From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Apr 18 2009 - 19:38:14 EDT
Obama at the Americas summit: A bid to revive US hegemony
by Bill Van Auken
Global Research, April 18, 2009
With his trip to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago at
the end of this week, President Barack Obama is attempting to put a new
face on American imperialism’s pursuit of its strategic interests in
Latin America, a region where the US once asserted unchallenged
hegemony.
These summits were first launched in 1994 by the Clinton administration
with a meeting in Miami. Their principal purpose over the next decade
was to further Washington’s agenda of establishing a Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) based on US domination and
“free-market” capitalism. This meant the scrapping of all barriers to
foreign capitalist investment, deregulation of financial markets and the
wholesale privatization of public enterprises and basic services.
The Clinton administration had set a 2005 target date for the completion
of such a treaty, while George W. Bush sought to move it up to 2003.
Neither target was reached, and the last summit, held in the Argentine
resort of Mar del Plata, was a debacle for Washington. Bush faced mass
demonstrations in the streets and at the summit itself a rejection of
the US agenda by the major South American powers joined in the Mercosur
trading bloc. For the first time, the final communiqué of the summit
included conflicting statements by governments for and against the FTAA.
That summit marked a low point in US influence in Latin America and
effectively buried the prospects for a US-led hemisphere-wide free trade
zone.
Obama’s task in Latin America—as it was in his recent trip to Europe—is
to repair some of the damage done by the aggressively unilateralist
policies of the Bush administration over the previous eight years.
Under the Bush administration, Washington’s Latin America policy was
relegated to the back burner. On the one hand, it consisted of an
attempt to foist a series of bilateral free trade agreements onto
countries in Central America and the Caribbean. On the other, it sought
to use the “war on terrorism” and the crackdown on drugs as a means to
reassert US military dominance in the region, while maintaining an
economic embargo against Cuba and seeking to destabilize left
nationalist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
While adopting a different tone than that of the Bush
administration—Obama’s aides have stressed that he is going to the
summit to “listen”—it is not at all clear that he has any coherent new
policy. Indeed, the chief State Department official in charge of Latin
American policy, Under Secretary Thomas Shannon, is a holdover from the
Bush administration.
The summit itself has little in the way of an agenda. A draft
declaration entitled ‘Securing Our Citizens’ Future by Promoting Human
Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability” is a
largely meaningless document containing a laundry list of empty promises
to fight against poverty, unemployment and social inequality, combined
with declarations of firm support for the system of capitalist free
trade and investment that has created these conditions.
The document also includes a lengthy section on “Promoting Energy
Security”—a major concern for the US, which derives 30 percent of its
oil imports from the region.
On this key issue, the declaration has the following to say:
“Recognizing that the issues of the availability, cost and security of
our energy supplies, our economic competitiveness and the sustainability
of our environment are closely intertwined, we commit to the development
of a coherent policy framework that takes into consideration our diverse
situations, circumstances and opportunities and allows for the
simultaneous strengthening and diversification of all our economies.”
The same type of long-winded platitudes prevails throughout the
statement, masking the profound social and economic crisis confronting
masses of working people in the region.
What makes the statement even more irrelevant is that it was drafted in
September of last year, before Wall Street’s meltdown unleashed a global
slide into depression.
While initially Latin American leaders affirmed that they would be
little affected by the financial crisis in the US—Brazil’s President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva replied “Go ask Bush” when asked about the
financial meltdown—the impact is now being widely felt in the form of
mass layoffs and capital flight.
On the eve of the summit, the World Bank issued a report predicting that
Latin America as a whole will suffer a 0.6 percent decline in its gross
internal product over the course of 2009. The bank also warned that the
flow of direct investment into the region will plunge by 89 percent.
No doubt, the world capitalist crisis will be the focus of the
discussions in Trinidad, but Obama has little to offer on this score
outside of pointing to the limited promises made at the G20 summit in
London earlier this month.
