Latin America and the U.S. National Interest

A Basis For U.s. Foreign Policy

Margaret Daly Hayes

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429725173
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politique et relations internationales
• Categoría: Politique

Arguing for a new and sober look at the nature of U.S.-Latin American relations, Dr. Hayes addresses the question: Does the United States have compelling national interests in maintaining close relations with Latin American countries? Her conclusion is yes, but for reasons different from those offered in the traditional literature or espoused by many policy analysts. She maintains that U.S. interests in relations with Latin America are primarily political, secondarily economic--though economic ties are the basis of the relationship--and only marginally military. Proper emphasis on these long-term interests may be critical to U.S. national security in a global, as well as regional, context. Dr. Hayes points out that the Latin American countries--occupying a unique position among developing nations today because of their comparatively successful experiences in achieving economic growth and development--represent an increasingly important political influence in both the developed and developing worlds. Moreover, she argues, it is in the U.S. interest to give economic aid to the less-developed countries in the hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean Basin: U.S. security is better preserved and enhanced by encouraging political and economic stability in the region than by promoting military alliances that Latin Americans may not really want. Supporting the need for a revised rationale for U.S.-Latin American relations, Dr. Hayes focuses in detail on the regions and nations of special interest to the United States today: the Caribbean Basin, Mexico (in a chapter by Professor Bruce M. Bagley), Brazil, and the Southern Cone.

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Latin America and the United States’ National Interest

Latin America is a region of more than 30 countries ranging in size from Brazil, the world’s fifth largest nation, to Barbados, one of the world’s smallest states. The population of the region is approximately 360 million, with one-third of that number living in Brazil and nearly one-quarter in Mexico. The gross regional product in 1980 was approximately $722 billion, a figure that makes the economy of all of Latin America about equal in size to that of West Germany among the developed countries, or comparable to the combined national products of all of the developing countries of Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and twice the regional product of Africa.

The United States has a profound interest in the future of Latin American societies and in its relations with those societies. It is the United States’ national interest that there exist in its hemisphere stable, friendly, prosperous nationstates that permit the free movement of goods and services in and through the region, and that no hostile foreign powers exercise influence there. This interest is being challenged today by political instability stemming from the region’s own development struggles, by economic insecurity resulting from the region’s backwardness and exacerbated by international economic trends, and by insurgency generated internally and encouraged and supported opportunistically from abroad.

The critical questions to be answered in reviewing U.S. political, economic, and security interests are not whether the United States has interests in the hemisphere, but rather, how to promote those interests more effectively. This chapter seeks to examine essential U.S. interests in Latin America in a realistic and pragmatic fashion. It also seeks to establish an order of priority for U.S. interests and a priority for actions promoting U.S. interests.

Background

Historically, Latin American relations have had a relatively low priority on the agenda of U.S. Presidents and cabinet members. The low level of attention reflected Latin America’s relative isolation from the main currents of international relations. The Monroe Doctrine, which sought to exclude foreign (i.e., European) powers from the Western Hemisphere, was successful. The low level of priority also reflected the tremendous development gap that separates Latin America from the developed world--Europe, the United States, and Japan. It reflected the United States’ independence of imported raw materials as well. Unlike the European powers, the United States did not have to look abroad for resources to fuel its industrial growth. While U.S. corporations went abroad seeking opportunity for profits, and often called on the U.S. government to support their efforts, the United States did not establish colonies in its sphere of influence.

The principal U.S. concern in the hemisphere has been to secure it from the control or influence of hostile foreign powers. While that purpose has been self-serving, it has not been contrary to Latin America’s own interests. Over time, though certainly not consistently, the U.S. has invested constructive energies in the hemisphere as well. The Point Four programs of the postwar period, the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s, and, most recently, the Caribbean Basin Initiative, are examples.

