Santos and the Colombia peace deal

NPR piece here.

Quote of the day

From Corey Robin's 2004 review of Greg Grandin's The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, republished in Robin's The Reactionary Mind [link], pp.156-57:

Arguably the most audacious experiment in direct democracy the continent had ever seen, the Agrarian Reform [in Guatemala] entailed a central irony. The legislation's authors -- most of them Communists -- were not building socialism. They were creating capitalism. They were scrupulous about property rights and the rule of law. Peasants had to back their claims with extensive documentation; only unused land was expropriated; and planters were granted multiple rights of appeal, all the way to the president.... Guatemala's socialists did more than create democrats and capitalists. They also made peasants into citizens.... When anti-Communists put an end to this democratic awakening in 1954, it was as much the peasant's newfound appetite for thinking and talking as the planter's expropriated land that they were worried about.... Guatemala's archbishop complained that the Arbencistas sent peasants "gifted with facility with words" to the nation's capital, where they were "taught...to speak in public."

Why are criminal gangs in Mexico killing Central Americans trying to get to the U.S.?

This sad story does not make clear why some migrants are being killed en masse by the Mexican mafias. It's one thing to kidnap would-be migrants and force them to run drugs; the mafias benefit from that. But what possible reason would the mafias have for killing them?

Will R2P become a 'European Monroe Doctrine'?

DPTrombly has a post suggesting that, inasmuch as European states will be willing and able to enforce the Responsibility to Protect only within a defined geographic area, R2P will come to resemble a European Monroe Doctrine, with Europe attempting to ensure certain norms of behavior by states within its sphere of influence, i.e., "Sahara, Sahel, Mediterranean rim, and Balkans."

Does the analogy work? I'm not convinced. The U.S., as DPT indicates, relied on Britain's naval power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine for most of the 19th century. And not too long after the U.S. became capable of using its own navy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed in 1904 his famous 'corollary' to the Doctrine which "declared that misgovernment (or 'chronic wrongdoing')" by Latin American governments would be grounds for U.S. armed intervention (Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, 1998, p.337). Applying this principle via his paternalistic pronouncement that "we must teach the Latin Americans to select the right man," Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Mexico in 1914 (ibid., p.573).

By contrast, R2P is less paternalistic than the Monroe Doctrine as applied by TR and Woodrow Wilson. R2P's application is limited to four circumstances: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity (see M.W. Doyle, "International Ethics and the Responsibility to Protect," Int'l Studies Review 13:1, March 2011). It is not a question of teaching the inhabitants of country X "to select the right man [or woman]." A leader can drive his or her country into the ground and can be as corrupt as all get-out, but as long as he or she does not engage (or very credibly, by his or her own pronouncement, appear to be right on the verge of engaging) in genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity -- all of which, with the possible exception of ethnic cleansing, have accepted definitions in international law -- the question of R2P does not even arise.

Of course, application of R2P will be selective and considerations of the sort mentioned by DPT will influence the 'selections'. But that does not mean that R2P will be used to legitimize interventions of the kind that Wilson ordered in Mexico. Thus "European Monroe Doctrine" may not be the right description, inasmuch as it may conjure up a history of paternalistic, imperialistic interventions that I think few have any interest in defending or repeating.

Brazil on the move

At the beginning of October, just after Rio was awarded the 2016 summer Olympics, T. Greer collected a bunch of headlines showing Brazil's assertiveness in regional and world affairs. His verdict: "For the first time in modern history Brazil has banished enough of its inner demons to become a true force in international politics, and [has] a president who is ready to play the role of Statesman-in-chief."

Hugo Chavez channels Herman Wouk

Referring to a recent agreement between the U.S. and Colombia giving the U.S. access to some military bases in Colombia, Hugo Chavez has said that the arrangement could lead to war in South America. Speaking at a meeting of the Union of South American Nations in Ecuador, Chavez said that the "winds of war are beginning to blow" across the region, according to the BBC.

The U.S. is of course already giving Colombia a substantial amount of money and support to fight drug trafficking and the Farc -- indeed Colombia gets more U.S. 'aid' (defined broadly) than any other South American country by far -- and the Obama administration says that the agreement in question simply updates Plan Colombia, as the initiative was called when it was passed during the Bush administration. As in the case of U.S.-India relations, the Obama admin seems to be following the Bush admin's approach with respect to Colombia. Following the Bush lead on India makes sense, but the same is perhaps not true in the case of Colombia. There were many critics of Plan Colombia at the time of its launch, and my impression (although admittedly I have not followed it) is that its record is mixed at best. Be that as it may, Chavez's remarks are unnecessarily incendiary. Perhaps they will be discounted because of who uttered them, but no politician, regardless of ideology, should go around talking about the "winds of war" unless the situation realIy warrants it. The 'winds of war' was an o.k. title for Herman Wouk's WW2 epic novel, but that's about it.

Homage to Che Guevara

A.O. Scott does not like Steven Soderbergh's movie about Che:

"...treat[s] complicated and consequential political events — the Cuban revolution, for starters, and nearly everything that followed, by implication — in purely tactical terms. The precision with which Mr. Soderbergh charts the progress of Castro’s army across the Cuban countryside — and the even greater meticulousness in his depiction of the unraveling Bolivian campaign — has something in common with the exertions of Civil War re-enactors or online gamers."

It's four hours long (actually a bit more). I think I'll wait for the dissertation comparing it to Lawrence of Arabia.

The McCain-Spain thing

A minor brouhaha -- on the web, at least -- has erupted about an interview that McCain gave to a Spanish-language radio station in Florida. The interviewer, speaking quite heavily accented English, asks a series of questions about Latin America to which McCain gives pretty standard neocon-flavored answers. Then the interviewer switches continents and asks whether McCain would be willing to meet with Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, should McCain become president.

I have listened to the interview -- here's a link that can get you to the audio -- and it's clear that McCain did not hear, or did not process, the interviewer's references to Spain and Europe. McCain continued to talk about Latin America, making a specific reference to Mexico and Calderon, and refused to commit to a meeting with Zapatero specifically, clearly because he had no idea that the interviewer was asking about Spain.

Does this mean McCain is senile? No, it means he misheard an interviewer speaking with an accent and was unwilling to ask for clarification. His campaign has worsened the situation by telling the Wash Post that yes indeed, McCain is not willing to commit specifically to meeting with Zapatero. The whole thing is ridiculous. They should just admit he made a mistake and didn't hear the interviewer clearly. If they had done that, it would have been pretty much the end of the story. Now, though, his campaign's on record as saying he won't promise specifically to meet with the head of government of a NATO ally.

"Pushback" against U.S. in Latin America

A recent Wash. Post story (h/t: Open Source Geopolitics) about the closing next year of a U.S. air base in Manta, Ecuador contains the following passage:

In the waning days of the Bush administration, governments in Latin America are rejecting many U.S.-funded programs, particularly anti-narcotics efforts.... In Venezuela, anti-drug officials say, cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has deteriorated sharply. In Bolivia, coca farmers decided in June to expel the U.S. Agency for International Development from part of the country amid accusations that it was conspiring against President Evo Morales. The pushback resonates well politically in many parts of Latin America, where U.S. policies are often seen as security-obsessed Cold War vestiges or bitter economic pills forced down the throats of unwilling governments.

The story of the Manta air base is one in which soft balancing and hard cash come together. Among other things, a joint $6 billion Venezuelan-Ecuadoran oil refinery announced by Hugo Chavez and Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa means that the money injected by the U.S. base in Manta is no longer so important to Ecuador.

The Manta air base, which employs 450 U.S. Air Force personnel and contractors, will close in November 2009. Its main mission has been to conduct surveillance flights aiming to interdict seaborne drug trafficking. The closing of the base, on balance, seems to be a good thing. My impression is that, generally speaking, the U.S. military/drug-war footprint in Latin America has cost more than it's worth. The U.S. does not need and should not have more than 700 military bases scattered over the world. Some of them no doubt perform essential strategic missions, but the majority probably should be closed. They perpetuate the image and reality of American 'empire'. Alexander Cooley has argued that the U.S. should maintain bases in "mature democracies" but not in non-democratic countries (see A. Cooley, "Base Politics," Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005; he also has a recent book on the subject). However, one should also ask whether a given base is really serving a valuable purpose, regardless of where it is located.