Obama maneuvers on Cuba
While not on the agenda, the question of Cuba is expected to play a
major role at the summit. Virtually all of the participating heads of
state—save Obama—have stated their support for Cuba being admitted as a
member of the Organization of American States (OAS) and asked for an end
to the 47-year-old US economic embargo.
OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza joined this consensus, telling
the Miami Herald: “I want Cuba back in the Inter-American system.” He
added that the decision to expel the country in 1962 “was a bad idea in
the first place.”
In the early 1960s, when the Castro regime still promoted the idea of
guerrilla-led revolution, Cuba’s foreign minister dismissed the OAS as
Washington’s “ministry of colonies.” Former Cuban president Fidel Castro
in a column published this week echoed this conception, calling the
institution “the incarnation of betrayal.”
In an attempt to deflect criticism of Washington’s policy, Obama on the
eve of the summit announced a very limited easing of the economic
sanctions that the US maintains against Cuba. Fulfilling a campaign
promise, he repealed all restrictions on travel to Cuba and remittances
sent by 1.5 million Americans with family members on the island. The
restrictions had been tightened under the Bush administration, with
trips to visit families limited to one every three years and remittances
capped at $100 a month.
The changes also included the lifting of restrictions on
telecommunications companies, allowing them to establish cell phone
service in Cuba as well as satellite television and radio.
The economic impact of the changes will be limited, but an inflow of
greater amounts of US dollar remittances will serve to widen the already
growing social gap between Cubans with access to dollars and those
without. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has made it clear that the
US economic blockade will remain in place.
Another action that appeared to be a gesture aimed at deflating
criticism of US policy toward Cuba was the indictment last week of the
former CIA operative and longtime terrorist Luis Posada Carriles on
charges of perjury and obstruction of a federal proceeding.
Specifically, he was charged with lying to US authorities when he denied
responsibility for a series of bombings aimed at Cuban tourist areas in
1997. It marked the first time that Posada, long harbored by Washington,
has been accused by US federal prosecutors of an act of terror, even
though he has only been indicted for lying about it, rather than the act
itself.
In response to the indictment, Venezuela announced that it will renew
its demand that the US extradite Posada to stand trial in that country
for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
While the US free trade agenda is effectively off the agenda of the
Trinidad summit, Washington’s desire for a US-dominated system capable
of warding off competition from Europe and Asia remains.
Washington’s drive to establish economic and political hegemony in its
“own backyard” has been a bedrock principle of US policy since the
adoption of the Monroe Doctrine more than a century and a half ago. It
has been responsible for dozens of US military interventions and
military coups and the subordination of the region’s people to the
interests of US-based banks and corporations.
If Washington now confronts increasing difficulties in imposing its will
in the region, it is in large part because of the protracted economic
decline of American capitalism and the rise of powerful rivals in the
region.
The extent of this challenge was spelled out by the New York Times
Thursday in an article detailing the burgeoning economic influence of
China, which has become Latin America’s second largest trading partner
after the US.
“As Washington tries to rebuild its strained relationships in Latin
America, China is stepping in vigorously, offering countries across the
region large amounts of money,” the Times reported, citing tens of
billions of dollars in loans and investments being made by China with
the aim of “locking in natural resources like oil for years to come.”
In addition to securing access to commodities ranging from soy beans to
iron ore, China is also using Latin America investments as “an
alternative to investing in United States Treasury notes,” according to
the article. It also points to a deal between Argentina and China to
swap $10.2 billion worth of each other’s currencies in order to avoid
using dollars in bilateral trade. Such deals, the Times notes, may “lead
the way to China’s currency to eventually be used as an alternate
reserve currency,” replacing the dollar.
Meanwhile, the European Union has emerged as the largest source of
foreign direct investment in Latin America and has forged its own trade
agreements with almost every country in the region.
US imperialism, which got its start in Latin America, cannot accept such
challenges without a fight. Obama’s rhetoric about a “new day” in
US-Latin American relations notwithstanding, the logic of economic
interests points to the region becoming the arena for an ever more
ferocious struggle between the major powers.
Bill Van Auken is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global
Research Articles by Bill Van Auken
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13231> &aid=13231
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