The Post-American Hemisphere Has Arrived

            Russell Crandall, associate professor of International Politics at Davidson College and recently Director for Andean Affairs at the National Security Council from 2010-2011, writes in the current (May-June) edition of Foreign Affairs that Washington is rapidly and surely losing its leverage in Latin America. His article, “The Post-American Hemisphere: Power and Politics in an Autonomous Latin America,” explains that as U.S. influence in Latin America has faded, Latin America’s own capabilities have grown. “The region has grown into an era of unprecedented economic, political, and diplomatic success,” Crandall writes.

            While there have been impressive success stories – economic growth has been a steady reality in Brazil and Chile, as most recent examples – there still remain problem areas. Crandall cites one example in Guatemala, which “ranks among the world’s poorest countries,” and has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with 6,000 people killed each year in a nation of 13 million.

            To be sure, Central and South America continue to look northwards to the United States at critical moments: during the crisis in Honduras, in spite of wobbly moments on the world stage there, Crandall notes that leaders in the region were grateful for the role, limited that it was, the U.S. played in diffusing what could have been a more violent outcome to Honduras.

            “Over the past decade or so, the United States’ willingness and ability to excert control in the region have diminished,” Crandall writes. This has occurred in part because more important issues, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have forced Latin America down the policymaking food chain.”

            And that has led to bold actions and words by leaders in Latin America speaking out against the U.S., witnessed by diatribes from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008, and he shut down U.S. funded democracy programs in 2009. Because our hands were tied with the wars we were waging in the Middle East, Crandall noted that George W. Bush, normally not at a loss for words to those who operated “against him,” was strangely silent about Morales’ actions.

            The real power shift in Latin America seems to be a move to more coordination among neighbors. Brazil will continue to play a crucial role in the economic vitality of the region, a result, Crandall notes, that is due to a lack of play by the United States. “As one diplomat recently put it, ‘The new imperialists have arrived, and they speak Portuguese.’”

            Is there good news for our relations? Crandall says yes. In his second term as president, George W. Bush tempered his rhetoric focused on Latin America and began a conciliatory course that the Obama administration has continued today. And the United States “enjoys robust partnerships with governments of all political stripes in the region – with conservative governments in Chile, Mexico and Peru as well as more leftist ones in Brazil, El Salvador, and Uruguay.”

            It remains to be seen how well we do in the remainder of the Obama adminstration’s watch of our neighbors to the south.