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Our pragmatic approach marks a clean break from ideologically driven, outmoded definitions of foreign policy.
by Dan Restrepo

Does the Obama adminstration have a foreign policy for Latin America? Yes

The Americas are our shared home. To build a stronger and more resilient neighborhood, the Obama administration is promoting a safe, stable, prosperous, and democratic hemisphere where the United States and our partners share responsibility on key regional and global issues.

In keeping with the President's National Security Strategy, we are leveraging our deep ties and working as equal partners to enhance common security, expand economic opportunity, secure a clean energy future, and defend shared democratic values.

Our pragmatic approach marks a clean break from ideologically driven, outmoded definitions of foreign policy. So, too, does our embrace of change in the Americas and our understanding that the U.S. must play a critical role in tackling the key challenges facing the people of the Americas today.

Personal insecurity-often driven by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs)-pervades the Americas, threatening our security, hampering regional prosperity and undermining democratic governance. To confront it, we have dedicated unprecedented resources, including the recent $600 million Southwest Border supplemental appropriation to interdict illicit flows of weapons and money from the U.S. to Latin America and the Caribbean and to disrupt criminal financing and other TCO operations in the United States. Recognizing the importance of demand reduction, we have invested more than $10 billion in drug treatment and prevention in our first two years, increasing such funding by 10 percent from the previous two years.

Because the reach of TCOs demands multinational responses, we are also pursuing comprehensive security partnerships across the Americas, particularly in the greater Caribbean Basin. With Mexico, we have established a four-pillar strategy: 1) to dismantle TCO operational capacity; 2) to support sustainable rule of law institutions; 3) to create a twenty-first-century border with shared management to promote the secure flow of goods and trade and the joint targeting of illicit activities; and 4) to foster resilient communities to deny illegal groups fertile recruitment grounds. In partnership with Caribbean nations, we are implementing a new $124 million Caribbean Basin Security Initiative. We have expanded cooperation through the Central America Regional Security Initiative and are helping consolidate security gains in Colombia and Peru. Through trilateral engagement we are also encouraging security cooperation between key partners like Colombia and Canada.

At the same time, we have deepened our military and humanitarian assistance through robust relationships in the Americas. Examples include transparent defense and military cooperation to enhance support for civilian authorities, foster humanitarian relief and disaster assistance cooperation, and promote responsible modernization. To promote security, we have worked with defense ministries, signed Defense Cooperation Agreements with Colombia and Brazil, and engaged in military-to-military partnerships. This shared responsibility was evident in the partnership between the U.S. military and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in post-earthquake Haiti.

Rebuilding our economic foundation at home profoundly benefits the Americas, a region that is central to the President's commitment to promoting balanced global growth and economic opportunity. Large and small countries in the Americas benefited from our lending through crisis response work with our G-20 partners, which mobilized $1 trillion in new lending capacity for international financial institutions. The President's embrace of the G-20 as the preeminent global economic forum has strengthened the global voice of large economies in the region. The U.S. also has championed International Monetary Fund quota reform to allow Brazil to become one of its 10 largest shareholders.

To fuel inclusive growth, our focus is also on the poorest of the region. Our remittance policies are aimed at ensuring that remittances reach their intended recipients and that flows are leveraged to lower capital costs. We also joined with other Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) shareholders to add $70 billion to the IDB's capital-doubling its annual lending capacity and reforming lending practices to focus more sharply on the poor and on regional integration. With various countries assuming leadership roles, a refashioned Pathways to Prosperity initiative ensures that economic growth and integration promote socioeconomic inclusion. For example, the region rallied around a U.S. proposal to cancel Haiti's $800 million debt to international financial institutions, mobilizing $2.5 billion in IDB grants over 10 years.

Another key element of our engagement in the region is energy and climate. The Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) is tackling the effects of climate change and the toll that dependence on energy imports takes on economic growth, stability and governance. Launched by President Obama, ECPA is a flexible partnership between Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, the U.S., and others aimed at making concrete progress on low-carbon communities, sustainable urban development and planning, renewable energy, and electrical interconnections.

Bilateral partnerships reinforce our clean energy agenda at home. We are building new transmission lines to take U.S. wind energy to markets in Canada, creating U.S. jobs. Similarly, the Export-Import Bank has helped finance exports of U.S.-manufactured wind turbines to Mexico, supporting jobs at home and clean energy production in Mexico. Similar cooperation with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile advance a clean energy future and contribute to economic growth.

