Obama, Kerry and Latin America

If President Barack Obama appoints Senator John Kerry to the position of Secretary of State in order to replace Hillary Clinton at the start of his second term in office – as is believed will be the case by administration officials – we may see a slight increase in the attention that the United States gives to Latin America.

It’s not that Kerry is an expert on the region, nor that he is more interested than Clinton in Latin American affairs. He is not; neither was Hillary Clinton nor her predecessor.

The difference would be that Kerry would leave his current position as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and would almost certainly be replaced by Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey). That, along with the promotion of Congressman Elliot Engel (D-New York) from his current position as Democratic leader in the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere for the House of Representatives to that of Ranking Member for the Foreign Affairs Committee, the most important of the affairs committees.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs would leave two experts of Latin America in key positions, with the ability to exert greater influence on U.S. foreign policy.

According to well-placed sources, there would not be a big difference between Kerry and Clinton as Secretary of State. Both are figures of great political weight: Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 and has been Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations since 2009. Clinton was First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State.

In regard to Latin American issues, Kerry had his most important moment – some would say the only important one – in the late 1980’s, when he played a key role in the congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal of Central America. Since then, his main interests have been Afghanistan, Iran and other hot beds of the world.

When I interviewed Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign, he admitted that he had never met any of the major Latin American leaders. To be fair, his worldview was much more akin to that of Latin American leaders then that of President George W. Bush.

Congressional sources tell me that if Menendez replaces Kerry at the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as presumed, he would surely push for a continental counternarcotics strategy, which would replace the current plans to fight drug trafficking separately in Mexico, Colombia and Central America. Menendez’s proposal would also put emphasis on reducing U.S. drug demand.

Menendez has also encouraged greater economic aid to Latin America, which no doubt will be difficult amid the current budget cuts. He has also asked for the activities of Iran in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador to be investigated. A supporter of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Menendez also signed, along with Kerry and Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Marco Rubio, a letter demanding that the Organization of American States come out of its “paralysis” and fulfill its responsibility to defend the democracy in the region.

Although Menendez’s relationship with the White House isn’t as strong as Kerry’s, where many see him as too focused on Cuba, his appointment as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would put pressure on the administration to invest more time and energy on Latin American issues, say proponents of Menendez.

My opinion: The probable promotion of Engel and Menendez to senior congressional posts and the growing political clout of Latinos in the United States after the crucial Hispanic support for Obama in the Nov. 6 election could force the president to provide greater attention to Latin America in the next four years.

It’s probable that we will see, for example, immigration reform in Congress, which would have a major economic impact in Mexico and Central America. The legalization of 11 million undocumented immigrants where many of them would have to agree to legal jobs, with better wages, would allow them to send more remittances to their countries of origin.

But it could also lead to other U.S. initiatives in the region, including the reformulation of the drug war, and new trade agreements with Mexico, Peru, Chile and other countries in the Pacific coast under the umbrella of the Trans Pacific Association Agreement that Obama is pushing.

Although it all remains to be seen, we may see more interest from Washington in Latin America, something that has not been seen in recent years.