{"id":139968,"date":"2019-08-12T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=139968"},"modified":"2019-08-08T10:58:40","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T09:58:40","slug":"the-right-has-power-in-latin-america-but-no-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/08\/the-right-has-power-in-latin-america-but-no-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right Has Power in Latin America, but No Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Across Latin America, the Right has swept to power. But its achievements pale in comparison to the Pink Tide \u2014 and it has no compelling vision for how to address the region\u2019s challenges. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Foreign ministers representing member states in the Lima Group meet together at the Palacio de Torre Tagleon on February 13, 2018 in Lima, Peru.
(Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores \/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

3 Aug 2019 – <\/em>Two days after the November 2016 elections that brought him to office, president-elect Donald Trump had a 90-minute meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House. \u201cWe discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful, some difficulties,\u201d Trump told the media<\/a> afterward. He later revealed that the major \u201cdifficulty\u201d discussed was the North Korean nuclear threat.<\/p>\n

We know little else about the two men\u2019s conversation that day, but it is likely that one particularly \u201cwonderful situation\u201d they touched on was a part of the world where the United States had gained enormous ground during Obama\u2019s presidency: Latin America.<\/p>\n

When Obama first took office in January 2009, much of Latin America and the Caribbean were dominated by independent-minded, left-leaning governments, despite the previous Republican administration\u2019s aggressive attempts to turn back the \u201cpink tide\u201d of progressive movements that had come to power in the early twenty-first century.<\/p>\n

But by the end of Obama\u2019s two terms, Latin America had swung decisively back to the Right. Groundbreaking regional integration schemes spearheaded by left-wing governments, such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), were paralyzed or floundering. Meanwhile, a US-backed bloc had emerged \u2014 the Pacific Alliance, made up of Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, all signatories to \u201cfree trade\u201d agreements with the United States. Openly dismissive of UNASUR and the Venezuela- and Cuba-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Pacific Alliance has embraced many of the neoliberal policies that led to two decades of economic stagnation<\/a> and increased inequality in the region during the 1980s and \u201990s (and which subsequently fueled support for \u201cpink tide\u201d policy alternatives).<\/p>\n

There are a number of factors that led to the return of the Right in Latin America, including economic downturns resulting in large part from the ripple effects of the global financial crisis, politicized corruption scandals, the political influence of powerful ultra-conservative evangelical movements, and the expanding influence of financial capital. Undemocratic coups also brought down left governments: a military coup, in the case of Honduras in 2009; and the parliamentary coups<\/a> that resulted in the unconstitutional removals of President Fernando Lugo<\/a> of Paraguay in 2012 and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil in 2016.<\/p>\n

In nearly every case, the United States provided a helping hand to right-wing forces. For instance, the Obama administration helped prevent the toppled left-wing leader of Honduras from returning to power and provided strong diplomatic support for the ousting of Lugo and Rousseff. It deepened a financial crisis under Argentina\u2019s left-wing government by blocking loans<\/a> from US-dominated international financial institutions, and it blatantly intervened in Haiti\u2019s 2010\u20132011 elections in the interest of preventing a left-leaning party from remaining in office. Throughout the region, the United States deployed various \u201csoft power\u201d tactics to support the electoral victories of right-wing movements.<\/p>\n

And so, by the end of Obama\u2019s presidency, pliant pro-US governments abounded, eager to demonstrate their loyalty to Washington. The new right-wing governments of the biggest economies of South America \u2014 Brazil and Argentina \u2014 clamored for \u201cfree trade\u201d agreements with the United States. Only eleven years earlier, their left-wing predecessors had shattered Washington\u2019s dream of a Free Trade Area of the Americas.<\/p>\n

President Trump has shown limited interest in nurturing relations with his many avid allies in Latin America. He has canceled several trips to the region, including two to Colombia and one to the eighth Summit of the Americas, in Peru, even though the themes of the agenda \u2014 focused on countering Venezuela\u2019s left-wing government and promoting anti-corruption campaigns \u2014 could have been designed by the US State Department. As of June 2019, his only presidential trip south of the border has been to Buenos Aires, for the December 2018 G20 summit.<\/p>\n

When he has paid attention to the region, Trump has often antagonized friends and foes alike. He has hurled threats and insults at Central American and Mexican migrants; rolled back<\/a> Obama\u2019s popular Cuba normalization policy; and sharply criticized Colombia\u2019s far-right president Iv\u00e1n Duque, saying that he had \u201cdone nothing\u201d to stem the country\u2019s booming cocaine industry. His harsh words horrified the US foreign policy establishment, which considers Colombia to be a crucial political and military ally, regardless of the government\u2019s appalling human rights record.<\/p>\n

