I still don’t understand why we can go to Venezuela (with all its potential for domestic political blowback, congrats on ur reelection Rubio) and we can’t make it clear to the Saudis and jumped up gulf princes that either they get the oil Wells pumping or kiss goodbye to the fleet in the gulf, any weapons deals & all those US Bases
If I had to guess, the Saudis are seething because of our negotiations with Iran. They are obviously not fans of any arrangement which might give Iran concessions.
They also know we cannot abandon the Gulf because most of our Allies in Asia depend on Middle East oil, as does, ironically, China.
If you’re the dependent partner in a relationship u can seethe all u want behind closed doors but you’ll do as ur told, we’re getting public seething, no benefits & all the costs (remember 70% if that oil the fleet is protecting is going to China and other enemies) all for what???! And why??? Are we really so pathetic in the west that all it takes is buy off a few think tanks and some cultural elites & u can treat us like this???
Thankfully no, we’re a democracy & a great vote winning opportunity is sitting there for any politician smart enough to grab it
Not pathetic. We made a series of policy choices which has led our country to be energy dependent (again). You can approve or disapprove of the Biden Admin’s actions vis-a-vis the Keystone XL and ANWR drilling. We have chosen to eat these costs by an intentional reduction in domestic oil production.
US cannot export crude by US law. This our Allies are heavily dependent on Russian and Saudi oil. Russian oil is now closed to them. Saudi’s know we are in a position where they can dictate terms. If they are not protected goodbye to oil for China but also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and others.
And when Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, what then? Should the US sit back and let their terrorist proxies destabilise the Gulf, as they're already doing in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? Or should they let Saudi Arabia, and possibly Egypt, develop the same nuclear expertise the Iranians already have?
Honestly, I think the Turks might end up dominating the Middle East if we ever just “up and left.” They have quite a modern military and access to a lot of Western technology. Additionally, through NATO they have access to a lot of quality military training.
I could see the Saudis and Turks aligning if, indeed the US leaves the M.E. I would also throw in Israel as a “wild card.”
Interesting idea. They've been mending fences lately with Israel (and Greece), so I could see an alignment with the Saudis as well. But I think dominance might be a stretch? They can't even get the upper hand over Iran in Syria, on their own doorstep.
Raph, if you had asked me 10 years ago I would have said that USCENTCOM was the most dominant actor in the Middle East due America’s web of alliances as well as raw military, diplomatic and economic heft. However, I think the US writ large could care less about what goes on there anymore.
That leaves Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a stand alone nation I would say Israel is most dominant with its modern economy, military and nuclear arsenal. However, I think for historical reasons they will never be able to command a coalition. Which means they are likely going to have to act unilaterally or as a balancing power against the other three nations.
Turkey has the advantage of being in NATO. Any serious attack on the Turks risks Article V support. Turkey just has a lot going for it.
How does us not selling weapons to Saudi & the gulf princes affect Iran’s nuclear program one way or the other. Show me one piece of evidence that the sale of an F22 to Abu Dhabi prevented the Iranians building one centrifuge
That doesn't follow from what I wrote. It is the case that the Saudis have made no moves towards building nuclear weapons. If America abandons them, that could easily change.
You seem to think that all dictatorships are equally cruel to their people, and threatening to their neighbours. This is not the case. Or should we have abandoned Korea in the 50s because it was a dictatorship? The Iranian people are immiserated while the regime bankrolls Assad and Hezbollah. In the Gulf, at least, one can hope for economic opportunity and greater rights for women. In today's Middle East, there are few better places to live.
Can we distinguish between "we'll sell phones, even to people ruled by dictators" and "we'll loan money, even to dictators"? I dislike the idea of Wall Street becoming a piggy bank for the next Ortega or whomever.
Money is a good way for dictators to stay in power. Is it really a good idea for us to open our wallets wide even to the worst governments?
Or am I naive to try to separate "trade" from "finance"?
Lula is very much about preserving the Amazon and he's leading the polls for this year's election. And on Lula he very much follows the points of this article. He took more people out of poverty in Brazil than anyone before or since while managing to reduce inequality. Instead of aiding sickos like Bolsonaro we should be aiding Lula because though he's not as friendly to foreign investors he was building a more sustainable country.
One other point: In terms of GOP hatred of the Latin American Left, I think you need to remember that the GOP has had no meaningful foreign policy for more than a decade, not since 2004, when they turned everything about the Iraq War into a club with which to beat their domestic rivals. You see this with their bifurcation about Russia right now. Some of them want to say Biden is being too aggressive, Putin isn't so bad, we should avoid war; others want to say Biden is being too timid, and we should start a no-fly zone even if that risks nuclear war. But _all_ of them know that everything is awful and it's Biden's fault.
The reason to attack Leftism in Latin America is that they can then link Leftists in Latin America to Democrats and other liberals or progressives at home, and say that they're baaaaaaaaad. Marco Rubio's understanding of Venezuela and Cuba extends only as far as "what do I have to say to get people in Miami to vote for me?" :-P
Budding up to Cuba and Venezuela is by far the most mysterious foreign policy idea. Chavez/Maduro destroyed oil production so effectively that it would take a decade of investment to go back to where it was[1], and no sane oil company is going to risk political instability for that long (either the regime nationalizes production again, or the US elects GOP which restores sanctions). Cuba is so unpopular in Latin America that leftists have to promise they're not like that to be electable - the post itself has plenty of examples. If that's the case, than how will rapprochement help improve opinion of US in the hemisphere?
Nor can I agree with the idea America has been waging a war on Latin America leftism. The US did nothing when leftists won in Chile or Brazil. The exceptions are two actual authoritarian regime, and one guy who rhetorically looked like a rerun of Chavez.
I can't see any reason why the admin should accept the domestic blowback for basically nothing.
So, leaving aside the realpolitik aspect of reasons why we might want to just tolerate the Venezuelan regime and work with them towards gradual reforms, I want to push back on your questioning of the legitimacy of Guaidó's claim.
Guaidó followed the process in his country's constitution. Let's imagine an alternate reality where Trump had cowed the SoSs of Georgia and Arizona into "finding" the additional votes he needed. He and Pence were all set to get him re-installed. But the day before the electoral count, a bunch of GOP House and Senate members have an attack of conscience*, and an emergency session of Congress rushes through an impeachment of both Trump and Pence, making Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker, the President. She immediately appoints Biden as her VP, and resigns, ending the crisis.
* Yes, I know this is the least realistic part of this imagined scenario. /lolsob/
Pelosi's role in this scenario would be very much parallel to what's happened with Guaidó. His assumption of the Presidency was authorized by the legislature in the manner prescribed in their constitution, and it is supposed to be temporary -- if they ever get to hold real elections again, he would be banned from participating. Before all of this happened, he had been considered a potential serious candidate in an election. He sacrificed that on the principle that the fraudulent re-election of Maduro should be blocked.
Maybe you have other reasons to dislike or disagree with Guaidó, but I don't think questioning the process here is reasonable. He and the National Assembly did exactly what they were supposed to here, in the face of an autogolpe. They just lost. "Possession is nine tenths of the law." If we can't get a legitimate regime, we just have to make what bargains we can with the illegitimate one, and try to cajole them into returning to normalcy. I don't think Guaidó's faction wants to start a civil war, and nobody wants to invade. So that's where we're at.
I'll also add, for context, that Bush's questioning of Chávez's original election, 20-ish years back, was stupid and destructive. Chávez turned out to be a standard cult-of-personality strongman dictator, but like it or not, he _was_ elected, and the attempt by the Bush administration to encourage a coup against him, even before he'd started down the path of constitutional "reforms" to consolidate power, was stupid and self-defeating. Those actions have certainly helped Maduro maintain an aura of popular legitimacy with the folks who still believe in the Chavista revolution. He can always say that those who oppose him are just stooges of the US. We would have a lot more standing now to support Guaidó's legitimate claim, if Bush had supported Chávez's legitimate claim while expressing concern or condemnation of whatever bad stuff he did.
It is _possible_ that if we'd had a Good Neighbor policy toward Chávez, and provided appropriate carrots at the time, that we could've kept him from going down the path of consolidating power -- after the US _actually attempted to push a coup against him_, why _shouldn't_ he be paranoid that any domestic opposition is just cover for another attempt? Maybe he still would've aspired to dictatorship regardless, but we'll never get to run that experiment, because Bush decided it was still the '60s and he could topple an elected Latin American leftist to bring some friendlier right wingers to power.
I think the "stick" should mainly be reserved to "Don't make deals with Russia and China, and we won't back regime-change against you, but we're also not going to pretend that we think you're a good person, you little autocrat you."
This doesn’t make sense to me. We effectively have a good neighbor policy for everyone except for the two dictatorships. I’m not sure what normalizing relations with them will do for Latin America overall.
Also, it’s pretty cool seeing that Mapp is as I work there regularly. The choice in South America is not really between leftist and rightists. It’s always about corruption. Corruption is what drives these elections. Basically they seesaw from one side to the other because they are all corrupt. There is this constant hope that this young guy from this party is going to put an end to the corruption.
I never take these favorable views of the United States polls seriously. The United States as a whole as a concept is generally widely admired. And a huge huge huge portion would love to have a green card. But also know the people who have lived in the United States and who moved back to South America just because life in the culture there is so much more interesting.
Anyway, Columbia is probably my favorite country. Argentina is awesome even though their government sucks especially with their fake exchange rate. I am going to chili for the first time this summer. Can’t wait.
"We effectively have a good neighbor policy for everyone except for the two dictatorships."
Um, this might come as a surprise to Evo Morales. Like yes, I'm sure the Biden administration will behave more responsibly than the Trump administration, but if you think anyone to the left of Augusto Pinochet, anywhere in South America, has just decided to forgive-and-forget that -- not to mention Bush's attempt to encourage a coup against Chávez two decades back -- you're engaging in wishful thinking. If the US wants to shore up a hemisphere-wide alliance against China, we have a lot of work to do, regaining trust.
Well, if they won’t forget, maybe we should try a studied disregard of them, just don’t interfere. Do you suppose others, such as China, would do the same?
I think Morales did a ton of good and was inspiring in a lot of ways and overall a great president, but man, why'd he have to go and eliminate term limits so he could run again? You can see how that would get people riled up, right? He couldn't find a successor to hand off the presidency to? I still buy that the US was wrong to condemn the election right before the coup, and god knows I feel very "you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to 'em"" about Jeanine Añez and the other Christian supremacist coup orchestrators, but man, if Morales had just accepted the legitimacy of term limits, I feel like this could have been avoided.
It’s a dangerous spiral opening trade and normalize relationships with murderous dictators like Maduro. Let’s remember that the Vice President is the head of Cartel de los Soles.
The US has never cared much about the neighbors but lifting all the sanctions would bring nothing good for the US or the Venezuelan people.
The most good-neighborly thing the US can do in Latin America is to stop pressuring countries in the region to cooperate with Washington's counternarcotics policies. If the Venezuelan government is involved in drug trafficking, who cares?
The only reason the drug problem is a US problem is because the Us consumes most of it, and the proceeds are used to corrupt countries (even more), allow human violations to continue happening and a myriad of horrible things.
The US has always intervened in South America with a self serving agenda.
The fact that the Venezuelan government has allowed hezbollah camps to train in the country and their close relationship with Iran should be enough to understand that the US should not lift sanctions.
And, on your point. think of this, if the US government is not pressuring South American companies to fight narcos, then the countries will encourage it. That means, a ton of more drug problems in the US, and god knows, the US already has enough drug problems.
There's very little evidence that changes in the supply of narcotics have a major effect on consumption, or even availability. If you apply pressure to specific supplier countries, production goes up elsewhere. (This is more or less what happened when President Uribe claimed he'd brought drug violence under control in Colombia. It did go down there, but it shifted to Mexico and Central America instead.)
The whole approach to drug use in the US has been a mistake
I'm old enough to remember that in the late eighties, the cartels offered to pay off Colombia's foreign debt if the government promised not to extradite drug kingpins to the United States. The government rejected the offer.
I don't usually use terms like "neocolonialism" but seriously: how subservient does a state have to be to turn down an offer like that?
They should have taken the money and told the Reagan administration to go pound sand. Poor countries are not in a position to fight drug traffickers; they can either quietly cooperate or else see their societies undermined by organized crime.
Tacit cooperation with the cartels seems to have been how post-Soviet states in Central Asia responded to their position as conduits for Afghan heroin, and I suspect that it's also how the Sandinistas have kept cocaine-related violence out of Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega has done some pretty bad things but if I were a Nicaraguan voter I'd support him anyway, just because he's prevented the country from turning into Guatemala or El Salvador.
The US has consistently pressured weak states to destroy themselves by fighting America's drug war, and the handful of countries which refused are in much better shape than the ones which played along.
If the drug trade was legal and regulated, both here and abroad, you wouldn't need the whole militarized, organized-crime structure around it. Like, maintaining private armies costs money! The folks who grow coca would much rather just run their farms and sell into a legitimate market. If you suddenly made corn illegal, while not changing anything about the demand for it, the whole Midwest would turn into a cartel-ized murder zone, too.
(This also goes to why it is so incredibly frustrating that in the twenty years we were occupying Afganistan, we never just legalized opium poppies. We instead engaged in a pointless, destructive campaign against farmers who wanted to grow that as a cash crop, which ensured that the central government would be seen as illegitimate American puppets, by all those farmers -- it's not the _only_ reason we failed to establish a stable government, but it's definitely _a_ reason. We have a deal for legal opium poppy trade with Turkey already! Why not extend the same deal to Afghanistan? But of course, the folks at places like Purdue Pharma didn't want the competition.)
I haven't been to Colombia but I understand that cocaine is basically decriminalized there. It's illegal to sell it but if you pay a street vendor $10 for a pack of cigarettes he'll give you a gram of coke "for free", which apparently isn't illegal. If that's been chosen as the least harmful approach in a country where drugs are everywhere, why wouldn't it be the best policy for the US?
Looking foward for your article on how Latin American could make the jump to manufacturing. In Brazil there are people (including economists) who think we should 'abandon' manufacturing and focus on primary sector activities. I'm really skeptical about this view, so it would be nice to read about a consistent policy for manufacturing.
I'd like to read it too. I'm skeptical of the idea that Latin America should go this route, because wages are already higher than in developing Asia and you'd be leaning against the huge comparative advantage that many of these countries have in tourism. Everyone loves to hate on tourism as a path to development but in this case I think the Ricardian argument is pretty strong.
Well, for Brazil and Argentina it makes no sense focusing on low end manufacturing, where low wages are important. But more complex manufacturing can be very viable (see the aircraft industry in Brazil).
Bolivia on the other hand can go on the low end manufacturing route.
Instead of appeasing brutal and repressive regimes like Venuezuela (and Cuba), perhaps the current administration could have refrained from being a bitch to domestic energy production.
Pity, too, that Merkel shut down nuclear energy in her country.
The original "Alliance for Progress" of 1962 was designed and implemented to reduce and stop Soviet and Cuban influence in Latin America during the Cold War Era. After J.F.K assasination, it lost momentum, faded and was terminated.
A XXI Century "New Alliance for Progress" for Central American and Caribbean countries is very needed nowadays. Such "Alliance" will provide governments with auditable funding, permitting the poor population of those countries to have opportunities to fairly better their living. It will also provide funding and technical knowledge to fight Corruption, Drug trafficking and the devastating effects of Tropical Hurricanes.
If Security and living conditions greatly improve South of the Rio Grande, Migration up North, to the USA will be drastically reduced. It won't be an easy task but once policies are properly setup, desired results will be produced.
A part of the Caribbean geography and long ago, the "Adversary", Cuba could be invited to engage in the making up of that international "Alliance". Having it's own Security Concerns ahead, the USA must pragmatically first engage with Cuba. For that the US Foreign Department must re-evaluate its (Foreign) Policies for the Region.
Letter sent to editor of America's Quarterly on line publication on 9 th of May. 2021.
Also sent to Vice POTUS K.Harris previously on April 2021.
The original "Alliance for Progress" of 1962 was designed and implemented to reduce and stop Soviet and Cuban influence in Latin America during the Cold War Era. After J.F.K assasination, it lost momentum, faded and was terminated.
A XXI Century "New Alliance for Progress" for Central American and Caribbean countries is very needed nowadays. Such "Alliance" will provide governments with auditable funding, permitting the poor population of those countries to have opportunities to fairly better their living. It will also provide funding and technical knowledge to fight Corruption, Drug trafficking and the devastating effects of Tropical Hurricanes.
If Security and living conditions greatly improve South of the Rio Grande, Migration up North, to the USA will be drastically reduced. It won't be an easy task but once policies are properly setup, desired results will be produced.
A part of the Caribbean geography and long ago, the "Adversary", Cuba could be invited to engage in the making up of that international "Alliance". Having it's own Security Concerns ahead, the USA must pragmatically first engage with Cuba. For that the US Foreign Department must re-evaluate its (Foreign) Policies for the Region.
Letter sent to editor of America's Quarterly on line publication on 9 th of May. 2021.
Also sent to Vice POTUS K.Harris previously on April 2021.
I still don’t understand why we can go to Venezuela (with all its potential for domestic political blowback, congrats on ur reelection Rubio) and we can’t make it clear to the Saudis and jumped up gulf princes that either they get the oil Wells pumping or kiss goodbye to the fleet in the gulf, any weapons deals & all those US Bases
Especially because hammering the authoritarians in the Middle East would be incredibly politically popular everywhere outside the DC think tanks
If I had to guess, the Saudis are seething because of our negotiations with Iran. They are obviously not fans of any arrangement which might give Iran concessions.
They also know we cannot abandon the Gulf because most of our Allies in Asia depend on Middle East oil, as does, ironically, China.
If you’re the dependent partner in a relationship u can seethe all u want behind closed doors but you’ll do as ur told, we’re getting public seething, no benefits & all the costs (remember 70% if that oil the fleet is protecting is going to China and other enemies) all for what???! And why??? Are we really so pathetic in the west that all it takes is buy off a few think tanks and some cultural elites & u can treat us like this???
Thankfully no, we’re a democracy & a great vote winning opportunity is sitting there for any politician smart enough to grab it
Not pathetic. We made a series of policy choices which has led our country to be energy dependent (again). You can approve or disapprove of the Biden Admin’s actions vis-a-vis the Keystone XL and ANWR drilling. We have chosen to eat these costs by an intentional reduction in domestic oil production.
US cannot export crude by US law. This our Allies are heavily dependent on Russian and Saudi oil. Russian oil is now closed to them. Saudi’s know we are in a position where they can dictate terms. If they are not protected goodbye to oil for China but also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and others.
And when Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, what then? Should the US sit back and let their terrorist proxies destabilise the Gulf, as they're already doing in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq? Or should they let Saudi Arabia, and possibly Egypt, develop the same nuclear expertise the Iranians already have?
Honestly, I think the Turks might end up dominating the Middle East if we ever just “up and left.” They have quite a modern military and access to a lot of Western technology. Additionally, through NATO they have access to a lot of quality military training.
I could see the Saudis and Turks aligning if, indeed the US leaves the M.E. I would also throw in Israel as a “wild card.”
Interesting idea. They've been mending fences lately with Israel (and Greece), so I could see an alignment with the Saudis as well. But I think dominance might be a stretch? They can't even get the upper hand over Iran in Syria, on their own doorstep.
Raph, if you had asked me 10 years ago I would have said that USCENTCOM was the most dominant actor in the Middle East due America’s web of alliances as well as raw military, diplomatic and economic heft. However, I think the US writ large could care less about what goes on there anymore.
That leaves Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a stand alone nation I would say Israel is most dominant with its modern economy, military and nuclear arsenal. However, I think for historical reasons they will never be able to command a coalition. Which means they are likely going to have to act unilaterally or as a balancing power against the other three nations.
Turkey has the advantage of being in NATO. Any serious attack on the Turks risks Article V support. Turkey just has a lot going for it.
How does us not selling weapons to Saudi & the gulf princes affect Iran’s nuclear program one way or the other. Show me one piece of evidence that the sale of an F22 to Abu Dhabi prevented the Iranians building one centrifuge
That doesn't follow from what I wrote. It is the case that the Saudis have made no moves towards building nuclear weapons. If America abandons them, that could easily change.
You seem to think that all dictatorships are equally cruel to their people, and threatening to their neighbours. This is not the case. Or should we have abandoned Korea in the 50s because it was a dictatorship? The Iranian people are immiserated while the regime bankrolls Assad and Hezbollah. In the Gulf, at least, one can hope for economic opportunity and greater rights for women. In today's Middle East, there are few better places to live.
Can we distinguish between "we'll sell phones, even to people ruled by dictators" and "we'll loan money, even to dictators"? I dislike the idea of Wall Street becoming a piggy bank for the next Ortega or whomever.
Money is a good way for dictators to stay in power. Is it really a good idea for us to open our wallets wide even to the worst governments?
Or am I naive to try to separate "trade" from "finance"?
Shouldn’t policy in South America also be focused on preservation of the Amazon and other rainforests? Have we given up on that?
Lula is very much about preserving the Amazon and he's leading the polls for this year's election. And on Lula he very much follows the points of this article. He took more people out of poverty in Brazil than anyone before or since while managing to reduce inequality. Instead of aiding sickos like Bolsonaro we should be aiding Lula because though he's not as friendly to foreign investors he was building a more sustainable country.
I suspect that of her builds a “more sustainable country,” he will increase poverty, but might still reduce inequality.
One other point: In terms of GOP hatred of the Latin American Left, I think you need to remember that the GOP has had no meaningful foreign policy for more than a decade, not since 2004, when they turned everything about the Iraq War into a club with which to beat their domestic rivals. You see this with their bifurcation about Russia right now. Some of them want to say Biden is being too aggressive, Putin isn't so bad, we should avoid war; others want to say Biden is being too timid, and we should start a no-fly zone even if that risks nuclear war. But _all_ of them know that everything is awful and it's Biden's fault.
