http://www.fpif.org/blog/latin_america_delivers_a_good_swift_kick_to_the_us
Latin America Delivers a Good, Swift Kick to the U.S.
By Conn Hallinan, May 1, 2012
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff
On one level, April’s hemispheric summit meeting was an old-fashioned
butt kicking for Washington’s policies in the region. The White House
found itself virtually alone—Dudley Do-Right Canada its sole ally—on
everything from Cuba to the war on drugs. But the differences go
deeper than the exclusion of Havana and the growing body count in
Washington’s failed anti-narcotics strategy. They reflect profound
disagreements on how to build economies, confront inequity, and
reflect a new balance of power in world affairs.
The backdrop for the summit is anger in Latin America over the failure
of the U.S. and Europe to stimulate their economies, all the while
pursuing policies that have flooded the region with money—a “ monetary
tsunami” in the words of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff—driving up
the value of southern hemisphere currencies and strangling local
industries.
After meeting last month with President Obama, Rousseff said she told
him of Brazil’s “concern with the expansionary monetary policies of
the rich countries…leading to the depreciation of developed countries
currencies and compromising growth among emerging economies.”
While Latin American economies are in better shape than those in
Europe and the U.S., the recession dogging the latter areas—plus the
cooling of the Chinese economy—has slowed growth throughout much of
Latin America. Brazil’s most recent figures indicate a stalled
economy, which could have an impact on efforts by the Rousseff
government to raise living standards and narrow what was once the
world’s biggest gap between rich and poor.
According to the Getulio Vargas Foundation Brazil has lifted 33
million out of extreme poverty since 2003 and, out of a population of
190 million, has created a relatively well-paid workforce of some
105.5 million. In contrast to the U.S. and Europe, where the wealth
gap is accelerating, income for the poorest 50 percent of Brazilians
has risen 68 percent, while for the top 10 percent, it has grown only
10 percent.
This growth has come about because most countries in Latin America
reject the economic model pushed by Washington and the European Union:
free trade, financial deregulation, and deep austerity.
Argentina is the poster child for the region’s rejection of the
so-called “Washington consensus.” Throughout much of the '90s, a
deeply indebted Argentina followed the strictures of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), slashing government spending and instituting a
suffocating austerity. The result was a “debt trap”: cutbacks
increased unemployment, which dampened tax revenues, which required
yet more cutbacks, and more unemployment. In the end, debts went up.
>From 1998 to 2002, Argentina’s economy shrank 20 percent. By the time
Buenos Aires finally said “enough” and defaulted on its $100 billion
sovereign debt, half of its 35 million people were below the poverty
line.
Argentina reversed course and primed the economy with government
spending on housing, highways and education. It also subsidized 1.9
million low-income families, which cut poverty in half. Since 2002,
the economy has grown at an average rate of 6 percent a year, and
joblessness has fallen from 20 percent to 8 percent.
Brazil has followed a similar strategy that is now threatened by the
fiscal and monetary policies of the U.S. and Europe. Those policies
have caused the value of Brazil’s currency, the real, to grow, which
prices Brazilian manufactured goods out of the international market.
“There is concern in South America about deindustrialization,” says
Alicia Barcena of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America.
“Therefore some countries are taking measures to support their
productive sectors.” While the Obama Administration calls this support
“protectionism,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega says, “The
measures we are using are to defend ourselves.”
There are other issues Latin Americans are unhappy about that never
made it into U.S. media accounts on the summit, in particular the
make-up of the permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council that Brazil—along with India and South Africa—would like to
join.
As former Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva told the African
Union summit last July, “It isn’t possible that the African continent,
with 53 countries, has no permanent representation in the Security
Council. It isn’t possible that Latin America with its 400 million
inhabitants does not have permanent representation. Five countries
decide what to do, and how to do it.”
The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S.,
Britain, France, Russia, and China.
While the U.S. has endorsed India’s bid—in large part because it is
wooing New Delhi to join its anti-China coalition—Washington has been
consciously silent on Brazil’s bid. Indeed, United Nations U.S.
representative Susan Rice has been sharply critical of Brazil, India
and South Africa for not supporting intervention in Syria. “We have
learned a lot [about these three countries] and frankly, not all of it
encouraging.” The message is clear: back us and we will think about
it.
The summit was particularly critical of the Obama administration
around the exclusion of Cuba, causing the President to turn positively
peevish. “Sometimes I feel…we’re caught in a time warp, going back to
the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yankees and the Cold War.”
