europe, a key aim in the Andean region, as also in Central America, is to help vulnerable countries strengthen their institutions in order to enable them to resist organized crime and drug trafficking organizations as well as resist the ALBA path. It is important for Washington and the members of the EU to distinguish carefully among the already aligned ALBA countries, looking in each case for common ground in order to confront shared problems. The thus-far promising beginnings by the governments of Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Ollanta Humala in Peru, and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador merit sympathetic attention and support, both from Europe and the United States. Both Washington and the EU countries should also seek case by case cooperation regarding shared concerns with Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua—and Cuba. How the international relations of all these countries unfold in the coming years will depend in each case not only on their internal evolution, but also on the willingness and capacity of international actors to relate to them individually and constructively.

Fourth, the United States, Canada and the European countries should think of Latin American and Caribbean nations not simply as sources of commodities, arenas for investment, export markets and suppliers of labor but as important potential partners in confronting the broad global agenda, from climate change to public health, nonproliferation to fighting organized crime. They should also focus on the synergistic energies that could be released by investing in Latin America’s infrastructure and its educational and technological capacity.

Fifth, the United States, Canada, and the countries of Europe should invite all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, whatever their political orientation, to join in dealing with the challenges that affect them all, and on which the former have as much to learn as to teach: improving research, opening up debate and undertaking concerted efforts to curb the violence and corruption that the drug trade produces; improving citizen security by focusing on what can be learned from experiences throughout the world on the relationships between citizen security and economic prosperity, social equity, political participation, community-based policing, and judicial and penal reform; and exploring and implementing feasible ways to understand and respond effectively to climate change and its consequences.

These global issues are not unique to the Americas, but they are all challenges for which the diverse countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are highly relevant.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Image Source: Â© Luis Galdamez / Reuters

Shifting the Balance: The Obama Administration and the Americas - A Midterm Assessment

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

January 6, 2011
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EST

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

As the mid-point in the Obama presidency approaches, the United States and the nations of Latin America face an array of tough policy challenges -- from immigration, narcotics and crime to humanitarian emergencies and democratic development -- in some of the hemisphere’s most complex nations. Shifting the Balance: The Obama Administration and the Americas (Brookings Press, 2011) analyzes the current state of U.S.-Latin American affairs and sets forth a series of specific recommendations for how the Obama administration might advance its goals toward building a more collaborative and pragmatic partnership with the Americas in the years ahead.

On January 6, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted the launch of Shifting the Balance featuring keynote remarks from Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela. Assistant Secretary Valenzuela provided opening remarks on the state of U.S.-Latin American relations and what the next two years might hold. He was joined by two of the book’s co-editors, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Abraham Lowenthal, professor at the University of Southern California, and Senior Fellow Ted Piccone, deputy director of Foreign Policy at Brookings.

Senior Fellow Mauricio Cárdenas, director of the Latin America Initiative, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. After the program, panelists took audience questions.

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

Arturo Valenzuela

Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. Department of State

The Disappearance of Latin America

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

All of us are used to reading, thinking, writing and making decisions about "Latin America." For many purposes, we treat all the countries south of the United States as if they were similar and even united. This is true in business and government, politics and policy, the media, and academia. We develop Latin American strategies and policies, publish Latin America-wide journals and magazines, and foster Latin American studies departments and research institutes.

We have long known, of course, that there are many widely diverse countries in the region we conventionally call Latin America. There are and always have been enormous differences between Argentina and Venezuela, Brazil and Belize, Mexico and Peru, Chile and Colombia. We often make statements about Latin America while making a mental reservation that the statement applies to some but not all the countries thought of as belonging to the region. And in recent years, many noted that there were converging trends in many countries: toward democratic governance, free market economies, policies of macroeconomic balance and regional integration. Many observers thought that Latin American countries were proceeding, albeit at different paces, in the same general direction, and that Chile was leading the way.

In reality, however, "Latin America" may actually be disappearing. Consider the following:

Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean are every year more North American, not Latin American. True, the majority of their citizens speak Spanish (or French or Dutch) rather than English, but so do majorities in southern Florida, southern California, parts of Texas and Quebec. These countries are every year more intertwined with and oriented toward the United States (and to a lesser extent Canada). They export most of their goods to the United States and they take most of their imports as well as tourists and finance from the United States. Large fractions of their work force are employed in the United States, and large percentages of their foreign exchange comes from remittances from their diaspora in the United States. Many use the US dollar as their informal and in some cases even their formal currency. The focus of vision for all classes is far more on the United States than on South America. Despite recurrent official nods at Latin America-wide cooperation, successive Mexican governments revert back to a North American priority.

Brazil, by far the largest country in the region, has never thought of itself as being a Latin American nation. The publisher of Brazil’s largest magazine told me once that the least read section of the publication was the section on “Latin America,” of little interest to most Brazilians. That aloof attitude has been reinforced in recent years as Brazil becomes an important player beyond the Western Hemisphere on a wide range of topics ranging from climate change to trade policy, nuclear non-proliferation to global governance. There are few issues on which it makes sense –in business, government or academia—to think of Brazil in “Latin American” terms.

