The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change

Chapter 2: Building a Constructive Inter-American Partnership

In their limited discussion of Latin America, both of the U.S. presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, promised to pursue a closer, more collaborative relationship with the region. The question, now that President Obama has taken office, is whether the United States is ready, willing, and able to do so. In this chapter I urge the new U.S. president to reassess this country’s relations with Latin America. The United States has much to gain from a more constructive, collaborative, and respectful relationship with its hemispheric neighbors and partners, whose destinies are increasingly entwined and indivisible . This new relationship must recognize Latin America’s increasing con- fidence and competence in addressing national and regional problems and strengthen U.S. partnerships with the region’s trusted leaders. The world is changing at an accelerating rate. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 put an end to Marxist dogma, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union two years later put an end to the bipolar world. Today, almost two decades later, we are witnessing fundamental transformations of equal or greater magnitude . As a result of the financial and economic crisis that has quickly spread throughout the world, a new relationship between the state and the market is beginning to develop, as is strong demand for a reconfiguration of the archi22 two Building a Constructive Inter-American Partnership Daniel Zovatto The author would like to thank Alberto Adrianzen, David Kupferschmidt, Rafael Roncagliolo, and Kristen Sample for assistance in the preparation of this chapter. tecture of global governance—it is being called a Bretton Woods for the twenty-first century. The financial markets were unable to regulate themselves and had to resort to the state to survive. Because the markets did not adequately allocate resources, the government will have to assume a greater role in the economy. A number of progressive governments in Latin America look favorably on this trend toward a more active role for the state in the economy. But the profound changes we are witnessing are not limited to the financial and economic realm; they have also shifted international politics. As the journalist Fareed Zakaria notes in his book The Post-American World, we are transitioning from a unipolar world to a world that is post-American, global, multipolar, and decentralized because of the strategic regroupings of key global actors and the urgent need to find effective, common solutions to shared global dilemmas. The changes that are rapidly occurring worldwide, combined with those taking place on our continent, present a unique opportunity for the United States and Latin America to increase the scope and improve the quality of their relationship.1 Regional Solutions to Regional Problems Some three decades after launching the third wave of democracy, Latin America now finds itself democratically more mature, more diversified in its relations with Europe, China, India, Russia, Iran, and other countries, more autonomous in its decisionmaking, and more inclined to seek solutions to its own problems. For a peripheral region like Latin America, multilateralism, along with increasing power and autonomy, is a priority. As Roberto Rusell notes, “Washington is prepared to establish‘spheres of responsibility’with countries in the region to achieve common goals by means of a certain division of labor.”2 The coordinated effort of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, making Haiti their “sphere of responsibility,” is one good example of this. Similar efforts should be made in the cases of Cuba, Colombia, and other countries. Unfortunately, internal problems and differences and conflicts between countries have often affected the region’s willingness and ability to act collectively. The stagnation of Mercosur and the Andean Community,3 the two principal entities advancing the process of Latin American integration, and the tensions, conflicts, and disagreements between various presidents in the region are evidence of unresolved difficulties. Nevertheless, two events in 2008 attested to the political will and capacity of the region’s countries to resolve their conflicts without the participation of the United States.4 Building a Constructive Inter-American Partnership 23 The first event was the Rio Group meeting in the Dominican Republic, following a Colombian military incursion into Ecuador to attack an FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) camp. At the meeting, the host, Dominican president Leonel Fernández, facilitated dialogue among the presidents of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela to reach a preliminary agreement that defused a potentially explosive situation...