On April 20, President George W. Bush will meet the
heads of state of the Latin American countries at the Summit of the
Americas in Quebec City, Canada. This forum will provide him with
an excellent opportunity to revitalize relations with America's
neighbors to the south, which languished under President Bill
Clinton.
The
stakes are considerable. Unlike the Balkans, where the Clinton
Administration spent the bulk of its foreign policy capital, Latin
America is strategically important. Its 500 million people are
connected to the United States by geography, trade, and culture.
Its $2 trillion economy is a key market for U.S. goods and
services. Americans benefited
from $3 billion in bilateral trade with the region in 1999 alone,
and nearly a third of the oil imported by the United States
originates there. The region is poised to become the second largest
trade partner of the United States (see Chart 1).
But
Latin America also is suffering. Over the past decade, political
unrest, transnational crime, drug trafficking and wars, and
economic mismanagement reversed the encouraging democratic and
economic reforms begun in the 1980s. The Clinton Administration
neglected the commitments America made to support these reforms,
and the opportunity for President Bush to recoup lost progress and
set a new course is shrinking.
Washington should waste no time in
restoring America's once-flourishing relations with its Latin
American neighbors and in regaining the momentum begun during the
Reagan Administration that favored friendly democracies and open
markets. The Bush Administration should implement a cooperative
long-term approach that seeks to strengthen democratic institutions
where needed, modernize security relationships, and extend economic
prosperity throughout the American neighborhood by increasing
trade.
To be effective, the
Administration's new policies must encourage America's southern
neighbors to become the authors of their own success. These
policies should be guided by three broad principles:
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The region will be more
stable under democratic governments that have free and fair
elections and are committed to the rule of law;
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The Western Hemisphere
will be more secure under cooperative partnerships that focus on
combating transnational crime and modernizing outdated security
mechanisms; and
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The people of Latin America will prosper
by expanding trade and implementing sound economic reforms.
With these overarching principles in mind,
the new U.S.-Latin America policy agenda should seek to:
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Strengthen democracies
To do this, the Bush Administration should promote free and
fair elections in Latin America through election monitoring,
party-building programs and activities, and public diplomacy.
Public diplomacy and information programs should be aimed at
political leaders and general audiences to increase understanding
of how democratic governance works best. Civic education
programs need continued U.S. support to help build understanding of
concepts like the separation of powers, decentralization of
government, and core administrative competencies. Only with such an
understanding can Latin Americans develop strong democratic
institutions as a counterbalance to authoritarian traditions.
In addition, the Bush
Administration should help foster judicial reforms and the rule of
law in Latin American neighbors. U.S. Administration of Justice
programs already provide assistance to Latin America to help states
reform their outdated civil codes, strengthen inadequate court
systems, and professionalize police forces. These efforts need to
be enhanced and extended to include more countries. The
Administration should also focus efforts in Latin America on
facilitating the growth of democratic cultures by broadening public
understanding of citizens' rights and responsibilities. Education
programs and projects that use non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) to improve primary and secondary education can help bolster
literacy and citizenship skills in countries where most people have
less than a fifth grade education.
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Build working partnerships for
defense
The United States should help its neighbors to the south
modernize their military capabilities and work to improve
multilateral security mechanisms to defend against traditional
threats and provide a basis for bilateral and multilateral
cooperation. The United States should encourage its regional allies
to update the 1947 American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio
Treaty) and to establish a high-level forum in which to plan
strategies to address problems like transnational crime.
The Bush Administration
should promote cooperative arrangements among its hemispheric
neighbors to counter such emerging threats as arms and drug
smuggling, terrorism, and money laundering. It also should
encourage the development of protocols with and among Latin
American states to enhance the level of coordination between
military and civilian institutions to deal with these threats
internally and regionally.
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Promote regional prosperity through
free trade and economic reform
Congress can greatly enhance this effort by granting
fast-track negotiating authority to the U.S. President. The
Administration should cement the recently announced free trade
agreement with Chile and use its signing to introduce the
establishment of a global free trade association (GFTA) of
countries committed to open markets and the rule of law. The
establishment of the GFTA should encourage other countries that do
not automatically fit the criteria for free trade to qualify for
membership by pursuing measurable reforms, including stronger
property rights, fewer restrictions on the creation of small
businesses, and tougher anti-corruption laws.
Only such a broad approach will enable the
Administration to develop country- and problem-specific policies
that effectively address, for example, Colombia's illegal narcotics
trade, which is levying huge costs on American society, or help
Haiti overcome its rampant illiteracy and encourage Cuba to one day
respect human rights.
The Clinton Failure to Build on
Success
President Clinton inherited relations with
a Latin America that had begun to flourish with peace, free
elections, and more open markets. Unfortunately, he made little
progress in helping to shore up democracies in the region, address
new emerging threats to hemispheric security, and promote economic
reform. The positive outlook that existed in 1992 has evaporated,
and the opportunity to build a strong hemispheric neighborhood
based on free markets and democracy is closing.
Latin America is too important to allow
the policies of the last Administration to continue. Rebuilding
relations and reversing recent dangerous trends will require
President Bush to exercise leadership and vision that are firmly
rooted in a keen understanding of the region's past and current
problems.
In 1980, fewer than six out of the 23
Latin American nations could be described as democratic.
Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes continued to spawn civil
conflicts, Marxist revolution, mass migrations, and economic
turmoil. President Jimmy Carter had tried unsuccessfully to fight
these ills with a policy promoting human rights. The Reagan and
senior Bush Administrations sought instead to eliminate
Soviet-sponsored subversion, encourage democratic reforms, and urge
the countries to open their economies to trade. Their influence
proved remarkably successful, and by 1992, 21 out of 23 countries
had elected new leaders in competitive contests, free markets had
begun to replace import substitution models, economies were
growing, and intraregional trade had begun to provide a practical
basis for multilateral cooperation on many issues.
At first, the Clinton Administration
seemed eager to add to this progress. During his first year in
office, President Clinton spent considerable political capital to
achieve an initiative he had inherited from the Bush
Administration--the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA)--and successfully pushed it through a skeptical Democratic
Congress. Late the following year, he hosted the first summit of
American states in 27 years and the first ever in the United
States. At the Miami summit, he made an extraordinary commitment to
create a hemispheric free trade area (the Free Trade Area of the
Americas, or FTAA), to help strengthen Latin American democracies,
and to support regional development.
