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 Editorials | November 2005 
Bush Flies South and Goes from the Frying Pan into the Fire
 Max J. Castro - Progreso Weekly
| | Demonstrators use slingshots to shoot rocks during a protest near Panama University in Panama City, Panama Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005 calling for the release of fellow students arrested last night during another protest against US President Bush during his visit to Panama. (AP/Esteban Felix) |
If George W. Bush thought he would get some relief from his administration's many troubles by getting out of Washington and journeying to South America, he had a big surprise coming. Reeling from the indictment of a top aide, disastrous job approval numbers, and the continuing carnage in Iraq, the President went to Argentina in an effort to rescue his free trade policy and patch up relations with Latin America.
Summits typically boost the popularity of U.S. presidents by allowing them to escape from domestic criticism and play the role of statesman while basking in the glow that comes from being the leader of the world's most powerful country. It didn't turn out that way this time. Instead, Bush was forced to feel the full thrust and intensity of Latin American rejection of his policies and his person - in full view of the people of the United States and the world.
No one should have been surprised that the trip from DC to Mar del Plata for the fourth Summit of the Americas turned out to be a jump from the frying pan straight into the fire. Bush, more disliked by Latin Americans than any U.S. president in history, was met not just by one revolt but by two, one by the masses and the other by some of the region's biggest countries, including Brazil and Argentina. On the streets of this celebrated resort town as many as 25,000 people joined a peaceful protest against Bush led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Argentinean soccer star Diego Maradona. In the suites where the region's leaders met, Argentina led a surprise uprising by the Mercosur countries and Venezuela to torpedo the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the centerpiece of U.S. policy toward the region.
"Despite efforts from all sides to put a good face to it, the summit ended in disarray." That, coming from Andrés Oppenheimer, a fan of neoliberal policies, speaks volumes. The outcome of the Bush administration's effort to rescue its Latin American policy from the jaws of defeat was a failure. The measure of that defeat, in Oppenheimer's own words, is that "it was the first time participating countries couldn't even agree on a final joint news conference. More importantly, it was the first time in the 11-year-old history of the Summit of the Americas that participating countries failed to agree on advancing the talks for a hemisphere-wide free trade area."
What is going on? Some U.S. pundits blame what they see as the obstructionism of Brazil and the mischief of Chávez. In fact, what happened at Mar del Plata was the continuation of a trend that was already evident at the OAS meeting in Fort Lauderdale earlier this year. For the first time ever, several key Latin American nations have decided simultaneously to declare their independence for a second time by uniting to say "no" to the United States.
The FTAA, a plan for hemispheric integration on Washington's terms - opening Latin American markets while leaving in place massive U.S. agricultural subsidies - is an offer that Brazil Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela have decided to refuse.
The reason the FTAA process is falling apart has more to do with the terms the United States is proposing to Latin America than with obstructionism or mischief. The success of the European model of integration was based on recognition of the differences in wealth among the partners and a commitment on the part of the richer countries to work to decrease the gap by assisting the less well-off nations. In other words, European integration has been built on social democratic principles, both in terms of domestic policies and in relations between countries.
In contrast to this capitalism with a human face, the ruling ideology in the United States today -which in the Bush administration has been virtually elevated to a religion - is that of the most dog-eat-dog variety of capitalism. Whether applied domestically or internationally, this brand of capitalism produces massive inequalities. Indeed, rather than using government to attenuate the enormous economic inequality inherent in contemporary capitalism, the Bush administration has used the power of the state in ways that increase domestic inequality. It has, time and again, favored the rich and punished the poor. The most obscene example has been the administration's tax policy, which has systematically favored the very rich. But the same approach has been evident in virtually every area of policy.
The effort to sell a one-sided trade agreement to Latin America amounts to an effort to apply, on an international scale, the same principles applied domestically. These are the policies that have produced vast inequality in this country and made the United States the most unequal developed country in the world. Rather than a model of integration in which the rich assist the poor as in the European model, the United States is offering Latin America the opposite, a type of integration that favors the wealthiest partner at the expense of the rest. "Open your markets but we will keep ours closed" seems to be the operative principle.
Some countries, such as the small nations of Central America and the Caribbean, may see little choice except to accept unfair terms. Others, such as Mexico under Fox and Colombia under Uribe, continue to favor FTAA because they are closely tied politically and/or ideologically to the United States. But countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela have the resources and the political independence to reject the bum deal the United States is selling. Together, this five-country front of resistance has as much weight as the 28 nations that backed the FTAA at the Mar del Plata meeting. And, if Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins the Mexican presidency next year as seems probable, another weighty partner will be added to the list.
If the United States wants hemispheric integration other than with those countries that are very desperate or very dependent, it needs to offer dramatically different terms. In exchange for open access to Latin American economies for its products and services, the United States must provide more aid and open its economy to what the Latin Americans have to sell. This would mean not only the end of agricultural subsidies and other protectionist schemes, but also a greater access to the U.S. market for what Latin America has to sell in greatest abundance: labor. A fair integration regime needs to include all three classical factors of production - land, labor and capital - and not just the mobility of capital and access to land (mining, lumber) that favors the rich nations.
At present, and especially under the Bush administration, the United States is incapable and unwilling to offer Latin America such a fair and attractive model of integration. Instead, it has proposed a one-way street and tried to persuade, seduce, divide, and bully Latin America into accepting it. Mar del Plata was a signal demonstration of the failure of this approach. |
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