February
23, 2006
Bush
and the Waning U.S. Position in Latin America
By
Wayne S. Smith
The Bush administration has managed to reduce U.S. credibility
and prestige in Latin America to its lowest point in memory. There
are rising tensions with Cuba and Venezuela, but that is but an
offshoot of the central problem. Elections over the past few years
have brought to power decidedly left-of-center governments in
Argentina, Uruguay, and now Bolivia, and more moderate shifts
in Chile, Brazil and Ecuador. And the trend may well continue
in the months ahead in Peru, Mexico and Nicaragua. The fact is
that the great majority of countries to our south are now to one
degree or another distancing themselves from us and taking position
not in consonance with our own. This was seen clearly this past
November at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata. Not only
were there massive demonstrations against President Bush, but
most of the other representatives rejected the only thing President
Bush had to offer – a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas,
which is now regarded as a dead letter.
The
stark erosion of U.S. influence was seen also at the Ibero-American
Conference in Salamanca, Spain, this past October, where despite
strenuous lobbying efforts on the part of the U.S., the foreign
ministers of Latin American, Spain and Portugal vociferously and
unanimously backed Cuba in calling for an end to the U.S. “blockade.”
As Mexico’s former Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaneda, put
it in The New York Times this past January 21st: “U.S. relations
with Latin America are in utter disrepair.”
They certainly are. A recent BBC poll found that 79% if those
queried
in Argentina had a highly negative opinion of President Bush,
as did 78% of those polled in Brazil. And a query conducted by
the Zogby International polling firm in Mexico, Colombia, Chile,
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, found that more than four out
of five respondents, or a whopping 81%, gave Bush a strong overall
disapproval rating.
U.S. Decline Not Engineered by Cuba and Venezuela
There is a tendency in the U.S., and especially in official circles,
to see this decline in U.S. influence as resulting from the growing
influence of Havana and Caracas. And to be sure, the hemispheric
movement toward the left does strengthen their positions. They,
however, are not the prime movers behind that trend -- however
much Castro and Chavez might wish it were so, i.e., wish they
had that much influence. Rather, declining U.S. influence is far
more a function of Latin America’s disagreement with or
outright rejection of certain U.S. policies and attitudes. We
have, in effect, brought it on ourselves.
It need not have been so. True, most of the Latin American states
had by 2000 rejected the neo-liberal economic model recommended
for them by the U.S. Argentina actually blamed its economic near
collapse on this U.S. endorsed policy. Still, abandonment of neo-liberalism
might have been accomplished without lasting damage to U.S.- Latin
American relations -- especially as immediately after the 9/11
terrorist attacks, there was an outpouring of support for and
solidarity with the United States. The world faced a new threat,
and, it was believed, the U.S. would now, as it had during the
Cold War, lead the way in confronting it, consulting with its
allies and working carefully within the international system as
it did so. The United States was seen, briefly, by the other states
of the hemisphere as the champion of a grand and noble effort.
U.S. Debasement of International Agreements
But the Bush administration quickly dispelled any such illusions,
making it clear that it gave – and gives – little
importance to international law, international treaties or to
the collective security system that had prevailed for the past
half-century. The U.S. had taken a wrong turn even before Bush
was elected, when, in 1998, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty, and then, in 1999, the International Criminal
Court. But in the latter case, the Bush administration itself
made matters far worse by insisting that governments that do support
the court must sign “bilateral immunity agreements”
with the U.S. so that they cannot use the court against U.S. citizens.
If they refuse, the U.S. will reduce or cut off any aid it gives
them. This has infuriated other governments around the world.
Most Latin American governments have refused to sign. The New
York Times
on October 16 of 2005, for example, quoted Ecuador’s president,
Alfredo Palacio, as saying “no one is going to make me cower,”
as he announced his government’s refusal to sign.
Other governments were stunned also by the Bush administration’s
withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, considered
the epicenter of the arms control system that had helped to neutralize
the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. Even more disturbing
was its announcement in 2002 of a new national security doctrine
which abandoned the policies of détente and containment
followed all during the Cold War, in favor of pre-emptive military
action against any state deemed by the U.S. to be a potential
threat.
Import of the War in Iraq
When seen against the background of the way the U.S. went to war
in Iraq, this new doctrine raises the specter of an unpredictable
international system in which the U.S. takes pre-emptive military
action against anyone it wishes on the basis of no hard evidence
at all. Claiming that it had irrefutable evidence that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to fire, it ignored
the UN Security Council and with a sneer for what Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld called “old Europe,” invaded. But there turned
out to be no weapons of mass destruction at all. Nor was there
any evidence of an Iraqi link to al-Queda. As an Argentine friend
put it to me: “Your invasion of Iraq points toward a profoundly
unstable international system – one guided by nothing more
than the whims of the United States.”