But from Latin America’s point of view, by maintaining a
half-century-old blockade, it is the U.S. who seems locked into the
world of the Cold War. And there are, indeed, some worries about “gun
boats,” specifically those that make up the newly re-constituted U.S.
Fourth Fleet, mothballed in 1950 and revived by the Bush
Administration. The U.S. has also recently established military bases
in Colombia and Central America.
The Brazilians are particularly nervous about the security of their
newly found offshore oil deposits, and the head of the Brazilian Navy,
Admiral Luiz Umberto de Mendonca, is pressing Brasilia for surface
ships and submarines.
Testifying before the Brazilian House of Representatives, Simon
Rosental of the prestigious Escuela Superior de Guerra (ESG) institute
warned that “The world has known oil reserves that will only last 25
years and in the United States, only for the next ten years.”
It may be a bit of a stretch to imagine the U.S. actually threatening
Brazil’s offshore oil deposits, but Latin Americans can hardly be
blamed if they are a tad paranoid about the Colossus of the North. For
the past 100 years the U.S. has overthrown governments from Guatemala
to Chile, and supported military juntas throughout the region. Brazil
only recently emerged from its own U.S.-backed dictatorship.
“South America,” says Moniz Banderia of the ESG, “is really trying to
define its own identity, to differentiate itself from the United
States, in opposition to its domination, which is evident in the
creation of UANSUR [Union of South American Nations] and the South
American Defense Council.”
UNASUR was established in 2008 and includes all 12 South American
nations, plus observers from Panama and Mexico.
The Defense Council’s Action Plan 2012 aims to integrate the
militaries of the region, establish a “peace zone” on the continent,
and create a space agency, an essential step for launching satellites.
Certainly issues like Cuba, the war on drugs, and the tensions over
Britain’s claim on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands are areas of friction
between the U.S., Europe and South America. But it is in the realm of
economics, poverty alleviation, and independent foreign policy that
the differences are sharp.
South Americans tried the austerity model and found it wanting. They
have also seen the U.S. and NATO spark wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Libya, and they are deeply suspicious of policy of “humanitarian
intervention” in places like Syria because they don’t trust the
motives behind it. Members of the BRIC countries, made up of Brazil,
South Africa, India, Russia, and China, share those suspicions.
“There’s almost a third-world sense, a post-colonial sense,” says Mark
Quarterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
“that they were meddled in, in ways that didn’t rebound to their
benefit, and now the same countries are claiming humanitarian reasons
for meddling.”
Thus in Libya, the UN enforced an arms boycott and an oil embargo on
the Qaddafi regime, while the French supplied arms to the rebels and
Qatar handled rebel oil sales. Brazil and other BRIC nations see a
similar pattern in Syria. In the meantime, the U.S. and Europe are
conspicuously silent on oil-rich Bahrain’s suppression of its Shiite
majority and the lack of democracy in the monarchy-dominated Persian
Gulf states.
So far the Obama Administration has responded to South America’s
growing independence by increasing the U.S. military footprint in the
region and acting churlish. While the leaders of India and South Korea
got formal state affairs, the U.S. President gave Rousseff a two-hour
meeting. “Obama could have taken her to dinner,” one Brazilian
official complained to The Guardian (UK) “or to the Kennedy Center.”
But Latin Americans no longer pay as much mind to the atmosphere in
Washington as they used to. They are too busy confronting poverty and
underdevelopment, forging a multi-polar world in which the U.S. is
looking increasingly out of touch.
For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge.
Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The
Middle Empire Series.
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Pablo
Very good blog. I would, however, very much caution against
overplaying the demise of the U.S. No matter how repetitive the
security mantra becomes, whether in the guise of the so-called
'National Security doctrine' of the 1960-70s, or the seemingly
interminable War on Drugs ('declared', I believe, by one R. M. Nixon),
it still exercise a hold in the region. Moreover, as increasing
greater emphasis is placed on the 'securitisation' of different
aspects of the nation-state ('multidimensional security'), the greater
the possibility of democratic spillage. Furthermore, the contimued
dependency on export-led development, as hinted at in the impact of
the cooling of the Chinese economy, underscores the ongoing dependency
of even the largest regional players on external forces. I enjoyed the
article. Good to read something positive form a region that here in
the UK media is at best potrayed and as a soap opera and at worse
reflects the partisan thinking of The Miami Herald. Keep on truckin'!
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