Then, just a few days after Clinton's
summit speech, the Mexican government devalued the peso amidst a
financial crisis that cast doubt on the President's hard work.
Though NAFTA had nothing to do with the crisis and played a major
role in Mexico's subsequent recovery, the Administration was unable
to combat the perception that it had misjudged one of its new NAFTA
trading partners. Pressured by
special interests, the Administration backed away from its
hemispheric engagement strategy.
Even
before the peso crisis, the White House and Congress had been
shifting money for democracy programs away from Latin America in
favor of the former Soviet republics. Congressional budget cuts led
to reductions in U.S. Information Agency (USIA) exchange programs,
foreign broadcasting operations, and the U.S.-supported library
programs in countries with limited information resources. Even though
an educated population is essential to both democratic governance
and a prosperous economy, assistance to expand education remained a
low priority of the Administration, with funding pegged at about 5
percent of the Latin American budgets at the Agency for
International Development (USAID).
In
1997, the White House finally dropped its wavering bid to obtain
fast-track negotiating authority from Congress. The President needs
fast-track authority to cement agreements with nations in a timely
fashion, providing potential trade partners with the assurance that
the agreements they sign will be given a quick up-or-down vote in
Congress without the likelihood of amendments that would
effectively reopen the negotiations. Without such assurances, few
countries are willing to invest their efforts in hammering out
agreements with the President and his Administration that might
later be changed by Congress.
In
1998, the Clinton Administration quietly agreed to share leadership
of the FTAA with Brazil at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago,
Chile. Had the United States maintained its influential leadership
position, the hemispheric trade model for the FTAA would be NAFTA,
and Chile would have been invited to join immediately. Instead, the
FTAA proceeds slowly along the lines of a protectionist customs
union, the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), which primarily
serves the interests of its largest member, Brazil.
Development assistance also lost its focus
under the Clinton Administration. Few Latin American recipients
have economies that are any more sustainable today than they were
20 years ago. This is because programs that primarily provide
funds, tools, and information are not always accompanied by the
political and economic reforms needed to sustain any gains. Ecuador
is a case in point: Even as U.S. development assistance attempted
to confront the problems of public health, environmental
degradation, and corrupt government, access to international credit
allowed Ecuador to continue corrupt practices, maintain
unsupportable subsidies, and oust three presidents and one vice
president who dared to propose even modest measures of fiscal
responsibility.
Even
where President Clinton acted to preserve the status quo in Latin
America, success was at best temporary. His disinterest and
unwillingness to delegate responsibility to appropriate U.S.
agencies weakened efforts on the two issues that did make it to his
radar screen: Haiti and Colombia.
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For example, the White House generally
ignored the institutional expertise of the State Department on
Haiti and directed the $3 billion, 20,000-soldier intervention
effort out of the National Security Council. Focusing on a
quick-exit strategy instead of a long-term remedy, the intervention
returned a non-democrat to power and effectively propped up a
kleptocracy that was little better than the previous regimes.
- When piecemeal efforts in Colombia failed
to contain the activity of narco-guerrillas, the Administration
helped the Colombian government develop a comprehensive plan but
failed to draft the emergency aid request to Congress in a timely
fashion. When the package arrived on Capitol Hill, six months late
and with few supporting details, legislators had to fill in the
blanks, delaying the arrival of assistance and substituting
compromise for a clear vision of what needed to be done.
The
Bush Administration should learn from these missteps and develop a
comprehensive strategy for improving relations with Latin American
states that benefits all concerned. Even if the tactical approach
employed under President Clinton were "better managed," it would
not gain the region's confidence or solve any problems.
Latin America faces more complicated challenges than it did six
years ago at the Summit of the Americas in Miami; many political
institutions have weakened, and economies have stagnated. As the
late Senator Paul Coverdell (R-GA) observed in a speech before the
Council on Foreign Relations in April 2000, three general
problems affect most of the countries in the region: fragile
democracies, inadequate defenses against emerging threats, and
failure to develop broad-based economic growth. Many governments
tread a delicate balance between survival and disaster, unable to
translate free elections into democratic institutions. Drug
trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism threaten the stability
of the northern Andean states, with tentacles that stretch from
Argentina to the United States. At the same time, the slow pace of
economic reform has not improved the lives of most Latin
Americans.
Incomplete Democracies
Although a democratic government may not
be an absolute requirement for achieving prosperity or developing a
more secure society, authoritarian regimes in Latin America not
only failed to achieve these goals, but also blocked their
development. Democratic nations certainly make better neighbors,
allies, and trade partners; and leaders who must compete in regular
elections under public scrutiny do not normally tend to lean on
other governments to bail them out for corrupt activities or
frivolous decisions. Nor do they usually allow problems to develop
that threaten their neighbors. Furthermore, governments that
respect democratic freedoms create a solid basis for the growth of
free markets, enabling private enterprise, employment, and
prosperity to flourish.
Most
Southern Cone countries have held democratic elections, yet many
elected governments in the northern Andean tier and parts of
Central America are now in crisis. Mexico has made steady gains,
electing President Vicente Fox, an opposition party candidate,
after 71 years of single-party rule; but the rest of the region
presents a mixed bag, with some successes and many failures. Polls
show that, although most Latin American citizens prefer a democracy
over an authoritarian government, 60 percent are not satisfied with
the performance of their democratic governments and respect the
armed forces more than any other public institution.
The
reasons are many. For one thing, even though competitive elections
are more or less a feature of all Latin American governments except
Cuba's, unfair electoral practices still plague the region. In
Haiti, violence against the opposition candidates and manipulated
vote totals resulted in a dubious victory for the Fanmi Lavalas
party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in parliamentary
elections last May. In the November presidential election, Aristide
ran unopposed; but only an estimated 10 percent of the electorate
voted, and opposition candidates sat out the election in protest.
In Peru, the legacy of President Alberto Fujimori's authoritarian
rule includes candidate intimidation, electoral council
manipulation, and media coercion, which must be neutralized before
new elections take place in April. In Colombia,
candidates--especially in the rural areas--are often threatened by
criminals and illegal armed groups.