The troubled countries of the Andean Ridge (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and to some extent Venezuela), together with Guatemala, Paraguay and in some ways southern Mexico are every year more “American” but less “Latin.” That is they are more and more defined by their links to the indigenous pre-Colombian, pre-European components of their heritage. This point is more true in some countries than in others, to be sure, but all these countries have profound issues of identity and governance that stem fundamentally from the history of exclusion to which their indigenous populations have been subject.

This view leaves Argentina, Chile and Uruguay as the only truly Latin American countries today. That is, these countries have a strong European flavor to their population, culture, cuisine and politics as well as to their international orientations. Comments about “Latin America” may perhaps apply in these three cases, but these countries are certainly not regional trendsetters in most respects.

It may well be time to retire or at least rethink the "Latin America" concept before we discover one day that no one responds when we call upon Latin Americans! At the least, we should consciously and carefully think what the countries south of the United States actually do have in common, and how important that is.

This article originally appeared in the Spanish-language magazine America Economia.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: America Economia

Obama and the Americas: Promise, Disappointment, Opportunity

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Incoming U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, have often announced a new policy initiative toward Latin America and the Caribbean. But few expected this from Barack Obama. His administration was inheriting too many far more pressing problems. During the presidential campaign, moreover, he had said little about the region beyond suggesting that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) be renegotiated and expressing vague reservations about the pending free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama.

Soon after Obama's inauguration, however, the administration organized high-level visits to Latin America and the Caribbean and announced various initiatives toward the region. Calling for a "new beginning" in U.S.-Cuban relations, it loosened restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by Cuban Americans, said it would consider allowing U.S. investment in telecommunications networks with the island, and expressed a willingness to discuss resuming direct mail service to Cuba and to renew bilateral consultations on immigration to the United States. The administration also backed away from Obama's earlier comments about the free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. In April 2009, the president announced that he would press for comprehensive immigration reform, a move that was welcomed throughout the region. He also won praise for his consultative manner and his interest in multilateral cooperation at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009.

In addition to the White House's preexisting commitment to attend the summit in Trinidad and Tobago, there were two main reasons for the Obama administration's surprising early attention to the Americas. One was the hope that it could score a quick foreign policy victory: people in the region had widely rejected George W. Bush's policies, but more because of style -- a combination of neglect and arrogance -- than because of any deep, substantive conflict. Obama aimed to do better.

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Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: Foreign Affairs

United States-Brazil Relations are Critical

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on President Lula da Silva of Brazil this week, hoping, among other things, to receive Brazil’s support in the United Nations Security Council for imposing stricter sanctions on Iran in response to that country’s nuclear program. Lula pre-empted her message even before they met by opining that it would not be prudent to back Iran against a wall. The dispute highlights Brazil’s willingness and capacity to carve out an independent world role, not necessarily antagonistic to the United States but not subordinate to Washington.

For all its immense challenges, Brazil is an increasingly successful and influential country. It has opened most of its economy to international competition, modernized its vast agricultural sector, developed industries with continental and even worldwide markets and expanded the global competitiveness of its engineering, financial and other services. Brazil has also slowly but steadily strengthened both its state and its nongovernmental institutions. It has achieved a high degree of previsibilidad, i.e. stability of expectations about the rules of the game and about the established process by which they could be altered. And it has forged an increasingly firm centrist consensus on the broad outlines of macroeconomic and social policies, including the urgent need to reduce gross inequities and alleviate extreme poverty, to continue to expand its large and expanding middle class and to improve the quality of education and access to it at all levels.

Brazil plays a growing role in international negotiations on trade, climate change, the environment, public health, food security and intellectual property. It is an active leader of the Global South and works closely with China, India and South Africa on several issues. It is also one of the influential and fast growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations, the darlings of international investors and geopolitical analysts. Brazil is developing its ties with many other countries around the world, including Iran, and it is ever more active in the United Nations, the G-20 and other multilateral fora.

In recent months, a good deal of comment has emerged about “rifts” between Brazil and the United States. The two governments have, in fact, had some notable differences, beyond the disagreement over the Iran sanctions issue. They had somewhat antagonistic perspectives on how to handle the Honduran imbroglio, as Brazil thought that Washington’s willingness to accept as legitimate the results of the elections conducted by the de facto Micheletti regime was tantamount or nearly so to condoning the unconstitutional coup. And Brazil also raised questions and made critical statements about the U.S.-Colombia military base agreement.

