Latin American Politics & Society

Mcclintock, Cynthia, and Fabian Vallas. The United States and Peru: Cooperation at a Cost. New York: Routledge, 2003. Tables, Bibliography, Index, 222 Pp.; Hardcover $75, Paperback $18.95.

This book describes U.S.-Peru relations between 1990 and 2000 as a story of missed opportunities. Economic, political, and social transformations [End Page 181] that took place in Peru during the decade, in addition to more favorable perceptions of the United States, created various opportunities to build and consolidate a sense of community between both countries. Unfortunately, factors related to Alberto Fujimori's authoritarianism and the lack of "correct" priorities in the U.S. government prevented that from happening.

The authors provide a carefully informed narrative of U.S.-Peru relations in the 1990s, during President Bill Clinton's two administrations and Fujimori's government. In congruence with Palmer's 1997 analysis of U.S.-Peru relations between 1993 and 1997, they carry out an extensive review of the bilateral agenda by issue area, including national security, economic issues, narcotics control, and democracy and human rights.

Analyzing the history of bilateral relations before the 1990s, the authors acknowledge the importance of the United States to Peru since the latter's independence in 1821, and especially since the end of World War I. The historical chapter, as well as subsequent issue-area chapters, unveils some reluctance to "box" facts and details into defined conceptual frameworks, other than the classification of foreign policy issues and references to the regional context. The historical relationship between the two countries is defined as cooperative before the Cold War period. To paraphrase Palmer 1992, starting in the 1960s, Peru's foreign and domestic policies diverged from U.S. objectives. This is particularly salient during the resolution of the International Petroleum Company question in the late 1960s, the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-75), and Alan García's administration (1985-90). With the exception of the Junta Revolucionaria period (1968-75), the authors mention a positive correlation between increased cooperation and authoritarian governments in Peru; this topic merits further research.

The book posits diverging trends in foreign policymaking in the 1990s. It recognizes Clinton's lack of personal interest in Latin America, and therefore in Peru. Even more, it signals Clinton's lack of interest in foreign policy in general, at least initially. In contrast, the authors assert, the Fujimori administration was very interested in the United States, and considered its support crucial. In the United States, the president's disinterest paved the way for a foreign policy made by career bureaucrats in the Treasury Department, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Department of State. In Peru, the president's authoritarian traits and the deinstitutionalization of traditional foreign policymakers by Fujimori and his cadres converted the president and his top advisers (namely Vladimiro Montesinos) into pivotal actors in foreign policymaking, especially toward the United States.

The authors place the weight of public policymaking and its implications on the individual actors; namely, Clinton, Fujimori, Montesinos, U.S. ambassadors to Peru, and others, providing detailed information [End Page 182] regarding their personalities and desires, especially among the Peruvian actors. Yet this element, positive to the extent that it produces an original narrative, becomes costly because no other lines of explanation are explored with the same profoundness; for example, economic dependency, historical asymmetrical relations, and systemic variables.

According to the authors, U.S.-Peru cooperation during the 1990s was expensive because the issues, context, and actors involved shaped the process in a particular way and directed it along a specific path, missing other opportunities. This is the usual trade-off of any action. What the authors are not so open to assert is that cooperation was less costly for Fujimori, because, despite the huge power asymmetries between both countries, Peru's president took advantage of it. Indeed, one of the reasons behind Fujimori's popularity in 2000 may have been the U.S. covert cooperation on national security issues.

The book presents an exhaustive description of the bilateral agenda of issue areas in the 1980s and 1990s. Cooperation on national security issues--both domestic, to fight Sendero Luminoso and Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, and external, related to the border conflict with Ecuador (1995-98)--and Peru's enthusiasm with Plan Colombia became increasingly significant during the Fujimori government. The same was true of economic cooperation, which was two-way: Peru cooperated by implementing free-market reforms and consolidating a liberal economy; and the United States cooperated with aid, and foreign investment in the economic arena. The authors successfully explain the preponderance of economic issues (mainly free-market reform) as necessary conditions for all other aspects of cooperation.

While collaboration on national security and economic reforms helped to ease the relationship between the two countries, the same did not happen with narcotics control and the promotion of democracy and human rights. Perpetual disagreement about coca growing stemmed from each country's understanding of the sources of the drug problem and the significance of coca itself to each of them. Additionally, when forms of cooperation are finally devised, benefits are usually doubted afterward, as happened with the results of the "air bridge denial" policy (1995-2000). Montesinos's alleged links to the drug mafia helped harm the counternarcotics agenda even more.

The issues related to democracy and human rights strained U.S.-Peru relations but did not bring them to a halt during the Clinton and Fujimori administrations. According to the authors, problems related to these topics were basically rhetorical, though this almost changed in 1992 after Fujimori's self-coup and during the fraudulent 2000 presidential elections.

The authors are effective in stressing that U.S. foreign policymakers closed their eyes to what Peru's executive was doing wrong--authoritarianism, [End Page 183] human rights violations, among other evils--because there were many things--free-market reforms, ending terrorist attacks--it was doing right, and there was not too much blood on the government's hands(!). In this sense, from a critical standpoint, McClintock and Vallas state that foreign policy toward Peru was made "with insufficient thought and analysis" (p. 159), essentially because U.S. bureaucrats privileged information provided by Peru's government to the detriment of information advanced by the opposition.

The book ends with a postscript completed after Alejandro Toledo's election as Peru's president in 2001. Focusing again on the new president's individual characteristics, history, and personality, the authors discuss the future of cooperation between the United States and Peru. Final recommendations to the U.S. government include the following: "We believe that it is fundamental that, on the new bilateral agenda, the values of democracy and respect for human rights might be reasserted and prioritized" (p. 169).

By the end of the book, the reader has acquired a vivid view of U.S. foreign policymaking toward Peru in the 1990s. The U.S. view predominates throughout, which is not surprising, considering the huge power asymmetries between both countries. It is also reflected, however, in the sources of information, of which the majority are written in English and published originally in the United States. The same occurs with interviews; with the exception of references to firsthand information given by Peruvian officials--namely Ricardo Luna, Luis Quesada in Peru's embassy in Washington, and Eduardo Ferrero, former minister of foreign relations--there are very few interviews with Peruvian actors involved in foreign policymaking. Although this is understandable for the Fujimori regime, when officials may have preferred to remain anonymous in order to guarantee their own safety, an effort to improve the balance of sources might have added to the thoroughness of this notable work on U.S.-Peru relations.

References

Palmer, David Scott. 1992. United States-Peru Relations in the 1990s: Asymmetry and Its Consequences. In Latin America and the Caribbean Contemporary Record 9: 1989-90, ed. Eduardo Gamarra and James Malloy. New York: Holmes and Meyer.

----. 1997. Las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Perú durante los gobiernos del Presidente Clinton. In Estados Unidos y los países andinos, 1993-1997: poder y desintegración, ed. Andrés Franco. Bogotá: Centro Editorial Javeriano. 113-40.