The reason to attack Leftism in Latin America is that they can then link Leftists in Latin America to Democrats and other liberals or progressives at home, and say that they're baaaaaaaaad. Marco Rubio's understanding of Venezuela and Cuba extends only as far as "what do I have to say to get people in Miami to vote for me?" :-P
Budding up to Cuba and Venezuela is by far the most mysterious foreign policy idea. Chavez/Maduro destroyed oil production so effectively that it would take a decade of investment to go back to where it was[1], and no sane oil company is going to risk political instability for that long (either the regime nationalizes production again, or the US elects GOP which restores sanctions). Cuba is so unpopular in Latin America that leftists have to promise they're not like that to be electable - the post itself has plenty of examples. If that's the case, than how will rapprochement help improve opinion of US in the hemisphere?
Nor can I agree with the idea America has been waging a war on Latin America leftism. The US did nothing when leftists won in Chile or Brazil. The exceptions are two actual authoritarian regime, and one guy who rhetorically looked like a rerun of Chavez.
I can't see any reason why the admin should accept the domestic blowback for basically nothing.
[1]
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/venezuelas-new-oil-production-target-is-completely-unrealistic-1030985750
So, leaving aside the realpolitik aspect of reasons why we might want to just tolerate the Venezuelan regime and work with them towards gradual reforms, I want to push back on your questioning of the legitimacy of Guaidó's claim.
Guaidó followed the process in his country's constitution. Let's imagine an alternate reality where Trump had cowed the SoSs of Georgia and Arizona into "finding" the additional votes he needed. He and Pence were all set to get him re-installed. But the day before the electoral count, a bunch of GOP House and Senate members have an attack of conscience*, and an emergency session of Congress rushes through an impeachment of both Trump and Pence, making Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker, the President. She immediately appoints Biden as her VP, and resigns, ending the crisis.
* Yes, I know this is the least realistic part of this imagined scenario. /lolsob/
Pelosi's role in this scenario would be very much parallel to what's happened with Guaidó. His assumption of the Presidency was authorized by the legislature in the manner prescribed in their constitution, and it is supposed to be temporary -- if they ever get to hold real elections again, he would be banned from participating. Before all of this happened, he had been considered a potential serious candidate in an election. He sacrificed that on the principle that the fraudulent re-election of Maduro should be blocked.
Maybe you have other reasons to dislike or disagree with Guaidó, but I don't think questioning the process here is reasonable. He and the National Assembly did exactly what they were supposed to here, in the face of an autogolpe. They just lost. "Possession is nine tenths of the law." If we can't get a legitimate regime, we just have to make what bargains we can with the illegitimate one, and try to cajole them into returning to normalcy. I don't think Guaidó's faction wants to start a civil war, and nobody wants to invade. So that's where we're at.
I'll also add, for context, that Bush's questioning of Chávez's original election, 20-ish years back, was stupid and destructive. Chávez turned out to be a standard cult-of-personality strongman dictator, but like it or not, he _was_ elected, and the attempt by the Bush administration to encourage a coup against him, even before he'd started down the path of constitutional "reforms" to consolidate power, was stupid and self-defeating. Those actions have certainly helped Maduro maintain an aura of popular legitimacy with the folks who still believe in the Chavista revolution. He can always say that those who oppose him are just stooges of the US. We would have a lot more standing now to support Guaidó's legitimate claim, if Bush had supported Chávez's legitimate claim while expressing concern or condemnation of whatever bad stuff he did.
It is _possible_ that if we'd had a Good Neighbor policy toward Chávez, and provided appropriate carrots at the time, that we could've kept him from going down the path of consolidating power -- after the US _actually attempted to push a coup against him_, why _shouldn't_ he be paranoid that any domestic opposition is just cover for another attempt? Maybe he still would've aspired to dictatorship regardless, but we'll never get to run that experiment, because Bush decided it was still the '60s and he could topple an elected Latin American leftist to bring some friendlier right wingers to power.
I think the "stick" should mainly be reserved to "Don't make deals with Russia and China, and we won't back regime-change against you, but we're also not going to pretend that we think you're a good person, you little autocrat you."
This doesn’t make sense to me. We effectively have a good neighbor policy for everyone except for the two dictatorships. I’m not sure what normalizing relations with them will do for Latin America overall.
Also, it’s pretty cool seeing that Mapp is as I work there regularly. The choice in South America is not really between leftist and rightists. It’s always about corruption. Corruption is what drives these elections. Basically they seesaw from one side to the other because they are all corrupt. There is this constant hope that this young guy from this party is going to put an end to the corruption.
