President Bush has been witnessing the advent of a new bloc of left-leaning and sometimes robustly anti-American leadership that has sprung up in countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, among others. At the same time, there are a number of recent developments throughout the region that Washington only now beginning to correctly see as a menace to its own narrow definition of U.S. national interests. Bush will discover that the region will never be the same now that Washington’s obsession with Iraq has freed up the region to go its own way on a number of global highways. Preceding by several weeks President Bush’s upcoming visit to Latin America, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad stopped off in Caracas, Managua and Quito in mid-January to welcome an expanding crop of tough-minded and often abrasive hemispheric figures willing to aggressively speak out on regional issues, often at Washington’s expense. Ahmedinejad’s visit coincided with civil unrest in Mexico, threats of secession in Bolivia, and President Chávez’s crackdown on a rabidly right-wing Caracas TV network.
Until recently, it seemed that the flowering of a new generation of hemispheric populist leaders symbolized by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales who appeared to have less to do about leftist rhetoric than with hard policy aimed at advancing a coherent political system which would best serve their basic constituency, the poor, but not necessarily Washington’s. Now, however, with Washington’s massive distraction over Iraq and its deteriorating relationship with Iran, the challenges posed by a restless Latin America have resulted from an unexpected opportunity to break from its traditional moorings and sail free. Ultimately the U.S.’ ability to lead and inspire its neighbors, will no longer be automatic, but will have to be earned.
Bush is No Student of Latin America
When Bush thinks of the region, images of his amiable paladins like El Salvador’s Tony Saca, whose administration could not survive an audit, or Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias, who sees only his own reflection in everyone’s mirror, come to mind. But they are hardly anything more that yesterday’s Latin America, a function of failed U.S. regional policies. With the U.S. mired in its problematic “War on Terror,” a new faction of self-absorbed Latin American nationalists are becoming increasingly emboldened by Washington’s mounting irrelevance in the region’s future.
The Bush administration is being made aware that its leverage in Latin America is rapidly dissipating. Even well-meaning kinsmen found at the top in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, let alone its Central American banana republics, don’t always salivate when the bell is rung. If this is true, the U.S. could be running out of conventional diplomatic options to “stay the course.” Today, apart from Central America’s durable servitors like El Salvador and Costa Rica, and the White House’s victory in turning the CAFTA-DR free trade pact into a portal for the U.S.’ entry into Central America’s markets, only Mexico remains to be accommodated. For President Calderón, Washington must establish a guest workers program so that he may reach his goal of successfully exporting up to a million undocumented workers to the U.S. which would help alleviate the immigration issue between the two countries. Meanwhile, the moderate left in South America seems to be fast escaping from Washington’s grasp as the region goes global, not only in matters of trade but in mindset. With the region’s leaders offering growing resistance to Washington’s free trade model and their refusal to take a U.S.-sought defiant stance against Chávez’s provocative rhetoric and leftist goals, Latin America is signaling that it will not necessarily follow a Washington-defined development path, which is better known for its inability to break away from Cold War instincts.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0702/S00339.htm
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