Weak
political institutions both fail to check the arbitrary acts of
paternalistic leaders and impair the effective delivery of services
to the public. In Argentina, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, and
Venezuela, powerful executives exercise heavy influence over the
judiciary. In Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, they control the
legislative branches and other independent bodies, such as
electoral councils. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has
used referenda to rewrite the national constitution, remake the
legislature into a unicameral body, and restrict other institutions
that could oppose his administration. A December 5, 2000,
referendum put free trade unions under government control, and
proposed measures reportedly include nationalizing non-governmental
organizations as well as private schools. In almost all countries
of the region, weak municipal and state governments are only a
minor counterpart to the strong, centralized national
administrations that collect the bulk of all taxes and distribute
most of the services (though often poorly).
The
rule of law--essential to fair play, democratic governance, a
competitive market, and a healthy investment climate--is weak in
more than a third of the region. At one end of the spectrum, Cuba's
Fidel Castro jails people simply for "looking dangerous." Elsewhere, vague,
Napoleonic-era civil codes invite interpretation, enabling major
and minor officials to solicit bribes for favorable decisions.
Judiciaries lacking resources and competence limit public access to
justice with high court costs, a lack of public defenders, and long
waits for cases to be heard. In Haiti, 80 percent of all prisoners
are simply awaiting trial.
At
the governing level, public officials either refuse to follow laws
or manipulate them for personal gain. In December 1999, Nicaraguan
President Arnoldo Alemán jailed the Comptroller General for
inquiring into an extraordinary and unexplained increase in
Alemán's personal assets as required by law. As
Alemán and his party began losing support, he colluded with
Sandinista legislators to modify the constitution to eliminate
smaller opposition parties and grant him an unelected seat and
voice in the national assembly.
Finally, social factors also serve to
inhibit the development of cultures that support democracy. In
Brazil, the northern Andes, parts of Central America, and Mexico,
economic and ethnic divisions result in fragmented political
interests. Participation is further limited by low average
education levels and inadequate access to schooling outside of the
capital cities. In Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and (in the
extreme case) Cuba, competitive practices are simply not tolerated
in cultures where the traditions of monopoly prevail. In such
places, public diplomacy and civic education programs funded by
USAID are key to introducing people to new values that favor
self-determination, human rights, the rule of law, and open
markets.
New Threats and Outdated Security
Paradigms
Strong nations united against external
aggression and safeguarding the well-being of their own people are
the best defense against a broad range of threats, whether war,
natural disaster, or transnational crime. Yet the United States and
its allies in Latin America have never shared a common focus on
hemispheric defense beyond their Cold War determination to repel
Marxist insurgencies. Worse, they are unprepared to deal with the
new threats to security that loom on the horizon.
The
good news is that the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 reduced
the threat of communist-sponsored aggression in Latin America. The
United States has taken advantage of a decade of relative peace in
the hemisphere to encourage its neighbors to draw down their armies
and place them under civilian control. Accordingly, the region's
civilian leaders have acted to reduce their once prominent
political profile and largely have separated the military and
police functions. To occupy the smaller-sized forces, modern
defense chiefs have sought out such new missions as disaster
response, environmental protection, and international
peacekeeping.
The
bad news is that the Clinton Administration allowed U.S. strategic
objectives for this region to drift. It neglected traditional
defense matters, such as the importance of Caribbean sea lanes and
the Panama Canal in facilitating global commerce, by turning over
the canal to Panama in December 1999 without encouraging the
development of territorial defenses or preserving a convenient
location for defense operations should they be needed in the
future. The Pentagon has largely ignored the fact that Latin
American countries have developed important trade relations and
military contacts with other parts of the world, including China.
Unwilling to go much beyond hosting training exercises or selling
used equipment, the Clinton Administration and the Defense
Department failed to reform America's traditional paternal
relationship with the region's militaries.
Cocaine and heroin production in the
Andes, augmented by the global economy, is creating an insidious
new threat--a billion-dollar multinational crime industry, centered
in the Andean ridge, and that extends north through Central
America, Mexico, and the Caribbean and south through Brazil and
Paraguay. With local roots, profits rivaling the economies of small
nations, and a global reach, this activity falls outside the
purview of strictly military or police jurisdiction.
In the past five years,
narco-corruption has undermined the sovereignty of Colombia, and
related violence has displaced more than 1.5 million citizens. In
1999, lost revenue from damage to infrastructure and legitimate
businesses caused Colombia's total domestic production (GDP) to
decline by 5 percent and unemployment to rise by 20 percent.
In Brazil, a recent
congressional investigation implicated more than 800 persons--among
them three national legislators and several mayors--in drug-based
crime networks stretching from Amazonas State on the Colombian
border to the port of Santos in the south.
In Mexico, local
cartels have co-opted all but the highest levels of law
enforcement, and the transshipment of cocaine is now Haiti's
biggest business.
All told, Latin America accounts for
almost all of the cocaine and the largest portion of the heroin
coming into the United States, with an estimated associated cost in
1995 of $110 billion in medical expenses and lost productivity.
Crossing borders, this threat requires the
cooperation of both the military and the police. Unfortunately, few
armies, having already dismantled their police battalions, are now
prepared to collaborate with civilians to combat this menace. Where
civilian units were created to take over law enforcement from the
military, neither numbers nor training has been sufficient to
control common crime. Following the end of the civil conflict in El
Salvador in 1992, the new civilian police were barely a match for
demobilized combatants who kidnapped, stole cars, and attacked
travelers. Now drug trafficking has moved in from Colombia to
further overwhelm the police. Even in countries with long-standing
civilian police forces, like Mexico, poorly paid officers rely on
bribes for a living and simply do not present a credible
deterrent.
The
United States has tried to provide help, but U.S. counternarcotics
assistance has been affected by U.S. domestic laws that block
cooperation between the military and police. Except as exempted by
statute, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act and the Foreign Assistance
Act of 1961 place limits on U.S. military forces, from acting as
police domestically to working with foreign security forces
performing a police role. As a result, the U.S. military has tried
to limit its exposure to counternarcotics missions. Although U.S.
justice agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the Drug Enforcement Administration train and assist Latin American
police forces, there is insufficient coordination between Latin
soldiers and civilians and no efficient way to transfer U.S.
military assets to foreign civilian use. Furthermore, efforts by
the State Department to jury rig a counternarcotics aid program
have resulted in bureaucratic delays, bungled deliveries, and the
provision of useless equipment--such as outdated ammunition to
Colombia and defective helicopters to Mexico.
Multilateral institutions that could
foster coordination between states on this problem have not done
so. The 1947 American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty)
did not foresee the threat of transnational crime, and since the
end of the Cold War no country has made a serious effort to promote
its modernization. Though the Organization of American States (OAS)
has a Commission on Hemispheric Security, military matters are
largely relegated to the Inter-American Defense Board--an agency
that functions only to give advice to member governments and has
been used only rarely during its 52-year existence.
