Insights into US-Latin American relations through Wikileaks

By Guy Burton

Much of the recent attention to the leaked American diplomatic cables has involved gossip and various unflattering pen portraits of world leaders. In the case of Latin America this has already emerged in relation to Argentine President Cristina Kirchner’s mental state. Today there is the exposure of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and his tumour treatment which will doutbless be seized upon.

However, what has been overlooked is the extent to which much of the dispatches that have been published to date between Washington and its Latin American missions confirm what we already know – namely its primary concern with regional security and the ambiguous relationship that exists between Washington and much of Latin America.

First, in the case of regional security the US arguably relies on the regional power, Brazil – which itself is the subject of most of the cables so far released. The relationship between the US and Brazil is also significant since it illustrates the scope of American engagement. There is a strong recognition by American officials that there are limits which may be summarised as ‘Friendly Cooperation, But Not Strong Friendship’. This is due to a tension between the more sceptical position towards the US at the top of the Brazilian government and the willingness and level of cooperation within it at the operational level. In January 2008, for example, the US embassy in Brasilia notes the tussle between the defence and foreign affairs ministries over whether to sign a defence cooperation agreement with Washington.  Similarly, although the embassy comments that Brazil’s National Defence Strategy and the decision to restructure its armed forces does coincide with American interests at greater regional security and peacekeeping and offers opportunities for American businesses and armed forces and their counterparts, it has to deal with a publically ambivalent Brazilian government.  This is made explicit in the discussion between the American ambassador and Brazil’s defence minister, Nelson Jobim, that the US-Colombian agreement over American airbases and an Air Force budget memo ‘showed “a complete lack of understanding” of Latin America and said that [Jobim] had to discuss the issue with the President to urge “moderation” from Lula.’ By contrast the ambassador ends with the comment that Brazil’s ‘insistence on painting [Colombian President] Uribe as the primary source of Andean tensions may limit the [Government of Brazil]’s effectiveness’.

American concern with security is also apparent in its preoccupation with regional rivals. First (and not surprisingly) Venezuela features prominently in American communications. For example, in May 2005 the US ambassador to Brazil complains about the role that Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, is playing in preventing Brazilian leadership in the region. In response, his interlocutor, the Minister for Institutional Security, General Jorge Armando Felix, reminds the ambassador that Chavez is ‘very much a part of the “Latin American” reality.’  But while Latin Americans have accept Chavez as part of the scene, it is not apparent that the US is comfortable with this. By 2008 Brazil was proposing to contain Venezuela ‘exporting instability’ by bringing the country into a South American Defence Council, an approach which the embassy commented on as ‘impractical.’ At the same time, the State Department was seeking information on the attitudes of the Paraguayan presidential election candidates towards Venezuela and Cuba and the level of domestic intervention being played by the two in that country.

Second, Washington has become increasingly concerned with external actors in the region, both state and non-state. In terms of state actors, American officials at the State Department have been specifically requesting information on Chinese and Iranian involvement in the region, including military cooperation and communications in Paraguay. With regard to non-state actors, although a number of transnational issues such as the drug trade, arms smuggling and money laundering have been problems in the Tri-Border Region (TBR) between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay since the 1990s, there has been a shift in focus. This reflects a change in American priorities from tackling these transnational issues to countering radical Islam over the past decade, following the 9/11 attacks.

US officials are actively seeking information on the involvement of radical Islamist individuals and organisations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah and their respective links, support networks and funding. At the same time the cables recognise that the issue is no longer contained to the TBR. Instead efforts have to be made to the wider Muslim population in the continent. In Brazil, for example, the US embassy reports greater attention being paid to counter-terrorism measures.  These include greater cooperation to tackle illicit financial transactions and other activities taking place between American and Brazilian law enforcement agencies even while official government rhetoric remains relatively distant.