For their part, Trump officials have sought to attenuate some of this friction by traveling frequently to Latin America. Vice President Mike Pence has made five Latin America trips. Mike Pompeo traveled to Colombia and Mexico as CIA director and then made six more trips during his first year as secretary of state. National Security Advisor John Bolton has also ventured to the region, most notably to Brazil where he heralded extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro as a \u201clike-minded partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, given Trump\u2019s protectionist tendencies, new trade agreements usually haven\u2019t been a topic of discussion during these high-level visits, with the exception of Mexico and its renegotiation<\/a> of NAFTA, now billed as the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Instead, State Department press releases indicate that Venezuela has been at the top of nearly every bilateral meeting agenda. China, which Pompeo and others have accused of \u201cimperial\u201d ambitions in the region, with no apparent intended irony, often appears next on these agendas.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has had little success in persuading even its most stalwart allies to weaken their relations with China \u2015 admittedly a difficult feat given that Chinese trade and investment has helped keep many of their economies afloat. Most have gone in the opposite direction: Chile\u2019s right-wing president Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era has said he wants to \u201ctransform Chile into a business center for Chinese companies\u201d; Argentine president Mauricio Macri signed a multibillion-dollar, five-year economic cooperation plan with China; even Jair Bolsonaro, who has parroted Trump\u2019s anti-China rhetoric, has recently engaged in a diplomatic charm offensive with Beijing.<\/p>\n

Where Trump\u2019s foreign policy team has gotten a great deal of traction is on Venezuela, a country whose enduring left-wing leadership had previously been a regional obsession for both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Venezuela had apparently not initially been on Trump\u2019s radar. During his presidential campaign, he rarely mentioned the economically beleaguered South American nation. All of that changed after Trump and former election rival Marco Rubio (R-FL) met repeatedly and made peace in the spring of 2017. Soon after, the president announced his intention to reverse Obama\u2019s Cuba normalization policy. Then he turned his sights on the government of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, first announcing that there might be a \u201cmilitary option\u201d for Venezuela, then imposing crippling financial sanctions<\/a> in August of 2017.<\/p>\n

It is clear that Rubio, who is beholden to right-wing Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American donors and voters in South Florida, has had an outsized role<\/a> in determining Trump\u2019s Latin American policy. In fact, many believe<\/a> that he convinced Trump that supporting a hard-line regime change strategy toward Venezuela could significantly improve Trump\u2019s odds of winning Florida in the 2020 presidential elections. Whatever the case, Trump officials have zealously rallied regional governments to support such a strategy. Their efforts have borne fruit.<\/p>\n

Regional Right-Wing Alliances Emerge<\/strong><\/p>\n

In August 2017, representatives from a dozen right-wing Latin American governments and Canada established the Lima Group in Peru, signing a declaration that denounced the alleged \u201crupture of democratic order\u201d and \u201cviolation of human rights\u201d in Venezuela and committing to work together to regionally isolate the Maduro government. The Lima Group has met repeatedly since then<\/a>, focusing exclusively on Venezuela and ignoring particularly troubling attacks on democracy and human rights in countries like Honduras<\/a> and Colombia<\/a>, both Lima Group members.<\/p>\n

Though the United States isn\u2019t officially part of the group, high-level US representatives have attended nearly all of its meetings. Much as the Obama administration cheered on the Pacific Alliance and downplayed its close coordination with the group, Trump officials have constantly cited Lima Group positions to create the impression that US strategy is rooted in a sort of regional multilateral consensus. Major international media outlets and think tanks have helped reinforce this impression by systematically ignoring the right-wing ideological bent of many of the signers of the group\u2019s resolutions.<\/p>\n

When Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaid\u00f3 proclaimed himself interim president of Venezuela in January 2019, the Lima Group, the United States, and dozens of other countries around the world recognized him as president. The Lima Group took a harder line, actively supporting a strategy of regime change through a military coup against Maduro, who had been reelected in contested elections in May the previous year. Mexico, where a progressive government had just taken office, refused to sign the group\u2019s resolution, instead proposing, jointly with the left-leaning government of Uruguay, a \u201cdialogue mechanism\u201d to address Venezuela\u2019s political crisis.<\/p>\n