For
lack of a welcome forum for such issues, Brazilian President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso convoked his own summit of South American
presidents in August 2000 to protest not being consulted by the
United States and Colombia on their joint counternarcotics efforts
and announced his own Plan Cobra to monitor and discourage drug
banditry on the Brazil-Colombia border. Clearly,
Washington needs to promote the development of a new paradigm for
hemispheric defense that counters traditional threats while
bringing neighbors together to work against new, transnational
problems.
Stalled Economic Reforms
Nations benefit in three ways from sound
economies:
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Prosperity increases, supporting
stable governments and peaceful relations;
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Resources increase for providing
adequate defenses against external threats; and
- Regional economies grow, since
nations with vigorous markets are more likely to trade with other
nations, stimulating their economies as well. Prosperity becomes
mutually reinforcing and, among trade partners like the United
States and Latin America, is clearly in the interests of both
sides.
Even though the development of a free trade agenda and the gradual
demise of statist, import-substitution economies during the past 20
years encouraged Latin American nations to lower some tariffs and
open some markets, free trade remains mostly a concept, and
economic reforms are an ideal yet to be achieved. As
Table 1 shows, 9 out of
23 countries have economies that could be considered "mostly
unfree," according to the
2001 Index of Economic
Freedom published jointly by The Heritage Foundation and
The Wall Street Journal. Moreover, 15 out of 19 Latin
American states fell in the "more corrupt" range of Transparency
International's Perceptions of Corruption and Bribery Index for
1999. Little wonder,
then, as the World Bank found, that more than a third of Latin
America's citizens get by on less than $2 a day.
The
idea of boosting hemispheric free trade to expand prosperity has
roots in the senior Bush Administration's Enterprise for the
Americas Initiative and Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in
1980. Following the passage of NAFTA in 1993, however, U.S. efforts
to expand free trade in the hemisphere lay dormant, denying U.S.
consumers access to Latin American goods and costing U.S. firms
billions in export opportunities. President Clinton waited until
November 29, 2000, to seek a bilateral free trade agreement with
Chile--six years after he had suggested it at the Miami Summit of
the Americas.
Predictably, such flagging leadership
strengthened the grip of such sub-regional trade blocs as Mercosur,
Caricom, and the Andean
Community, all of them
protectionist customs unions that restrict trade beyond their
member markets. To reinforce its hold, Mercosur reportedly will now
require its member nations to negotiate all of their bilateral
agreements through the bloc--a move that could weaken their trade
prospects. This could also affect the
implementation of new bilateral ties beyond the agreement currently
under negotiation with Chile.
Even
with lower tariffs, broad-based prosperity would continue to be
elusive because of the lack of sound fiscal management. Although
there are stellar performers like Chile and El Salvador, most
countries have taken only half-steps toward reform.
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In the 1990s, Argentina tamed
hyperinflation by pegging the peso to the U.S. dollar. It still
managed to sink into deep recession, thanks to excessive public
spending sustained by high taxes that suffocated private-sector
activity.
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In 1998, Brazil obtained a $41.5 billion
"precautionary" bailout from the International Monetary Fund to
stabilize its currency. But when it failed to cut spending, its
currency lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar.
- Neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela
traditionally have restricted trade and competition while siphoning
revenue from their nationalized petroleum industries to pay for
subsidies and entitlements. As a result, Ecuador's economy
collapsed in January 2000, and Venezuela has experienced an average
per capita GDP growth rate of zero since 1990, despite a dramatic
rise in oil prices from $9 to nearly $30 a barrel.
Prosperity is blocked at the local level
when businesses and markets are restricted. Moderate or greater
regulatory burdens have taken their toll in 20 out of 23 states. In
Mexico, liberalized trade under NAFTA and fiscal restraint have
produced an impressive 15 percent increase in GDP over the past
five years; yet living standards remain at 1970s levels. In his campaign
for president, Vicente Fox blamed restrictions on foreign and
domestic investment, overregulation of small businesses, and the
practice of granting monopoly licenses. Throughout the region,
prohibitive collateral requirements, 20 percent to 30 percent
annual interest rates on loans, and steep down payment requirements
commonly restrict access to commercial loans. Inadequate protection
of property rights also makes it difficult for small entrepreneurs
to use their property for collateral or to sell it to raise
capital.
Unreasonable regulations merely encourage
people to circumvent the law or buy off the authorities. To date,
there have been some outside efforts to curb such practices. In
1999, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials
in International Business Transactions entered into force. Three
countries in the Americas--Canada, Mexico, and the United
States--have ratified it. For its part, the Organization of
American States has negotiated a well-intentioned but
non-enforceable Inter-American Convention Against Corruption.
Though ratifying such conventions signals reform-minded goals, real
progress will be made when commercial and criminal codes are
modernized. The United States should encourage such reforms while
reinvigorating efforts to expand free trade.
Country-Specific Problems
Beyond the general issues of strengthening
democratic governance, addressing new threats, and securing
economic prosperity, there are immediate problems in Latin America
that require the Bush Administration's focused attention.
Colombia and Its Neighbors
This north Andean nation now supplies 90 percent of the
cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin consumed in the United
States. America's $63.2
billion annual habit fuels a powerful international narcotics
industry that is closely linked with well-armed Marxist insurgents.
It is estimated that this violent alliance earns up to $75 million
a month through extortion, kidnapping, protection of drug lords,
and narcotics production. U.S. officials worry about the drugs, but
polls in Colombia show that its people are more concerned about the
weak government and its response to the violence. An estimated
300,000 Colombians left the country last year, and a third of them
are said to have settled in the United States.
The
Clinton Administration's $1.3 billion assistance package to support
President Andrés Pastrana's Plan Colombia targeted
drug traffickers as though they had no connection to the country's
illegal armed groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the paramilitary
United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC). Hastily conceived and
haphazardly implemented, the plan supports meandering,
conditionless peace talks that simply appear to address the
concerns of members of the U.S. Congress and human rights advocates
who view the insurgents more as a political force. Appropriations
totaling $48.5 million support human rights initiatives, but
allocations to strengthen Colombia's weak judicial system are
insufficient.
Moreover, contributions from European
donors for non-military aid were not negotiated ahead of time,
leaving Plan Colombia more than $1 billion short in funding
economic development and addressing other government reforms.