Despite this involvement, American officials cannot contain their criticism. The American response to the Brazilian government’s lack of concern with passing anti-terrorism legislation is broadly negative. In an April 2008 cable the embassy notes that the proposed bill, which would have treated the participation, financing and support of terrorist groups as a crime, was shelved by Lula’s chief of staff, Djilma Rousseff, on the grounds that it might be used against social groups and movements that support the government.  This has promoted the Americans to seek alternative ways to engage the issue, including the use of outreach activities between its São Paulo consulate and moderate Muslim leaders in the city.

More generally, the nature of American attitudes towards their Latin American counterparts demonstrates a critical, partial and equivocal stance. For example, American analysis of Argentina reveals not only a lack of knowledge about Cristina Kirchner – despite having been in office for nearly two years - but it also echoes the opposition’s criticisms, namely that it is ‘extremely thin-skinned and intolerant of perceived criticism.’  In addition, the US maintains a reputation for being equivocal. The dispatch from its embassy in Honduras a month after last year’s coup illustrates this point neatly. Following the enforced exile of the then president, Manuel Zelaya, the embassy recommends a search to ‘provide a face-saving “out” for the two opposing sides in the current standoff’. On the one hand, this presents the US as standing above the fray. Indeed, at the time of the coup the American position was extremely vocal, with Barack Obama condemning it swiftly. The embassy too criticized Zelaya’s forced exile and the assumption to the presidency of Congress’s speaker, Roberto Micheletti.

On the other hand, the American position was not as virtuous as it appears. That Zelaya was an ally of American rivals such as Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez and his peers in Ecuador, Cuba and Bolivia may have discouraged more extensive American support. Indeed, the embassy claims that Zelaya may have been partly to blame, by having ‘committed illegalities and may have even violated the constitution.’ This is based on the embassy’s decision to seek out legal advice regarding the constitution and the grounds for presidential removal. Its recommendation to find a solution amenable to both did not therefore mean a return to the presidency for Zelaya, but rather one that removed both Micheletti and Zelaya from the picture. That “out” was achieved at the end of the year when the scheduled presidential election took place, resulting in quick American acceptance of the result even as other Latin American governments continued to protest.

That Washington was looking for a solution in the latter part of last year was no secret. In this regard, along with the detail of the other dispatches so far published does not shake up our fundamental assumptions about American interests, attitudes and actions in Latin America over the past few years. If anything, they merely confirm that Washington pursues its interests throughout the region – regional security, radical Islam, external threats, drug trafficking, arms smuggling and money laundering – and making common cause with those who share them. At the same time, they are extremely useful at revealing the limitations of American influence and that Washington is not able to impose its will on individual countries – even small ones such as Honduras. Finally, the leaked documents are fascinating at providing a contemporary insight into the way that American policymakers view their priorities and concerns in the region, along with their own estimation of their Latin American counterparts. With the publication of further dispatches from the region, the opportunity to analyse the role of Washington and others in the region in greater detail is certainly one not to be missed.

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

WikiLeaks Disclosure Sets off Defensive Posture in the International Politics of Pakistan.

The recent news on Pakistan’s international relations that came out of the latest WikiLeaks document cache has been remarkably easy to bear.  Nothing untoward has happened.  All the players have played their parts. International politics between the U.S and Pakistan continues in recognizably similar ways as it did yesterday, and the day before.  Of course, strategic politics has nakedly come to the fore and understandably so; the real news however is non-news--that though everyone has grumbled, moaned, they have all walked away into their own corners of politics and chicanery to hold onto their share of power in Pakistan.

