Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

POLITICS: Uncle Sam Disappointed with Latin America

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Apr 21 2003 (IPS) - Disappointment is a recurring word – with some unsettling connotations – in recent statements by U.S. officials about Latin America, a region that largely resists "backyard" status despite the expanding power of the neighbour to the north.

Washington euphemistically used the word "disappointment" with regards to Chile, "for its stance against the United States in the United Nations Security Council before the war against Iraq began, and to Argentina for its discrepancies with the vote criticising Cuba promoted in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights," notes Chilean political scientist Antonio Cortés Terzi.

The Iraqi and Cuban questions were the source of the major diplomatic conflicts of recent times in the U.N. scenario, and in both cases the U.S. government of George W. Bush was a long way from winning decisive support from the Latin American representatives.

Chile and Mexico, the two Latin American countries currently holding posts in the rotating membership of the U.N. Security Council, rejected the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, a position that was echoed throughout the Americas, where only six countries, led by Colombia, backed the military action.

"Washington obtained more support in Europe (for the war) than in its own hemisphere," says Argentine expert Rosendo Fraga, referring to the so-called "coalition of the willing", the 49 countries that aligned themselves with Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The "Latin American non-alignment", as Fraga terms it, was manifest once again beginning Apr 17, during the vote on Cuba by the 53 member states – among them 11 from Latin America – in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

Argentina and Brazil abstained from the vote on a resolution critical of the Fidel Castro government, while Venezuela voted against it.

Mexico and Chile supported the resolution that passed with 24 votes, a text that was seen as moderate in its criticism of Cuba’s human rights record, but the two did not back a more harshly worded amendment unsuccessfully promoted by Washington through Costa Rica.

Where U.S.-Latin American relations are on the diplomatic gameboard now is among the unknowns to be resolved in the international panorama following the war in Iraq, where Washington’s unilateralist and hegemonic stance placed the world under a "state of emergency", as Cortés Terzi wrote in the Spanish- language Internet journal ‘Asuntos Públicos’ (Public Affairs).

Experts consulted by IPS agreed that Latin America is a secondary concern of the Bush administration, though is far from being ignored in its foreign policy parameters, which are based on security and, under the Bush Doctrine, "pre-emptive war".

The United States has two security challenges in the region: Colombia and its ongoing civil war, and Cuba, where the recent crackdown on dissidents has given "new justification" to pressures from Washington, according to Brazilian retired army colonel Geraldo Cavagnari, coordinator of strategic studies at the University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo.

But Cavagnari pointed out that the White House’s security priorities are in the Middle East, Central and South Asia (Afghanistan, India and Pakistan) and the Korean peninsula.

Also on the list of priorities is the need to rebuild relations with Europe, an objective crossed by the disputes over participation in the reconstruction of Iraq, says Clovis Brigagao, director of American studies at the private Candido Mendes University of Rio de Janeiro.

But Theotonio dos Santos, professor of international economy at Fluminense Federal University of Niteroi, near Rio, reckons that the concept of pre-emptive military action could "heat up" at any time in Latin America, from Washington’s perspective.

Along that line are four points of tension, which are the "Puebla-Panama Plan, for Central American development, Colombia and its counterinsurgency fight, which extends to the Amazon region, Venezuela (with the outspoken government of Hugo Chávez) and the Triple Frontier (of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay)," says Dos Santos.

Journalist Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, said last week in Caracas that "a group of hawks (in the Bush administration) want to prove that military strength should be the principal element of U.S. foreign policy."

And that is "a threatening sign in the direction of Cuba and Venezuela," Ramonet said.

Marc Homedes, a Chilean political analyst, noted that Latin America "went from being Bush’s top priority two years ago, at the time of his election, to complete marginalization," due to the "short-circuit" in the administration resulting from the Sep 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Since before the war against Iraq, the only visits by top-level U.S. officials to the region were related to the economy, and in particular to Washington’s "star project", the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), commented Homedes.

Mexico, which ostensibly holds a privileged position in dialogue with the United States, being the closest Latin American neighbour, saw bilateral negotiations on migration, and even trade talks, come to a virtual standstill after Sep 11, 2001.

But even though Latin American issues are not a priority on the Bush foreign policy agenda, much attention is being paid Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba in terms of security, and the FTAA in terms of trade, Isabel Jaramillo, a Chilean expert at Cuba’s Centre for American Studies, told IPS.

Jaramillo believes that as 2004 approaches, an electoral year, Bush will begin to pay relatively more attention to Latin America "for the sake of cultivating the Latino vote in the United States for his re-election."

But Brazilian retired officer Cavagnari suggested that the FTAA is tending to backslide, and Brigagao stressed that the vital interests involved in the hemisphere-wide treaty could ultimately return a leadership role to Latin America vis-à-vis Washington.

That is, "If Brazil and the future government of Argentina (resulting from this month’s elections) take appropriate steps," Brigagao added.

The FTAA, the negotiation of which is to end in early 2005 and enter into force that year or early 2006, is of particular interest to the Washington as an instrument "to maintain Latin American under control when tensions between the United States and Europe intensify," says Dos Santos.

"The implementation and timeline of FTAA have become uncertain," according to Fraga, who cites as a symptom the fact that Mexico and Chile, the region’s two countries most closely integrated economically with the United States, did not back Bush in the Iraq debate in the UN Security Council.

Washington’s "disappointment" in Chile has already translated into a postponement of steps towards the U.S. congressional ratification of a bilateral free trade treaty that the two countries signed last November.

(* Marcela Valente/Argentina, Mario Osava/Brazil, Patricia Grogg/Cuba, Diego Cevallos/Mexico and Humberto Márquez/Venezuela contributed to this report.)