Colombia pledged to contribute some $4 billion to the effort, but
it is hard to see how a budget already stretched thin by war can
support that level of commitment. Washington should
focus instead on ways to help the government provide security for
law-abiding citizens and assert authority over the national
territory.
Spillover violence from drug kingpins and
guerrillas operating beyond Colombia's borders now affects
Colombia's neighbors--Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
Brazil announced its Plan Cobra to catch Colombian outlaws
operating in the northwestern Amazonas State; Ecuador's Sucumbios
Department is gaining notoriety as la dispensa de las FARC
(literally, "the FARC's storehouse," a guerrilla rest and resupply
area). Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela are plagued by
unstable governments and weak economies. Adding potency to this
cocktail, Venezuelan strongman President Hugo Chávez has met
with and given tacit support to Colombian guerrillas, visited
Bolivia's dissident coca growers, and reportedly provided money to
jailed Ecuadoran coup-plotter Colonel Lucio Gutierrez.
The
potential for further destabilization is huge. Sixty percent of the
people in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela live below the
poverty line. Bolivia's highly touted alternative crop development
plan has failed to
ensure the livelihoods of former coca growers. An estimated 500,000
Ecuadorans have left their country in the past two years to find
work and escape invading Colombians. And Peru must
rebuild corrupted political and security institutions in the wake
of President Alberto Fujimori's departure from office in disgrace.
President Clinton's hands-off approach to these countries should be
replaced with an effort to build cooperative defense partnerships
and clear encouragement for political and economic reforms.
Haiti
This small Caribbean state might be ignored were it not for
the fact that it is now a transshipment hub for some 14 percent of
all cocaine reaching U.S. shores, and for its potential to send
waves of unskilled refugees to other countries. Since gaining its
independence from France in 1804, Haiti has never had a social
contract or a democratic culture. Its adult population is 65
percent illiterate.
The
restoration to power of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in
1994 failed to address these problems. Supporting the ex-priest
became the Clinton Administration's principal concern, to little
gain. Aristide cultivated alliances with violent partisans to
ensure political support and had to be talked out of staying in
office beyond his term. His successor and long-time friend, Rene
Preval, loyally carried out his wishes to hinder the formation of a
strong opposition. When Aristide ran unopposed for re-election in
November 2000, the opposition boycotted the discredited electoral
process, and voter turnout was low.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars of U.S. and
multilateral aid have been wasted on reconstruction projects
speedily undone by uncooperative Haitian officials, rampant
corruption, and pilferage. As a result, international lending
institutions have withheld millions of dollars already in the
pipeline. The United States should shift its attention from the
regime to the people and establish attainable objectives while
speaking out against Aristide's irresponsible behavior.
Cuba
The Castro regime continues to maintain the region's most
repressive political climate and most unfree economy. Neighborhood
revolutionary defense committees keep citizens from expressing
dissent, there is no free press, and the state controls the
economy. Thanks to the loss of subsidies when the Soviet Union
collapsed, Cuba is no longer a security threat, although Castro has
built an advanced biotechnology industry reportedly capable of
producing biological weapons.
The
loss of support from the Soviet Union forced Castro to allow minor
market reforms, such as permitting a small number of independent
farmers and farm cooperatives to operate in order to increase the
food supply. During the 1990s, he lifted the ban on self-employment
in such occupations as bicycle repair and snack sales. These
"businesses," however, are highly regulated and taxed. In fact,
their numbers have decreased from an estimated high of 208,000 in
1995 to about 150,000. Meanwhile, the
regime's Soviet-style command economy continues to import more than
twice as much as it exports, and the state reportedly owes some $10
billion in foreign currency debt.
To
keep his grip on the island and recover strength as an
international actor, Castro needs credit. He has been able to
obtain only limited amounts from other countries to buy their
goods, but he has persuaded American businesses to lobby for
lifting the U.S. trade embargo and providing credit by holding out
the dubious carrot of commerce with his regime. Thus far, U.S.
policymakers have retained the trade embargo enacted in 1960 and
codified under the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity
(LIBERTAD) Act to deny the regime
access to U.S. dollars, to protest its human rights abuses, and to
sanction its confiscation of property in Cuba belonging to U.S.
citizens and businesses.
In
other ways, U.S. policy has softened. In 1995, the Clinton
Administration made a secret agreement--behind the back of
working-level State Department negotiators--to curb the flow of
refugees into the United States by returning Cuban rafters picked
up at sea by U.S. vessels. Seeking to protect
the status quo in Cuba, President Clinton expended little effort
advocating human rights, political reforms, and open markets, or
overtly helping the Cuban population prepare for life after
Castro.
The Southern Cone
This sub-region encompassing Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay, and Uruguay has a population of 225 million people and a
$1.1 trillion GDP. It has made remarkable progress in establishing
democratic governance and moderate gains in opening markets
important to the United States. But reforms are still needed to
strengthen wobbly political institutions and weak economies.
In
Argentina and Brazil, backlogged justice systems and corruption
have lowered public confidence. Brazil's military and civilian
police forces are poorly trained and organized, and entrenched
interests resist judicial system reforms, as they do in Paraguay.
Economically, Argentina is suffering its second year of serious
recession, and the results of a recent poll suggest that some 21
percent of the population would like to leave the country. Paraguay's economy
remains troubled by overregulation, corruption, and poor
supervision of the banking sector.
Brazil overshadows the sub-region, with
166 million people and a GDP of between $700 billion and $800
billion. But the fractious nature of local politics has slowed the
dismantling of protectionist barriers at home and in Mercosur,
which it dominates. Although the United States still provides
bilateral development assistance to Brazil and Paraguay, other
Southern Cone countries no longer qualify. All should implement
needed reforms to help strengthen their economies and to promote
regional stability.
Mexico
Little engaged by the United States since the peso
devaluation, Mexico presents a rare opportunity for President Bush
to establish positive relations now that the Mexican people have
done an about-face on seven decades of one-party rule and elected
an opposition party president, eliminating the majority enjoyed by
the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the
Congress as well. Although Vicente Fox is building on reforms begun
under his predecessors, he must institute checks and balances and
decentralize authority to the states and municipalities. He has
pledged to end the practice of governing through payoffs and
patronage, and has proposed the elimination of monopoly licenses
and excessive regulation that stifles small enterprises. To the
United States, he has promised improved cooperation on
counternarcotics efforts; Mexican cartels are responsible for
two-thirds of the Colombian cocaine reaching the United States.