Indeed, each partisan to Pakistan’s politics is doing its best to preserve necessary ties while claiming priority for its own prerogative.  The media is leading the charge here, and both the central government in Islamabad and its U.S allies are on the defensive. The right is blaming President Asif Ali Zardari, pointing to Saudi King Abdullah’s criticism of the political situation in Pakistan—a rather veiled threat? -- that “when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”  The left and the center in Pakistani politics, the majority of Pakistanis therefore, are talking about sovereignty as they have always done. Already, judging by a series of opinion polls conducted by organizations like Pew Research and the New American Foundation over the summer, Pakistanis distrust the U.S intervention in Pakistan and blame the U.S squarely for the intensifying drone attacks in the tribal regions.  The new revelations that the U.S. had been intent on removing enriched uranium from a nuclear site and therefore, had been intervening in Pakistan’s favorite national capability, its nuclear arsenal, can only inflame that distrust and disdain.

So far, the Zardari administration in Islamabad has been loath to deal with the rightists in Pakistani politics.  Thus the right-leaning English language newspaper, The News front page piece chiding President Zardari drew an unsurprisingly mild response from the executive office: Zardari claimed that King Abdullah is like his older brother.  ”Call me names”, he seemed to say, “and I will turn the other cheek.”  He might well have added that he is doing this to maintain his precarious grip on power.

Consider that Zardari needs to brush aside this offensive rebuke. Hardliner Saudi Wahhabis help fund the Taliban in Pakistan, as much as they do in Afghanistan. Perhaps to contain the domestic criticism laid against him, King Abdullah spoke to appease the homebred Wahhabis; perhaps not. There is no doubt, however, that Zardari bowed before King Abdullah in order to staunch as much of the runaway support of the right as he can.  In order to not fall in the way of his democratically elected predecessor, and current opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif he needs to kowtow to the right.  Perhaps more importantly he needs to court the military to his side, though he has long bristled at that fact.

President Zardari and his ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have been deferring to the military after a terrible summer of misrule and missed opportunities.  After the devastating summer floods that ruined farms and fertile fields in large swathes of the countryside, the people of Pakistan sanctioned the Pakistani military as the only functioning authority in the country.  (Note how many are clamoring for the seemingly misremembered clarity and purpose of General Musharraf’s rule!)  Since then Zardari and his Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have been looking for a way to undercut the military for their political benefit.

Indeed, the recent news might have provided that opportunity.  Upon the disclosure that the U.S. had been trying to get rid of a cache of enriched uranium in Pakistan for fear that it would wind up at the disposal of militants, even the left leaning English daily Dawn that often defends the Zardari administration, raised the specter of Pakistan’s contested sovereignty. It’s front-page headline: “Pakistan’s nuclear capability a source of strength: PM”. At the same stroke as defending Pakistani national pride, Prime Minister Gilani tied together the fate of Pakistan with the fate of the ruling party.  Notice though that even though he spoke to the pride of place of the nuclear arsenal, and therefore of Pakistani national security, he failed to mention that the Pakistani military might have anything at all to do with securing Pakistan’s nuclear capability.

In response to Gilani’s bold move, the U.S. government, through the person of the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, has argued for the continued cooperation of sorts that it enjoys with Pakistan, without backtracking from its criticism of the Zardari government and without disavowing the moves it reportedly made against Pakistan’s nuclear, military complex.

These moves and counter-moves raise the haunted ghost of previous U.S. interventions in Pakistan.  Those interventions have not gone well for the Pakistani people. How might the U.S. now defend itself against the claim that it is charging head-long into occupying Pakistan, when it has been shown to have interfered into Pakistan’s favorite public capability: its nuclear arsenal?  Little surprise then that Ambassador Cameron Munter moved to calm those in the military and in the political right and published an op-ed piece this morning in the right-leaning newspaper The News, announcing in part that:

Pakistan is an important strategic partner of the United States. Of course, even a solid relationship will have its ups and downs. We have seen that in the past few days, when documents purportedly downloaded from US Defense Department computers became the subject of reports in the media.

Moreover he claimed, the U.S foreign policy team:

…will continue to work to strengthen our partnership with Pakistan and make progress on the issues that are important for our two countries. We can’t afford anything less. I am in close contact with Pakistan’s leadership to make sure we continue to focus on the issues and tasks at hand. President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and I remain committed to being trusted partners as we seek to build a better, more prosperous world for everyone.