Some such differences should perhaps be expected between large countries with diverse and complex interests, in which foreign policy on both sides is inevitably affected by conflicting domestic political imperatives. They may well turn out to be relatively minor differences, perhaps less important in practice than long-standing and more mundane disputes over tariffs on orange juice, specialty steel and ethanol, restrictions on the transfer of certain technologies and subsidies to U.S. corn and cotton growers. But all these issues, whether of high politics or of routine engagement, need to be managed with keen sensitivity to consistently respectful communication and to overcoming a legacy of paternalist presumption, lest they cumulate and consequently interfere with cooperation on other and more important questions.

The fundamental challenge for U.S.-Brazil relations is to build greater synergy on major world challenges: strengthening global regimes for trade, finance and investment; developing and implementing measures to cope with climate change; preventing and responding to global pandemics; curbing nuclear proliferation; and reforming international governance arrangements. On all these issues, Brazil and the United States both have a lot at stake. Their interests are not identical but they are potentially compatible. Opportunities to work together on this whole agenda, in the Americas and beyond, should now be actively and consistently pursued as a high priority. Now that Ambassador Thomas Shannon, one of this country’s most accomplished diplomats, has finally reached Brazil after his confirmation was held up for months by partisan squabbling in Washington, he should concentrate on helping to build a strategic relationship that recognizes and respects Brazil’s role and aspirations, smoothes needless frictions and focuses sharply on how to strengthen cooperative efforts. And Brazil should invest equally in doing so, for a solid working relationship with the United States will yield far more for Brazil than cozying up to Iran.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Coup in Honduras: Can the Obama Administration’s Promising Start in the Americas be Sustained?

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The military coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras provides an early test of the Obama administration’s commitment to its new approach in the Americas, committed to multilateralism and cooperation with Latin American partners.

The Obama administration set out very early to improve U.S. relations in the hemisphere by strengthening partnership with Mexico and developing a strategic alliance with Brazil; taking responsibility for the domestic U.S. sources of some regional difficulties; indicating that it would build domestic coalitions to support expanded trade and sustainable immigration reform; pragmatically improving relations on a case by case basis with populist regimes; and moving carefully to build a mutually respectful relationship with Cuba, looking toward future rapprochement without abandoning U.S. concerns about human rights.

Will these positive initial moves endure? Honduras may prove to be a tough test. In the past, one U.S. administration after another has trumpeted a new policy, but more often than not, these new approaches have faded away: resisted by career bureaucrats, special interests, or both, and overwhelmed by regional realities or by other concerns. That is what happened, for example, in 1963 when elected President Ramón Villeda Morales was overthrown in Honduras, testing the resolve of the Kennedy administration to implement its announced policy that it would not recognize governments established by force. Washington suspended diplomatic relations immediately after the coup, but restored them less than two months later, recognized and accommodated itself to the anti-Communist military regime. This sequence contributed to the so-called Mann Doctrine of 1964, dropping the U.S. insistence on democracy.

Those who are skeptical that the Obama approach to Latin America will endure point to some early straws in the wind. Indications from the new administration that it respects the right of Latin American countries to diversify their international relationships appeared to be contradicted when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern about the increasing presence of China and Iran in the region. The President’s call for a new beginning with Cuba was followed by U.S. resistance to lifting the OAS expulsion of Cuba. Mr. Obama’s early promise that comprehensive immigration reform would be a first year priority soon gave way to a commitment only to begin consultations on the issue this year. After the new administration acknowledged the need to regulate the export of small weapons from the United States to Mexico, the President suggested that this was politically unrealistic. None of these indications is necessarily definitive—the lifting of the OAS expulsion of Cuba was deftly resolved by diplomatic compromise, for example—but they all raised doubts.

These have been further deepened by the new administration’s approach to trade policy, which has been confusing at best: rejecting protectionism but accepting a “Buy American” provision in the economic stimulus legislation, and expressing its willingness to proceed with the Free Trade Agreements for Colombia and Panama but postponing action. The administration has talked up energy cooperation with Brazil but has preserved the subsidy for U.S. corn-based ethanol producers and a high tariff on imported ethanol. Despite trumpeting enhanced partnership with Mexico, it allowed the experimental program for Mexican truckers to enter the United States to lapse, leaving the United States in non-compliance with an important NAFTA provision.

It is still possible, however, that the Obama administration’s early steps to reform U.S. approaches to Latin America can be sustained. The regional vision of the new senior policy team appears well-aligned with that of the career bureaucracy specializing in Latin American affairs. The administration’s Latin American policy approaches also fit well with both its domestic priorities and its broad international approach. Several interest groups that oppose the administration’s policies—notably the hard-line sector of Florida’s Cuban-American community and the gun lobby—have been weakened by the 2008 elections and the currents of opinion they reflect. Hispanic/Latino voters beyond the Cuban American community have been gaining influence, and generally support the policy changes the Obama administration is proposing. Mr. Obama may thus have room to maneuver on Latin American policy.