Fox
has proposed establishing a common market--to include Mexico, the
United States, and Canada--that permits free movement of labor and
goods among the partners. Bilateral trade with Mexico has doubled
under NAFTA, from $76 billion in 1992 to $157 billion in 1997, but
inadequate planning, coordination, and staffing in key U.S.
agencies have exacerbated problems of congestion, crime, and
environmental degradation along the border.
Free
movement of labor and goods would mean more traffic and perhaps a
new influx of migrant workers into the United States. In 1998, the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service apprehended 1.5 million
undocumented immigrants along the Southwest border. Mexico must
also deal with its own migration problems on its southern border,
with many Central and South Americans fleeing northward to escape
violence and stumbling economies. The United States and Mexico
should cooperate to find solutions to this problem as well as the
problem of transnational crime. Clearly, a good working
relationship between the Presidents of the United States and Mexico
is key.
An Agenda for Common Prosperity
As a
global power that depends increasingly on the markets and
well-being of other nations for its economic strength, the United
States has an obligation to encourage its neighbors to follow
proven pathways to peace and prosperity. But as the Clinton legacy
demonstrates, ad hoc tactics rarely promote progress or maintain
the status quo. Worse, they encourage emergency measures to
compensate for the absence of sustained, sensible engagement.
The
United States needs a strategic Latin America policy that promotes
basic political and economic reform, recognizes the virtues of
long-term cooperation, and encourages nascent democracies to be the
authors of their own success. Development assistance should not be
a stand-alone priority, as President Clinton stated in his 1994
Summit of the Americas address; it should be a tool to encourage
and support verifiable reforms that allow market participation to
flower and prosperity to take root. Like welfare, foreign aid
should not be acceptable as a permanent state of affairs. Political
will is required for countries to establish the rule of law,
liberalize economies, and create political stability--the true keys
to lasting economic development--but leadership and vision are
needed from the United States to develop policies to cultivate
political will.
Even
though the threat of Marxist revolution has disappeared in Latin
America, America's interests and concerns in the region have
continued to grow. New threats mean that benign neglect cannot be
an option. The United States should reallocate resources targeted
toward Latin America as necessary to develop friendly democracies,
cooperate to defend against threats, and nurture hemispheric
prosperity. To that end, President Bush and Congress should take
the following broad steps:
Strengthening Neighboring Democracies
-
Promote free and fair elections in
Latin America by supporting election-monitoring programs and
party-building efforts. The National Endowment for Democracy
and other entities such as the National Democratic Institute,
International Republican Institute, International Foundation for
Election Systems, and Center for Democracy can provide technical
assistance and field observers whose scrutiny would help to ensure
open and honest elections in Latin America. Programs that help
develop grassroots political competencies should be expanded where
they are notably absent--in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and
Venezuela.
-
Advocate separation of powers,
decentralization, and core administrative competencies to develop
strong democracies as a counterbalance to authoritarian
traditions. This means targeting public diplomacy and
information programs at civic leaders and general audiences to
increase understanding of how democratic governance works best.
Further, just as the U.S. military has influenced thousands of
largely competent, honest soldiers through exchanges and
specialized courses, an international visitors program should be
revitalized to promote similar exchanges for government
officials.
-
Promote judicial
reforms. These should include modernizing the civil and
criminal codes, separating prosecutorial and judicial functions,
adopting systematic rules of evidence, and strengthening court
systems to handle case backlogs. Assistance should be continued for
U.S. Administration of Justice programs and for police
training, as well as for promising concepts like neighborhood
justice centers. Such centers, like those developed under
Colombia's Casas de Justicia program (see sidebar), provide law
enforcement, counseling, and conflict mediation services to urban
neighborhoods and rural communities that have little access to the
existing justice bureaucracy.
Promote more effective civic education programs
as a public diplomacy effort to inform citizens of their rights and
responsibilities in democratic societies where such concepts are
poorly understood or at risk. These people-to-people exchanges
should bring subject experts together with teachers, community
leaders, and journalists, as well as general audiences, to increase
understanding of the principles underlying democratic governance. The State
Department should provide strong senior-level support and
reallocate resources as necessary to its public diplomacy bureau to
ensure that these programs are successful.
In addition, because citizens cannot make
informed judgments and take control of government without the
ability to read, write, and understand basic political concepts,
efforts to improve levels of education also should be a goal,
especially in regions where citizens have less than five years of
primary schooling, on average (see Table 1). To that end, USAID
should reallocate some of the money it spends on other projects to
address the more basic need of helping populations become educated
enough to help themselves. Rather than
sending aid to bureaucratized education
ministries, USAID should channel assistance through NGOs to provide
educational materials, improve literacy, and promote the
decentralization of inefficient bureaucracies.
Building Cooperative Defense
Partnerships
Continue Defense
Department training assistance and grant aid to modernize the
military capabilities of democratic allies in the region to
protect trade and shipping routes, counter terrorist threats,
conduct search and rescue operations, and respond to natural
disasters, such as the recent earthquake in El Salvador. The Panama
Canal remains an important link for commercial cargo and U.S. and
allied naval vessels. The Administration and Congress also should
consider helping Panama develop and train a security force to
protect the canal against terrorist attacks. And they should offer
to help Panama bolster its border defenses to deny safe haven to
Colombian bandits who traffic in drugs and arms in the eastern
Darien province.
Promote partnerships to counter
emerging threats
The United States and Latin America may not be ready for a
hemispheric cooperative defense alliance like the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), but Washington should encourage
cooperation to mount a more effective defense against transnational
crime and to promote the interoperability of forces. The U.S.
Southern Command should use training opportunities to promote
common military standards, similar to those used by NATO, and
better civil-military relations to build confidence between
civilian leaders with little experience working with the armed
forces and military institutions that are mistrustful of civilians.
Washington should facilitate the development of protocols to
enhance coordination between the armed forces and civilians at a
sub-national level and between regional allies on threats that
require both police and military action. These protocols should
address such topics as jurisdiction, intelligence-sharing, and
responsibilities during interdiction operations.