In spite of the emphasis on the United States’ own security, and what Latin countries would regard as a failure to accommodate Latin America’s greater interest in economic development, there has been a consistent concern for the quality of relations with the nations of the hemisphere. Nearly all U.S. Presidents have sent special emissaries to Latin America in the hope of understanding the region better and of developing better programs to deal with its problems. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent his brother Milton Eisenhower to the region in 1953 and Vice President Nixon in 1959. John F. Kennedy, building on lessons learned in the 1950s, announced the Alliance for Progress during his presidential campaign.

U.S. attention to Latin America languished during the Johnson administration, which was preoccupied with the Vietnam conflict. However, Richard Nixon entered office promising a more “mature dialogue” with Latin America, and dispatched Nelson Rockefeller to tour the region in 1969 and report back on U.S. initiatives that might respond to Latin American needs. Jimmy Carter sent his closest confidant, the First Lady, on a series of visits to Latin America to explain U.S. policy to Latin America and to report Latin American sentiments back to the President.

More recently, private commissions have also sought to contribute to better U.S. Latin American policy. In 1974, the Commission on United States-Latin American Relations (Linowitz Commission) issues its report, The Americas in a Changing World. Chairman Sol M. Linowitz noted “the fundamental changes which have taken place in the world, within Latin America, and in the United States in recent years make timely--and indeed urgent--a reordering of relationships in this hemisphere.” The Linowitz Commission had an initial important impact on the Latin American policies of the Carter administration, and so other commissions were spawned. Whereas Linowitz had “not presumed to prescribe to Latin America,” in 1981 the Aspen Institute convened a distinguished panel of public servants from the United States and Latin America to explore the problems of Governance in the Western Hemisphere (Aspen Institute, 1982). In 1982, Linowitz and former Secretary General of the Organization of American States Galo Plaza convened a “new dialogue” to discuss near-term problems of The Americas at a Crossroads (Wilson Center, 1983).

The messages of these successive special emissaries and commissions have, been consistent. Relations between the United States and its Latin American neighbors are in dire need of attention and reevaluation. The United States and Latin America should consult more regularly and work more closely together, and the United States, as the power in the region, must accommodate Latin American preferences, priorities, and interests when developing policies for the region or on global issues that affect the region.

The Debate Over U.S. Interests

The discussion of U.S. interests in its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean countries reflects a continuing absence of consensus about the basis for U.S. Latin American relations, the importance of Latin American relations to the United States in global context, and the benefits that derive from a strong “inter-American system.” Lowenthal (1976) noted that “The idea of an inter-American ‘community1 of a natural harmony between the United States and Latin America, has also influenced U.S. rhetoric and policy toward the region throughout the country’s independent history.” However, he went on, “Latin American leaders from many countries and from various places on the political spectrum are coming to reject the idea of a special and exclusive relationship between their countries and the United States.”

Latin Americanists have repeatedly called on the United States to “end America’s hegemonic presumption”--the belief that “the entire hemisphere was the rightful sphere of U.S. influence” (Lowenthal, 1979). Latin Americans have generally agreed with this position, for their own reasons. In reviewing the not always felicitous legacy of U.S. involvement in Central America and the Caribbean, serious scholars have argued that the United States should cease trying to influence the direction of events, should disengage from its “pro-consular” role, and let Latin leaders determine their own fates. In a similar vein, others maintain that the United States’ overemphasis on security issues distorts policies toward the region and forecloses Latin America’s opportunities for setting its own political course. Almost all critiques of U.S. policy toward Latin America call for greater U.S. attention to social and economic problems in the region while failing to offer compelling reasons for expending energies and resources in a region that may not be vital to U.S. security, that is determined to set its own independent course in regional and world affairs, and that has not been grateful for U.S. efforts toward it in the past.

