Addicted to Failure: U.S. Security Policy in Latin America and the Andean Region

Abstract

Brian Loveman, one of the foremost scholars on Latin American military and security issues, has joined with nine colleagues (seven of them from the Andean region) to produce a devastating critique of recent U.S. policy in the Andean republics. His central concern is to analyze the effects of U.S. policy makers’ insistence on continuing a security-driven (counterdrug or counterterrorism) approach to the region that has not worked in the past and shows little prospect of being successful in the future.His extensive introductory chapter meticulously documents the major statements of key policy actors and illustrates how Washington’s bureaucratic politics operates, focusing on the degree to which the Department of Defense and the security establishment have come to dominate the formation of policy toward Latin America in general and the Andean countries in particular. He attributes the U.S. government’s pursuit of a failed policy to a combination of hubris, ignorance of Latin American realities, and the dominance of domestic priorities over an objective appraisal of U.S. national interests in the region.This hard-hitting analysis is followed by individual chapters that focus on U.S. security policy as it has played out in the individual countries of the Andean region: Colombia (Eduardo Pizarro and Pilar Gaitán), Venezuela (Orlando J. Pérez), Ecuador (Adrián Bonilla), Peru (Enrique Obando), and Bolivia (Kenneth Lehman). While each is generally critical of U.S. policies, particularly those related to the negative social, economic, and political consequences of coca eradication in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia and the spillover effects in Ecuador and Venezuela, some also point out areas of progress, such as the reduction in violence and the expansion of state presence in Colombia and the retention of a vigorous trade relationship with Venezuela.A chapter on Brazil (Monica Herz) offers a substantive overview of the evolution of that country’s regional security policy from a focus on the Southern Cone to the Amazon Basin, and describes the significant differences with the United States on how best to deal with the guerrillas and counterdrug policies in Colombia. Philipp Schönrock-Martínez, writing on relations between the European Union and Colombia, details the EU’s role in supporting the peace process rather than Plan Colombia with significant economic and social assistance and highlights Europe’s differences with the United States on how best to deal with conflict resolution in Colombia.In the concluding chapter Juan Gabriel Tokatlian focuses discussion on the period following 9/11, in which “security issues, defined in a global framework, once more dominate the Inter-American agenda” (p. 243). The author views this approach with alarm, and concludes that its continuation is likely to produce even greater insecurity and instability in the Andes. .Overall, these analyses conclude that U.S. security policy toward the Andean region is counterproductive and unlikely to alleviate violent and lawless conditions there. At the same time, however, the volume’s exclusive focus on U.S. regional security policy overlooks other important U.S. policy priorities toward Latin America in the post – Cold War period or the differences across the three U.S. administrations since 1989. Without gainsaying the continuing priority of counternarcotics and counterinsurgency policies, major policy initiatives also include debt relief, trade and investment expansion, free trade agreements, economic assistance, and collective responses to internal threats to democracy. In short, beginning in 1989, U.S. policy toward Latin America shifted away from a security-dominated agenda in major ways, even in the context of the gradual reassertion of such concerns in the late 1990s and after 9/11. Such elements tend to be underplayed or overlooked entirely in most of the volume’s chapters, as are the multiple internal factors within the Andean countries that affected outcomes in several cases at least as much as, if not more than U.S. policy.Such limitations aside, Brian Loveman and his collaborators combine to provide a valuable contribution, one that is enhanced by clear writing, ample referencing (including a list of URLS of primary documents available on the Internet), and the high qualifications of all of the contributors. I recommend this collection to all who are concerned with inter-American relations, including students, scholars, and members of the foreign policy community.