Self-Doubt & Self-Deception in 9/11 & 11/4

Self-Doubt & Self-Deception in 9/11 & 11/4

Yesterday, on the eve of the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I taught separate undergraduate classes on anti-Americanism and the presidential election campaign. An antipathy towards those Americans who continue to believe in ideals that these diverse students considered as limited was a clear theme that ran through both classes. Americans observed at their party conventions and preparing for the remembrance of 9/11 were identified as Other that irrationally clung to a faith in a false exceptional identity grounded in absolutes of God and History. Questions were asked of those Americans who continued to perceive the world that they could plainly recognise as a constructed “reality”. But as Slavoj Žižek urges, maybe is it not wise to transform an American Other into a ‘subject supposed to believe.’ What if constant confrontations with the void in this constructed “reality” continue to sow doubts in many of these seemingly ardent believers? Are the patriotic outbursts at symbolic events of party conventions and 9/11 memorials simply used as means to settle these doubts by externally asserting belief? Witnessing signs of an ‘unbearable truth’ that disrupt the American Dream are repressed through the performative act of reasserting the splendour of that very dream. Emersion in a presidential campaign or the rhetoric of the War on Terror contains the uncomfortable uncertainty of their own identity.

But are those of us in comfortable ‘Western’ lifestyles in a position to immediately denounce those betraying their own interests and the ideals of universal liberation through accepting the functioning of an unfeasible democracy and submitting to the materialist pleasures of an exploitative capitalist system? Is it enough to continue our participation in a “worthless reality” by cancelling it out through the clinging to an idea that we can withdraw to the inner knowledge of the way things “really” are? Has the naive view of the world that is rejected for a more “realistic” understanding already become a part of us? As the Indian scholar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta suggested shortly after 9/11 – maybe the antipathy towards America for many is derived more from the knowledge that its way of life has been invited in and cannot be escaped. Can anti-Americanism simply sustain an appearance that allows continued enjoyment of the good life? How many are actually willing to fully embrace the fetishised path to political manumission that enables the conviction that we are not “really” living in this “reality”? Courage is not just in questioning in the attitude of those Americans we study, but more in questioning our own positions. This is a call for reflection rather than relativist demand to accept the wrongness of any belief. Half an hour before lessons began yesterday, scientists at the European Organisation of for Nuclear Research successfully completed their initial tests of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. It has been refreshing to read about those retaining a readiness to continually reconsider the theories that guide the journey into the complex and unknown.

New Orleans and the Other Convention Centre

New Orleans & the Other Convention Centre

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast appears to have escaped the devastating death toll that Hurricane Gustav inflicted in the Caribbean, but John McCain also seems to have been rescued from political disaster in Minneapolis. He has been saved from the prospects of Bush and Cheney addressing the Republican National Convention and he has successfully managed to gloss over his weak oratory and appeal directly instead to his campaign slogan of Country First. ‘It was one of those moments in history,’ McCain insisted of the looming crisis, ‘where you have to put America first.’ But it is important to raise questions of this approach. The use of Hurricane Gustav to demonstrate his credentials as the nation’s natural leader in the face of crisis needs to be highlighted for its cynical politicking. McCain’s visit to a disaster relief centre was swiftly touted as evidence of his ‘ability to lead from day one.’ At the same time, it reinforced the key campaign message of the inexperience of Barack Obama. The early stages of the Republican Convention have also sought to utilise the situation for another campaign tactic (taken from the Hillary Clinton campaign) to promote McCain as the “American” candidate. McCain was not alone in asserting that it is ‘time to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.’ Previous efforts to construct a discourse that portrays Obama as somehow un-American in his opposition to the projected image of McCain as embodiment and protector of “America” has already been documented and the endeavours look set to continue.

The political struggle to define “American” values is no new phenomenon to U.S. elections, but the Republican Convention has also used the opportunity to try to exorcise the spectre of the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. McCain may hope to recapture the image of leadership projected by Bush at Ground Zero, but this was a construct that waned during the intervention in Iraq and was irreversibly damaged after Katrina. In facing the crisis as an American, rather than Republican, McCain hopes to distance himself from the image of Bush’s belated flyover of the devastation in New Orleans. Both Obama and Biden have stressed their hope that the lessons of Katrina have been learned, but in maintaining a narrow focus on the need for a rapid and compassionate response to natural disaster they have allowed McCain, who has worked hard to detach himself from the Bush administration’s response, to assume such a mandate for his own campaign. He has made it his personal crusade to assure the security of all Americans. ‘If Obama can talk about Katrina,’ one Republican delegate from Arizona suggested, ‘then McCain can start talking about Gustav.’ Obama and the mainstream of the Democratic Party need to be talking about a very different lesson of Katrina that has still to be learned.