Toward a Better Definition of the U.S. Interest in Latin America

This book was undertaken with the assignment to give a candid assessment of whether Latin America is important to U.S. national security and to what degree. The conclusion of the investigation is that Latin America and the Caribbean are very important to the United States and will become even more important in the future as the international system continues to evolve into more diffuse power centers and as competing ideologies test the political balance. Once isolated from the mainstream of international politics, Latin America is now very much caught up in those competing and conflicting currents. The United States now has high stakes in fostering the political stability, institutional maturation, and economic development of Latin America and Caribbean countries. In order to develop policies that can contribute to those ends, there needs to emerge a broad-based consensus that the United States has a vital national interest in Latin America.

The most elementary U.S. interest in the hemisphere is in the region’s contribution to U.S. national security. Security requires first and foremost that there be no direct military threat to the United States in the region. Latin America is secure from that perspective. Security also requires stable, predictable, and harmonious relations in the region, and Latin America--especially its less developed regions--is far from secure on those grounds.

In reassessing policy toward the region, a sober evaluation of Latin America’s economic prospects and capabilities is required. Latin America is important economically to the United States and will become more important as the region’s potential is developed over time. Nevertheless, some countries will always have difficulty in sustaining economic growth, and the gap that separates even the wealthiest and most diversified Latin American countries from the United States or Western European powers will remain tremendous. Latin American countries cannot contribute to the solution to world economic problems yet, though some may cease to be a part of those problems in the near future.

It is also important to understand that Latin America has a tremendous political importance for the United States. That importance becomes most visible when revolution threatens to upset the predictable order and perhaps to install an ideologically hostile government. However, Latin America is important to the United States on many less critical political dimensions. In weighing U.S. strength and influence in the world, it is important that values that the United States shares prevail in the hemisphere; it is important that Latin America generally line up with the United States on East-West questions. Given the historic presumption of hemispheric solidarity, it is important that the concept of regional consensus remain viable.

These political interests acquire increased urgency in the present-day climate of insurgency, revolution, militant nationalism, political institutional decay, and economic distress. The political order is often threatened long before vital security interests are placed in jeopardy. For the most part, in its intermittent attention to Latin America, the United States has ignored its more subtle political interests and failed to pursue a sophisticated long-term policy toward the region. The result has been periodic crisis often invoking the use of military force which, in turn, has had negative political consequences for relations in the region.

In his “inquiry into the American National Interest,” Henry Kissinger noted that Americans have “historically shied away (from addressing) the essence of our national interest and the premises of our foreign policy…. A mature conception of our interest in the world would … take into account the widespread interest in stability and peaceful change. It would deal with two fundamental questions: What is it in our interest to prevent? What should we seek to accomplish?” (Kissinger, 1974).

The Special Relationship

The United States’ principal goals for Latin America are that friendly, stable, prosperous nations prevail there; that no hostile foreign influences exercise power or influence there. It is the United States’ interest that such conditions exist in the hemisphere and the goal of U.S. policy to see that they obtain. There are compelling reasons why Latin America should occupy a more important place in our national agenda. The most important is that, in spite of many efforts to deny it, the United States and Latin America do enjoy a special relationship. The relationship is special simply because all occupy the same geopolitical space--the Western Hemisphere--whose history is uniquely different and separate from that of Europe or Asia or Africa. The relationship is special because the United States is a superpower and unrivaled among the nations of the hemisphere. It is special, too, because over the course of years, the United States and Latin American countries have acted in concert on a large number of issues and have erected a framework of regional cooperation and expression--the inter-American system. The relationship is special because it has provided Latin American countries a unique shield against foreign intervention. Moreover, the friendship and collaboration of Latin American countries have enhanced the security of the United States, permitting it to meet threats and pursue its interests outside the hemisphere without concern for its immediate borders.

A special relationship does not necessarily entail an exclusive relationship, nor even always a happy relationship. Because of profound changes taking place internally in Latin America, because of the U.S. involvement in crises and alliances elsewhere in the world, and because of the gap in power and influence that historically has separated the U.S. from its Latin American neighbors, United States attention to Latin American problems has been sporadic and, as Latin Americans know well, has been stimulated by pending crises, not by a concern for Latin American preferences. Moreover, the United States has exercised its powerful influence over the region to manipulate outcomes it found convenient. It has often run roughshod over Latin American sensitivities and intervened in Latin American domestic politics to place in power governments of its own choosing. It has sought to dictate Latin American mores and to set limits to Latin American opportunities to acquire military weapons, nuclear, and other modern technologies.

