Obama Administration Making a Mistake with Latin America; More Bushite Policies Less Change
However, out of the starting gate, it seems the new administration is following the same hostile attitude and erroneous policy towards our neighboring continent to the south, especially Venezuela.
That inauspicious beginning should not be happening, and Obama needs to view Latin America with new eyes and understanding of the objective reality in those countries.
However, it seems the Obama administration has the same deliberate blinders on that characterized the Bush regime that only maintained a good relationship with Colombia, headed by a right wing president and his cohorts with a terrible human rights record.
Mark Weisbrot writes at VenezuelaAnalysis that the Obama administration is apparently
not dealing with realilty but an imaginary threat.
"US-Latin American relations fell to record lows during the George Bush years, and there have been hopes - both north and south of the border - that President Barack Obama will bring a fresh approach. So far, however, most signals are pointing to continuity rather than change.
"Obama started off with an unprovoked verbal assault on Venezuela In an interview broadcast by the Spanish-language television station Univision on the Sunday before his inauguration, he accused Hugo Chavez of having "impeded progress in the region" and "exporting terrorist activities".
"These remarks were unusually hostile and threatening even by the previous administration's standards. They are also untrue and diametrically opposed to the way the rest of the region sees Venezuela. The charge that Venezuela is "exporting terrorism" would not pass the laugh test among almost any government in Latin America.
"There is definitely at least a faction of the Obama administration that wants to continue the Bush policies. James Steinberg, number two to Hillary Clinton in the state department, took a gratuitous swipe at Bolivia and Venezuela during his confirmation process, saying that the US should provide a "counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of their people or the region."
"Another sign of continuity is that Obama has not yet replaced Bush's top state department official for the western hemisphere, Thomas Shannon.
"The US media plays the role of enabler in this situation. Thus the Associated Press ignores the attacks from Washington and portrays Chávez's response as nothing more than an electoral ploy on his part. In fact, Chávez had been uncharacteristically restrained. He did not respond to attacks throughout the long US presidential campaign, even when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden called him a "dictator" or Obama described him as "despotic" - labels that no serious political scientist anywhere would accept for a democratically elected president of a country where the opposition dominates the media.
"There is still hope for change in US foreign policy toward Latin America, which has become thoroughly discredited on everything from the war on drugs to the Cuba embargo to trade policy.
"Several presidents, including Lula, have called upon Obama to lift the embargo on Cuba, as they congratulated him on his victory. Lula also asked Obama to meet with Chávez. Hopefully these governments will continue to assert - repeatedly, publicly and with one voice - that Washington's problems with Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela are Washington's problems, and not the result of anything that those governments have done. When the Obama team is convinced that a "divide and conquer" approach to the region will fail just as miserably for this administration as it did for the previous one, then we may see the beginnings of a new policy toward Latin America."
But if the Obama administration myopically continues its hostile policy its doomed to failure and unnecessary negative blowback from Latin America.
As Weisbrot wrote: "Obama's statement was no accident. Whoever fed him these lines very likely intended to send a message to the Venezuelan electorate before last Sunday's referendum that Venezuela won't have decent relations with the US so long as Chávez is their elected president." (Voters decided to remove term limits for elected officials, paving the way for Chávez to run again in 2013.)
Venezuela's electorate, like any democratic people, don't like bullying by the US and Obama. The US had a nasty history of propping up military and right wing dictators thoughout the continent while it flexed its hegemonic powers to protect private corporations as they stole Latin American countries' natural resources...colonialism at it worst.
Obama needs to get out more...to Latin America and talk to the presidents of various countries like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador. He has too many Washington insiders and holdovers feeding him erroneous information, and that surely isn't change but potentially dangerous old wine in old bottles.
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