An administration that understands Latin America’s ongoing significance for the United States and that has an incipient strategic vision for the Americas should fend off the pressures that could undermine its promising effort to renew inter-American cooperation. The Honduras crisis provides an opportunity to reaffirm the Obama policies in the Western Hemisphere by supporting multilateral and institutional processes, relying on the Organization of American States and its Inter-American Democratic Charter, and encouraging Latin American leadership. This is, as Rahm Emmanuel would say, a crisis to take advantage of.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: The Jamaica Gleaner

Obama off to Good Start in Latin America

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Among the important accomplishments by President Barack Obama in his first 100 days has been a major step forward in U.S. relations with our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Obama's early meetings with Brazil's President Lula da Silva and with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico went well, and he accomplished his objectives at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. He conveyed an attractive approach to Latin America that is consistent with his overall worldview: confident, open, genuinely interested in consultation but also committed to expressing U.S. objectives and ready to move away from unilateralism and presumption without being defensive.

The substance and style of his prepared address, his informal comments and his banter and body language, as well as his thoughtful remarks at the final press conference, were all positively received.

Courtesy paid off

The improvement in the atmospherics of official U.S.-Latin America relations is stunning. Criticism voiced by Newt Gingrich and others about Obama's supposed weakness in exchanging friendly smiles and a handshake with Hugo Chávez, in welcoming expressed openness to Raúl Castro and in reassuring Bolivia's Evo Morales that the United States will not support the violent overthrow of his government are frozen in outmoded stances from the folks who invented the ''axis of evil.'' As a well-known Latin-American saying puts it, ``courtesy does not weaken courage.''

But friendly visits, photo-ops and well-crafted statements cannot substitute for implementing the policies that the new administration now needs to pursue in the Americas.

• First, the administration should move now to gain congressional approval of the already negotiated free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia; expand the Inter-American Development Bank's capital, needed to fund infrastructure and energy projects; and provide lending for the microfinance and social development the president announced in Port of Spain.

• Second, the administration should keep focused on the closest neighbors of the United States-Mexico and countries of Central America and the Caribbean in order to work on the shared concerns posed by their unusual degrees of demographic and economic integration with the United States.

The most important issues to address soon are new approaches to the narcotics trade, the related issues of arms and financial flows going south and a new immigration policy. None of these are easy, but the administration should tackle them this year.

• Third, Washington should further develop strategic cooperation with Brazil, both within the hemisphere and beyond, on energy, especially from renewable sources, and on trade, infrastructure, regional stability and global governance.

• Fourth, the administration should cautiously explore the prospects for rapprochement with Venezuela and Bolivia by attempting mutual confidence-building through limited and reciprocal steps, starting with the renewed exchange of ambassadors.

But the president and all of Washington should be prepared for the likelihood that rising domestic frustration and their personal qualities will push Chávez, Morales, or both, back to invective. If either or both revert to attack, as they well may, the administration should use the rope-a-dope technique that Muhammad Ali demonstrated so brilliantly: avoid being an easy target while contenders flail away.

• On Cuba, the Obama administration has begun well, but carefully: not only reversing the hardening of sanctions on travel and remittances the Bush administration imposed, but doing away even with some prior restrictions and announcing a willingness to facilitate investment in improved communications, including establishing fiber-optic cable and satellite connections between the two countries.

The administration took another symbolically important step by indicting Luis Posada Carriles for his alleged terrorist activities against Cuba, reversing years of previous unwillingness by U.S. authorities to do so.

Keeping it simple

And Obama's simple statement that the United States seeks a new relationship with Cuba was important, precisely because it was not accompanied, as statements by the previous administration had been, by calling first for change in the Cuban regime.

Navigating the next stages in the U.S.-Cuba relationship will be a complex task, for both sides have to overcome years of distrust, mutual hostility, propaganda and domestic sources of resistance to even symbolic changes.

The guiding principles for the Obama administration should be to improve the prospects for healthy relations in the medium term, avoid being trapped into letting Cuba dictate the pace of steps the United States should take in its own interest, and remain true to the basic tenets of U.S. policy, including a commitment to the protection of individual human rights.

Letting Latin American nations take the lead, without discouraging their efforts, is probably the best course for now.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: The Miami Herald

President Obama and the Summit of the Americas

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0400

President Barack Obama will travel to Mexico and then to the 5th Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad, beginning on April 16th. He would do well to remember Ronald Reagan's seemingly obvious but fundamentally important comment on returning from his first trip to South America as President: "These Latin American countries are all very different from each other."

It's crucially important for the new U.S. government at its senior levels to take seriously the oft-repeated advice of regional experts to disaggregate "Latin America" -- to understand its complex diversity. Emphasizing this is now more important than ever.

During the past 20 years, under administrations of both parties, Washington has tended to underline the supposed convergence within the region: toward democratic governance, market-oriented economies, regional economic integration and policies of macroeconomic and fiscal balance. These convergent trends were real, though never universal, and they have been significant, though never as fully consolidated as Washington liked to claim.

Key differences persist among the many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Some of the differences are growing, not shrinking. And U.S. policy should focus on how different countries of the Americas cluster along five separate dimensions.

