When George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, he promised to embrace the Powell Doctrine and employ the military only to clear threats to America’s public interests.
Following the attacks of the 9/11, however, anger overcame him and he distorted his humble foreign policy to a president who sought to kick evil out of the world and create democratic societies. Instead of George W. Bush focusing on the interests of Latin America, as he had promised, the President started the road to war in Iraq.
America often used Latin America as a ground to display its power. At the start of the twenty-first century, wealth inequality in Latin America was at an all-time high. This was partly because Reagan and his successors introduced developmental models that did not succeed to offer better health care, education, and food. By 1996, the total number of impoverished persons in Latin America grew to a full third of the population (165 million people).
As of 2005, four years after George W. Bush took over power, 221 million citizens in Latin America lived below the poverty line. A comparison between development levels in countries of the Middle East, particularly Iran and Syria, with countries in Central America leaves one wondering why the United States had to involve itself in the Middle East while its neighbor Latin America was in wretchedness.
In terms of education, for instance, illiteracy in Iran was 20.6% of the total population and 23.1% in Syria. On the other hand, 29.4% of the population in Guatemala and 32.5% in Nicaragua were in 1990.
As from 1976, there have been oppositions in the form of riots and global campaigns due to the misery that engulfs Latin America. Bolivians have protested to maintain control over their water and gas; Ecuadorians have sued oil corporations for polluting their environment; Amazon Indians have fought the patenting of medicinal plants by chief pharmaceutical companies.
These are just but a few illustrations of the political activism that has turned America into a critical center of the anti-globalization movement. All these movements are open to integration, but they resist the type of corporate integration that Washington imposes on them. The sundry and often opposing constituencies that makeup Latin America’s new left fight owing to their desire to function while free from U.S. control.
During George W. Bush campaigns in 2000, he promised to listen to Latin American leaders and not harass them to follow U.S expectations. Nevertheless, the bully is what he did following the 9/11 attack. When the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, condemned the International Monetary Fund model, the White House offered its support to schemers who tried to overthrow him in 2002.
Besides, the United States restores the heavy-handed strategies of the Cold War. For example, the U.S. deployed Otto Reich, a Central American crusader, and the old Iran-Contra hand to direct the accusation against Chavez.
Bush as well threatened to punish Mexico when the country refused to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Further, the government of Bush forced Latin American states to sign bilateral agreements exempting U.S. residents from the International Criminal Court treaty, threatening to cut economic ties with them if they refused.
Contrary to Clinton’s Pentagon, which had a positive view of the region, Bush’s saw issues earlier presented as discrete issues- arms trafficking, drugs, intellectual property piracy, money laundering, and migration, otherwise known as the five wars of globalization as part of a great war on terrorism.
Following the 9/11 attack, Bush’s government selected Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales as impending terrorists who took advantage of inherent frustrations of the failure of democratic changes to deliver anticipated goods and services.
As mobilization against the Central American Free Trade agreement heightened in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, in 2005, Bush convened a meeting with the region’s five presidents in the White House and identified leftists groups-and not poverty, gang violence, military , or government corruption-as the chief danger experienced in Central America.
Under the pretext of the “war on terror,” Washington pushed for the creation of a new design of security that would assimilate Latin America security forces more firmly into the U.S. military is command structure. The Pentagon then urged American states to involve their armies in domestic policing, similar to what happened in the Cold War.
Drawn back into the wars of the 1980s, Central America had no choice but to yield to Washington’s directives. However, South American militaries reacted with larger ambivalence because they were eager to receive economic aid and more training.
Since when George W. Bush initially militarized the battle on drugs in 1989, U.S. troops have gradually stretched their presence in the Andes, instituting airfields and training hubs to work with Bolivian, Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian military on prevention and prohibition exercises. While all these countries are potential sources of drugs, Colombia lies at the heart of the crisis in the Andes.
The country produces about six hundred tons of cocaine and heroin for the U.S. market per annum. Following the 9/11 attack, the White House forced the Congress to incorporate its global counterterrorism funding bill to stage a joint campaign in Columbia. This was another illustration of how the government of Bush translated all public policy issues into “the war on terror” to bypass any oversight that was likely to obstruct its processes.
Bush’s administration was full of dishonest officials. Elliot Abrams-the man who in the 1980s distorted the idea of human rights so that it could validate the murderous actions of the Contras and the Salvadoran military-served as the leader of the international crusade for democracy.
William Kristol, an editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, appeared on the television to hail Central America for being a success story. The National Review extolled Reagan’s policy in Central and South America as a hugely successful fight to activate and sustain Western political norms in the area.
A close look at what the United States achieved in Latin America and Iraq leaves policymakers feeling guilty. Fifty-five Special Forces did manage to train over five hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Vietnam. However, whenever the United States tried to rely on these local paramilitaries to impose order, they would run out of control.
Once unleashed, these militias escaped control by the U.S., and the result was massive killings and abductions. Ayad Allawi, Iraq’s first prime minister, noted that human rights violations had become worse under U.S. involvement than during Saddam’s reign.
Unsurprisingly, this history does nothing to reduce the maddened enthusiasm with which the new imperialists clinch to the notion that the United States has not only the right but also the capability to order the world.