Recent U.S. administrations assumed that the paths of Latin American and Caribbean countries were converging: with Chile showing the way, all (except Cuba) were thought to be moving toward free markets, democratic governance, sound macroeconomic policies, and regional integration. The Obama administration, however, recognized from the outset that the countries of the region are actually going in very different directions. This is the result of important structural differences among them, including the level of their demographic and economic interdependence with the United States; the degree and nature of their openness to international economic competition; the strength of key aspects of their governance, such as checks and balances, accountability, and the rule of law; the relative capacity of the state and of their domestic civil and political institutions beyond the state, such as political parties, the media, religious organizations, and trade unions; and their ability to integrate traditionally excluded populations, including the more than 30 million indigenous people, Afro-Latin Americans, and migrant workers in the region. Washington's policies would have to take account of these differences; clearly, one size would not fit all.
In reframing U.S. policy toward the diverse mix of Latin American and Caribbean countries, the new administration proceeded in line with its broader resetting of U.S. foreign policy: it would be more open to engagement, even with adversaries; more disposed to multilateral cooperation; and more respectful of international law and international opinion. Once these changes became clear, the Obama team posited, the international economic crisis might make inter-American cooperation attractive again.
In devising this approach, the incoming administration drew in part on policy changes that had been introduced during the second term of the Bush administration by Thomas Shannon, a career diplomat who became assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs in 2005. In contrast to his predecessors, political appointees who had pursued Cuba-centric policies redolent of the Cold War, Shannon fashioned a carefully nuanced, case-by-case approach to the various populist and potentially populist regimes of Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Shannon emphasized that social and economic inequities were the root cause of many of the problems in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This was in line with the prevailing view among many nongovernmental experts on the region. A series of think tank reports before and soon after the 2008 election had recommended more emphasis on poverty, inequality, citizen security, and energy; new approaches to narcotics and gun trafficking and immigration; increased cooperation with Brazil and Mexico; restrained, nonconfrontational, rope-a-dope responses to Chávez; and initiatives to move beyond the Cold War impasse with Cuba and to assist Haiti's development -- all ideas that contributed to the new administration's thinking.
Instead of reverting to grand rhetoric, the Obama administration began working on a few concrete matters: bolstering financial institutions, restoring credit and investment flows, and meeting the challenges of energy security, the environment, and citizens' safety. Rather than unfurl broad Pan-American initiatives, the new administration sought to bring together different clusters of states with comparable concerns to deal with specific issues.
