US faces increasingly left-leaning Latin America
Rice aims to shore up relations while testing support for Chavez.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday began her first official trip to Latin America. She will visit Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and El Salvador.
Her
efforts aim at two challenges, "bolstering democracy" and "alleviating poverty," reports the
BBC.
The trip is seen as an effort by the Bush admiinstration to "revive relations overshadowed in recent years by the war on terror and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan," says the
BBC.
It is also seen as a diplomatic means for the US to test the waters on how it will deal with what the US perceives as the
growing antagonisms presented by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
In Brazil, Ms. Rice emphasized the US
wanted good relations with Venezuela. But
The Los Angeles Times reports that it shared "concerns about the Venezuelan regime in terms of its own democratic development" and the "threat it may pose to its neighbors."
US officials believe the best way to deal with Chavez is the way they are trying to get North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear ambitions - by working with neighbors to apply collective pressure.
But neighbors, including the United States' close ally Colombia, are unwilling to press Chavez too hard because doing so might increase instability along expansive borders. Neighboring states also fear that siding with the US against Chavez might alienate leftist groups at home.
Rice is mindful of how difficult this task might be.
Commentary by Ian Bremmer in Wednesday's
International Herald Tribune
portrays the left-leaning tides the Bush administration confronts.
The Bush administration is worried that a Ch���vez-led bloc of radicalism may be developing in Latin America. Leftist governments are in power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. With the inauguration of Tabare Vazquez as president of Uruguay, the trend will likely continue.
Mexico and Peru may move left in elections next year. In Bolivia, the Socialist opposition has controlled the agenda since the fall of President Gonzalo S���nchez de Lozada in 2003. Might Ch���vez export revolution across Latin America and transform the U.S. isolation of Venezuela into a Venezuela-led isolation of the United States? Will Bush roil markets by imposing sanctions on Caracas?
Rather than being caught in a bind over Chavez, Rice needs to address four issues that affect the
entire hemisphere,
The Miami Herald editorialized.
•Trade and economic development as proposed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas should be at the top of her list, writes the
Herald.
The FTAA is the best way to create a prosperous hemispheric alliance powerful enough to compete in a globalized world and fend off the growing challenge of China. Rice must make it clear that the FTAA remains a priority for the administration and that Brazil should see it as an opportunity, not a threat. •The US needs to take a more positive approach to immigration, seeing the issue in terms of "regulated immigration" affording "a diversified workforce in a more-global world." By "only" calling for a "tightening of restrictions and complaints bordering on xenophobia about foreigners invading our shores," the message is too negative.
•Rice should reaffirm US support for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in the fight against narco-terrorism.
More than any of his predecessors, this president has shown that this is a winnable fight. Now is the time to push even harder to help Colombia rid itself of this deadly menace. •It is imperative the US set out a broad agenda for regional security and terrorism. The violent overthrow of President Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador last week is an event "that Secretary Rice cannot ignore."
The violence in Ecuador is symptomatic of the dangerous political currents coursing through the region. When such events play into the hands of demagogues like President Chavez of Venezuela, they threaten to become a trend. The best message Rice can deliver is a commitment to work harder on achieving the promises of democracy and free economic systems that lead to prosperity. Rice announced Tuesday that the US has not offered an official recognition to Ecuador's new government, reports
China View. Rather, US concerns and those of the region are that the new government "
keep constitutional processes."
What is clear, writes Mr. Bremmer in the
Tribune, is that the left is on the rise in Latin America.
But not all 'leftists' have the same agenda. ..Left-wing politics in Brazil and Argentina has little to do with the old-school, hard-line ideology of Ch���vez. Instead, it was frustration with the half-hearted reforms, crony capitalism and lack of economic development of right-wing governments in the 1990s that elected leftists in Brazil and Argentina." Comments by Rice in Brazil on Tuesday indicate a recognition of the changing political winds in Latin America, reports the
BBC. Democracy flourishes when it "actually provide[s] for its people," said Rice.
Also...
•
Diagnosing the madness of things Latin American (
Harvard Crimson)
•
Allies doubt future of North Korea talks (
International Herald Tribune)
•
Italy will not sign off on report (
The Boston Globe)
•
New Lebanese government calls elections for May 29 (
Reuters)
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Jim Bencivenga
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