Monday, June 2, 2008

Obama on Latin America – Real Plans or Campaign Oratory?

By Patrick Corcoran

Barack Obama gave a major address on Latin America May 23, touching on all the region’s pressure points before a group of Cuban-Americans in Miami. Predictably, it sounded better coming from Obama’s mouth than it read on a piece of paper, but despite the enthusiastic reaction from a conservative audience, I can’t seem to summon anything beyond ambivalence.

First the good: both the speech and Obama’s Latin American agenda were built on Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (religious and political freedom alongside freedom from want and from fear). Though it can sound corny, this emphasis on the personal welfare of Latin Americans is a welcome change.

“Bottom-up” was the constant refrain of Obama’s address, the idea being that for too long the United States has dealt only with Latin America’s elites. This concept, popularized as the 80-20 dilemma by Julia Sweig (referring to the fact that the US government builds bridges with the elite 20 percent but ignores the poorer 80 percent), represents a fair critique of the United States’ diplomatic strategy, particularly in Latin America. The US makes deals with the leaders but it ignores the poor, at least until they start arriving in American cities, at which point they become a problem. This fuels a groundswell of anti-Americanism waiting to be tapped by a fiery populist (see: Chavez, Hugo).

Obama’s comments about Cuba were among the strongest of the speech. He received hearty applause for his criticism of the decades-long futility of America’s Cuban policy: “Now I know what the easy thing is to do for American politicians. Every four years, they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba.” I hope he is considering a rollback of the embargo (even if he can’t say so in Miami), but even this mild rebuke of the failed five decades of Cuba policy is cause for celebration. 

The Illinois senator shined elsewhere as well. He pledged more aid, an expanded Peace Corps, the return of the Special Envoy of the Americas (which was discontinued under George W. Bush) in the White House, and the creation of an Alliance of the Americas. Obama also discussed the challenges Haiti faces in surprising detail, supported Colombia’s right to raid cross-border terrorist sanctuaries, and proposed the creation of a hemispheric nuclear energy policy.

For everything mentioned above, Obama deserves praise. But despite the high points, the speech was wanting in other areas. One is trade. Obama’s trade positions have seemed dictated more by politics than reason (he was anti-CAFTA, anti-Colombia, and pro-Peru, adhering pretty closely to the party line), and his explanation of his trade philosophy was overly brief and basic. He needs to explain whether he would seek fast-track trade authority for trade negotiations, and what countries, if any, would be good candidates for an agreement. Obama also mentioned the need to “fix” NAFTA, but what does that mean? Given that export-driven growth has pushed countries like South Korea and Taiwan into the first world, Obama needs to justify his anti-trade leanings with more than just the empty canard of supporting “trade that lifts up workers, not just a corporate bottom line.”

Obama neglected to go into much detail about Mexico. The American relationship with Mexico is by far the most important in Latin America, yet it garnered only a handful of perfunctory references. In the written speech, Obama devoted only one paragraph out of more than fifty to the Mérida Initiative, despite the fact that it is probably the most pressing Latin American policy issue before the country today.

More generally, Obama left us without a specific idea as to what his priorities will be. The speech sounded more like a catalogue of problems than a specific plan to alleviate them. This is partly explained by the fact that this was political speech and therefore is not given to a whole lot of detail, but if you read the more expansive report summarizing Obama’s Latin American agenda, the trickier questions persist.

Aside from the Iraq War and beyond the general charge of “arrogance,” what missteps did Bush commit in Latin America that Obama will avoid? What is America’s role in promoting a more equitable distribution of wealth abroad? How will the region look after eight years of President Obama? And how will Obama reconcile his promise to pay more attention to the region if, even with Hugo Chavez and company raising hell, Latin America is one of the least worrisome zones on the planet?

Senator?

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Patrick Corcoran, a MexiData.info columnist, is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila.  He blogs at Gancho.