Implications
for Cuba and Venezuela
Latin American governments note that the new preemptive strike
doctrine has consequences for Cuba and Venezuela as well as Iraq.
The Bush Administration has said that Cuba is a potential threat
to U.S. security and its announced objective is to bring an end
to the Castro regime. Does that mean it intends to take military
action to bring about regime change?
“The embargo is one thing,” an Argentine friend commented.
“ But nothing in international law or the UN Charter gives
you the right to aim for regime change in Cuba. And if you try
to overthrow or bring down the Cuban government, you will find
Latin America massively against you.”
“The same,” he said,” is true in the case of
Venezuela. We note that the U.S. was certainly involved in the
coup against Chavez back in 2002 and that U.S. funded organizations
are working against him now. That constitutes blatant intervention
in Venezuelan affairs and is unacceptable.”
Conduct
of the Iraq War Harms U.S. Image
If the Bush administration’s justification for the war in
Iraq was deceitful, its conduct of the war has been a disaster.
Almost three years after President Bush strutted around the deck
of that aircraft carrier under the sign “Mission Accomplished,”
insurgent violence is growing in Iraq, not declining. Over 2,500
American have been killed, some 20,000 maimed and wounded, and
tens of thousands of Iraqis killed. And there is no end in sight.
If the Bush administration wanted to impress the world with the
decisiveness of American military prowess, his war in Iraq has
backfired.
U.S.
Image Besmirched by Abuse of Prisoners
Damaging the American image even more perhaps were the pictures
and reports of prisoner abuse coming out of Abu Ghraib in Iraq,
out of Bagram in Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Naval Base in
Cuba. As a Mexican journalist said to me recently, “When
we think of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, we think not of
happy liberated people, but of that hooded Iraqi prisoner with
electrodes hooked to his fingers and penis. He is the symbol of
what the U.S. has done in Iraq! We can no longer think of you
as a state promoting human rights!”
U.S. Neglect
Neglect and insouciance have also contributed to the decline of
U.S. influence in the area. For example, Bush early on promised
Mexican President Vicente Fox to negotiate a comprehensive immigration
treaty. But in fact he never made any effort to bring about such
an agreement; rather, he left Vicente Fox swinging in the wind.
Worse, the U.S. is now planning to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican
border, the exact opposite of what President Bush had promised.
Mexicans are outraged – and no wonder.
And then there is the case of Haiti, a nation with a long history
of political turmoil. But two years ago, there seemed to be a
good chance of bringing about compromise between President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide and his political opponents, one that might have led
to a more stable situation. As reported extensively in the January
29 edition of The New York Times, however, that was snuffed out
by elements in the Bush administration and by the International
Republican Institute and Aristide was forced out of the country.
What we have had since is virtual anarchy. Haiti is at this point
virtually a failed state. Whether that situation will or will
not be altered by the just-held elections remains to be seen.
In any event, the Bush administration seems still to have no intention
of trying seriously to address the problem. And yet, having a
failed state on one’s doorstep is not the best way to point
up the efficacy of one’s foreign policies.
Perception of the U.S. as a Declining Power
In view of all the above, there is a growing tendency in Latin
America to see the U.S. as a declining power, a tendency encouraged
further by such things as the utter failure of the Bush administration
to deal effectively with the destruction and human suffering caused
by Hurricane Katrina. A Venezuelan diplomat in Washington commented,”
this was not even up to the standards of the third world country.”
Much of the Latin American press was even more biting. Argentina’s
Clarin, for example, said that: “Katrina had more than the
power of wind and water, because now, when they have subsided,
it can still reveal the emptiness of an era, one that is represented
more than anyone else by President George W. Bush.”
And, finally, another serious problem of this “empty era”
is the troubled U.S. financial situation. A number of Latin American
diplomats and journalists with whom I have spoken in Washington
point to the fact that under the Bush administration, the U.S.
has every year had huge budget and trade deficits. Nor is there
any effort to reduce those deficits. On the contrary, a number
of them pointed out, the administration every year increases spending
at the same time that it continues to cut taxes. The result is
inevitable: even bigger deficits. “And who is financing
those deficits?” the same Venezuelan diplomat quoted above
asked. “Why, among others, the Chinese! They and the Japanese
are the leading two nations buying Treasury bills to bail you
out. In fact, if we read the figures correctly, you now owe the
two of them together over a trillion dollars. And with your deficits
marching unending over the horizon, we wonder where all this leads?”
So do many Americans.