U.S. lawmakers should work with the
Departments of State, Defense, and Justice to resolve the dilemma
of how best to transfer equipment and supplies to this mix of
foreign law enforcement agencies and militaries. While the State
Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs (INL) may be a good place to coordinate policy, State's
lack of financial and management expertise has slowed the timely
delivery of assistance to the Colombian National Police and at
times has jeopardized the crop eradication program. Since the
mission of the State Department is diplomacy, not program
administration, expert management teams should be detailed from the
Pentagon and USAID to ensure prompt delivery of assistance under
the INL's overall guidance.
Modernize multilateral security
mechanisms
The United States should assess the level of interest among
its Latin American allies in updating the Rio Treaty and establish
a high-level forum for planning strategies against transnational
threats. While the Organization of American States might provide an
obvious platform, its members in the past have avoided discussing
substantive matters like Plan Colombia. A better approach might be
to suggest the integration of civilian law enforcement,
international finance, and Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission (CICAD) personnel into periodic hemispheric defense
ministerial meetings.
Promoting Free Trade and Economic
Reform
Grant fast-track negotiating authority to the
President
Latin American leaders have expressed frustration that
the agreements they sign with a U.S. Administration could get
bogged down in Congress. Without fast
track, it would be more difficult for the President to conclude any
trade agreements with Latin American countries; few will be
inclined to invest their time or effort in working out agreements
that may be radically altered by Congress. The Administration's
ability to negotiate bilateral free trade accords will be seriously
hampered at best. The Bush Administration should move quickly to
secure fast track and use it to finalize bilateral trade accords
beginning with Chile (see below).
Promote a self-selecting global free trade
association (GFTA) model for trade expansion and encourage other
countries to commit to reforms that would enable them to join
While the White
House and Congress should move quickly to enact the free trade
agreement with Chile that President Clinton proposed last year,
they should do so as a steppingstone to establishing a GFTA and
avoid any complicated and costly protocols on labor and the
environment that would work against true trade liberalization. Once
the bilateral agreement has been signed with Chile, the United
States should announce the formation of a GFTA and invite Uruguay
to join by signing a free trade agreement--provided it takes
measurable steps to reduce excessive regulation. The United States
should quickly establish new trade incentives for the region and
explain why a free trade association makes more sense than does a
protectionist model like a customs union.
Support regulatory
reform in Latin America that promotes property rights and greater
banking competition for small consumer loans to enable small
businesses to thrive
The United States should promote this goal by (1) advocating
it in forums like the upcoming Summit of the Americas; (2)
providing expertise through active public diplomacy programs; (3)
persuading the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to
condition loans on measurable progress in implementing reforms; and
(4) assuring elites, through such groups as chambers of commerce,
that removing barriers to competition will actually expand
markets.
Urge Latin American states to ratify the
OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in
International Business Transactions
The United States, Canada, and Mexico have already ratified
it. The Bush Administration should work to persuade countries to
enact statutes against bribery and corruption where needed and
institute policies that promote transparency in government and
business.
Dealing with Specific Concerns
In
addition to pursuing these broad strategies, the Bush
Administration will need to meet pressing challenges in the region
and implement short-term policies. For example, it should:
Urge the Colombian government to
place conditions on the peace talks in order to end guerrilla
violence and banditry, and reallocate U.S. development assistance
under Plan Colombia to increase the resources going to
criminal justice and police institutions in order to help the
government extend its authority into the countryside to protect
citizens from violence. At the same time, U.S. efforts to train and
professionalize both Colombia's police and Colombia's armed forces
should continue.
The Bush Administration should reconsider
its predecessor's unconditional endorsement of the flawed Colombian
peace process. It should urge Colombia to regard both insurgents
and paramilitaries as illegal armed groups and establish objectives
to disband them. The goal should be to end the violence and find a
way to give dissidents a competing voice in a pluralistic system.
The Administration should stress the importance of government
reforms that bolster the criminal justice system and increase
domestic security. In addition, as noted above, the United States
should shift resources to increase justice-sector aid in order to
help the Colombian government establish an effective presence in
the municipalities plagued by violence.
The Administration should support the
training of government human rights monitors who scrutinize the
activities of all armed groups, as well as the government's forces,
to bring a more complete picture of abuses to public attention and
institute accountability in the justice system. Some public
diplomacy and civil society projects should be targeted at
Colombia's economic and political elites to encourage them to
support a stronger, more competent government.
Finally, Washington should press European
states to contribute their fair share to Plan Colombia. Europe is third in
cocaine consumption behind North and South America, and trafficking
there contributes to Colombia's problems. So far, the
European Commission of the European Union has agreed to give only
$250 million of $2 billion requested under the plan.
Foster cooperative
partnerships with Colombia's neighbors to improve interdiction
of drug bandits, reduce border violence, and address other
festering political and economic problems. Interdiction and
development assistance now focused on Colombia should be
restructured to send some of it to Colombia's neighbors to
strengthen government authority in border areas. Brazil, Ecuador,
and Peru should be encouraged to cooperate with Colombia by denying
safe haven and supply routes to outlaws.
Increase contacts
with Venezuelan democrats through public diplomacy programs,
and provide platforms for them to reach new audiences both within
and outside of their country. The Administration should refrain
from drawing attention to Venezuela's antagonistic president by
unnecessarily criticizing him, but it should reinforce economic and
security partnerships with the surrounding democracies and build a
consensus for condemning his mischief in multilateral settings. The
Administration should look for ways to reduce America's reliance on
Venezuelan oil, perhaps by purchasing more from allies such as
Mexico and Canada, while studying exploration and conservation
strategies. As long as demand and prices are up, Chávez can
use the revenue from oil sales to finance his increasingly
autocratic government and make trouble for his neighbors.
End the policy toward Haiti of
personally supporting leaders, deny assistance to corrupt
government entities, and help Haitians become more involved in
their government. The United States should condition friendly
relations with Haiti on the regime's willingness to enact
democratic and free-market reforms and to cooperate on bilateral
matters such as drug interdiction. At the same time, the
Administration should hold Haitian officials accountable for their
actions and revoke visas and freeze U.S. bank accounts of anyone
involved in criminal or corrupt activities. The Administration
should also deny direct U.S. assistance to Haitian government
entities and to programs that are unlikely to survive frequent
institutional upheavals and pilferage.
Washington should increase institutional
contacts with democratic elements of civil society in Haiti through
public diplomacy international visitor programs and grassroots
party-building initiatives that are currently being funded by the
National Endowment for Democracy. For a country in which the
average adult has only 1.7 years of primary schooling, Washington
should promote the efforts of NGOs to raise the level of basic
education and put more citizens on the road to
self-determination.
