Secretary
of State John Kerry, at the Washington headquarters
of the
Organization of American States, asserted that the Monroe
Doctrine,
a policy that equated Latin America as the U.S. backyard
- is
dead. Immediately, though, he seemed to contradict himself.
Kerry's 'End of Monroe Doctrine' Seems More Like New Beginning (La
Jornada, Mexico)
"It is clear that if the old colonialist policy formulated by
John Quincy Adams and enunciated for the first time by President James Monroe -
'America for Americans' (referring to the people of the United States) - is out
of date, that doesn't signify a desire on the part of the political powers in
Washington to renounce their never-ending zeal for foreign intervention in
Latin America. Kerry himself, in his speech at the OAS, made evident that among
the U.S. political class, the thinking toward its continental neighbors has not
changed one iota."
Monday,
at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS), Secretary of
State John Kerry assured members that the era of the Monroe Doctrine has
ended, and that now, Washington desires to share responsibility with other countries
on the continent and make decisions as partners, in the context of a
relationship of equals.
Immediately
after that, the secretary contradicted himself, indicating on his own and
without consulting anyone, an order of priorities for the region: promoting
democracy (the U.S. way), improving education, and adopting new environmental
protection measures. At the same time, Kerry mentioned the slogan of boosting
cooperation in the area of security, and of particular concern for Mexico since
it augurs additional pressure to privatize its petroleum industry, development
of the energy sector.
If
pretensions of dictating the agendas of sovereign nations isn't bad enough, the
senior U.S. diplomat, as expressed in his newly synthesized Monroe Doctrine, exposed
for everyone the extent to which his country's traditional interventionism into
the affairs of other states remains intact, launching into a criticism of the
governments in Cuba and Venezuela for domestic issues Washington has no right
to opine about.
In
all of its incoherence and even grotesqueness, Kerry's speech reflects a
certain implicit recognition of the loss of U.S. influence in the rest of the Americas.
The
diminished regional weight of the superpower is due not to a decision made by the
government in Washington, but political projects for the recovery of sovereignty
and Latin American integration being implemented in various nations of South
America over the last decade: in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia,
and Uruguay. Such projects, singular and distinct, are as one in stressing the need
to set a new direction for the economic, political and social rights of nations beyond U.S. dictates, whether direct or mediated through international financial institutions.
Such organizations also converge on the need to build regional forums and regional
institutions free of Washington's presence, including Mercusur,
the Bolivarian Alliance for the
Americas, and the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States - and in the necessity of diversifying relations,
commercially and technologically, with countries in other parts of the globe
that constitute a geopolitical counterweight to the United States, like Russia,
China, and Iran.
With
these elements in mind, it is clear that if the old colonialist policy formulated
by John Quincy Adams and enunciated for the first time by President James
Monroe - "America for Americans" (referring to the people of the United
States) - is out of date, that doesn't signify a desire on the part of the
political powers in Washington to renounce their never-ending zeal for foreign intervention
in Latin America. Kerry himself, in his speech on Monday at the OAS, made
evident that among the U.S. political class, the thinking toward its
continental neighbors has not changed one iota.