It is time for a change to a more enlightened set of relations with Latin America. However, any U.S.-Latin American relationship must be predicated on a thorough understanding of national interests involved. U.S. and Latin American national interests will not always coincide. The United States should not be faulted for pursuing its interests, any more than Latin American nations should be criticized for pursuing theirs. Each should have a clear view of its own interests.

A Negative Approach to Security: What we would Prevent

The United States’ (and any nation’s) most fundamental interest is in securing its borders against hostile enemies. No Latin American country is going to attack the United States. That is clear. However, it has been the United States’ historical concern to prevent powers from outside the hemisphere from establishing a base of power or influence within the region. Thus, even though John Q. Adams initially argued against U.S. involvements in the hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated, making the entire region an area of U.S. security concern--to be defended by the British fleet, to be sure, since the United States was not then powerful enough to defend the region against the efforts of the other major European powers. Slowly, over the course of the nineteenth century, the United States reduced British involvement in the region. The Spanish American War succeeded in eliminating the last remnant of Spanish influence. The completion of the Panama Canal made the U.S. a maritime power with a vested interest in the unchallenged right of passage throughout the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

The frequent U.S. interventions in Caribbean countries during the first quarter of the twentieth century were undertaken in part to preclude the possibility that European powers might send military forces to exact payment of debts to European creditors. In the years leading up to World War II, U.S. military planners developed contingency plans for securing first the Caribbean and access to it (South to approximately the bulge of Brazil), to the Panama Canal, and finally, to the hemisphere (Child, 1979, 1980). Child notes that the debate over the hemispheric defense concept was “complicated by the fact that U.S. isolationist sentiment favored the Hemisphere Defense concept, because it suggested a self-reliant (even autarchic) U.S.-Canadian-Latin American alliance which could isolate itself from the ravages of European and Asian wars.” The self-reliant, isolationist viewpoint continues to influence U.S. thinking about the hemisphere to this day.

During World War II, Latin American countries played an important role as U.S. allies--providing bases, airfields, and ports, and supplying raw materials to the war effort. Brazil sent troops to fight in Europe with the Allies.

Postwar defense planning continued to stress cooperation with Latin American militaries to enhance defense of the Panama Canal and the hemisphere, preservation of peace in the hemisphere, and avoiding unnecessary diversion of U.S. military resources to the Western Hemisphere (Child, 1980). However, the real challenge to U.S. security interests in the post-World War II environment came not from foreign military powers--the United States was the only nation still able to project power--but rather from a hostile ideology--Communism. In the aftermath of the world war, after watching Eastern European countries fall, one by one, behind the Iron Curtain, and seeing China move into the Communist camp, it became the primary U.S. security interest that the hostile ideology not take root in the Western Hemisphere.

Concern for revolutionary Marxism associated with the Soviet Union has been the key factor motivating U.S. policy in the hemisphere since the war. That concern was heightened following the Cuban revolution and that country’s sudden turn toward the Soviet Union. The Missile Crisis in 1962 set the extreme limits of U.S. tolerance for Soviet involvement in the hemisphere. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union continues to test U.S. resolve in the region through its use of the Cienfuegos port facilit...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 LATIN AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES’ NATIONAL INTEREST
• 2 LATIN AMERICA’S EXPANDING INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ROLE
• 3 THE CARIBBEAN BASIN: FOCUS OF IMMEDIATE CONCERNS
• 4 MEXICO: THE PROMISE OF OIL
• 5 BRAZIL: EMERGING POWER
• 6 DIMENSIONS OF U.S. SECURITY INTERESTS IN LATIN AMERICA
• Appendix: Armaments of Latin American Military Forces
• Bibliography
• Index