Pubdate: Tue, 28 May 2002
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2002 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Edward N. Luttwak
Note: Edward N. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies in Washington, D.C. He wrote this for the Los Angeles 
Times.

U.S. YAWNS AS LATIN AMERICA CRUMBLES

PRESIDENT Bush, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and dozens of 
lesser officials were focused for weeks on the siege of Yasser Arafat's 
office and the Bethlehem stand-off. Only a few dozen people were involved 
in these affairs, and the outcome was yet again bound to be inconclusive. 
Yet the television cameras were there, and that was enough to ensure the 
full attention of the U.S. government.

In the meantime, with no TV anchors present, the largest part of the 
Western Hemisphere, from Mexico to Patagonia, continued to slide into 
crises that threaten the most important U.S. interests and values, from the 
supply of oil -- much more than we buy from the entire Middle East -- to 
economic liberalization and even democratic governance.

Argentina's economy, paralyzed by financial collapse, is literally 
disintegrating as businesses simply shut down and the rural population 
retreats into subsistence. That inflicts heavy damage on nearby Uruguay, 
with adverse effects on impoverished Paraguay and Bolivia and even 
prosperous Chile. Brazil, with its trillion-dollar economy and 170 million 
inhabitants, will not be wrecked by Argentina's troubles, but those 
troubles are weakening both its export-driven economy and popular support 
for the free-market policies that Argentina exemplified from the early 
1990s. Not by coincidence, the presidential candidate who is leading in the 
polls is Luiz Ignacio da Silva, a longstanding opponent of privatization 
and deregulation.

Only in Colombia is a full-fledged internal war under way. But even 
Venezuela's much less violent political convulsions -- under the corrupt 
populism of Hugo Chavez -- certainly block its economic recovery and 
threaten U.S. oil supplies.

The impact of the global economic slowdown, with its low commodity prices, 
is most severe in the poorest countries -- Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

Yet even Mexico, for all its economic and political progress of recent 
years, is suffering the consequences. The sharp fall in exports to the 
United States has stymied growth and shrunk government revenue -- 
undermining the best intentions of its government to relieve poverty.

That in turn explains the surge in illegal immigration, which collides with 
the new United States preoccupation with border security, although Latin 
Americans are almost universally our friends in every way rather than 
U.S.-hating terrorists.

The United States government has reacted with spectacular inattention to 
these vast events, whose consequences are serious and could easily become 
much worse.

With scarcely a minute of the president's time since Sept. 11, and not much 
more from his Cabinet officials -- even the Treasury secretary has found 
reasons to virtually ignore Argentina's collapse -- policy has inevitably 
drifted.

The obvious objection to more U.S. activism is that Latin America's 
problems are structural and cultural; critics argue that more United States 
action would be useless.

As for economic aid, any large increase is fiscally impossible and could be 
appropriate in any case only to help the poorest Andean countries.

But that overlooks the political and psychological dimension of U.S.-Latin 
America relations: Even visits by mere undersecretaries, let alone Cabinet 
officials, raise the morale of local reformers, force decisions on 
outstanding issues and provide opportunities to solve problems in open markets.

It is on that score that the charge of gross inattention can be proved: 
This month, the 1991 Andean Trade Preferences Act, designed to promote 
legal alternatives to cocaine production, expired in Bolivia, Colombia, 
Ecuador and Peru because of Senate objections engineered by the textile lobby.

The White House could easily overcome that weak lobby with a small fraction 
of the president's time and political leverage. Even that has been denied, 
however, as if to prove to our neighbors that we are indifferent to their 
plight.

Edward N. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies in Washington, D.C. He wrote this for the Los Angeles 
Times.
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