However, soon afterward, the Lima Group\u2019s positions began to diverge from those of the Trump administration. In late February, when Guaid\u00f3 began floating the idea of enlisting outside military support in his effort to oust Maduro, Lima Group members published a declaration saying that a solution to the crisis should come from Venezuelans themselves. Regardless of their ideological bent and affinity for Washington, these governments stopped short of supporting foreign military intervention.<\/p>\n

As the political stalemate continued in Venezuela, the Lima Group began expressing support for a negotiated solution, a possibility that the United States \u2014 still focused on achieving regime change through a military coup \u2014 strongly rejected. Then, after Guaid\u00f3 staged a failed uprising on April 30, the group began to appeal to Cuba to help with negotiations. This idea was particularly abhorrent to Trump\u2019s Latin America team, which now included Elliott Abrams<\/a>, a Cold War hawk who in the 1980s had defended Central American death squads and lied to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal.<\/p>\n

Abrams and other officials claimed, without evidence, that Cuba had thousands of troops and intelligence agents in Venezuela and was responsible for \u201cpropping up\u201d Maduro. In fact, after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau reached out to Cuban authorities on behalf of the Lima Group to ask for their help in advancing negotiations, he received an irate call from Vice President Pence calling on him to instead help expose Cuba\u2019s \u201cmalign influence\u201d in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has also failed in its public efforts to lobby Lima Group members to implement broad economic sanctions against Venezuela. Some right-wing governments in the region implemented sanctions targeting individual Venezuelan officials, but none of them sought to replicate the United States\u2019s devastating financial or oil sector sanctions against Venezuela.<\/p>\n

It appears then that even the United States\u2019s most compliant right-wing allies retain a basic aversion to the extreme forms of interventionism promoted by Trump\u2019s team. It has probably not helped that John Bolton and other officials have recently trumpeted the virtues of the Monroe Doctrine<\/a>, the nearly 200-year-old imperial policy that has served to justify countless US interventions throughout the hemisphere. No Latin American leaders have shown support for a revived Monroe Doctrine, and few appear to agree with Bolton or Pompeo\u2019s claims that China or Russia represents a serious threat to the region that necessitates supporting the United States in vigorously opposing their presence.<\/p>\n

Nor is it likely that any government in Latin America was pleased to hear Bolton state<\/a> on Fox Business that Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves were a key motivation for US intervention there as it would \u201cmake a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Latin American geopolitical panorama hasn\u2019t been this favorable to US interests since at least the late \u201990s, yet the stridently imperialistic approach of the current administration risks alienating even those in the region most supportive of US hegemony.<\/p>\n

But even if the Trump team\u2019s behavior grows more unacceptable to Latin America\u2019s right-wing governments, it appears unlikely that these governments will succeed in developing a coherent, collective project in defense of their vision for the region. This is because, for the most part, the main actors of the Latin American right have not promoted any alternative strategy in international relations that does not involve US leadership.<\/p>\n

This is apparent in the strikingly meager record of the regional groupings that conservative governments have developed since the region\u2019s rightward shift. The Pacific Alliance, for its part, doesn\u2019t have much to show for the eight years it has existed. Its biggest \u201cachievement\u201d is the integration of its four member states\u2019 stock markets in a common trading platform, but there is little evidence that this has provided a significant boost to these countries\u2019 faltering economies. And the biggest right-wing regional bloc, the Lima Group, is a one-trick pony focused on Venezuela.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the previous progressive decade\u2019s regional groupings had a real impact, with extensive cooperation mechanisms in infrastructure, defense, investment, trade, energy, social programs, and various other areas, and \u2014 perhaps most importantly \u2014 systematic diplomatic consultations and coordination around common challenges and crises as they emerged.<\/p>\n

The most recent alliance to emerge is the eight-member Forum for the Progress and Development of South America \u2014 or \u201cProsur\u201d \u2014 presented by its right-wing cofounders \u2014 as essentially an anti-UNASUR (a body they deemed to be too pro-Venezuela). Officially founded in March of 2019, the group includes Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, and Peru. So far, it appears to be a repeat performance encompassing the positions of both the Lima Group and the Pacific Alliance.<\/p>\n

If the Left wins a few elections in the coming years, then a progressive generation of regional alliances could make a comeback. These groups \u2014 UNASUR, CELAC, ALBA \u2014 have structural flaws that should be addressed, but continue to offer a compelling vision for the region, one that puts the welfare of the peoples of Latin America first and maps out a path toward genuine political and economic independence, without the interference or tutelage of outside powers.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Alexander Main is Senior Associate for the International Policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jacobinmag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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