From the start of the 2016 election campaign, it was all too clear that a
Donald Trump presidency would bring dramatic and destabilizing changes
to U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Candidate Trump
publicly pummeled the region, fulminating about “rapists” and drug traffickers crossing from Mexico, and vowing to build a wall to keep Central American migrants from “invading” the United States.
The rhetoric was jarring in itself, but it was even more startling
because it represented such a sharp departure from President Barack
Obama’s administration, when even the most critical measures or
sanctions came wrapped in diplomatic language. Will U.S. policy in the
region return to that if former Vice President Joe Biden defeats Trump
next month?
If Biden wins the presidency, U.S. policy toward Latin America is
certain to change in both tone and substance. Relations will unfold
against an unspoken backdrop of great-power competition, since
Washington’s role in the region has been shrinking, while China, Russia
and even Iran widen their footprints. Ties with Latin America are more
than a hemispheric matter now; they are a global geopolitical concern.
The Trump administration’s policies toward the region have been
shaped by two principal and reactionary currents. The first is the
relentless push to slash immigration and refugee flows, mostly from
Central America via Mexico. That has been one of the most consistent
themes in an otherwise mercurial and often volatile administration. The
second is the Cold War-style campaign against what Trump’s former
national security adviser, John Bolton, branded the “Troika of
Tyranny”—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, all with socialist and
authoritarian-minded leaders. It is at least as much a campaign strategy
as a policy, since it is driven in large part by electoral
considerations—think Florida, where it appears to have paid some dividends for Trump. Polls have shown Biden well ahead of Trump among Hispanics, but trailing among them in some polls in Florida, where a key part of the electorate has roots in Venezuela and Cuba and feels visceral hostility toward their regimes.
Biden
would come into the Oval Office with vast experience in the region. He
was something of the point man for Latin America during the Obama
administration, traveling throughout the region well over a dozen times.
He was the public face of the administration’s ambitious, $1 billion
plan to fund development, security and good governance initiatives in Central America.
The difference in Biden’s approach to Trump is stark, and it is already
visible on the campaign trail, starting with how Biden speaks about the
region. He is certain to restore the Obama-era initiatives to promote
the rule of law and democracy and fight corruption in Latin America.
Washington’s efforts on that front were enormously helpful in a region where corruption has been a major obstacle to prosperity and economic growth.
Under Trump, Washington’s focus has generally been narrowed to
combating what he sees as the twin scourges of migration and socialism.
Perhaps most of all, a Biden administration would mean the end of
Washington’s automatic philosophical alignment with regional demagogues
such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, a favorite of Trump. Biden’s more
assertive efforts on human rights, the rule of law and corruption could
create tensions behind the scenes with other governments, although the
stridency of those disagreements would be kept to diplomatic decibels.
It would be a welcome change from Trump. Insults by the American
president, including references to “shithole” countries, would finally,
and thankfully, disappear.
Read more at:
How Biden Would Change US-Latin America Relations
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