The tragic pictures broadcast from New Orleans three years ago did expose the Bush administration’s negligence in regard to the safety of American citizens, but the rest of the country were forced to directly confront the abject poverty that is tolerated in their way of life in front of a global audience. Here were pictures that radically undermined the ideal-ego of an exceptional nation as archetype of progress. The tragedy of 9/11 was met in New Orleans with a great outpour of sympathy for those directly affected - I still have my NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) Y New York t-shirt somewhere in my wardrobe. It could have been interpreted as symbol of the gap between the American ideal-ego and the different experiences of the U.S. role in the world. The Bush administration’s construction of a barbarous Other opposed to this ideal-ego instead provided many with the immediate suture for the trauma of 9/11. The victims of New Orleans also received the immediate concern of the nation, but the natural catastrophe left by Hurricane Katrina revealed the man-made injustices of the American nightmare that lay behind their symbolic constructions of the American dream. New Orleans could also have been interpreted as the symbol of the gap between the American dream and lived experience. Maintaining the former in a Freudian ego-ideal would provide the stimulus for the action necessary to close this fissure. But the wider tragedy was that these casualties became symbols of a narrow discourse adopted by the majority of the Democratic Party that focused on criticising the Bush administration’s response as the departure from this ideal-ego. Asides from the Black Caucuses and other members on the fringes of the Party, no serious challenge was made to the traditional attitudes towards poverty and race. Symptom was identified in cause as individual responsibility was accepted as the condition for poverty. This has meant that Democrats have failed to engage an alternative discourse that is present within, as well as outside, the U.S. that constructs New Orleans as a symbol of American inequality.

If growing up in rough areas of England had awakened me to the inequity of capitalist society, it could only partially prepare me for the disparate living conditions I witnessed during my brief residency in New Orleans before Katrina hit. Maybe it gave me a modicum of courage to at least look beyond the constructed divide that I was clearly supposed to stay behind. I will not easily forget the splendour of the affluent white areas of the city and the hospitality of its residents. Being welcomed into family trip for July 4th celebrations was certainly a highlight. The generosity extended even as I questioned the patriarch’s perceptions of the wealth and race divide in the city. But it was my fleeting relationship with Wesley – a former gang member with gold teeth and the inscription ‘F*** All Y’All’ tattooed across his chest – that I will always remember. His was a tragic story far removed from my own, but what was maybe initial intrigue on his behalf of a white Brit joining him in the hunt for any minimum wage labour eventually developed into common cause. Wesley held strong convictions of the race and class barriers that stood in his way. If he remains safe – wherever he is – I am pretty sure that Katrina only reaffirmed his perceptions of American society. Anecdotes aside, it remains clear that for all the anticipation of Obama’s triumphant march towards the White House, the persistence of economic inequity will sustain conflicting constructions of hierarchy and injustice. The Obama campaign has pushed its own message – a McCain administration would inevitably continue in the footsteps of its predecessor in failing to rebuild the American dream. But a wide gap also remains between the symbolic victory for Obama and Biden and any genuine cause for race or class liberation. It was Bill Clinton that gave the Democratic faithful in Denver the powerful line that, ‘people around the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.’ The Backyard will return to the latter and its impact, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, but for those Latin Americans pursuing liberation, the example set by the U.S. in New Orleans has been powerful for the wrong reasons. New Orleans was promoted as the bridge between the U.S. and Latin America after World War II by the Mayor, DeLesseps Story Morrison, but his commitment to racial segregation undermined his attempts to sell the American way of life. It is perhaps more apparent today that the U.S. is far from realising John Winthrop’s ‘citty upon a hill’ in the sub-sea level New Orleans.

Y Dónde Quedó América Latina?

Y Dónde Quedó América Latina?

During the past couple of months academic and media focus has turned towards defining the legacy of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the prospects for continuity and change under its successor. Wider attention has also explored the question of what the world situation will look like for the new occupant of the White House and what role the U.S. will manage to play in it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the issue of U.S. policy towards Latin America has remained largely out of the spotlight. Following Barack Obama’s international trip, John McCain even went so far as to broadcast adverts asking why his Democrat counterpart decided not to use the occasion to make his first visit to Latin America or even mention the region. Obama’s subsequent decision not to immediately respond draws the need for some explanation. The banners under which each candidate hopes to march towards the Oval Office perhaps offer some enlightenment.

In his campaign slogan, McCain makes it clear that his job is to put ‘Country First.’ He looks poised to continue the Bush administration’s strategy of pursuing a preponderance of power to maintain U.S. global primacy. The application of this slogan to a strategy of U.S. ascendancy must be considered however, in the context offered by Thomas Paine that ‘by serving themselves, Americans would serve the world.’ Domestic support for a foreign policy that defends national interests cannot be easily separated from the enduring belief in the U.S. as the guardian of universal values and the agent of human liberation. U.S. primacy is rationalised at the international level as necessary for universal progression towards freedom. The Bush administration regarded the projection of the symbolic image of U.S. power as confirmation of the inevitability of the U.S. leading the world towards liberation. Recent events in the Middle East and the former Soviet orbit have led to resistance to this construct of U.S. superiority. McCain insists on efforts to reassert the credibility of the projected image of U.S. power. Obama however, whilst not renouncing the U.S. claim to global leadership, has acknowledged the failure of the Bush administration to demonstrate that this is necessary for the liberation of the world rather than narrow national interests. Obama’s rallying call for ‘Change That We Can Believe In’ is directed at both the domestic and international audiences. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations at the end of last year, Obama sought to reunite Americans through the restoration of its traditional Mission. As George F. Kennan had asked of the American people 60 years earlier, Obama insisted that they believe in this change and show the world that they know what they want and are able to achieve it. During his international tour last month, Obama also hoped to project this new image to those in Europe and the Middle East, who considered the Bush administration as acting only on behalf of their own interests. Obama promised to win their hearts and minds by providing them the freedoms from fear and want. Americans would serve themselves by serving the world.

