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.