Push the Cuban government to respect
human rights, support open U.S. relations with Cuban citizens, and
increase the amount U.S. citizens can send to them. The Bush
Administration should put the burden of change back on Castro's
shoulders and insist that his regime adhere to international human
rights principles. The Administration should pursue a Reagan-type
public diplomacy strategy that aggressively calls attention to
abuses of human rights as well as to the regime's economic
failures. It also should help boost outlets for reports from
independent Cuban journalists, strengthen Radio and TV Marti's
signal, and actively encourage donations of books and periodicals
for Cubans who have no access to them in the closed market. Using
the bully pulpit, the Administration should make clear that U.S.
policy supports targeted contacts between American civil society
and ordinary Cubans, such as increased academic, artistic, and
research exchanges, as well as contacts between churches, local
chambers of commerce, Rotary Clubs, and others. And it should
require reciprocity from Havana when Cuban officials seek to visit
the United States to lobby for changes in U.S. policy.
The Administration should lift the
U.S.-imposed ceiling for remittances to ordinary Cubans from $100
per month to $1,000, which would give them greater buying power
relative to state workers and the nomenklatura. It should permit
Americans to sell food, medicine, and other soft goods like
clothing to the Castro regime on a cash-and-carry basis only, to
trigger changes in Castro's policies in order to pay for them.
Credit could be earmarked for sales to private Cuban businesses as
they are permitted to exist; the government could have access to
credit once it enacts political and economic reforms. Washington
should allow Americans to enter joint ventures with the Cuban
state, provided that the regime allows them to hire whomever they
wish and abide by principles that guarantee employees freedom of
association on the job and equal access to products and services
provided by the venture. Washington should
convince other nations to institute the same policy.
Castro may be unwilling to make changes as
long as he is in command, but such strategies focus attention on
ordinary Cubans and widen space for independent thought and
economic activity. Moreover, they provide a guideline for an
eventual transition government.
Conclude the free trade agreement with Chile
proposed late last year. The Bush Administration should
use this agreement to announce a global free trade association and
then invite other nations, such as Uruguay, to join once they meet
the criteria. Adopting this
strategy would help America encourage less-free countries that
desperately need access to developed markets and foreign investment
to liberalize their economies. It also would give President Bush an
opportunity to reestablish U.S. leadership in hemispheric free
trade and lead the region away from current protectionist
models.
Promote reforms in Southern Cone states
through more active engagement. The Administration should urge
Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, for example, to enact
strong anti-corruption measures. Although Argentina has gone some
of the distance toward market liberalization, corruption and high
taxes undermine public confidence and private investment. The
Argentine economy contracted 3.5 percent last year, and
unemployment climbed to nearly 15 percent. In December, de la
Rua agreed to cut federal salaries and deregulate the health
industry to secure a $39.7 billion loan from the International
Monetary Fund. Without deeper reforms, however, such loans are not
likely to produce a turnaround.
Washington should quietly support the
measures of Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to reform
the state and open its economy. Factions that favor liberal
democracy and open markets are in the minority, and elections in
2002 may turn Brazil's focus decidedly inward and leftward. The
United States should suggest the possibility of trade incentives to
encourage open markets and, eventually, a bilateral free trade
agreement.
The Administration should continue to try
to interest Paraguay's democratic leaders in political and economic
reform at a time when the country's nascent democracy is vulnerable
to transnational crime. Development support should continue for
election monitoring, civil society programs, and judicial reform in
order to strengthen political institutions and establish the rule
of law.
Establish a working relationship with
the new Mexican government; focus on improving border
relations, applaud political and economic reforms, and challenge
Mexico to sever the link between its cartels and Colombian drug
suppliers. A more prosperous, democratic Mexico is clearly in the
interests of the United States. Fortunately, Mexico under President
Vicente Fox is more likely to be engaged as an eager partner in
solving common problems and achieving shared goals than as a
prickly adversary. President Bush can take advantage of this
opportunity by improving U.S. cooperation along the 2,000-mile
border and by working closely with the Fox administration to
establish a new bilateral agenda.
The Administration should charge the
Department of Justice and the U.S. Treasury with fully staffing
customs and immigration units along the border, and ask the
Treasury to fulfill its commitment to help the North American
Development Bank streamline loans to improve border infrastructure.
Although cooperation is adequate between the United States and
Mexico, better coordination is needed at all levels of the U.S.
government to ease congestion for travelers, improve sanitation,
and plan for future growth. The Administration should work with
Congress to enhance U.S. entry procedures in order to reduce unsafe
illegal border crossings, and should explore alternatives policies
toward Mexican migrant laborers as the Fox internal reforms take
hold.
The Administration should challenge
President Fox to improve counternarcotics cooperation by cutting
the link between Mexican cartels and Colombian drug suppliers. It
should ask Congress to make the annual drug certification exercise
a simple reporting requirement devoid of automatic sanctions,
rather than a media event. The process was discredited when the
Clinton Administration used one standard to decertify Colombia and
another to certify a previously uncooperative Mexico. Finally, the
White House and Congress should encourage President Fox's
willingness to champion democratic and free-market reforms
elsewhere in the region, particularly through Mexico's relations
with Cuba and Venezuela.
Conclusion
Most
of Latin America is better off today than it was 20 years ago, yet
the progress made during the 1980s in expanding democracy and
opening markets is now at a standstill and could slide backward.
The Bush Administration must put active relations with America's
southern neighbors back on track. Helping Latin Americans to
consolidate democratic reforms and dismantle protectionist barriers
to trade will offer an unprecedented opportunity for the people of
both the United States and Latin America to broaden hemispheric
prosperity.
At
the same time, the defense paradigm that assumes a U.S. military
security blanket over the region must be replaced. It neither
addresses new transnational threats nor recognizes the growing
interdependence of some Latin American states with the rest of the
world.
Only
Latin Americans can be the true authors of their success; but the
United States should catalyze and support local efforts to
strengthen democratic institutions, reduce corruption and crime,
build cooperative security, and advance free trade. President Bush
must waste no time in reinvigorating relations with Latin America;
indeed, the window of opportunity may be closing. At the third
Summit of the Americas to be held in Quebec City, Canada, on April
20-22, he should lay out his vision for a new U.S.-Latin America
partnership that will benefit people throughout the hemisphere.
--Stephen Johnson
is Policy Analyst for Latin America in the Kathryn and Shelby
Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage
Foundation.
Endnotes