foreign policy for Latin America?
Moisés Naím
The President would be hard-pressed to describe how his
policies toward the region differ from those of his predecessor.
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A lot is happening in Latin
America. The dynamism in business,
politics, society, international relations, and even the criminal cartels
is obvious. In contrast, U.S. policy
toward Latin America is lethargic,
unimaginative and surprisingly irrelevant.
Consider what is going on south
of the U.S. border. For starters, and
to everyone’s surprise, the region
known for its legendary economic
mismanagement and frequent financial crashes weathered the global financial storm amazingly well. It is
now posting economic growth rates
exceeded only by Asia. In politics, a
new cohort of presidents has been
elected through fair and free elections. All of these heads of state come
to power with broadly positive attitudes toward the United States. Just
a few years ago, Hugo Chávez enjoyed
the admiration of the vast majority of
Latin Americans who detested George
W. Bush. Today, Chávez’ popularity
has plummeted. Meanwhile, like everywhere else in the world, the election of Barack Obama was widely
cheered in the Western Hemisphere.
Yet, Latin Americans feel disap-
pointed as the new U.S. president,
challenged by domestic problems and
distracted by international emergen-
cies, has failed to meet their high and
clearly unrealistic expectations about
a major redefinition of U.S. policies
toward its southern neighbors. They
are right. President Obama would be
hard-pressed to describe in which fun-
damental ways his government’s poli-
cies toward Latin America differ from
those of his predecessor.
This all happens while Latin America goes through big changes, and
while other international players
gain traction in the region. Just to give
some examples, China has gained significant economic influence in Latin
America, and Iran has forged an unprecedented political presence with
several countries there—notably Venezuela and others in the Alianza Bo-livariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra
América (ALBA). Russia has also made
unprecedented strides as a supplier to
the armed forces of countries which,
in the past, mostly relied on U. S. companies for their arms procurement.
The region is also rife with politi-
cal and economic change—even in
places like Cuba, where politics and
economic policies have been stagnant
for half a century or more. In today’s
Latin America, macroeconomic fail-
ure is more the exception than the
norm. While the economies of Cuba
and Venezuela rank among the worst
performers in the world, those of Bra-
zil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and other
countries are booming. Even Mex-
ico—which suffers from chronic slow
growth and was hit hard by narcovi-
olence, pandemics and other major
shocks—is recovering at an unchar-
acteristically fast clip.
The favorable external economic
environment, good macroeconomic
management and more effective antipoverty policies have had enormously
positive social impacts, too. In recent
years, tens of millions of Latin Americans were able to leave the ranks of
the poor and join a more stable middle class.
Of course, all of this does not mean
that the region’s traditional problems
have been solved. Bad schools and
universities, poor health care, corruption, and inequality are still endemic.
Latin America is one of the most high-crime regions in the world in terms
of murders and the percentage of its
economy related to illicit trafficking. This is not a problem with an
easy solution. But Latin America has
also given us a good surprise: Colombia proved that progress in the fight