But Obama recognises that persuading these allies that the U.S. must remain first among equals, cannot rely alone on demonstrating change that “we” all can believe in, but it must also be justified with the common threat that the U.S. must protect “us” against. The Bush administration had used its antagonistic division of “us and them” in the War on Terror as rationale, not only to extend beyond its frontier of influence and transform “them”, but also to maintain its claims to the leadership of “us”. Obama has made it clear in numerous speeches that Iraq however, was the wrong danger. It was not the Other that threatened and negated “us” all. But the threats that “we” face to “our” way of life are real, he argues. Rather than dragging “us” kicking and screaming into foreign policy situations they wish to avoid, Obama hopes to redefine the Other to one that “we” all share a fear of. The promise of a changed diplomacy of cooperation relies on the identification of this common cause that guarantees “our” greater cohesion. But it is here where we move on to look at the Western Hemisphere. Latin America has remained far from the War on Terror. There is little fear of it crossing the line of demarcation into Other in this discourse and it poses no significant challenge to U.S. leadership in this struggle. If the Bush administration failed to convince friends in Europe and the Middle East to identify with its representation of Self primarily because of its unilateral offensive against Iraq as the principal representation and danger of the Other, it failed in Latin America because of the complete absence of a common Other.

The Bush administration did not attempt to unite the region through common negation of an extra-hemispheric Other in the War on Terror, but through the positive pursuit of liberation through common ideals. However, the focus of attention and resources in demonstrating the credibility of its leadership in the Middle East guaranteed the failure to convince Latin America of its model of liberation through an agenda of security, democracy and free trade. Faced with serious alternative approaches in Latin America, McCain has pledged more engagement with Latin America, but it is clear he will not divert from the Bush administration’s agenda. Rather than demonstrating a new framework of U.S. power – where the U.S. restrains its unilateral pursuit for particular national interests – to change U.S. relations with Latin America, Obama would need to prove the credibility of the American model of liberation. Despite the disruption to the insinuated Bush-McCain continuum that a young, black Democrat could offer, Obama has offered no real evidence that he can make this happen. The difference in his approach to Latin America has again focused on a new diplomacy – promising to deal directly with Cuba and Venezuela. But other than expressing doubts about the Bush administration’s agenda of democratisation, security and development, Obama has offered no serious alternative. The Bush administration’s inability to stabilise Iraq has ensured that debate has continued to focus on capabilities of U.S. power rather than its model of liberation. In the near future Obama will continue to demonstrate the superiority of his vision of U.S. power over McCain’s, but outside of its domestic context the model of liberation looks as if it will remain unaddressed. Alternatives to the Bush-McCain strategy have been proposed though and The Backyard will examine their likelihood and viability over the next few weeks.

The Three Amigos!

The Three Amigos!

Last week President Bush met with Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderón at the North American Leaders’ Summit in New Orleans. Dubbed in the media as ‘The Three Amigos’, Bush and his Canadian and Mexican counterparts gathered with representatives of major corporations from the three countries to develop further plans for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). Since its conception in early 2005, the SPP has received criticism from the right as a threat to national sovereignty and from the left as being beyond popular democratic control. But it is in its designation as “NAFTA plus” that the SPP has provided a new focus of protest for those unconvinced about the benefits of continental free trade. Protectionist sentiment has become more visible through the Democratic presidential nomination race and the Bush administration is now up against the clock. Administration and private leaders are working together to ensure that further integration plans are well developed and their case is well made before any potential transition to a Democratic White House in 2009.

The intensified efforts are due, in large part, because the SPP has been an executive initiative of the Bush administration. Negotiations have been subject to neither legislative oversight nor popular participation. Government officials of the three governments have instead focused on collaboration with a number of corporate leaders from across the continent. The North American Competitiveness Council was created in 2006 as a State-Private working group to drive plans for integration and selected representatives include leaders of Ford, General Motors, Chevron and Wal-Mart. As they congregated in New Orleans last week, a parallel People’s Summit of New Orleans hosted protests against the exclusion of ‘civil society’ from negotiations. Congressional representatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties have also expressed their concerns. In one letter to President Bush, Democratic House Representatives, Marcy Kaptur and Raul Grijalva, stated that Congress “objects to a process that permits the executives of the respective countries to bypass constitutionally mandated review.” They insisted that the SPP negotiations “are made transparent and proper legislative oversight is established.” The Bush administration finds these remonstrations against the form of negotiations problematic, not only in itself, but because the content of the SPP is also under criticism.

The SPP has provided fresh impetus for protests against the economic arrangements of NAFTA. The Democratic candidates for the White House have been using more and more protectionist rhetoric and have both promised to renegotiate the terms of the NAFTA. The Bush administration and business leaders fear that their agenda will be derailed if it has to become more accountable. Their main priority for the next few months will be to counter the growing criticism of their plans. Noting that administration officials would have to take a fairly diplomatic tone in this task, Thomas Donohue, the President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, felt that he was in a better position to rant against the protectionist sentiment emerging from the Democratic nomination race. “The bottom line” he suggested however, “is when we get down to serious business we are not going to change the position on [NAFTA].” He acknowledged that key members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team, even former President Bill Clinton had come out in favour of NAFTA and Barack Obama had sent aides to Canada to ensure his criticism should not be taken too literally. The problem, of course, is that this rhetoric would soon become part of public discourse. Speaking to the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America, Donohue argued that private leaders would have to dramatically improve their efforts in talking to Congress and the public about the positives of trade. He also said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had undertaken numerous surveys about the language that people use and understand on trade. As the term ‘protectionism’ had many positive associations, Donohue suggested that business leaders and corporate lobbyists should use the more negatively-connected ‘isolationism’ as the converse to their trade agenda.

Donohue is astute in his calls to focus on a negative opposition to NAFTA and current developments. Recent attempts to promote the positive sides of this agenda have not been particularly successful. In response to a reporter’s question on Democratic criticism of the fairness of NAFTA, Dan Fisk, the Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the National Security Council suggested that the significant increase of trade to nearly $1 trillion between the three countries was a positive record. He acknowledged that the administration’s main task was “to find ways to, frankly, convince the American people from our perspective, first and foremost, that this is an arrangement that’s worked for us and it’s also worked for our neighbours. It’s been a win-win situation.” The U.S. Department of Commerce even dedicates a webpage to dispelling the continuing ‘myths’ of the SPP, some of which are less accurate than others. But they persist nonetheless, as they have been drawn into an equivalent chain in a counter-narrative. This discourse is one that extends across borders and pivots around the kernel that NAFTA has not brought equal benefits. The Three Amigos’ focus on the advantages of increased trade has not been enough to break this discourse down. On the ground, many still cannot see that this increased trade has brought equally improved standards of living. Workers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico all still fear job losses. Demonstrations continue this week in Mexico against efforts to privatise water and oil resources. Larger protests still, target the large government subsidies to U.S. agricultural producers that are legal under NAFTA. Already making a profit in the U.S. market, these producers are able to dump their exports on the Mexican market at prices below cost. Whilst some Mexicans in urban areas can benefit from competitive prices, the rural farming poor are driven out of any profits and ultimately their jobs. NAFTA is only one part of inequitable global economic system, but it has become a focal point for dissatisfaction with current economic relations. The Three Amigos will have to do much better in creating their own political discourse if it is to generate a consensus in favour of the SPP during 2008.

Thomas Shannon, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, will probably be the point man for the Bush administration on this task. He has long been on the front line in constructing a positive hemispheric discourse based on their free trade agenda. Speaking to the Council of Americas last week, Shannon did turn his attention towards North America: “It is about recognizing that we do live in a common continent, that we live off of common economies and markets, and that while we are independent countries, while we have enormous racial and cultural and ethnic diversity, we share fundamental political values and fundamental economic understandings, and that our ability to take advantage of this commonality, our ability to take advantage of these understandings and work together will enhance our position in the world and send a very strong signal to those who want to be partners with us that they have to understand these agreements in terms of strategic alliances and they have to meet our standards.” The problems with this approach are clear.
Shannon will struggle to replace the deep-rooted American exceptional identity or even the larger hemispheric identity he has been promoting recently. More importantly, this attempt to construct a continental identity ignores the very contingency at its foundation. Shannon acknowledges the diversity within North America, but suggests that their commonality is largely based upon their shared economic understandings. But it is the very resistance to these understandings that Shannon is trying to eradicate by focusing on a common identity. He will find it very difficult to promote an agenda through reference to its own deficient grounding. If the governments and private leaders of the three countries are unable to develop a consensus for the SPP, they will be forced to use more unilateral and unaccountable power to push the agenda onwards, which will only be met with more resistance. One wonders if Harper, Calderón and Bush would be better off just remaking the 1986 film, The Three Amigos, in which the three main characters, played by Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short repeated their renowned catch-phrase, complete with dance moves:

Lucky Day (Martin or Harper): Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.
Ned Nederlander (Short or Calderón): Wherever there is suffering, we’ll be there.
Dusty Bottoms (Chase or Bush): Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find...
All: ...The Three Amigos!

Fortunes and Favours

Fortunes and Favours

It is only a short comment from The Backyard this week, due to time constraints. But where analysis is lacking, the figures should speak for themselves. As the voting stations open across Pennsylvania today for the Democratic primary, debate continues over the candidates’ abilities to alleviate the plight of the Keystone State’s ‘blue-collar’ workers. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have together argued that the Bush administration has tragically failed this demographic, but both maintain that the other will not protect the interests of the working-class from the White House. After the ‘bitter’ comments, both the Clintons and Obamas have come out to establish their humble working-class origins, but the barrage of negative campaigning will perhaps leave the voters suspicious of either message. Whilst it may be unfair to label either as completely out of touch, their recent fortunes do not suggest that they have genuinely shared the ‘average’ American experiences of recent years. The (median) average household in Pennsylvania has earned around $300,000 under the Bush administration’s tenure. During the same period, Obama and his wife earned just short of $8 million. The Clintons have accumulated over $108 million.

This week’s release of the Obama household’s tax returns shows that they took earnings last year of $4.2 million. The ‘average’ Pennsylvanian family would need to have worked on current salaries since Warren Harding’s presidential election victory to have gathered a similar amount. These families will find even less comfort in the Clintons’ disclosure earlier this year that they made $20.4 million last year. To match that they would have been working since over a century before King Charles II granted William Penn the land charter to establish Pennsylvania. But the situation is far bleaker for neighbours in Latin America. Around this same time the Spanish missionary, St. Francis Solanus encountered the Guaraní Indians on an expedition through what is now Paraguay. But today’s ‘average’ Paraguayan household would have already been working for over a millennium in order to have earned last year’s Obama takings. The newly-elected Paraguayan President, Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez focused his campaign on the country’s standards of living. More specifically stressed the need to deal with the acute income inequality in Paraguay. Indeed, for the large proportion of Paraguayan households that remain living under the poverty line, they would need to have been working since the estimated origins of the Guaraní to match the Obamas in 2007.

It is not to say that neither Obama nor Clinton can put aside their own prosperity and address income disparity in the U.S. and the wider problems in the Western Hemisphere. But neither has really shown willing to seriously tackle the systemic problems that provide opportunities for such inequality. The considerable backing that both campaigns receive from Wall Street does not suggest anything different. John Paulson was able to make a Wall Street record $3.7 billion last year and it remains unlikely that any Democratic White House will seek to dramatically curb such mammon. It will remain a sad story for those households in Paraguay destined to remain under the poverty line. For them to have made this record amount they would have been selling their labour amongst the earliest discovered hominids.

Turning Backs on Colombia?

Turning Backs on Colombia?

The U.S. House of Representatives voted this week 224-195 to eliminate the ‘fast-track’ requirement for the approval or rejection of negotiated trade agreements by the executive branch. The immediate cause for this action is to allow them to indefinitely delay any vote on the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. The decision is already having an impact on the 2008 elections; presidential and congressional candidates are positioning themselves on either side of a battle line that separates different visions for reviving the economy and securing the nation. Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, stands strongly with the Bush administration in expressing “profound dismay” with the House vote, but the Democratic contenders are struggling to demonstrate their support for the decision. They have a unique opportunity to introduce a wider debate on U.S. policies in the Western Hemisphere, but the campaign trail has led them towards nationalist rhetoric that will not give regional neighbours much to be confident about.

The House decision received instant and fierce criticism from the White House. “The decisions that were made by the [House Democratic] leadership are disappointing,” noted the National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, on Fox News Sunday. “We will continue to work with the Congress,” he continued, “but the point is this is a good agreement. It helps American farmers, workers and businesses. It stands by Colombia. We have no better friend than Colombia in this hemisphere. And the president believes very strongly that Congress owes the American people a vote on this agreement this year.” President Bush also publicly condemned the “unprecedented and unfortunate action by the House of Representatives,” which he argued, “is damaging to our economy, our national security, and our relations with an important ally.” The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has continued to publicly stand behind the decision. Although few have cared to mention it, this seems, in large part, to be another attempt by Pelosi to claw back constitutional power for the legislative branch. Many members of Congress have considered the White House to have usurped too much control over trade; the ‘fast-track’ authority, which has stood since 1974, is a good target for Pelosi to uphold her pledge to introduce more oversight and restrains of the administration. Whilst this may have some political motive for Pelosi, the economic and security issues underlying this decision have elevated it to a loftier stage.

The impact of the economic problems on the ‘ordinary’ American has grown to be the major issue in the 2008 elections and the Democrats have sought to lay blame for the current situation on the Bush administration. “For seven long years,” the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, declared, “the president’s failed economic plan has stiffed the American people.” Pelosi has spent the past few days making sure that the American people see the Colombian Free Trade Agreement as being squarely within that plan. She told the press at one point that, “[i]f we are to be successful in passing a trade agreement, we have to first tell the American people that we have a positive economic agenda that addresses their aspirations, addresses their concerns.” In doing so, she has laid down the gauntlet for the presidential hopefuls. John McCain has been a long-time advocate of free trade deals and immediately issued a public statement condemning the House for turning its back on American workers. But both Democratic nominees believe that McCain’s support for this agreement demonstrates his neglect of the interests of working-class America. The recent ‘credit crunch’ has led the many Americans still living below the poverty line to question the Bush administration’s economic policies. Indeed, at a meeting of the Newspaper Association of America, Senator Barack Obama asserted that McCain is making a bad bet in “running for George Bush’s third term.”

Obama has joined Senator Hillary Clinton in pledging to protect more American jobs by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and opposing the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. At a recent campaign rally, Clinton declared that “[w]e're going to take a look at every single trade agreement we've got and we're going to make those trade agreements pro-America and pro-American worker.” It is difficult to see this recent posturing on free trade as anything more than electioneering. Clinton has recently had to demote her key strategist, Mark Penn, after it was revealed that he had been lobbying on behalf of Alvaro Uribe’s Colombian government to promote the trade agreement. She has also had to distance herself from her husband as his ties to Uribe have been disclosed. Her credibility has already been damaged as she struggles to prove that she had remained opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement when it was passed during her time as First Lady. But this has not left the door open for Obama to take up this mantle; his own position was compromised when a top aide was reported to have told Stephen Harper’s Canadian government that they could ignore Obama’s protectionist talk merely as campaigning. To look back into their voting records, it is evident that neither Clinton nor Obama can attest their recent positions. Whilst it is true that they both opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005, they have both supported a number of agreements similar to the one with Colombia. Even as recent as late 2007, Clinton and Obama went against other Democratic presidential candidates in showing support for the Peruvian Free Trade Agreement.

This can only indicate that their opposition to the Colombian Free Trade Agreement is far more about their election campaign than any conviction about the interests of the American people. Perhaps even more evident, is the fact that they are not being guided by any concern for the people of Latin America. Neither Clinton nor Obama have called for any serious reflection on the way the U.S. deals with hemispheric neighbours. Labour groups and key Democrats have been critical of agreements with countries that cannot protect basic labour and human rights. On the Peruvian deal, the Democratic Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, made a damning summary: “Slave wages are OK, unsafe working conditions are OK, unsafe products and food are OK, contaminated food is OK.” Undoubtedly, the situation is much worse in Colombia; the President of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, suggests that union leaders continue to be intimidated and killed. Seventeen union members have been reported as assassinated this year alone by the Colombian National Labor School. More ominously, there is mounting evidence of connections between the right-wing paramilitary groups that are perpetrating many of these crimes and high-level officials in the Uribe government. The Bush administration has continued to support Uribe’s claims that targeted labour and human rights activists have been sympathisers of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. Both Clinton and Obama expressed their concerns about the labour provisions in the Peruvian agreement, but this could not dampen their support. Fast-forward a few months and they also highlight the problems in Colombia, but neither has shown willing to make any blanket denunciations of U.S. partnership with Colombia. It is hard to believe that Colombian abuses alone would have been enough for them to raise their opposition to the Free Trade Agreement. They have firmly anchored the issue to U.S. interests and have used the labour rights problem for extra soundbytes. The debate on China only confirms this; the human rights card is played, but Permanent Normalized Trade Relations are hardly being questioned and the main issue is the threat to U.S. economic interests.

Noone expects McCain to make any dramatic changes to the Bush administration’s policies in Latin America, but the Democratic contenders are missing an opportunity for a serious consideration of U.S. activities in the region. The message from the Bush administration has been clear: Colombia is a key ally in Latin America and the Free Trade Agreement is vital for U.S. security and economic strategy. The U.S. Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, immediately complained that “[t]he House Democratic leadership has now slapped around a major U.S. ally, one of our most important allies in Latin America.” The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, also suggested that “Colombia's security is very important and it would be a shame to see the progress that's been made there put at risk because they face economic difficulties or because President Uribe suffers political consequences because his good friend, the United States of America, basically turned its back on him.” McCain, unsurprisingly, has backed the Bush administration’s support of Colombia as “an important ally in the battle against international narco-terrorism.” Clinton and Obama may have disagreed with the suggested importance of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, but neither has fundamentally questioned the U.S. partnership with the Uribe government. Neither of them was particularly critical of the recent Colombian incursion into Ecuadoran territory and neither has suggested that the billions of dollars committed in Plan Colombia are ill-spent. It has been left to the relatively unknown Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, to question the success of the current drug policy and accuse the Bush administration of using it as cover for interventionist policies.

