BY PETER MCKENNA
GUEST OPINION
One of the central manifestations of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine is Washington’s diminished engagement in the world. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Perhaps the only bright spot for Trump in the region — if you could call it that — is the recent election of populist Jair Bolsonaro as the next president of Brazil. But I doubt very much that the Trump White House would want to tie itself to a country now in the throes of a major political, economic and social crisis.
Two weeks ago, the annual vote at the United Nations General Assembly on the long-standing U.S. economic embargo against Cuba confirmed the ill-considered nature of Trump’s hemispheric posture. Every country in the region voted to condemn the U.S. blockade and to call for its immediate lifting.
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The overall vote was 189-2 in favour of the Cuban-sponsored resolution — leaving the U.S. and Israel completely isolated in the world. It was just another sign that the Trump administration is badly out of touch with what is happening on the ground in the Americas.
Speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community, Ambassador Sheila Carey of the Bahamas remarked: “As an important player in international affairs we hope that the United States will be open to considering the opinions and concerns of its friends and traditional partners on this issue.”
Moreover, Trump’s recent pledge to get even tougher with the Cubans going forward is a recipe for an unmitigated disaster. There is just no way that returning to the bad old days of the Cold War — which was clearly exposed as a failed policy approach—is going to enhance U.S. standing, trust and profile in the hemisphere.
To further inflame matters, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, in a tough speech in Miami, recently referred to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as the “Troika of Tyranny.” Well known as a bombastic hard-liner, Bolton didn’t mince his words: “These tyrants fancy themselves strongmen and revolutionaries, icons and luminaries. In reality they are clownish, pitiful figures more akin to Larry, Curly and Moe.”
Marking a first for the United States, he said that President Trump will no longer court “dictators and despots” in Latin America (while it has had a long history of doing so). He even pulled out the old trope that these countries are all fomenting hemispheric instability and communism in the region. Bolton also went on to announce that President Trump had signed a new executive order that would tighten U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.
There have been credible reports that Trump administration officials were working behind-the-scenes with opponents of the Nicolas Maduro government in Venezuela to destabilize it. Trump himself has even acknowledged that the “military option” is on the table when it comes to beleaguered Venezuela.
His inflammatory language about Venezuela, a Mexican wall and Central American migrants will eventually put him on a collision course with Mexico’s president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- given Obrador’s left-leaning sympathies.
Of course, this aggressive approach to the Americas harkens back to a time when the U.S. sought to dominate countries in the region and force them to loyally fall into line. But what worked during the Cold War era won’t work today.
Countries in the Americas know that the U.S. cannot push them around anymore (like threatening to cut-off aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala). The reality is that the U.S. needs these countries if it hopes to tackle successfully the bevy of political, economic and security challenges in the region.
Finally, Trump’s trashing of Central Americans as “hostile invaders,” “Middle Easterners,” and “some very bad people” has only made matters worse.
But if Trump wants to leave the hemisphere wide open for others to fill the void, both the Chinese and Russians will be happy to oblige. They are already making significant inroads in the region and his ill-advised bullying of the Americas will only put in serious jeopardy U.S. economic, political, strategic and diplomatic interests in the region.
- Peter McKenna is professor and chair of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