I never take these favorable views of the United States polls seriously. The United States as a whole as a concept is generally widely admired. And a huge huge huge portion would love to have a green card. But also know the people who have lived in the United States and who moved back to South America just because life in the culture there is so much more interesting.
Anyway, Columbia is probably my favorite country. Argentina is awesome even though their government sucks especially with their fake exchange rate. I am going to chili for the first time this summer. Can’t wait.
"We effectively have a good neighbor policy for everyone except for the two dictatorships."
Um, this might come as a surprise to Evo Morales. Like yes, I'm sure the Biden administration will behave more responsibly than the Trump administration, but if you think anyone to the left of Augusto Pinochet, anywhere in South America, has just decided to forgive-and-forget that -- not to mention Bush's attempt to encourage a coup against Chávez two decades back -- you're engaging in wishful thinking. If the US wants to shore up a hemisphere-wide alliance against China, we have a lot of work to do, regaining trust.
Well, if they won’t forget, maybe we should try a studied disregard of them, just don’t interfere. Do you suppose others, such as China, would do the same?
May I ask, courteously, why you don’t stay there? Sounds like you’d be much happier.
I would if my job let me. And the wife and kids thing.
I think Morales did a ton of good and was inspiring in a lot of ways and overall a great president, but man, why'd he have to go and eliminate term limits so he could run again? You can see how that would get people riled up, right? He couldn't find a successor to hand off the presidency to? I still buy that the US was wrong to condemn the election right before the coup, and god knows I feel very "you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to 'em"" about Jeanine Añez and the other Christian supremacist coup orchestrators, but man, if Morales had just accepted the legitimacy of term limits, I feel like this could have been avoided.
It’s a dangerous spiral opening trade and normalize relationships with murderous dictators like Maduro. Let’s remember that the Vice President is the head of Cartel de los Soles.
The US has never cared much about the neighbors but lifting all the sanctions would bring nothing good for the US or the Venezuelan people.
The most good-neighborly thing the US can do in Latin America is to stop pressuring countries in the region to cooperate with Washington's counternarcotics policies. If the Venezuelan government is involved in drug trafficking, who cares?
The only reason the drug problem is a US problem is because the Us consumes most of it, and the proceeds are used to corrupt countries (even more), allow human violations to continue happening and a myriad of horrible things.
The US has always intervened in South America with a self serving agenda.
The fact that the Venezuelan government has allowed hezbollah camps to train in the country and their close relationship with Iran should be enough to understand that the US should not lift sanctions.
And, on your point. think of this, if the US government is not pressuring South American companies to fight narcos, then the countries will encourage it. That means, a ton of more drug problems in the US, and god knows, the US already has enough drug problems.
There's very little evidence that changes in the supply of narcotics have a major effect on consumption, or even availability. If you apply pressure to specific supplier countries, production goes up elsewhere. (This is more or less what happened when President Uribe claimed he'd brought drug violence under control in Colombia. It did go down there, but it shifted to Mexico and Central America instead.)
The whole approach to drug use in the US has been a mistake
Well said.
I'm old enough to remember that in the late eighties, the cartels offered to pay off Colombia's foreign debt if the government promised not to extradite drug kingpins to the United States. The government rejected the offer.
I don't usually use terms like "neocolonialism" but seriously: how subservient does a state have to be to turn down an offer like that?
That was a publicity stunt. It was not real. Good old fashion clickbait.
Subservient to not sell your government, country and the future of your citizens?
That’s a way of interpreting history :)
They should have taken the money and told the Reagan administration to go pound sand. Poor countries are not in a position to fight drug traffickers; they can either quietly cooperate or else see their societies undermined by organized crime.
Tacit cooperation with the cartels seems to have been how post-Soviet states in Central Asia responded to their position as conduits for Afghan heroin, and I suspect that it's also how the Sandinistas have kept cocaine-related violence out of Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega has done some pretty bad things but if I were a Nicaraguan voter I'd support him anyway, just because he's prevented the country from turning into Guatemala or El Salvador.
The US has consistently pressured weak states to destroy themselves by fighting America's drug war, and the handful of countries which refused are in much better shape than the ones which played along.
If the drug trade was legal and regulated, both here and abroad, you wouldn't need the whole militarized, organized-crime structure around it. Like, maintaining private armies costs money! The folks who grow coca would much rather just run their farms and sell into a legitimate market. If you suddenly made corn illegal, while not changing anything about the demand for it, the whole Midwest would turn into a cartel-ized murder zone, too.