In focusing on U.S. interests in their campaign rhetoric, Clinton and Obama have failed to address many of the grievances of Latin American people against free trade deals. U.S. business lobbyists, such as Calmen Cohen, the president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, have argued that the rejection of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement “will undermine U.S. credibility in negotiations for decades to come, making it more difficult for the United States to level the playing field, eliminate foreign trade barriers and open foreign markets to our goods and services.” Whilst Clinton and Obama can have acknowledged some of the disadvantages of free trade for American workers, they have been reluctant to suggest there may be burdens for those in other countries. The Colombian Free Trade Agreement would have eliminated a number of trade barriers for U.S. exports, but in return the Bush administration would only have made permanent the access to the U.S. market that Colombia has enjoyed since signing the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Act. Since failing to attain any agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Bush administration has used bilateral agreements to force trade liberalisation measures that even the World Trade Organization has been reluctant to promote. The president of Oxfam America, Raymond C. Offenheiser, has expressed criticism of the Colombian deal that would cause suffering for the large proportion of Colombia’s population that rely on agriculture for a livelihood. Most would have no chance of competing with cheaper ‘dumped’ U.S. food exports that continue to be subsidised by the Bush administration. Offenheiser also suggests that this can only undermine regional security. Those small-scale farmers unable to compete with U.S. exports will have “few other options but to grow coca to survive.” The reduction of poverty in Latin America is surely essential for U.S. security in the region, but at the moment there does not seem to be any chance that 2009 will bring any major review of U.S. hemispheric strategy. Incoherence will continue to dominate strategy if the Democrats can only offer rhetorical shifts. Until they realise that they need to reverse the adage that in helping themselves they help others – they will be unable to attain international objectives.

Quietly Building a Legacy in the Americas

Quietly Building a Legacy in the Americas

This week has seen the exposure of a draft strategic plan for the long-term commitment of U.S. military forces in Iraq. At the very least, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee suggests that the Bush administration is constructing a military framework to pass on to its successor. Whilst military strategists maintain focus on Iraq and the wider Middle East region however, officials from the Departments of State and Commerce are also concentrating efforts on quietly building a legacy for the administration in the Americas. Key policymakers are examining how to spend the remaining months of their term to build bipartisan support for a broad hemispheric strategy and ensure that it is effectively handed over to their successors. The need to ‘tie up loose ends’ comes with the recognition that their approach to the region will only be considered a success if it is continued beyond its tenure. The administration has already gone some way in developing its strategic framework for the hemisphere, but it is far from any coherent plan that will enjoy widespread regional support. The real danger is that it could still be continued into 2009.

The Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas A. Shannon, was at the Americas Society & Council of the Americas program this week to discuss the Bush administration’s regional strategy. After the familiar restatement of the supposed successes of 2007, the ‘year of engagement’, he turned his attention to the next important step of making this engagement enduring. Shannon informed the many Latin American diplomats and journalists in the audience that the administration recognised the need to build a broader strategic approach. Recent U.S. policy in Latin America had, in large part, been reactive to various crises, but they would now be focusing on identifying and pursuing long-term interests that would ensure a degree of continuity. Shannon has noted the importance of enduring engagement with the region on several occasions over the past few months and the focal point of this strategic engagement is becoming more than clear: free trade.

This weekend, the Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez and the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, Daniel S. Sullivan, attended the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank to discuss U.S. strategic priorities for economic engagement in Latin America. Although the administration has long admitted defeat on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, it hopes instead that it can leave office having achieved “an unbroken line of Free Trade Agreements stretching from Canada to the tip of Chile.” President Bush will be attending a meeting in New Orleans this month with the Mexican and Canadian Presidents, Felipe Calderón and Stephen Harper, to discuss and, he hopes, to repair problems in the North American Free Trade Agreement. Following that, the focus will be on persuading Congress to vote in favour of the Trade Promotion Agreements with Colombia and then Panama, which Bush has called “urgent for national security reasons.” Shannon has also expressed hope that the successful creation of this free trade area would serve as a platform to then persuade the Mercosur members to reconsider their own positions on trade with the U.S.

This task is certainly not an easy one though. Many at home in the U.S. still need to be convinced by the administration that they have benefited from NAFTA, let alone will profit from the growth of free trade in the Americas. Important critics of the impending TPAs, particularly those in U.S. Congress, also remain unconvinced by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s arguments that there will be any gain for the people of Colombia and Panama. Whilst many regional political elites are looking to embrace free trade with the U.S., Calderón and Harper still face some domestic opposition to NAFTA and small but passionate popular resistance continues to pressure other Latin American leaders. Shannon recognised that the U.S. does now have to be prepared to compete for opportunities in the regional environment. But he was adamant that U.S. influence has not declined; it has simply changed. Since Bush’s speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in March 2007, the administration has identified the key to success in the region as engagement. They have isolated the problem as neglect of their hemispheric neighbours, whilst attention and resources have been focused on strategic priority areas, particularly the Middle East. Shannon highlighted the importance of the U.S. ‘being there’ in the region, but the U.S. also has to redirect significant resources, rather than continue with the public diplomacy efforts they have so far relied on. Upholding global commitments with an already overstretched domestic economy will only result in the failure of any hemispheric presence delivering the goods. Latin America has seen it all before.

