Tom Hayden: Is Obama Isolated in Latin America?

[magbana]

TOPIC: Tom Hayden: Is Obama Isolated in Latin America? (very important
analysis)
http://groups.google.com/group/Cuba-Inside-Out/t/a0b8393b25a1bfe3?hl=en
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Date: Sat, Apr 18 2009 11:09 am
From: "Karen Lee Wald"
The Huffington Post

Is Obama Isolated in Latin America?
By Tom Hayden
Huffington Post
April 17

Latin America may be Barack Obama's greatest opportunity and greatest current weakness. As an opportunity, the continent is in the midst of the greatest democratic revolution in fifty years and can become a successful model of independent economic development. Domestically, the growing Latino and immigrant populations in the United States are evidence as to where the future lies. Two-thirds of them voted for Obama, helping deliver New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and even Florida.

The weakness is that Obama has little experience in Latin America, is surrounded with advisors who represent the failed models of NAFTA-style trade agreements, drug war interventions in Colombia and Mexico, the irrational embargo of Cuba, and US hostility to democratically-elected governments in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Over an eight-year presidency, however, Obama's progressive instincts and intelligence might lead him to break with the failed policies of the past and define the US as a "good neighbor" in the tradition of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who banned military interventions and accepted Mexico's and Bolivia's rights to nationalize their oil industry in the 1930s.

The future begins today in Trinidad and Tobago, an archipelago populated by the descendants of slaves and sugar-cane workers of empires past.

Advisers in Washington, Caracas and La Paz have been huddling for weeks to orchestrate today's inescapable encounters between Obama, Hugo Chavez, and Evo Morales. One reasonable guess is that Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will facilitate the ritual contacts, which will be a mixture of the scripted and the impromptu.

Obama surely will be good-natured and project the dawn of improved dialogue and diplomatic relations. He combines sweeping possibilities with incremental measures, such as the relaxation of travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans visiting their homeland. These new policies are less than Latin American wants, but may be enough to keep Latin America engaged with the new president.

Chavez will project two sides of his Bolivarian project: a positive abrazo to the newcomer combined with a declaration of independence for Latin America.

Morales will glow with the Aymara presence long suppressed in continental relationships. If the atmosphere becomes friendly enough, he may hand Obama a coca leaf.

That will be stepping into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak, the stage of superficial rapprochement. But the shallow will lead to the deep in the months and years ahead.

Obama needs to create his own Latin American working group that engages with their counterparts to the South in a permanent roundtable dialogue where no issues are off the table.

Unfortunately, social movements in America demanding a new course in Latin America have ebbed since the anti-WTO and anti-FTAA protests of the past decade and the solidarity movements that came before. Organized labor, the immigrant rights movement and environmentalists will have to come together with progressive Latinos to demand significant change towards the south.

In the establishment center, Obama has some support to go further. The Council on Foreign Relations already approves the normalization of ties with Cuba and better relations with Venezuela and Bolivia. Julia Sweig of the CFR has been particularly good on Latin American issues, but was passed over for a post in the administration.

On the right of the spectrum, Obama can be less worried than previous presidents about the Miami Cubans, whose stranglehold on US foreign policy is fading with time. A greater threat to Obama will come from the neo-conservatives who want an aggressive approach to Venezuela. The Center for Security Policy already is demanding to know "who lost Latin America?' to Chavez and Venezuela, claiming they are a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. This line of thinking parallels that of Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan who claim that America's jobs and national identity are threatened by immigration from the South. Their threat of right-wing populism could gain traction in the recession, but thus far seems to be a minority backlash.

At the deeper end of the pool will be trade agreements. Obama promised to re-open NAFTA and opposed Bush's trade deal with Colombia. He now needs to clarify how far he intends to back away from his campaign pledge, a retreat which will upset Latin America and organized labor. Lula, who is considered a pragmatic leader, is not against the WTO or FTAA per se, but even he demands that power be shifted away from the "white-haired blue-eyed" Wall Street bankers who have plunged the continent into greater poverty. To the left of Lula are those led by Venezuela in ALBA, the Bolivarian alternative model, who are shaping a Latin American trade and currency bloc of their own. Obama will be under great pressure to accept a negotiated agreement more equitable to Latin America and distance himself from the wreckage left behind by the Bush administration and Wall Street.

The deepest issue will be liberating the US, Mexico, Colombia and the whole continent from the nightmare of spreading military intervention under the pretext of drug wars. Hawks in Washington prefer is a politics of repression state-formation as a rival pole to Chavez' 21st century socialism. Plan Colombia and Plan Merida set in motion a dangerous US military intervention in support of corrupt, authoritarian regimes, leading toward permanent US bases and forward positioning in Latin America. Thomas Shannon, the key State Department official under both Bush and Obama, has described this approach as "armoring NAFTA." Branded as essential to protecting Americans from drugs and gangs, the result will be a toxic combination of privatization and militarization.

