Foreign Policy In Focus

On one level, April’s hemispheric summit meeting was an old-fashioned butt kicking for Washington’s policies in the region. The White House found itself virtually alone—Dudley Do-Right Canada its sole ally—on everything from Cuba to the war on drugs. But the differences go deeper than the exclusion of Havana and the growing body count in Washington’s failed anti-narcotics strategy. They reflect profound disagreements on how to build economies, confront inequity, and reflect a new balance of power in world affairs.

The backdrop for the summit is anger in Latin America over the failure of the U.S. and Europe to stimulate their economies, all the while pursuing policies that have flooded the region with money—a “ monetary tsunami” in the words of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff—driving up the value of southern hemisphere currencies and strangling local industries.

After meeting last month with President Obama, Rousseff said she told him of Brazil’s “concern with the expansionary monetary policies of the rich countries…leading to the depreciation of developed countries currencies and compromising growth among emerging economies.”

While Latin American economies are in better shape than those in Europe and the U.S., the recession dogging the latter areas—plus the cooling of the Chinese economy—has slowed growth throughout much of Latin America. Brazil’s most recent figures indicate a stalled economy, which could have an impact on efforts by the Rousseff government to raise living standards and narrow what was once the world’s biggest gap between rich and poor.

According to the Getulio Vargas Foundation Brazil has lifted 33 million out of extreme poverty since 2003 and, out of a population of 190 million, has created a relatively well-paid workforce of some 105.5 million. In contrast to the U.S. and Europe, where the wealth gap is accelerating, income for the poorest 50 percent of Brazilians has risen 68 percent, while for the top 10 percent, it has grown only 10 percent.

This growth has come about because most countries in Latin America reject the economic model pushed by Washington and the European Union: free trade, financial deregulation, and deep austerity.

Argentina is the poster child for the region’s rejection of the so-called “Washington consensus.” Throughout much of the '90s, a deeply indebted Argentina followed the strictures of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), slashing government spending and instituting a suffocating austerity. The result was a “debt trap”: cutbacks increased unemployment, which dampened tax revenues, which required yet more cutbacks, and more unemployment. In the end, debts went up. From 1998 to 2002, Argentina’s economy shrank 20 percent. By the time Buenos Aires finally said “enough” and defaulted on its $100 billion sovereign debt, half of its 35 million people were below the poverty line.

Argentina reversed course and primed the economy with government spending on housing, highways and education. It also subsidized 1.9 million low-income families, which cut poverty in half. Since 2002, the economy has grown at an average rate of 6 percent a year, and joblessness has fallen from 20 percent to 8 percent.

Brazil has followed a similar strategy that is now threatened by the fiscal and monetary policies of the U.S. and Europe. Those policies have caused the value of Brazil’s currency, the real, to grow, which prices Brazilian manufactured goods out of the international market.

“There is concern in South America about deindustrialization,” says Alicia Barcena of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. “Therefore some countries are taking measures to support their productive sectors.” While the Obama Administration calls this support “protectionism,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega says, “The measures we are using are to defend ourselves.”

There are other issues Latin Americans are unhappy about that never made it into U.S. media accounts on the summit, in particular the make-up of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that Brazil—along with India and South Africa—would like to join.

As former Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva told the African Union summit last July, “It isn’t possible that the African continent, with 53 countries, has no permanent representation in the Security Council. It isn’t possible that Latin America with its 400 million inhabitants does not have permanent representation. Five countries decide what to do, and how to do it.”

The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China.

While the U.S. has endorsed India’s bid—in large part because it is wooing New Delhi to join its anti-China coalition—Washington has been consciously silent on Brazil’s bid. Indeed, United Nations U.S. representative Susan Rice has been sharply critical of Brazil, India and South Africa for not supporting intervention in Syria. “We have learned a lot [about these three countries] and frankly, not all of it encouraging.” The message is clear: back us and we will think about it.

The summit was particularly critical of the Obama administration around the exclusion of Cuba, causing the President to turn positively peevish. “Sometimes I feel…we’re caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yankees and the Cold War.”

But from Latin America’s point of view, by maintaining a half-century-old blockade, it is the U.S. who seems locked into the world of the Cold War. And there are, indeed, some worries about “gun boats,” specifically those that make up the newly re-constituted U.S. Fourth Fleet, mothballed in 1950 and revived by the Bush Administration. The U.S. has also recently established military bases in Colombia and Central America.

