Barack and Latin America

The announced withdrawal by Arturo Valenzuela from his position as assistant secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department in the next months will be an excellent opportunity for the United States to reexamine its policies toward Latin America and revitalize its ties with the region.

The time to make changes could not be better. The successor to Valenzuela must be dedicated to the planning of the Sixth Summit of the Americas, which will happen in Colombia in April 2012. President Barack Obama will meet with the majority of the leaders of the region. Also, in the coming months Obama must start to outline his foreign policy platform for the 2012 electoral campaign.

While Obama is quite popular in almost all Latin American countries, the United States is losing ground there in the economic field as much as the political field. The figures speak for themselves. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the participation of the United States in the total imports of Latin America has fallen from 55 percent to 32 percent in the last decade, while China continues to gain more and more market share. United States investment also fell from 25 percent to 17 percent in the last five years. In the diplomatic field, the OAS and other hemispherical institutions that include the presence of the United States confront a growing institutional competency that excludes it, such as the Union of South American Nations. It would not be fair to blame Obama for these steps backward. Obama inherited the worst U.S. recession since the 1930s, and he has been putting out political fires in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and North Africa.

When Obama was interviewed in March after his trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, he was much more interested in Latin American Matters. However, he has yet to produce a plan to improve relations with Latin America. “There exists the perception of a lack of a U.S. strategic vision,” the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean said. The “Alliance for Progress,” the “Initiative for the Americas” and the Free Trade Area were ambitious initiatives of regional cooperation. Today, there is no equivalent.

My opinion: if the United State wants to stop losing ground in the region, it should think big. It should do the same thing that businesses do when they lose market share: introduce new products. For example, Washington could increase its cooperation in areas where it already has world leadership, such as scientific and technological research and in academic work in its universities. Today, only three percent of the world’s investment in research and development comes from Latin America, and there is no Latin American university among the best 100 universities of the world, according to three global rankings, all of which are led by U.S. universities.

Why not expand Obama’s plan to increase the number of U.S. students that go to Latin American universities and vice versa to 100,000 by the end of this decade? Why not give economic incentives to the multinationals of the United States in order to establish centers of research and development in Latin America?

The changing of the guard in the leadership of Latin American affairs in the White House could be the best opportunity for Obama to initiate his 2012 political campaign with his plan of cooperation of large reach with Latin America. Hopefully, he does not miss it.