(This also goes to why it is so incredibly frustrating that in the twenty years we were occupying Afganistan, we never just legalized opium poppies. We instead engaged in a pointless, destructive campaign against farmers who wanted to grow that as a cash crop, which ensured that the central government would be seen as illegitimate American puppets, by all those farmers -- it's not the _only_ reason we failed to establish a stable government, but it's definitely _a_ reason. We have a deal for legal opium poppy trade with Turkey already! Why not extend the same deal to Afghanistan? But of course, the folks at places like Purdue Pharma didn't want the competition.)
I haven't been to Colombia but I understand that cocaine is basically decriminalized there. It's illegal to sell it but if you pay a street vendor $10 for a pack of cigarettes he'll give you a gram of coke "for free", which apparently isn't illegal. If that's been chosen as the least harmful approach in a country where drugs are everywhere, why wouldn't it be the best policy for the US?
Don’t believe they might have principled objections to the traffickers? Seems neocolonialist to me.
North and South American Free Trade Agreement when??
Looking foward for your article on how Latin American could make the jump to manufacturing. In Brazil there are people (including economists) who think we should 'abandon' manufacturing and focus on primary sector activities. I'm really skeptical about this view, so it would be nice to read about a consistent policy for manufacturing.
I'd like to read it too. I'm skeptical of the idea that Latin America should go this route, because wages are already higher than in developing Asia and you'd be leaning against the huge comparative advantage that many of these countries have in tourism. Everyone loves to hate on tourism as a path to development but in this case I think the Ricardian argument is pretty strong.
Well, for Brazil and Argentina it makes no sense focusing on low end manufacturing, where low wages are important. But more complex manufacturing can be very viable (see the aircraft industry in Brazil).
Bolivia on the other hand can go on the low end manufacturing route.
Hi Noah
Thanks for talking about LatAm!
Really looking forward to your post about industrial production in LatAm.
Perhaps even a post about crypto in El Salvador?
Instead of appeasing brutal and repressive regimes like Venuezuela (and Cuba), perhaps the current administration could have refrained from being a bitch to domestic energy production.
Pity, too, that Merkel shut down nuclear energy in her country.
A "NEW ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS"
The original "Alliance for Progress" of 1962 was designed and implemented to reduce and stop Soviet and Cuban influence in Latin America during the Cold War Era. After J.F.K assasination, it lost momentum, faded and was terminated.
A XXI Century "New Alliance for Progress" for Central American and Caribbean countries is very needed nowadays. Such "Alliance" will provide governments with auditable funding, permitting the poor population of those countries to have opportunities to fairly better their living. It will also provide funding and technical knowledge to fight Corruption, Drug trafficking and the devastating effects of Tropical Hurricanes.
If Security and living conditions greatly improve South of the Rio Grande, Migration up North, to the USA will be drastically reduced. It won't be an easy task but once policies are properly setup, desired results will be produced.
A part of the Caribbean geography and long ago, the "Adversary", Cuba could be invited to engage in the making up of that international "Alliance". Having it's own Security Concerns ahead, the USA must pragmatically first engage with Cuba. For that the US Foreign Department must re-evaluate its (Foreign) Policies for the Region.
Letter sent to editor of America's Quarterly on line publication on 9 th of May. 2021.
Also sent to Vice POTUS K.Harris previously on April 2021.
A "NEW ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS"
The original "Alliance for Progress" of 1962 was designed and implemented to reduce and stop Soviet and Cuban influence in Latin America during the Cold War Era. After J.F.K assasination, it lost momentum, faded and was terminated.
A XXI Century "New Alliance for Progress" for Central American and Caribbean countries is very needed nowadays. Such "Alliance" will provide governments with auditable funding, permitting the poor population of those countries to have opportunities to fairly better their living. It will also provide funding and technical knowledge to fight Corruption, Drug trafficking and the devastating effects of Tropical Hurricanes.
If Security and living conditions greatly improve South of the Rio Grande, Migration up North, to the USA will be drastically reduced. It won't be an easy task but once policies are properly setup, desired results will be produced.
A part of the Caribbean geography and long ago, the "Adversary", Cuba could be invited to engage in the making up of that international "Alliance". Having it's own Security Concerns ahead, the USA must pragmatically first engage with Cuba. For that the US Foreign Department must re-evaluate its (Foreign) Policies for the Region.
Letter sent to editor of America's Quarterly on line publication on 9 th of May. 2021.
Also sent to Vice POTUS K.Harris previously on April 2021.