The first is the degree of demographic and economic interdependence with the United States: highest and still growing in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean: lowest and likely to remain low in South America, and especially in the Southern Cone. Countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and others, which have significant fractions of their population living and working in the United States, pose "intermestic" issues -- combining international and domestic facets -- from immigration to medical insurance, pensions to drivers licenses, remittances to youth gangs.

A second dimension is the extent to which the countries have opened their economies to international competition: by far most fully in Chile; a great deal in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Panama and some Central American nations; and less so in other countries. A key challenge in the current world economic crisis will be to shore up the trend toward open economies by resisting domestic pressure for protectionism in our own case.

A third distinguishing dimension is the relative advance of democratic governance (checks and balances, accountability, and the rule of law): historically strong in Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica; increasingly, if quite unevenly, robust in Brazil; gaining ground in Mexico over the past twenty years but with ups and downs, hard struggle and major recent setbacks; arguably declining, or at least at risk, in Argentina; under great strain in Venezuela, most of the Andean nations, much of Central America and Paraguay; and exceptionally weak in Haiti. The Obama administration can make an important positive difference on these issues by respecting the rule of law at home and internationally, and by nurturing democratic governance abroad with patience, restraint and skill, mainly through nongovernmental organizations.

A fourth dimension is the relative effectiveness of civic and political institutions beyond the state (the press, trade unions, religious organizations, and nongovernmental entities): strongest in Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and perhaps Argentina; growing but still severely challenged in Brazil and Mexico; slowly regaining stature but still quite problematic in Colombia; weak in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, most of Central America and Haiti. Washington can help strengthen nongovernmental institutions, but it should do so as much as possible through multilateral organizations, and in strict accordance with each country's laws.

Finally, countries differ regarding the extent to which traditionally excluded populations are incorporated: this includes more than 30 million marginalized, disadvantaged, and increasingly politically mobilized indigenous people -- especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, the Peruvian highlands, and southern Mexico -- and Afro-Latin Americans in countries where they are still the object of racial discrimination. The very fact of President Obama's rise to the presidency has probably done more to affect this issue than years of more direct policies, but enhanced U.S. support for poverty alleviation targeted at excluded populations would also be helpful.

Hemisphere-wide summit conferences like the meeting in Trinidad have their place as a way of building communication and rapport, and they offer mutually convenient photo opportunities. But major progress on substantive issues can only be achieved with clusters of countries with comparable or complementary issues and concerns. Recognizing this reality should be the starting point for reframing U.S. policies in the Americas.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: The Huffington Post

A Latin America Game Plan

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama's visit to Mexico and then his participation later this month in the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad, will be his first visit to Latin America, not only as president but ever. That he is making the trip during his first 100 days in office is an important statement to the region, especially given the economic crisis that rightly consumes his administration.

The summit offers the president an exceptional opportunity to improve the substance of US-Latin American relations. It comes at a crucial time for our nation, with so many challenges at home and abroad, but it also comes at an opportune time. Latin American leaders are eager to meet and be associated with Obama, whose remarkable popular appeal is evident in the region, as it is in many parts of the world.

Obama can make excellent use of this opportunity, if he takes some steps before the summit, keeps a few key points in mind, and uses the meeting as much to listen as to speak. Here are seven recommendations for the president:

Solidify our representation in the region. Follow through on your campaign commitment to appoint a special envoy for the Americas. Be sure that the person chosen is one of recognized stature and that he or she has your personal confidence. Resist the pressure to name someone for mainly domestic political reasons. At the same time, retain Thomas Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, an experienced career Foreign Service officer with valuable knowledge and relationships.

Address Cuba beforehand. Announce, before you leave for the summit, that your administration aims for an end to 50 years of mutual hostility with Cuba. Do not limit change in Cuba policy to relaxing the restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban-Americans, but transform the US goal from regime change to expanded cooperation on shared concerns (such as narcotics, migration, and environmental pollution) without abandoning the US commitment to human rights.

Make clear your overall approach to the region. Emphasize in Trinidad that the United States fully recognizes the great diversity in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the shared commitment to effective democratic governance, and that all face common challenges: the economic downturn and unemployment rates, the need for secure and renewable energy, citizen insecurity, reducing the harm caused by the narcotics trade, combating social inequities, and improving education to help individuals achieve their potential and countries to be competitive.

Acknowledge that government institutions, in the United States as well as Latin America, need to become more competent, more effective, and more accountable to deal with broad societal issues such as poverty, crime, and competitiveness. Recognize the increasing demographic, economic, cultural, and political interdependence of the United States with its closest neighbors: Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean.

Address Brazil specifically. It is the fifth-largest nation in the world - by both land mass and population - and it deserves special attention. Without excessive rhetoric, make it evident that your administration seeks broad strategic cooperation with Brazil on energy security, regional stability, protecting the environment and public health, liberalizing and expanding international trade, and strengthening global governance.