The Brazilians are particularly nervous about the security of their newly found offshore oil deposits, and the head of the Brazilian Navy, Admiral Luiz Umberto de Mendonca, is pressing Brasilia for surface ships and submarines.

Testifying before the Brazilian House of Representatives, Simon Rosental of the prestigious Escuela Superior de Guerra (ESG) institute warned that “The world has known oil reserves that will only last 25 years and in the United States, only for the next ten years.”

It may be a bit of a stretch to imagine the U.S. actually threatening Brazil’s offshore oil deposits, but Latin Americans can hardly be blamed if they are a tad paranoid about the Colossus of the North. For the past 100 years the U.S. has overthrown governments from Guatemala to Chile, and supported military juntas throughout the region. Brazil only recently emerged from its own U.S.-backed dictatorship.

“South America,” says Moniz Banderia of the ESG, “is really trying to define its own identity, to differentiate itself from the United States, in opposition to its domination, which is evident in the creation of UANSUR [Union of South American Nations] and the South American Defense Council.”

UNASUR was established in 2008 and includes all 12 South American nations, plus observers from Panama and Mexico.

The Defense Council’s Action Plan 2012 aims to integrate the militaries of the region, establish a “peace zone” on the continent, and create a space agency, an essential step for launching satellites.

Certainly issues like Cuba, the war on drugs, and the tensions over Britain’s claim on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands are areas of friction between the U.S., Europe and South America. But it is in the realm of economics, poverty alleviation, and independent foreign policy that the differences are sharp.

South Americans tried the austerity model and found it wanting. They have also seen the U.S. and NATO spark wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and they are deeply suspicious of policy of “humanitarian intervention” in places like Syria because they don’t trust the motives behind it. Members of the BRIC countries, made up of Brazil, South Africa, India, Russia, and China, share those suspicions.

“There’s almost a third-world sense, a post-colonial sense,” says Mark Quarterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “that they were meddled in, in ways that didn’t rebound to their benefit, and now the same countries are claiming humanitarian reasons for meddling.”

Thus in Libya, the UN enforced an arms boycott and an oil embargo on the Qaddafi regime, while the French supplied arms to the rebels and Qatar handled rebel oil sales. Brazil and other BRIC nations see a similar pattern in Syria. In the meantime, the U.S. and Europe are conspicuously silent on oil-rich Bahrain’s suppression of its Shiite majority and the lack of democracy in the monarchy-dominated Persian Gulf states.

So far the Obama Administration has responded to South America’s growing independence by increasing the U.S. military footprint in the region and acting churlish. While the leaders of India and South Korea got formal state affairs, the U.S. President gave Rousseff a two-hour meeting. “Obama could have taken her to dinner,” one Brazilian official complained to The Guardian (UK) “or to the Kennedy Center.”

But Latin Americans no longer pay as much mind to the atmosphere in Washington as they used to. They are too busy confronting poverty and underdevelopment, forging a multi-polar world in which the U.S. is looking increasingly out of touch.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

For the second time since assuming office, President Obama met with the hemisphere’s leaders at the sixth presidential summit in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14 and 15. At first glance, the summit’s theme, “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity,” would have been better stated as “Disconnecting the Americas.” The presidents could not come to consensus on a final declaration that had long been in the works in draft form. Brazil’s harsh criticisms of U.S. monetary policy were widely applauded. Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner left the summit early, after the United States refused to go along with a statement endorsing Argentine’s right to the Malvinas Islands, insisting on U.S.  neutrality in the dispute between Argentina and Great Britain (where they are known as the Falkland Islands). The biggest tension, however, emerged over Cuba. While the rest of the hemisphere remained remarkably united around the idea that Cuba should participate in the next summit, scheduled for 2015, Canada and the United States remained steadfast in their opposition. (This ticking time bomb may very well derail future hemispheric summits.) To add insult to injury, the United States was deeply embarrassed by serious allegations of U.S. Secret Service agents drinking to excess and cavorting with prostitutes, harking back to the image of Latin America as a U.S. playground (a la Havana 1959).

Yet what was refreshing about the Cartagena meeting was that these differences were aired in public. Though conflict has taken center stage in previous summits, most were highly scripted events that provided more of a photo op than a meaningful forum for debate. This time, debate – and discord – took center stage. 

The lasting legacy of the Cartagena summit, however, will likely be the beginning of a serious regional debate on international drug control policies. With the apparently adept leadership of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, the issue was discussed at a private, closed-door meeting of the presidents – according to press accounts, it was the only issue discussed at that meeting  – and Santos later announced that as a result of the presidents’ discussion, the Organization of American States (OAS) was tasked with analyzing the results of present policy and exploring alternative approaches that could prove to be more effective. A topic long considered taboo – the U.S. “war on drugs” – is now being seriously questioned and debate on new strategies – including legal, regulated markets – is officially on the regional agenda.

The significance of this development cannot be underestimated. For years, Washington has used its economic and political muscle to squash any dissenting opinions from Latin American governments. Academics and other experts who proposed alternative policies were ostracized as “legalizers,” even if that is not what they were proposing. The “L” word could not even be mentioned in official circles. In fact, the present debate is not about outright legalization per se but rather legal, regulated markets. Administration officials, nonetheless, continue to misconstrue the issue. At the summit, President Obama said that drug traffickers could “dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint.”

Now, Latin American governments have turned the tables, taking on a leadership role in considering alternative policies. Numerous sitting presidents – including Santos, Guatemala’s Otto Pérez Molina, Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla and even Mexico’s Felipe Calderon – are lamenting the failure of present policy to stem the flow of illicit drugs or reduce the violence associated with the drug trade. There is also widespread frustration that while Latin American countries are paying a high political, social, and economic cost from both drug trafficking and drug policies themselves, Washington’s approach to the drug issue remains on auto-pilot, with no serious debate evident on Capitol Hill or in the White House.

Guatemala’s president, retired general Otto Pérez Molina, has emerged as the primary promoter of rethinking the drug war and has insisted that all alternative options must be on the table, including legal, regulated markets. On March 24, he hosted a Central American regional summit, “New Routes Against Drug Trafficking.” Though all of the region’s presidents initially accepted the invitation to participate, the presidents of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras dropped out at the last minute (Honduras sent its Vice President) – no doubt due at least in part to U.S. pressure. Indeed, Pérez Molina’s initiative has brought more U.S. officials to the region than at any moment in recent history, including Vice President Joe Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Under Secretary of State, Maria Otero, and the top drug policy official at the  State Department, William Brownfield. Nonetheless, those present at the Guatemala meeting point out that a lively debate took place and it helped ensure that the drug issue was raised at the summit.

While making clear that no change in U.S. policy is in the offing, Washington has reluctantly agreed to participate in a debate. At a press conference with President Santos on April 15, President Obama said: “I think it wouldn’t make sense for us not to examine what works and what doesn’t, and to constantly try to refine and ask ourselves, is there something we can do to prevent violence, to weaken these drug traffickers, to make sure that they're not peddling this stuff on our kids and they're not perpetrating violence and corrupting institutions in the region,” hastily adding, “I'm not somebody who believes that legalization is a path to solving this problem.” In a presidential election year, the administration is no doubt going to tread very carefully when it comes to the drug issue.

The United States is no doubt pleased that the OAS was tasked to study the issue. The Secretariat of its Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) is traditionally led by someone appointed by the U.S. government (presently it is former U.S. diplomat, Amb. Paul Simons) and it is widely perceived across the region as a U.S.-driven agency. However, ultimately, CICAD’s agenda and focus is dictated by member states. The burden is now on those member states advocating reform to ensure that the OAS effectively carries out its mandate to explore all alternative policies and to include in the discussion relevant experts and organizations with significant expertise, such as the Pan American Health Organization. 

Present international drug control policies are deeply-rooted and change will no doubt come slowly.  However, as a result of the Cartagena summit, for the first time a meaningful debate on developing and implementing drug control policies that are more humane and effective is underway. The genie is out and will be very hard to put back in the bottle, as much as U.S. officials might try.

Coletta A. Youngers is the Latin America Regional Associate with the International Drug Policy Consortium and a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

As a rule, anything the New York Times says about developments in Latin America should be taken with a couple of handfuls of salt. The paper regularly does its readers a disservice by painting a picture of developments in the region created in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. Case in point: an April 12 report titled “Trade, Energy and Drugs Are Topics for Obama at Summit of the Americas” by correspondent Jackie Calmes, which made the claim that “For the most part, the tension over Cuba seems mostly to be behind Mr. Obama.” According to Calmes, “Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, announced earlier this month that he would boycott the meeting in Colombia because Cuba, as usual, was not invited, but he failed to persuade other leftist leaders in the region to do the same,” and that Cuban President Raul Castro “said he did not want to attend anyway, sparing Mr. Obama the prospect of any photo opportunities with a Castro.”

Of course, we have no way of knowing whether Castro actually said that and neither does the Times. However, according to the Associated Press, the Cuban leader had expressed a desire to attend the meeting but was “delicately” told by the Summit host, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, that that would be impossible because it would put U.S. President Barack Obama in the position of “facing an awkward meeting with the Cuban leader or having to boycott the summit himself.”

The 6th Summit of the Americas was scheduled for April 14-15 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. According to the Falklands/Malvinas-based Merco Press, “Though the summit's official agenda ranges from technology to poverty reduction, Cuba was once again shaping into the No. 1 hot potato for those gathering in the Caribbean port city.”

There are 43 nations participating in the summit; only two – the U.S. and Canada – oppose Cuba’s participation. On April 12, a pre-summit foreign ministers meeting is said to have failed to agree on a last minute proposal to invite the island nation

However, reading Calmes’ report one might get the impression that the issue of Cuba’s participation in the leadership gathering had ceased to be much of an issue and Correa was isolated in his position. No mention was made of the statement made weeks ago by Bolivia's President Eva Morales that "We have arrived with the conviction that this must be the last summit without Cuba.” Or, of Santos’ statement: “I hope this is the last summit without Cuba.”

Nor did the Times report note that the recent visit to the US by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff came following her stay in Cuba and consultations with President Castro. While in Havana she criticized the existence of the U.S. base and prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Perhaps more revealing of the Times’ approach to the unfolding situation was its failure to note the symbolism of – or indeed, even report on – the pre-summit visit to Havana of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, where, according to Prensa Latina, he expressed “His government's interest in bringing relations with Cuba to the highest level.” Calderon arrived in Cuba April 11 for a two-day visit. 

According to Reuters, “Calderon said on Wednesday upon his arrival in Havana that ‘in spite of our natural and different points of view about various issues,’ an effort would be made during the visit to ‘take our bilateral relation to its best level’."

"We want to broaden trade and investment between Cuba and Mexico," Calderon told journalists in Havana. ““We are interested in cooperating in health, education, culture and sports, as well as in bilateral exchanges in energy,” said Calderon. “My visit is due mainly to the friendship and brotherhood existing between the two peoples.”

From Cuba Calderon flew to Haiti and from there was on to the Summit in Colombia. 

As it turned out that the exclusion of Cuba was indeed a big hot potato at Cartagena de Indias and it is clear the issue is not going away. Despite the wishes of Washington and Ottawa this was almost certainly
the last time the pushy norteamericanos determine who comes to summits and who does not.

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

The war on drugs is America’s forgotten war. For over 40 years, it has continued largely unnoticed outside the region and, for the last decade, has been almost completely overshadowed by the war on terror and the related conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the illicit drugs trade and the militarised government responses are the greatest threats to state and human security in the Americas; many analysts and policymakers now conclude that the war on drugs has largely failed.

Open Briefing has today published a policy briefing outlining a 'sustainable security' alternative to the war on drugs. 

Rehabilitating the war on drugs: Central America and the legalisation debate assesses the implications of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina's surprise announcement that he wants to open a regional debate on the legalisation of drugs. The authors, Chris Abbott and Joel Vargas, conclude that decriminalising some drugs and legalising others should form the foundation of a sustainable security strategy to tackle the violent crime associated with the illicit drugs trade in the Americas. The report outlines the following integrated programmes that would constitute an effective strategy:

• Decriminalising some drugs and legalising others in a staged process.

• Separating the law enforcement and military elements of tackling drug-related organised crime.

• Addressing citizen security challenges, including lack of personal safety.

• Addressing police corruption through career-long training, supervision and assessment.

• Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration programmes for former cartel members.

• Radically increasing funding for drug education and treatment programmes in North America.

By focusing on ineffective supply reduction strategies, the war on drugs is destroying the countries of Latin America in order to protect those of North America. The Sixth Summit of the Americas on 14-15 April needs to allow for a proper debate on the potential legalisation of drugs, and Central American leaders must be prepared to develop policy strategies that also ensure the health and security of their own citizens rather than only benefiting others. The sustainable security strategy outlined in Rehabilitating the war on drugs could form the basis of such an alternative to the war on drugs. 

Chris Abbott is the founder and Executive Director of Open Briefing.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan went on a disastrous tour of Latin America. In a series of gaffes that would have embarrassed an especially out-of-touch Japanese politician, Reagan proposed a toast to ‘the people of Bolivia’ at a dinner with the president of Brazil, and opined that Guatemalan military strongman Ríos Montt, who is now facing genocide charges, was ‘totally dedicated to democracy’. After the trip, Reagan memorably told reporters that ‘I learned a lot...you’d be surprised, yes, because, you know, they're all individual countries.’

President Obama will himself be heading to Latin America in April for the sixth Summit of the Americas, where he will meet the leaders of other nations in the Organization of American States (OAS). While it’s improbable that he will cause as much offense as Reagan, he could still be in for an awkward weekend.

US relations with Venezuela, for example, have scarcely improved since the days when George W. Bush’s nemesis, Hugo Chávez, was calling the ex-president a ‘donkey’ and a ‘drunkard’. Earlier this year Washington chucked Livia Acosta Noguera, Venezuela’s consul-general in Miami, out of the country. No explanation was forthcoming, but there were rumors that it was related to a murky affair during Acosta’s time as a diplomat in Mexico, when, it is claimed, she engaged in discussions with students about possible cyberattacks against US interests.

Reacting to the ignominious expulsion of his representative in Miami, Chávez announced he was closing the consulate, a decision which caused some irritation in the locality, even leading to a small demonstration. This was the latest spat in what has been a fractious three years. In 2010 Chávez refused to accept President Obama’s nominee for the post of US ambassador to Caracas, Larry Palmer, whereupon Washington got its own back by revoking the visa of Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington. The two states still do not have full diplomatic relations.

The Obama administration has also decertified Venezuela three years in a row for failing to cooperate sufficiently with Washington’s anti-narcotics efforts. Even the amount of Venezuelan oil imported by the US is in decline, only accounting for about 8 percent of total US imports in 2010.

Still, despite the early optimism, it was somewhat predictable that the US-Venezuela relationship would not recover from the deep freeze of the Bush presidency. Even as a candidate, Obama had called the Venezuelan leader a ‘demagogue’ who spouted a ‘predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy.’

Relations with Bolivia can’t be said to have gone smoothly either. Like Venezuela, Bolivia has repeatedly been decertified by the Obama administration for having ‘failed demonstrably’ to meet its international anti-narcotics obligations. Not until November 2011 did the two countries agree to restore full diplomatic relations, which had been suspended in 2008 when Washington and La Paz engaged in tit-for-tat expulsions of ambassadors, and Bolivian president Evo Morales sent the US Drug Enforcement Agency packing. Morales’ government continues to insist that the DEA will not be permitted to return to Bolivia.

As for Cuba, it’s effectively been business as usual. Although Obama went through with his campaign pledge to remove barriers to family travel for Cuban-Americans seeking to visit the island, Washington’s fifty year old trade embargo has not been lifted and the Caribbean nation still features on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Havana has expressed a wish to attend April’s summit in Colombia, but the likelihood is that it will not, as the US has stressed that its old adversary will only be invited if it carries out democratic reforms.

Both Cuba and Bolivia bristle at the existence of US ‘democracy promotion’ programs targeting their countries. In 2009 a contractor named Alan Gross was arrested in Cuba for his role in the US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s ‘democracy promotion’ activities in the Caribbean nation. Gross had been engaged in setting up internet access in the island – in violation of Cuban law – and smuggled prohibited, state of the art components into Cuba. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for spying.

The US president will at least be able to rely on a warm welcome from his hosts. He has spoken approvingly of Colombia, calling it ‘one of our strongest partners not only in the region but around the world.’ The administration’s foreign aid request for 2013 seeks roughly US$330 million in socio-economic and military assistance for Colombia. While this is considerably less than Bush-era aid packages for Colombia, it continues Washington’s long-standing and controversial support for Bogotá’s fight against drugs, insurgents and poverty.

The Colombian government has another reason for being well-disposed towards Obama. Last year the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) finally passed Congress, almost five years after it was signed by President Bush. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has, like his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, been a strong advocate of the CFTA. Although this trade pact is controversial, partly because Colombia is the world’s most dangerous country for trade unionists, Obama has argued that it represents ‘a major win for American workers and businesses.’   

Michael Walker has a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews.