Rethinking U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Latin America
Comment
The most recent edition of Foreign Affairs has a great piece by Chris Sabatini, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and Senior Director of Policy at the Council of the Americas. In “Rethinking Latin America” he points out that the most distinguishing aspect of U.S.-Latin America relations is the U.S. focus on internal dynamics — building democratic institutions, promoting social and economic inclusion and the like — as opposed to more hard-headed traditional international relations issues. This occurs not only in the Washington policy world, but also in academia. Reflecting back on my own graduate work, I distinctly remember the time spent reading the “classics” on U.S.-Latin America relations. These were relatively easy weeks, precisely because there has been so little written. This approach, Sabatini believes, “has distorted Washington’s calculations of regional politics and hampered its ability to counter outside influences and deal sensibly with rising regional powers.”
To be fair, the United States does focus on domestic issues in other places and regions around the world. Discussions of democracy filled much of the Bush administration’s Middle East docket, and issues of economic development, voting, and civil society also occupy Africa and Southeast Asia policymakers. And the United States does, at times, address big international relations issues in Latin America, including the role of transnational security threats, economic ties, and regional organizations. But the dominance of domestic issues — over which the United States has little or no control — in Latin America-oriented foreign policy is distinctive. Sabatini also rightly points out that many policymakers and thinkers continue to see Latin America through a Cold War lens, and use the region as a pawn in domestic partisan battles, all to the detriment of U.S.-Latin America relations.
I’d like to think this is shifting. At least parts of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and political process recognize the need to engage Brazil, Mexico, and other nations in multilateral forums and on global issues. Many are prioritizing energy, trade, and security, and beginning to analyze the nuance of regional interactions, from Brazil’s often uneasy relationship with its neighbors to Mexico’s relations with Central America. But these shifts need to be broader and more encompassing. Otherwise the fears of many Latin America watchers will come true, and the United States will lose ground in the hemisphere.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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In his remarkable article Christopher Sabatini complains that blinkered American diplomacy in his region comes from the blinkered academic community which trains our State Department professionals and heads them off in pursuit of ‘comparative politics’ – meaning democracy promotion – rather than management of international relations.In a word, ideology is trumping national interests in Latin American studies and in U.S. diplomacy.
The same is absolutely true in Russian (Eurasian) studies.
During the 2010-2011 academic year, I had a chance to experience this phenomenon first hand when I spent some time as a Visiting Scholar at one of America’s main centers of Russian studies, Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Looking over the schedule of Russian-related events on campus, one might be forgiven for concluding that, apart from a nod to Slavic linguistics and literature, the overriding interest of professoriate and students is human rights and pro-democracy movements in Russia and the CIS. The parade of Russian ‘dissidents’ passing through revealed a strong partisan commitment of the hosts rather than anything resembling scholarly detachment.
The same might easily be said of other major centers of Russian studies such as Stanford, Georgetown and Harvard.
For further discussion of these issues, see http://usforeignpolicy.blogs.lalibre.be/archive/2012/03/13/rebuttal-the-end-of-the-reset-why-putin-s-re-election-means.html#more