Avoid confrontation. In the spirit of "no drama," avoid confrontation and finger-pointing with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez or any of his friends in Central and South America. Seek ways to work directly with each country, when possible through multilateral modes, on specific issues of shared concern.

Avoid promising too much. Do not pledge that the United States will pay much more attention to Latin America. Show, instead, that your administration will improve the quality of attention devoted to the Americas: by changing mind-sets, understanding and respecting distinct perspectives, and focusing on opportunities for cooperation.

Above all, listen. That respect will help build confianza, the essential trust on which Western Hemispheric cooperation will ultimately depend.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Publication: The Boston Globe

The Obama Administration and the Americas : Agenda for Change

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2009 275pp.

The Obama administration inherits a daunting set of domestic and international policy challenges. It would be tempting to put Latin America and the Caribbean on the back burner, for their nations pose no imminent security threat nor do they seem at first blush critical to the most pressing problems of U.S. foreign policy. The Obama Administration and the Americas, however, argues that the new administration should focus early and strategically on Latin America.

Our neighbors to the south impact daily on the lives of U.S. citizens, on issues such as energy, narcotics, immigration, trade, and jobs. And these are the countries most likely to partner with Washington on the basis of shared values, culture, and interests. Recognized experts from Latin America, the United States, and Europe suggest in this timely volume that the United States should seize an early opportunity to engage Latin America, recognizing the region's diversity but also its shared concerns and aspirations.

The consolidation of stable democracies and rule of law in Latin America has long been an expressed goal of both parties in Washington, but the backlash from Iraq, the global financial crisis, and other recent experiences may discourage the use of U.S. influence and assistance to nurture democratic governance. The authors emphasize case-by-case, sophisticated, and multilateral approaches to dealing with such hard cases as Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Related Event: The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change. Wednesday April 1

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Ted Piccone

Laurence Whitehead

Laurence Whitehead is an official fellow in politics at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. His books include Latin America: A New Interpretation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Foreword by Strobe Talbott

Strobe Talbott is president of the Brookings Institution. Talbott, whose career spans journalism, government service, and academe, is an expert on U.S. foreign policy, with specialties on Europe, Russia, South Asia, and nuclear arms control. As deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, Talbott was deeply involved in both the conduct of U.S. policy abroad and the management of executive branch relations with Congress.

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The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:30:00 -0400

Event Information

April 1, 2009
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

On April 1, Brookings hosted a panel discussion on the upcoming Summit of the Americas and the recently released book, The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2009), edited by Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Abraham F. Lowenthal, Brookings Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Foreign Policy Theodore J. Piccone and University of Oxford Fellow Laurence Whitehead. As President Barack Obama's prepared for his regional debut at the fifth Summit of the Americas on April 17, a panel of experts discussed prospects for cooperation on several of the toughest issues facing the hemisphere: immigration, narcotics, energy, trade and democratic development.

The Obama Administration and the Americas assembles strategic policy advice from Latin American, European and U.S. experts. These experts recommend that the new U.S. administration renew its approach to the region and work productively with its southern neighbors, recognizing the region’s diversity but also its shared concerns and aspirations. Focusing on the hemisphere’s most challenging nations -- Cuba, Colombia, Bolivia, Haiti, Mexico, and Venezuela – these regional specialists emphasize collaboration, multilateralism and pragmatism to formulate bold recommendations for President Obama.

The panelists included Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States; Lowenthal, professor at the University of Southern California; Whitehead; and Piccone. After the discussion, participants took audience questions.

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The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change

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20090401_americas

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Panelists

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California

Laurence Whitehead

Official Fellow in Politics, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan

Ambassador of Mexico to the United States

Central America in 2009: Off the U.S. Radar

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:10:13 -0500

A generation ago, three successive U.S. presidents—Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—came to office facing high profile issues in the Central American isthmus. Carter’s first national security memorandum dealt with the Panama Canal issue, and his administration soon found itself embroiled in the civil wars of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Ronald Reagan entered office determined to “draw the line” against international communism in Central America, stepped up U.S. involvement in El Salvador and supported a major program to establish a “contra” armed force to attempt the overthrow of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. And George H.W. Bush focused early on how to extricate the United States from intense intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua but soon undertook a massive U.S. military intervention to topple the Manuel Noriega government in Panama.

As Barack Obama prepares to take office, Central America is off the U.S. radar. There are so many accumulated problems to address, domestic and international, that it is hard to imagine that senior officials of the new administration will pay any substantial attention to what is happening in the Central American isthmus. Indeed, the recent apparent electoral fraud in Nicaragua’s municipal elections passed almost unnoticed in the U.S. media, in stunning contrast to the obsessive attention devoted to Nicaragua by the U.S. press, administration and Congress twenty years ago.

A quick comparison of four countries in the region I recently visited—Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama—with their situations twenty years ago is revealing.

All four countries are in many ways better off, in some aspects dramatically so, than they were twenty-five years ago. Nicaragua and El Salvador are at peace, facing political challenges but with no prospect of returning to civil war. Guatemala was still immersed twenty years ago in a brutal cycle of rural insurgency and genocidal repression: it has now managed several consecutive peaceful executive transitions and the inauguration in 2008 of a left-center social democrat, Álvaro Colom, who seeks to strengthen social programs, increase taxes and bolster the state; all this was utterly unimaginable twenty years ago. Panama twenty years ago was still in the grips of the deeply corrupt and repressive regime of Colonel Manuel Noriega; Noriega is now in jail in Florida, Panama’s press is free, and its elections are competitive and widely accepted as fair.

In all four nations, the permissible bounds of opinion and political participation have greatly expanded, and tolerance for diverse perspectives has grown. This profound change should not be taken for granted or underestimated.

Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, to varying degrees, have importantly diversified their economies, moving away from over-reliance on coffee, sugar, cotton and beef exports to more emphasis on nontraditional products (fruits, vegetables, cut flowers, seafood and poultry); maquila industries such as textiles, automotive parts and computer chips; tourism; and various services, including call centers. Panama, in turn, has very successfully managed the reversion of the Canal, greatly expanded its port and transshipment facilities and developed major banking and legal services centers. Construction is booming, tourism is expanding and the country, buoyed by the major Canal expansion project, has been experiencing enviably high levels of economic growth, with significant reductions in the number of people caught in poverty and extreme poverty.

All four countries have been strengthened by considerably expanded intraregional investment and trade and by improving access to the U.S. market, most recently through the DR-CAFTA arrangement. Massive emigration, mainly to the United States, especially from El Salvador and Guatemala, has relieved employment pressures, provided a vital stream of foreign exchange from remittances (amounting to 18% of GDP in the case of El Salvador), and produced important non-monetary remittances of ideas, techniques and aspirations. Expanded consumption in internal markets, a growing middle class, family connections with the diaspora, modern shopping malls and the omnipresent cell phone mean that urban residents in the interior, not just in the capital cities, are far better connected with each other and with the world. Among the items now being considered for inclusion in the basket of goods used to calculate the cost of living index in El Salvador are cable television, mobile telephones and dog food, a revealing reflection of the growth of middle class consumption.

The many who are still very poor and historically excluded, especially indigenous peoples in Guatemala, remain substantially disadvantaged. But they are no longer brutally silenced, they have and use diverse channels to express their needs and priorities, and their situations are slowly but surely improving. Investment in education has expanded significantly, and statistics on literacy and numbers of school years completed have risen impressively, although quality and performance remain very low. Other social indicators, including life expectancy, infant mortality and access to potable water, have improved throughout the region.

The Catholic Church has moved away from its long time role as a bulwark of the old order in Guatemala and is increasingly oriented there toward the poor, while in El Salvador the left wing of the Church has moderated its pro-revolutionary stance of the late 1970s and early 1980s toward a more apolitical posture. In both cases, the Church has been motivated at least in part by intense competition for market share with fast-growing evangelical Protestant movements, which now claim 35-40% of the population in both countries, when they have built enormous churches and are evident at every turn.

These countries remain sharply divided, however, between highly privileged elites and very large sectors of the population mired in poverty or extreme poverty. These two latter categories together total about half the population in Guatemala and Nicaragua, more than 30% in El Salvador, and more than 28% even in wealthier Panama. Politics and communications have democratized, but access to major economic assets and to high quality education is still extremely restricted. Significant economic growth has occurred since 1990 in Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala and since 2000 even in Nicaragua, but the benefits of growth are still very unequally distributed in all four countries. Guatemala’s elite has more helicopters per capita than any other country (admittedly in a mountainous terrain) but infant malnutrition rates in Guatemala, although improving, are still among the worst in the world. The contrast between the homes and lifestyles of the wealthy and of the poor, both urban and rural, remains stunning.

Political institutions in all these countries remain lamentably feeble. Presidents and national legislatures are elected, usually in votes that are widely accepted as credible, but they soon lose public approval because of corruption and ineffectiveness. Public confidence in most presidents is low, and in the legislatures is even lower. The judicial systems are widely regarded as corrupt, compromised and unable to provide accountability or tackle impunity. Political parties are mostly weak, with the exception of El Salvador, where the conflict between ARENA and the FMLN may soon polarize the nation once again. Political parties come and go with startling rapidity in Guatemala, and parties are mere personal vehicles in Nicaragua. In each of these countries, there is some danger of reversion toward authoritarian rule, with the signs most evident in Nicaragua, especially in the evident government manipulation of the November 2008 municipal elections.

There is now less fear or possibility of military intervention in politics, but by the same token, police institutions are mostly ineffective, unable to provide the basic elements of citizen security, especially in Guatemala and El Salvador. Emigration provides the benefit of remittances, but deportation back to the region of criminal youth has also contributed to the growth of gangs, known as maras, in both El Salvador and Guatemala as well as in neighboring Honduras.