Since adopting a global role, the U.S. has repeatedly oscillated between neglect of the Americas and policies reacting to the ensuing fallout. Such policies have rarely brought any sustained and meaningful commitment though; attempts to regain hemispheric support have generally relied on restatement of common history and values. Shannon’s remarks in New York this week show that little has changed: “I think we’re at a point in time in which the United States and Latin America really can get beyond our recent history, really can begin to see each other not through the light of a security struggle taking place elsewhere in the world, but we can really see ourselves clearly in the light of the Americas, can see ourselves clearly in terms of our shared political values and common understandings about our societies and about our economies, and based on this kind of get beyond the rhetoric and ideology that has really confined or restricted our engagements over time. And use this to build relationships that are lasting.”

This kind of language has been hard to take for many in Latin America, who still consider U.S. economic agenda to be motivated by narrow interests. The failure of the Bush administration to address numerous complaints ranging from the continuance of U.S. agricultural subsidies to some of the negative impacts on Latin American communities caused by U.S. private companies only damages the credibility of their engagement. The ‘recent history’ of the U.S. relationship with Latin America leaves others struggling to believe that this is a shared political project, rather than an attempt to sustain U.S. regional hegemony. A number of ‘left-leaning’ Latin American governments feel that the U.S. values its economic agenda over democratic ideals. Responding to the call from the Bolivian Ambassador to the U.N. for the U.S. to demonstrate a clear message of support for all democracies in the Americas, despite any other economic or political priorities, Shannon argued that the U.S. had already done so. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, he added, had made clear that the U.S. does not care about the political affinity of Latin American governments. “What we care about,” he added, “is that there a fundamental commitment to democracy and is there an interest in working with us.” As ever, this “interest in working with us” remains the stumbling block for the U.S. commitment to democracy. The Bush administration is miles off convincing the likes of Bolivia that the U.S. is committed to a shared hemispheric respect for democracy, regardless of U.S. particular interests and preferences. The Bolivian Ambassador could have legitimately made his request again, but he probably recognised the answer was not going to change.

With damaged credibility, the competing projects in the region will continue. “One thing we need to be careful of,” warned Shannon, “is that the region doesn’t fragment and that it doesn’t become a series of sub-regions.” The Assistant Secretary noted the importance of using regional processes and institutions to “bring everybody back together and remind them that we share a hemisphere.” The renaissance enjoyed by the Organization of American States in its 60th year, following its performance in the recent border dispute between Colombia and Ecuador will not be anywhere enough to rekindle a genuine hemispheric solidarity. But this, nonetheless, remains the administration’s goal for the next few months. Whilst key figures, like Rice, Gutierrez and even President Bush, will sustain efforts to secure the free trade legacy in the region, Shannon will still have a difficult job in attracting much of Washington’s attention away from Iraq. But the Assistant Secretary believes that regional policy can still play a significant role in global priorities.

Shannon suggests that because the Americas were “for the longest time...the centrepiece of our foreign policy,” the U.S. will be able to demonstrate a successful example of engagement that would in turn, offer “an opportunity to put our best face forward” and present a positive image of the U.S. for the Middle East. But the Pentagon and outside military experts are highly unlikely to consider such factors as they develop Middle East strategy. “The target is regional stability,” emphasised Lieutenant General William E. Odom, former National Security Adviser to President Reagan. General sentiment in Washington following the forecasts of Petraeus and Crocker suggests that few expect it to be a quick and easy task. But Shannon argued that regional policy is still important. Precisely because the U.S., as a global power, will continue to face “really tough security challenges elsewhere in the world,” then “living in a neighbourhood that’s secure and living in a neighbourhood that’s prosperous is going to be vital to our long term security.” Shannon hopes that such a secure and prosperous Western Hemisphere will be achieved through “engage[ment] with partners who are prepared to have a dialogue and to cooperate with us.” But this misses the point that the Latin American Republics have more strength now to demand the cooperation of the U.S. in their agenda through a genuine dialogue, rather than the monologue they have become used to.

Time and time again in the past, the focus on the “really tough security challenges elsewhere in the world” has undermined any “shining example” and stable platform in the hemisphere.
In developing its regional strategy over the next few months, the Bush administration will have to face the very real decline of its influence in the hemisphere. But if John McCain were to arrive in the White House in 2009 there is little to suggest that there will be any significant shift away from the free trade agenda in the Western Hemisphere. Preoccupation with restoring U.S. credibility in the Middle East would prevent any real reflection on regional strategy. Prospects for an immediate change with would not be lifted much more with a victorious Democrat. Not least because nearly all of the planning for the first major presidential appointment in the region - the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago - will be carried out by the Bush administration. This does not necessarily rule out any major pronouncements, but again, campaign pledges to formulate an exit strategy for Iraq will almost certainly preoccupy key officials. After the experience of Iraq, it will take a bold initiative to restore U.S. credibility so badly damaged by the Bush administration. But the need to galvanise the American public for an active internationalist role means it will take a brave and able president to frame such an initiative in terms that can also persuade many Latin Americans of the merit of U.S. engagement in the Western Hemisphere.