This emergent policy, towards which the Obama administration is drifting, will require a powerful resistance from movements in both North and South if it is to be checked. Though only a first step, Hillary Clinton's acceptance of blame for American drug consumption and free-for-all US weapons sales to Mexican traffickers must be the start of an imperative dialogue. The Calderon government's military offensive against the Mexican cartels, supported by the US, has resulted in 7-10,000 deaths in the past year alone. In Colombia, the US-backed counterinsurgency has claimed 114, 000 lives, including 12,713 alleged "subversives" from 2002 to 2008, according to Colombian human rights sources.

Latin American leaders are moving towards legalization, regulation and treatment strategies for drugs like marijuana, while Morales and others demand the legalization of coca. But the Pentagon model of "armoring NAFTA" is deepening, with typical gringo indifference to oblivious to Latin American perspectives.

As the continental drift widens, a radical new analysis is emerging among many intellectuals and policy analysts in Latin America, one that views the US as a declining superpower. In Venezuela, for example, I interviewed Gen. Alberto Mueller-Rojas, a close Chavez ally who now heads a Caracas policy institute of the Socialist Party. Over a three-hour discussion, the general explained why he thinks it pointless for the US to worry about "losing" Latin America.

"Latin America is already 'lost'", he began. Besides the repeated democratic elections of left-center parties, internal economic, trade, financial and diplomatic exchanges are growing throughout the region. Technology transfer is increasing. Chinese, Iranian, Russian investments and military sales are expanding. The only remaining American base is Colombia, he said.

Second, Central America is similar, he said. The FMLN will win in El Salvador, he correctly predicted. Honduras is the remaining US base.

Third, he claimed, "the Caribbean is lost to the US". Instead of the US embargo isolating Cuba and intimidating the region, the reverse is true. Its Cuban policy has isolated the US in the entire region.

The general's proposal to Obama was to accept the geo-political fact that "a multi-polar world exists already", through transnational forces which are more important than governments. "Technology conspires against empire", he asserted, because "it facilitates communications among people to achieve their needs to develop themselves." He was suggesting that the slogan "another world is possible" already is obsolete. Another world already exists, or is beginning to exist. "It is irreversible", he opined.

In the general's perspective, all Obama needs to do is deal with reality. The US is no longer the hegemon over Latin America. "If the geo-political interest of the US is to contain its competitors, that is no longer possible." Instead, the US should learn the lesson that military strength must be replaced by politics: "We in Venezuela are willing to do politics, which is a process of negotiating explicitly."

He added that Obama gives us "hope for normalizing relations with us, because we know he must please his base."

Listening to this general share his long experiences, I wondered if he was underestimating the persuasive power of Obama's charisma combined with the low visibility of the Pentagon's counterinsurgencies. I also worried whether the American public might be stampeded to senseless war by fear of drug lords and terrorists at the border. The US has been dismissed incorrectly as a "paper tiger" before. But the general's explanation made greater sense than the Beltway-centric view that the US has been "losing" Latin America because the Bush administration became mired in Iraq. It remains to be seen if Obama can bend events to his liking by offering "a new beginning" or whether his task will be to retreat from unsustainable fantasies that Latin America continues to be America's backyard.


Tom Hayden is the author of the forthcoming The Long Sixties, From 1960 to Barack Obama . He has made many trips to Latin America.
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[Peace Patriot]

1. "...the low visibility of the Pentagon's counterinsurgencies" has me worried, too.

"Listening to this general share his long experiences, I wondered if he was underestimating the persuasive power of Obama's charisma combined with the low visibility of the Pentagon's counterinsurgencies." - Hayden

The "persuasive power of Obama's charisma" used toward what end? Servicing war profiteers? Regaining global corporate predator control of the oil in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico? The implication here, as to Obama, is not very pretty. Is he just a smarter, more hip, better spoken, better looking front man for US aggression and corporate rape and ruin? Or is he a "New Dealer" at heart, who managed, through multiple miracles, and shrewd compromises, and vagueness on policy, to infiltrate the US corpo/fascist establishment with secret designs for world peace and social justice, and a better US?

I don't know.

Good article by Hayden. He nails it, as usual.

"In the general's perspective, all Obama needs to do is deal with reality. The US is no longer the hegemon over Latin America. 'If the geo-political interest of the US is to contain its competitors, that is no longer possible.' Instead, the US should learn the lesson that military strength must be replaced by politics: 'We in Venezuela are willing to do politics, which is a process of negotiating explicitly.'"