Violent crime, including homicide, is also high in both countries and has moved beyond youth gangs and narcotics cartels to present a more pervasive threat, linked to the increasing power of organized crime. “You used to be at risk here if you said the wrong thing politically or joined the wrong group,” one Guatemalan observed, “but today you may die simply because you are on the wrong road at the wrong time.” Public opinion polls throughout the region, even in Panama, show that citizens are worried most about crime and impunity. Private security guards substantially outnumber the police in El Salvador and Guatemala. Nicaragua appears to be the least beset by these fears, in part because the country, helped by the former Sandinista military leadership, developed professional and apolitical military and police forces that still function relatively well. In Panama, while public opinion is concerned about crime and the drug trade, there is also fear in some circles that recent security reforms, ostensibly adopted to combat these dangers, could be abused, and could even lead to renewed militarism.

The immediate political challenges facing the countries are very different.

In Guatemala, President Colom is the first political leader to win office on the basis of rural electoral support, without carrying Guatemala City, but his leverage and authority are consequently limited. His finance minister recently presented a budget calling for significantly increased social investment requiring a modest increase in Guatemala’s remarkably low tax rates, but the conservative Guatemalan business sector staunchly opposes even these limited proposals.

In Panama, a third party candidate from the private sector is credibly challenging the two established parties, each derivative of caudillos from the 1960s, but has no party machinery of his own. In any case, some Panamanians say that elections merely serve to distribute opportunities for theft, and the judicial system remains a major question mark, despite the efforts of courageous individuals to make reforms.

In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega and his wife seem determined to manipulate the rules and procedures in order to perpetuate their own power, through maneuvers that have been facilitated by the general tendency toward short-term and tactical alliances in a polity with weak institutions and little enduring loyalty.

El Salvador faces the prospect for the first time of a highly competitive candidate put forward by the FMLN, TV personality Mauricio Funes, a moderate who is credibly challenging the 20-year long reign of the center-right private sector based ARENA party. Funes appears to be a modern social democrat in the model of Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Brazil’s Lula, but the FMLN itself still remains in the control of orthodox communist apparatchiks who have hung on since the 1960s and 70s. This raises doubts about how Funes would govern if he were elected. Business and professional elements, in turn, are split between those who believe that a Funes victory could be good for democracy in El Salvador and that its risks can be mitigated by cooperating on economic policy and those who seem bent on warning (and perhaps creating a self-fulfilling prophecy) of reckless radicalism.

Throughout these four countries, but especially in El Salvador, concerns are fast rising about the impact of the U.S.-triggered international financial and economic crisis. This crisis has already caused a drop in remittances to El Salvador and to a lesser extent elsewhere. It has also reduced markets for exports and therefore jobs, cut back tourism receipts and potential, slowed construction and investment because of credit constraints, and provoked a return of migrants who add to the pressures on the employment market and on public services. These worries are more immediate in El Salvador and Guatemala than in Nicaragua and Panama, but even in Panama economists and government officials are quietly but urgently assessing the new risks, while Nicaraguan officials must also contemplate the likely reduction in Venezuelan largesse, as international oil prices decline, and of European and other international budgetary assistance, both because of political reservations and worsening resource constraints.

Finally, the role of the United States in these countries has also changed remarkably since the time of intense interventionism in the 1980s. The United States embassy is still important in each country, but it is no longer the pinnacle of the local power structure. By the same token, these countries are ever more closely connected with U.S. society: demographically, economically and culturally. Hardly a Salvadoran family lacks a relative in the United States, and nearly the same could be said for Guatemala. Migrants from every country of the region move to the United States while U.S. tourists, retired persons and investors move down to the region. The dollar circulates as official currency in El Salvador and Panama and is widely used in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Transnational citizens and networks are expanding throughout the region, dealing with such issues as international health insurance, extraterritorial application of medicare benefits, portable social security payments, driver’s licenses and bilingual education.

The era when President Ronald Reagan could declare, however implausibly, that the United States had a vital national security interest in the internal political arrangements of Central America is long gone. None of these four nations is now considered vital for U.S. national security, nor does any present problems or solutions for the most pressing issues of U.S. foreign policy, as currently conceived.

But the bonds of interdependence, reinforced by proximity and legacy, make Central America and Panama relevant to the United States. It would not take much for the new Obama administration to have a very positive impact in this border region. It could do so by further extending Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Salvadoran migrants, pushing through a comprehensive immigration reform, getting Panama’s long-neglected Free Trade Agreement through Congress, working closely with international agencies to improve economic development and disaster relief assistance in the region, addressing extreme poverty as part of a consistent worldwide program and supporting regional efforts to improve energy and transportation infrastructure. These would all be modest but good investments in a region that time and again has pushed itself back onto the agenda of U.S. foreign policy.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal