After three months in office, Barack Obama traveled to Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009 to attend the Fifth Summit of the Americas. Already his presidency had been consumed by issues of major importance, both at home and abroad; Obama no doubt spent his days thinking about the global economic crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and consequential domestic priorities such as the upcoming push for health reform. On that future day when the Obama presidential library opens its archives, we should not be surprised to learn that top policymakers were not poring over Latin American affairs during their first weeks in office.
The summit nonetheless brought Obama face-to-face with the elected leaders of his nation’s thirty-four closest neighbors. Reflecting the fact that regional public opinion had coalesced against the United States in recent years, many of them had opposed the George W. Bush administration’s security and economic policies. Having taken opposition to its rhetorical extreme by comparing Bush to Satan at a 2006 meeting of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could be counted first among the critics. Clearly not one to pass up an opportunity to bluster on the international stage, Chavez used the occasion presented by the April 2009 summit to stroll over to Obama’s seat and provide his new counterpart with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent – a book that highlights the region’s victimization at the hands of imperial powers, including the United States.
It would be easy to summarize Chavez’s approach to international politics as blunt, inelegant, and downright undiplomatic, and leave the discussion at that. While it would be a reasonable appraisal of the Venezuelan president, such analysis is ultimately incomplete. The Obama-Chavez encounter illustrates the particular challenges confronting the administration in Latin America. Alleviating widespread popular mistrust of the United States that dates back past the Bush administration, back to the mid-nineteenth century at least, constitutes a monumental task. Yet it is a task that Obama is uniquely suited to handle. As the first person of color to serve as president, and following a campaign in which he promised transformative change, Obama came to office with a reservoir of good will among the Latin American people likely exceeding even that of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic to hold the office. Despite the new president’s advantages, success will not come easily; it will require that the Obama administration reform both the process of U.S. engagement with the region and the policy outcomes spawned by that engagement.
In domestic political debates, issues of process often matter only to political insiders. Few Americans today remember how bipartisan was the vote to pass Social Security in the 1930s or could explain the evolution of the Senate filibuster. Such issues seem like ‘inside baseball’ to most people outside of the Washington beltway. Foreign policy formation, however, is different. Multilateral processes enhance the legitimacy of the resulting policies. Public opinion in Latin America, and indeed throughout the Global South, bristles at the impression that decisions are handed down from on high in Washington or from some other Western capital. Policies that do not flow from genuine multilateral negotiation, no matter how beneficial they may be in the abstract, are inherently suspect. There is good reason. From the popular Latin American standpoint, externally imposed policies have rarely had a positive effect on the lives of ordinary people.
Legitimacy clearly matters to Latin Americans, but it is also significant to the United States. It is true that many Americans stand to benefit from, for example, expanded oil drilling by U.S.-based firms off the Brazilian coast. They are better off if the increased crude supply brings down gas prices. Additionally, those who own stock in participating companies stand to reap profits directly. But if U.S. firms gain access to the oil through a closed or corrupt process, and ordinary Brazilians come to believe that their interests have not been faithfully represented, then only later will the full cost of those benefits reveal themselves. In 1938, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas provided a dramatic example of this phenomenon when he nationalized the holdings of U.S. petroleum companies that his citizens widely believed had acted unethically and illegally. Today Latin American voters can elect politicians who promise to get tough with foreign capital and remain distant from Washington when they believe their previous leaders have not guarded the national patrimony. During the past decade, Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner appealed to such sentiments on their rise to power in Argentina. As a result, U.S. policymakers face additional obstacles to the advancement of their interests.
Fortunately, during his first ten months in office Obama has evinced a commitment to a more representative diplomatic process. Most notably, he took the lead in substituting the Group of Twenty (G20) for the Group of Eight (G8) as the most important multilateral forum for the negotiation of global economic policy. The G8 consists of seven European and North American economic powers, plus Japan. By contrast, the G20 better reflects the world’s diversity, and includes three Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico). Although the world’s poorest countries continue to lack representation, the G20 is a far more inclusive forum. Consequently, decisions taken under its auspices are likely to enjoy greater legitimacy throughout Latin America.
Along with greater legitimacy, multilateral processes are more likely to generate better policy outcomes – assuming that we define good policy as that which supports representative political systems and encourages economic growth in which all can share. As has been repeatedly pointed out since Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize win, no matter how encouraging the president’s diplomatic framework appears to be, his administration will ultimately be judged by its results. So far it is difficult to point toward any major accomplishment in its Latin American policy. That is not necessarily a bad thing. John F. Kennedy, seemingly among Obama’s favorite past presidents, came into office in 1961 trumpeting an “Alliance for Progress” with the nations of the hemisphere. Although Kennedy is still remembered fondly throughout the region, his program failed to live up to its many promises. Indeed, the rhetoric of the Alliance belied the actual unilateralism that marked Washington’s decision-making in the early 1960s. It was not a process that should be emulated.
Rather than propose a new Alliance for Progress-style framework, Obama should concentrate on making progress on nuts-and-bolts issues of importance to North and South Americans. In this vein, the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks, through which the rules of the road for global trade policy are negotiated, offers an opportunity. Long concerned with their underperforming economies, Latin American states have sought enhanced access to North American and European markets – especially for agricultural exports. Indeed, much disharmony between the United States and Latin America over the past century has sprung from the region’s frustration at the protectionism of the Global North. Restrictions by northern countries against foreign agriculture, and their practice of subsidizing domestic producers, remain sticking points in the negotiations. Addressing those concerns – a tall order given the political influence of farm states in the U.S. Congress – would do more for Latin America than any aid program. If Obama were ultimately able to help bring the nearly eight-year-old talks to a successful conclusion that balances the needs of farmers in the Global North and South, it would be a tremendous accomplishment – in Latin America and around the world.
Finally, with the exception of Rio de Janeiro winning the right to host the 2016 Olympics, the Honduran military’s removal of President Manuel Zelaya from power has attracted more U.S. media attention than any other recent story in Latin America. Zelaya could never be accused of being a Washington ally. Indeed, neoconservatives led by former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton have echoed the Honduran military’s argument that Zelaya’s ouster was legal because he advocated constitutional reform and was a friend of Chavez. Despite Zelaya’s diplomatic record, the Obama administration has lined up with the rest of the members of the Organization of American States to condemn the return of the military coup as a vehicle for regime change in the region. Such a principled stand, taken in partnership with leaders throughout the hemisphere, is a positive development.
The history of the U.S.-Latin American relationship has too often been marked by confrontation, violence, and ideological struggle. That history cannot – and should not – be glossed over. It establishes the context for today’s challenges. But to forge hemispheric progress and solve long-standing problems necessitates a break from past patterns. Such a break can be achieved by multilateral diplomacy that yields policies supportive of representative governance together with a more equitable and durable version of globalization. Success might even merit a Nobel Prize.
Dustin Walcher
Dustin Walcher is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Oregon University. A specialist in the history of U.S. foreign relations, he earned his Ph.D. at the Ohio State University in 2007. His research focusses on the history of U.S.-Latin American relations.