Finally, we continue our long-standing commitment to strengthen institutions of democratic governance vital to across-the-board progress. We have steadfastly promoted human rights, press freedom and electoral transparency. We have advanced social inclusion by helping establish the Inter-American Social Protection Network to strengthen the capacity of national social development agencies to formulate and implement effective and efficient poverty eradication policies and programs for at-risk poor.

Our engagement as equal partners in the Americas has created space for others to speak up in defense of shared democratic values. We set aside past divisions to shape a consensus that Cuba's participation in the OAS requires it to abide by core democratic principles. The collective invocation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and efforts to restore democracy in Honduras strengthened those principles, as have calls to respect press freedoms.

Significant work remains to advance our agenda. President Obama is committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but he cannot do it alone. He will continue to reach out to Republicans and Democrats to join him in pursuing a comprehensive solution that restores responsibility for the system to all parties-the federal government, employers and immigrants. The President also looks forward to working with the Panamanian and Colombian governments, Congress and interested stakeholders to resolve outstanding issues related to pending trade agreements with those countries.

Going forward, we will continue our efforts as equal partners to build a better future for the people of the Americas.

The President would be hard-pressed to describe how his policies toward the region differ from those of his predecessor.
by Moisés Naím

Does the Obama adminstration have a foreign policy for Latin America? No

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 disappointed as the new U.S. president, challenged by domestic problems and distracted by international emergencies, 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 fundamental ways his government's policies 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 Bolivariana 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 political 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 failure is more the exception than the norm. While the economies of Cuba and Venezuela rank among the worst performers in the world, those of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and other countries are booming. Even Mexico-which suffers from chronic slow growth and was hit hard by narcoviolence, pandemics and other major shocks-is recovering at an uncharacteristically fast clip.

The favorable external economic environment, good macroeconomic management and more effective anti-poverty 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 against drug cartels and violence is possible. If Colombia could, others can. In short, for better and for worse, Latin America is rapidly changing in almost all respects.

Where nothing is changing is the way in which the U.S. government relates to its southern neighbors. This is not new. For decades, experts have complained that Latin America only attracts the attention of the State Department and others in Washington when there are wars or natural disasters. U.S. leaders are always too distracted by other priorities (which currently include two wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the Middle East, the global financial crisis, health care reform, and China among many others) to worry about Latin America.

But the fact that Latin America does not figure in the calculations or conversations of top U.S. decision makers does not preclude some of them from giving speeches about U.S. policy towards the region that are as disconnected from reality as those given by Fidel Castro in Cuba. According to the State Department, U.S. policy toward Latin America has four priorities: "promoting social and economic opportunities for all, securing a clean energy future, ensuring the security of all citizens, and building effective democratic institutions." How can anyone disagree?

But this is an agenda better suited to an economic development agency, not the State Department. The goals the U.S. declares as its top diplomatic priorities in the region are in fact challenges for the government of each country, not for the diplomacy of another nation, regardless of how powerful it is. Washington would never dare say to Asia that one of the main goals of its diplomacy is "promoting opportunities for all Asians." Moreover, current U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America suffers from another flaw: neither the State Department nor the entire U.S. government has the money, knowledge or human resources to implement it effectively (See: Iraq or Afghanistan).

Talking about these illusory policy priorities toward Latin America allows U.S. diplomats to avoid mentioning other very real and politically explosive issues: the useless fence on the border with Mexico; the paralysis of policy on immigration and free trade agreements; the Castro-boosting embargo on Cuba; the missed opportunities of building a strong alliance with Brazil in its new role as a key global player; or the stagnation of the war against drugs. Regarding the latter, it should be noted that the only thing stagnant is U.S. government drug policy. Stagnation is not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks about the drug cartels or their U.S. customers. According to data released by the White House, last year the consumption of marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamines increased in the United States.

From this perspective, perhaps one of the top priorities of Latin America's policy toward the U.S. (if there were one) should in turn be to "help the citizens of the superpower to get high less often." No one would take it seriously, but it sounds good. It's much like the current U.S. official policy toward Latin America: well-sounding, well-meaning, but cliché-ridden and, ultimately, irrelevant.