With so much happenng in the U.S. and around the globe, it is easy to forget/ignore Peru's runoff Presidential election Sunday that is an ideological contest between leftist former Army officer Ollanta Humala and center right Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the ex-President. Peru has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, largely due to the ex-President's policies, but there is still an all-too-big income disparityI agree with everything that my friend said, and she knows the territory.
If Humala wins it is important that the U.S. indicate its satisfaction with the process and avoid the hand wringing that I am afraid will follow. Humala may choose to follow in the path of Lula da Silva in Brazil. If forced, however, by an emotional U.S. reaction, he may well follow the Chavez path. Nervous markets may also commit an error that will affect Peru's economic growth and push it toward the left.
For me, one of the problems with our involvement in Afghanistan is that we lack the money, and more important, the energy, to be involved in our own neighborhood, the Western Hemisphere. Not militarily involved, but in terms of helping build economies, which, in turn, would ease our own problems, such as illegal immigration. As I will note in my penultimate blog post on the Mass Democratic Convention, at least one of the candidates for Junior Senator is aware of our failed war on drugs and what it does to us in terms of unrest in Latin America.
Regards — Cliff
I am not certain that our failure to turn our attention to South and Central American countries is a matter of money and/or national energy. I think that centuries old Monroe Doctrine philosophy and its evolving and disparate meanings have so poisoned the international America's well that we are in many cases simply "persona non grata." There is an ongoing suspicion and fear among many of the America's countries that our involvement in the affairs of South and Central American countries is totally self serving and a precursor to colonialism. Our dreadful record in re IranContra really left a vile taste in the mouths of many.
ReplyDeleteOn a macro scale however, there are many and differing challenges for the US in dealing with the various nations in our southern hemisphere, many of them quite complex and very much open to various interpretations, many of which are erroneous in practice.
At the end of the day (sorry, a lazy use of a trite expression), it isn't about dealing with South America or Central America or even The Americas. It is about understanding with and relating to a bunch of very different nation states on an individual basis, and THAT will take some genuine interest and commitment. I don't think that there is either the political interest or will to do so.