From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Dec 08 2009 - 02:20:42 EST
Brazil’s Differences With Washington Are Unavoidable, And Positive
Share Mark Weisbrot
Fohla de São Paulo, November 28, 2009
Em português
Over the last decade an epoch-making political change has taken place in
the Western Hemisphere: Latin America, a region that was once considered
the United States’ “back yard,” is now more independent of Washington
than Europe is.
But while Latin America has changed, U.S. foreign policy has not – even
now, with the election of President Obama. Hence the region, including
Brazil, finds itself increasingly at odds with Washington. The military
coup in Honduras is just one recent and glaring example.
The elected president is kidnapped at gunpoint and flown out of the
country; his supporters are arrested by the thousands, beaten, tortured,
and some even killed by security forces; media outlets opposing the coup
are intermittently shut down, their equipment confiscated. Despite
widespread condemnation of these crimes from human rights groups worldwide,
the coup regime now tries to legitimate itself with an “election.”
Almost every country in Latin America says no, we must first restore
democracy, civil liberties, and basic human rights; Washington supports the
“election.”
It is not only on the question of democracy that Washington finds itself on
the wrong side of history. It has also gotten the economics wrong. From
1960-1980, when according to Washington folklore the region’s governments
couldn’t do anything right, the average Latin American’s income grew by
82 percent. From 1980- 2009, a much longer period filled with
Washington-sponsored neoliberal reforms, it grew by about 18 percent. No
wonder that most of the electorate in the region has voted over the last
decade to reject neoliberal policies. It is little comfort that the
U.S.-based authors of failed policies in Latin America have now managed to
tank the U.S. economy as well.
It is enough to just mention Washington’s “war on drugs” in the
hemisphere as another colossal failure that has trampled on the sovereignty
of various nations. The Obama administration now continues the Bush policy
of punishing Bolivia with trade sanctions for dubious “offenses.” As
for security policy, the Obama administration’s decision to expand its
military presence in Colombia, once again in opposition to almost every
government in South America, has made Washington into more of a
destabilizing force in the region.
Brazil cannot afford to sit on the sidelines while the United States causes
trouble in Latin America – most menacingly in the case of Honduras,
threatening to push the region back to an uglier era when the military
could overthrow elected governments that Washington and the local elite did
not like. As for policy outside the region, Brazil’s interest in reaching
out to all parties in the Middle East will be more than welcome there, as
well as throughout the world. Brazil has advantages that could enable it to
play a positive role: Lula is one of the most popular leaders in the world,
the government has a skilled diplomatic corps, and Brazil has no conflicts
of interest that would prevent it from being an honest mediator.
Lula’s Brazil has politely but firmly rejected the United States’
policies on a number of important issues, including the proposed “Free
Trade Area of the Americas;” Washington’s attempt to ram through a bad
deal for developing countries at the 2003 WTO negotiations; and the Bush
Administration’s failed attempt to isolate Venezuela in the region. On
all of these issues and more, Brazil turned out to be correct, and needed.
With no major changes in U.S. foreign policy or international commercial
policy on the horizon, an independent and assertive Brazilian foreign
policy is likely to be more important than ever.
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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the
University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social
Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has
written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president
of Just Foreign Policy.
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