Ah, me! I've been saying this for some time--Venezuela has a more vibrant, lively political life than we do, or than anyone does, partly because Venezuelan civic groups, social movements and others have attended so well to transparent elections--a democracy lesson we have yet to learn. This Venezuelan general's statement--"We in Venezuela are willing to do politics" is not coming out of nowhere. It is very meaningful--as to events within Venezuela, and the political savvy of the Left in the Latin America region, vis a vis the US, and in the greater world. The Chavistas are better at politics than any political group in history, and certainly than our own current Left, although we are improving. Although Hayden presents it as the Venezuelan general's view, I think Hayden agrees. The Forever War--the US reliance on military aggression and ruthless military/corporate bullying--needs replacing with politics, that is, with democracy. And the Venezuelans--contrary to literally everything we hear from our corpo/fascist press--are better at democracy than anybody since FDR and the New Dealers, who transformed the US from an Ayn Rand nightmare, full of Hoovervilles, into what was once the greatest democracy on earth.

If politics is the field of battle, Venezuela will win.

Consider what the Venezuelan Left--and its counterparts in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Guatemala--have overcome, just in the last decade: US corpo/fascist "neo-liberalism"--the utter looting of their countries, and impoverishment of millions, via the World Bank/IMF and other instruments; the Bushwhacks pouring multi-millions of US tax dollars--via the CIA, the USAID, the DEA, the US military "anti-drug" war profiteers and other means--into the fascist opposition in Latin America, to fund their political as well as their illegal activities (to run candidates, to push their lies, and to organize strategic riots and other disruptions, and to plot fascist coups); the US/Bushwhacks (and Clinton before them) pouring $6 BILLION into the narco-thugs running Colombia, to boost the fascists and militarists, to foster the drugs/weapons trade, and to create a "lily pad" country--a US puppet--from which to launch assassination and destabilization plots and wars against Leftist governments.

In Venezuela, this resulted in a US-supported, violent rightwing military coup attempt in 2002 (thwarted by the people of Venezuela, who braved tanks and guns and poured into streets to demand restoration of their democracy), a crippling oil professionals' strike, a divisive recall election (which Chavez won, hands down), rightwing student riots and disruptions, and numerous other efforts to destroy Venezuelan democracy and the Chavez government. In Bolivia, it resulted in the white separatist rioting and murder this last September. In Ecuador, it resulted in a US/Colombia bombing of Ecuadoran territory early last year, nearly starting a war between the US/Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela. In Colombia, it has resulted in the slaughter of thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, political leftists and others, and an increase in the cocaine trade. And those are just the most visible events and impacts of US support of rightwing causes in Latin America. And against all this US money, and all this murderous, anti-democratic US activity, the Left has triumphed* on the political field of battle, and has defeated the fascists and militarists and their bloody plots, by, a) attending to the fundamentals of democracy; b) being better leaders and organizers, c) having better ideas, and d) successfully implementing an alternative to US corpo/fascist domination.

Just think about this for a moment, just in the political field. Rightwing groups getting millions of dollars of support, through the USAID and other US budgets--yet the Left keeps winning elections. Money ain't the be-all, end-all, in a well-run democratic system--is one lesson. Furthermore, the corpo/fascist press in Latin America is worse than here. Leftists keep winning, in spite of this. Control of the media ain't the be-all, end-all either. Good ideas and successful political organizing can overcome both of these factors--which we leftists in the US sometimes use as an excuse for our failures.

In any case, this Venezuelan general's statement--that "We in Venezuela are willing to do politics"--is a gauntlet thrown: 'Are you willing to do democracy?' he could be saying, 'You who tout democracy as your flag?'

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*(The Left hasn't triumphed in Colombia--though it has almost everywhere else. As a US tool, Colombia has become a fascist, militarist and extremely corrupt state. Ain't that a pisser? The US destroys democracy wherever it goes. And 'we' are working on turning Mexico into something similar. Stolen elections, "anti-drug" militarism, rightwing assholes running things, vast poverty, vast drugs/weapons trafficking. And this is why I'm worried about "...the low visibility of the Pentagon's counterinsurgencies." The war profiteer plan to destroy democracy, and grab the oil, in Latin America, turns on the "war on drugs," which is not at all what it appears to be. It is a war of oppression against the vast poor majority, and a means of crushing Leftist political rebellion, and it has succeeded in Colombia, and is moving forward in Mexico. Possibly both countries will be saved by the Leftist tide that has swept through South America and into Central America, and its very savvy, and well-coordinated and united leadership. But that remains to be seen. Democracy is not well in Colombia and Mexico--not well at all.)