OBAMA AND LATIN AMERICA: A NEW BEGINNING IN TRINIDAD?
Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Friday, April 17, 2009

Starting today in Trinidad, President Obama of the U.S.A. will be meeting for several days with the leaders of Latin America. The summit comes after thirty years of manifestly failed neo-liberal economic policies, which have left Latin American countries and populations not only much worse off economically, but (until more reasonable lenders came along) had left most of the countries in a state of debt peonage to First-World lenders. Second, the summit comes after eight years of the retrogressive policies of the George W. Bush government. Latin American policy under the Republicans was more than normally determined by the Cuban exiles community in the political swing state of Florida. From most of Latin America’s point-of-view, the only good thing about the Bush government was that America’s attention was distracted by the Middle East. There were various Washington-inspired free-trade initiatives (now almost completely rejected by Latin America) and diverse sabre-rattling incidents such as the support for a coup against the democratically-elected Chávez in Venezuela, "Plan Columbia", or the recent re-activation after 65 years of the US Fourth Fleet as a means of reminding the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking colonials to the south that Washington still somehow regarded the Monroe Doctrine as valid.

Mr Obama’s promises to the Cubans in Florida during the campaign were not hopeful of change: he swore to keep the embargo on Cuba, for example. But, in anticipation of the summit in Trinidad this week and perhaps in a genuine attempt to unfreeze a situation that is now more than somewhat atavistic and has anyway never had any support in the rest of Latin America, he put a few Cuban bargaining chips on the table. Of course, Cuba will be the only Latin American country not represented at the summit, but once again Cuba will be the ghost at the banquet. Reasonable leaders such as President Lula da Silva of Brazil will be urging Obama to establish normal relations with Havana, start over again with Venezuela and for the U.S.A. to return in general to FDR’s “Good Neighbour Policy”, i.e., an arm’s-length policy of non-interference.

Not only is that perhaps the most reasonable approach to hemispheric relationships, it would also be a recognition that the United States is unlikely to be successful in the longer term with more gun-boat diplomacy and that globalisation as a default settings has perhaps now run its course. There are no armed threats to Aemrica hegemony from outside the region; over the last forty years the armed forces of most countries have been re-oriented with AMerican help to suppressing grass-root reform-movements. Already a majority of South Americans countries (measured by GDP or demographics) has turned to new though not particularly radical pathways to prosperity and national self-respect. The noisiest spokesman has perhaps been Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
But the leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia support his policies if not his rhetoric. Of course, these other leaders have yet to be the targets of American-supported coup d’etats as has Chávez. But with Venezuelan (and to a degree also Chinese) funds, there are alternative sources of finance to the U.S.-dominated World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank. With the price of oil down, Venezuela is currently somewhat hamstrung. But the price of oil is nearly certain to rise again in the next two years.

Meanwhile, most Latin American countries have joined the march to political, economic and financial union along the lines of the European Union. In some ways the movement is still vestigial. But it is moving forward rapidly with a development bank already established and active talks proceeding on how integration should go forward. It is a project whose time has come. Certainly from almost any and every point of view, a Common Market of the South should be easier to achieve than the E.U. ever was. After all, there are far fewer languages in Latin America, far fewer cultural differences, and far fewer historical enmities in Latin America than in Europe. The historical conflicts everywhere south of the Rio Grande have always been less between countries and more between races or between economic and social classes. Eliminating poverty, achieving reasonably-egalitarian social forms and dealing long-term with the region’s indigenous peoples present for more hurdles. A political and economic union is a piece of cake by comparison.

There are lots of politica streams flowing. Venezuela's overt calls for politica nad economic unity and anti-imperialism is ony one. Brazil intends to be the leader of Latin America and is perhaps the best placed to be so. If changed the U.S.A. still also intends to play an important role. It also has its stalking horses and spoilers in the region: Mexico and Columbia being the main ones at present. Columbia, the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, seems for the moment solidly in DC’s column; the last federal election in Mexico, on the other hand, was a near-run thing for moderately conservative Calderon. That said, however, there is probably enough momentum amongst the remaining countries for integration. The US plan for Latin America involving free trade agreements and neo-liberal economic, social and political programmes in each country have been largely repudiated throughout Latin America. With the possible exception of Chile, conservative regimes haveyet to prove that trickle-down economics does anything more than impoverish the mass of the people, detroy the social fabric and reenforce the traditonal elites.

No doubt Mr Obama will be coming to the summit with a professed readiness to listen and his characteristic high-mindedness and lack of bombast. This will earn him great respect. He may not be completely up to speed on Latin America and he may still be getting advice from the Yesterday’s Men held over from the last administration. But he will win many friends just by laying aside the ignorance and arrogance that has so often characterised American policy in Latin America. The people and the governments there are enthusiastic about Obama and hopeful for new manners. Despite everything, they still have a residual admiration for that asepct of the U.S. that represents democratic, republican and egalitarian virtues. But for some of the same reasons, the people of Latin America also admire Fidel Castro.




With a heavy agenda for change back home, Mr. Obama seems to have decided to stick with many of Mr. Bush’s financial-crisis policies. Beyond a readiness to calm the waters, get rid of the most visible horrors perpetrated by the last president (kidnapping, “rendition”, torture and the like) and at least give the semblance of listening, U.S. foreign policies do not however seem destined to change all that much. Economically, the hope that American consumers would be able to buy products from Latin AMerica other than bananas was always an illusion as long as the US retained agricultural subsidies and various other invisible barriers to trade. Now that American purchasing power is being wiped out due in the main to failed fiscal and economic policies, and to an increasing inability to bororw overseas to pay for imported toys, Washington has even less attraction for Latin America.

Nevertheless, the best thing Mr Obama can do in Trinidad is to listen and start to think his own way through the issues. The issue of free trade with the U.S.A. is largely off the table. Latin America will increasingly go its own way economically and politically. But aside from the E.U., where else are they to turn, where else to they have the same cultural and emotional ties if not the U.S.A. Almost none of the recent developments in “pink” Latin America are threats to the U.S.A. and a supportive administration in Washington will make many friends.

Small steps towards normalisation of relations with Cuba are great opening bids. Now, instead of insulting and hectoring him, the U.S. president would be well-advised to find an opportunity this week to talk informally with Hugo Chávez; the overwhelmingly popular and democratically-elected president of an important oil-supplying nation has after all been offering open discussions without preconditions ever since Mr Obama won the election. In return however, the White House has even labelled Mr Chávez a dictator, an exporter of terror and part of the overall drug problem, all accusations that are unfounded and ridiculous as even the leaders of Brazil, Argentina and others have been telling the young president.

Here too in Latin America, it is time for change one can believe in. Mr Obama has an historic opportunity this week.