It is too early to tell if the U.S government’s overtures to the Pakistani people, over the summer and now, going forward, will smooth out years of implacably opposed opinion on unhelpful interventions in Pakistan’s politics.  Most Pakistanis think that American promises aren’t worth much. Promises of a longer stay coupled with more productive moves to ensure the safety of Pakistanis in the tribal regions, plans to spur on economic growth, raise education standards, fall to daily drone strikes.  But maybe there is yet a third way.

Faheem Haider is the Senior Blogger on Asia for the Foreign Policy Association.

Why Nations Fight? Past And Future Motives For War

Last night at IDEAS, Richard Ned Lebow launched his new book, Why Nations Fight. Here he outlines the key argument of the book, which analyses a wholly new data-set of inter-state wars.

Following Plato and Aristotle, I posit spirit, appetite and reason as fundamental drives with distinct goals.  They generate different logics concerning cooperation, conflict and risk-taking. They require, and help generate, characteristic forms of hierarchy based on different principles of justice. A fourth motive – fear -- enters the picture when reason is unable to constrain appetite or spirit. Fear is a powerful emotion, not an innate drive.  In real worlds, multiple motives mix rather than blend, giving rise to a range of behaviors that often appear contradictory. 

In modern times the spirit (thumos) has largely been ignored by philosophy and social science. I contend it is omnipresent. It gives rise to the universal drive for self-esteem which finds expression in the quest for honor or standing.  By excelling at activities valued by our peer group or society, we win the approbation of those who matter and feel good about ourselves.  Institutions and states have neither psyches nor emotions.  The people who run these collectivities or identify with them do.  They often project their psychological needs on to their political units, and feel better about themselves when those units win victories or perform well. Transference and esteem by vicarious association are especially pronounced in the age of nationalism where the state has become the relevant unit.  

I documented the relevance of the spirit for war in a series of case studies in A Cultural Theory of International Relations.  In this book, I extend my analysis to war throughout the modern era and analyze war initiation in terms of the relative power of states and their respective motives for war.  I derive six propositions from my theory about war initiation concerning the kinds of states that start wars, their motives for going to war, who they fight against, their rate of successes, the extent to which general wars arise from miscalculation and the propensity of weaker states to attack stronger ones.  To test these propositions, I constructed a data set of all inter-state wars involving great and aspiring rising powers from 1648 to the present.  

Contrary to realist expectations, I find security responsible for only 19 of 94 wars.  A significant number of these wars pitted great powers against other great powers and none of them were associated with power transitions.  Material interests are also a weak motive for war, being responsible for only 8 wars, and most of those in the eighteenth century.    Standing, by contrast, is responsible for 62 wars as a primary or secondary motive.  Revenge, also a manifestation of the spirit, is implicated in another 11.  There is no evidence for wars between rising and dominant powers, as predicted by power transition theory.  There can be little doubt that the spirit is the principal cause of war across the centuries, and that it and its consequences have been almost totally ignored in the international relations literature.

In examining the future of war we need to recognize important changes that are taking place in how actors understand war in relation to their goals.  Interest shows a sharp decline as a cause of war once mercantilism gave way to more sophisticated understandings of wealth.  Security-motivated wars show no similar decline by century but come in clusters associated with bids for hegemony by great or dominant powers.  The most recent clusters of security-related wars were associated with the run up and conduct of the two world wars of the twentieth century.  Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is now longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.  Wars of standing can also be expected to decline as successful war initiation no longer enhances standing.  It may actually lead to loss of standing in the absence of United Nations’ approval of the military initiative in question.  The chance of war among great and rising powers is therefore diminishing and we may be cautiously optimistic that interstate war as an institution will see a sharp decline in this century. 

Richard Ned Lebow the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and the Centennial Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.