What does the emergence of a unified, anti-American, Europe-oriented trade bloc mean?

By Rebecca Theodore


If argument persists that a state cannot be fully understood if it is isolated from its historical development, then the transition from democracy to authoritarianism for Latin American countries implies that there must be a constant rewriting of the social contract based on new social and economic relations that are continually emerging in Latin America. Paradoxically, the return of democracy from authoritarianism not only demonstrates that ‘a government is legitimate if and only if no better feasible policy exists’ but also exhibits the fact that it is possible for democracies to be authoritarian as well.

Opponents have argued that Latin American state formation is more closely aligned with European state patterns due to colonial influences from the fifteenth century and it is to Western Europe that one needs to turn in order to uncover the roots of the embryonic parallel. However, it must be remembered that the US has also been deeply ingrained in Latin American affairs since 1823, when President James Monroe created the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the New World. In light of this, America’s reputation as the great superpower of the Andes and the savior of protectionism and liberalism is now viewed in Latin America as a policy of imperialism and a sign of utter weakness.

While China’s ideological connection of communism and socialism weakens US power in Latin America, it is evident that the European trade bloc is now Latin America’s primary trade partner. Latin American trade group Mercosur is the only multinational continent in the world to be united by a common linguistic background, a common culture, and a common religion factor making South America’s path to assimilation a lot smoother into the congregation of the European States of Europe. The legal structure of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) not only unites South America’s two major trade blocs -- Mercosur and the Andean Community -- but has now launched a South American Defense Council, unlike a NATO alliance to mediate regional conflicts and defense from foreign intervention and excludes the US from military planning in the region.

Moreover, Latin America is far more important to Europe as an industrial base than as a simple trade partner. The giant storehouse of timber, natural gas, crude oil, minerals, precious metals, and iron in the region from the Rio Grande to Terra del Fuego are resources that Europe needs in its ascension to world supremacy. The completion of the largest steel-producing complex in Brazil by ThyssenKrupp means steel products will be actively churned out to be sold to Germany and South American countries, with Venezuela as the principal buyer. This also means that the US-backed Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (FTAA) is dead. Estados de América Latina ha creado su propio barrio, y los Estados Unidos de América no es parte de ella. (Latin American states have created their own neighborhood and the US is not a part of it.)

It is clear that anti-Americanism is now the common premise across every political party in Latin and South America. While Evo Morales is rapidly following Chavez’s lead by nationalizing Bolivia’s oil and gas in a move that reverberates that of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe’s land for grab deals, the newly elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff is just a hand-chosen puppet of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s policies. With huge oil reserves recently discovered off Brazil’s coast, and with a rare earth debate gaining momentum between China and Germany that excludes American interest, Rousseff inherits an economy that is among the world's hottest emerging markets and this means that it will need more than a party shift in the US House of Representatives to advance bilateral relationship.

Hugo Chávez on the other hand has, without doubt, polarized Venezuela’s society and intellectual debate by undermining civil liberties, threatening the continuity of democratic governance, hence his accompaniment of a repulsive episode of an ALBA alliance that provided Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and Ecuadoran Rafael Correa with a foretaste of how to rewrite the constitution and establish authoritarian rule in Honduras, leaving a Honduran legislature buried in turmoil and controversy over US intelligence officials bribing Ecuadoran police, and recruiting informants among them. Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Chile are all offering radical transformation and presenting different alternatives to deal with the consequences of economic reforms.

Now that the US has lost Latin America to Europe and China as primary trade partners also means that the Republicans’ tsunami win in the House of Representatives will prove that Barack Obama is not suffering the blunders of a political double standard on the economy as has been so widely anticipated. As Republicans embrace their ambitious legislative agenda they will in time notice that the U.S. economy is starving to death and reducing the deficit or the current unemployment rate of 9.6% and fighting the Great Recession is no magic but a sign of the times.

Trade with Latin America, coupled with other economic factors, has already started reading the eulogy of the US dollar, thereby exposing the grave danger of the economic reverberations that are just now beginning to shake the nucleus of the world’s financial systems. Regardless of what anyone says, this is not an Obama problem, it is a global problem -- “blame it on the economy stupid”. The only self-sustaining economic bloc is the establishment of an EU-style government and for this reason EU status must be fortified in the UN because Latin and South American states, Caribbean states and even Africa have no option other than complete reliance on the economic ties of a German-led EU, or cling to the apron strings of a Russo-China alliance in their quest for economic reforms.

Whether it means that economic reformers in the US need to employ authoritarian tactics to defend democratic processes or risk total failure or that democratic governments in Latin America are not authoritarian enough to defend positive economic reforms; it is clear that the new trend in Latin America is… Buenos dias Europe, Adios America, pero quando o povo esta morrendo de fome, a democracia e’ so uma palavra.” Good morning Europe, Goodbye America, because when the people are starving democracy is just a word.

November 15, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

The ALBA and Copenhagen

Reflections of Fidel

(Taken from CubaDebate)

THE festivities at the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, demonstrated the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults of all ages through the singing, dancing, costumes and expressive faces of the individuals representing all ethnic groups, colors and shades: indigenous, black, white and mixed race people. Thousands of years of human history and treasured culture were on display there, which explains the decision of the leaders of several Caribbean, Central and South America peoples to convene that summit.

The meeting was a great success. It was held in Bolivia. A few days ago, I wrote about the excellent prospects of that country, the heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are striving to show that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by the ideas of Bolívar and Martí, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity – has demonstrated what can be done in just five years of peaceful cooperation. This began shortly after the political and democratic triumph of Hugo Chávez. Imperialism underestimated him; it blatantly attempted to oust him and eliminate him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the yanki multinationals, meant that the course they embarked on was particularly difficult.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA, two instruments of domination with which it crushed any form of resistance in the hemisphere after the triumph of the Revolution in Cuba.

It is outrageous to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have the elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of growth over 10%. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal onslaught. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the victim of a brutal coup d’état inspired by the yanki ambassador and boosted by the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. The fifth country, Ecuador, is rapidly advancing towards that goal. Comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace for the peoples of the Third World. Economic development plans combined with social justice have become real programs in the five different states, which already enjoy great prestige throughout the world for their courageous position in the face of the economic, military and media power of the empire. Three English-speaking Caribbean countries have also joined the ALBA, in a determined fight for their development.

This alone would be a great political merit if, in today’s world, that were the only major problem in the history of humankind.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are barely longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for humanity.

But, a new and extremely serious problem was extensively discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. At no other point in history, has a danger of such magnitude arisen.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega bade farewell to the people in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to a report by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing a session of the Major Economies Forum in London, mostly made up of the most-developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s words is that they were not uttered by a representative of the ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet, but Britain, the country where industrial development began and one of those that has released the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The British prime minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be "disastrous".

Floods, droughts, and killer heat waves are just some of the "catastrophic" consequences, according to the World Wildlife Fund ecological group, referring to Brown’s statement. "Climate change will spiral out of control over the next five to ten years if CO2 emissions are not drastically cut. There will be no Plan B if Copenhagen fails."

The same news source claims that: "BBC expert James Landale has explained that not everything is turning out as expected."

Newsweek reported that every day it seems more unlikely that states will commit to something in Copenhagen.

According to reports from a major American news outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that ""If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. He continued by listing conflicts such as "climate-induced migration" and "an extra 1.8 billion people living and dying without enough water."

In reality, as the Cuban delegation in Bangkok reported, the United States led the industrialized nations most opposed to the necessary reduction in emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer "Homeland or Death"; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of "Life or Death" for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and pillaging our nations. The wealthiest industrialized countries wish to impose on the rest of the world the major responsibility in the fight against climate change. Who are they trying to fool? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the countries of the Third World will be fighting for the survival of the species.


Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog Bahamas

The free trade what???

By David Roberts:


So what is the Barack Obama administration's strategic plan with respect to Latin America? It's tempting to conclude it simply doesn't have one, at least at the moment. From a political perspective, the man who should be behind policy towards the region, Arturo Valenzuela, hasn't even taken up his post yet, nine months into the administration, as his nomination as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs has been blocked by Republican senators led by Jim DeMint in protest of Obama's stance on the Honduran coup. The irony is, of course, that Obama doesn't really have a policy on Honduras either, being mildly critical of both elected President Manuel Zelaya and interim leader Roberto Micheletti, but clearly preferring not to get too involved.

And apart from a lot of pleasantries about there being no senior or junior partners in Washington's relationship with Latin America, so far Obama himself has shown scant interest in his southern neighbors. He's only set foot in Latin America once since taking office - a very brief visit to Mexico in April while on his way to the fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain - and has generally adopted a "let's be nice to everyone and sit on the fence" approach, even with regards to Hugo Chávez & Co.

But rather than ask what the strategic plan on Latin America is, maybe first we should ask whether the Obama government needs a plan at all? If his policy is going to be what we've seen so far, perhaps not, but with respect to trade at least, he should have one, as the region needs it. Yet, here again there's not much cooking. While visiting Chile last week, Obama's commerce secretary Gary Locke made it pretty clear that we shouldn't expect much in the way of more free trade agreements with Latin American countries, let alone deals on a more regional basis. Asked about the prospects for ratifying the FTA reached under George W Bush with Colombia, Locke declined to give any indication of whether or when it would get the nod from Capitol Hill, saying the priorities for the Obama administration in terms of passing legislation are healthcare and energy.

That's perhaps not surprising, considering the strong opposition to free trade in the US congress, mainly among Democrats like Obama (many of whom prefer protectionism), the lack of the fast track authority for ratifying deals and the current economic climate. But what was perhaps surprising was that Locke, when asked about the topic by a reporter, obviously was not even aware of past attempts - led by US governments - to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which was supposed to be the free trade bloc par excellence, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (conveniently excluding Cuba) and be in place first by 2000 (according to George Bush Sr) and then by 2005.

Indeed, the Summits of the Americas were in a sense born out of attempts to maintain the moribund process of FTAA and continental integration alive, a process that fell apart amid unseemly squabbling between free traders and Chávez's Alba bloc of nations over everything from intellectual property to US farm subsidies, with Bolivia's Evo Morales calling the FTAA "an agreement to legalize the colonization of the Americas."

October 18, 2009

bnamericas

Bahamas Blog Bahamas