Obama and the US-Latin America Time Bomb

Al's reporting at The Field got me back to the narcosphere - and my hope is his success there will help grow the work here. The analysis seems solid; and as (writing as nihilix) I commented at The Field, there are two turns that Senator Obama could make regarding foreign policy in the Americas. The first - will he turn away from the unilateral militarism of the neoconservatives? The second - will he turn away from the soft imperialism of the neoliberals? Al asks us to step back from the red-left analysis of the days before the Washington Consensus. I find a similarity to the days of Richard Nixon (which I barely remember) - that his policies were in today's terms pretty far to the left, but in the context of that day were an advance for right-wingers. Obama's policies - regarding Colombia, the 'war on drugs', the situation on Venezuela - are pretty right-wing. But in the context of our recent history - or forty years of history - they represent a definite move to the left. Obama might repeat the propaganda of those who would demonize Chavez, but at the same time he would meet with him. I've recently gotten a job as a community organizer. As part of my work, I've read Saul Aulinsky's Rules for Radicals, and I have to say that I find Obama to be very very much in that model. Aulinsky's community organizing was explicitly non-socialist, non-ideological, but anti-establishment pro-poor people. What I see of community organizers in general is that they get things done - that there are definite and real advances, but that the limited vision, the lack of ideology, leaves you un-transformed. They seem to get 4/10ths of the solution, which is nice, but not pushing over the tipping point into serious systemic change. So Obama is definitely not the unilateralist neoconservative, and he shows signs, with his bottom-up, fair-trade, explicit critique of corporate trade rhetoric, of not being neoliberal. On the other hand, he uses the old Western imperialist language that undergirds neoliberalism. Obama in Latin America will be like Obama in very many other things - not what I want but a darn sight closer and with movement in the right direction compared with the other guys. (edited for typos)

Given that Senator Obama is receiveing significant funding from the military industrial complex and their appetite for continuous warfare without the necessary social change and demobilization. I am not so sure that North America does not intend to continue its interference in Latin America to a high degree. I note with sadness Obama's recent speech in Miami with a promise to push "further south" with the 4th fleet. That does not sound like a non-imperilaist stance or a good neighbor policy that the OAS and others have consistently advocated. If we do pursue a "push further south" doctrine it could be worse for hemisphereic affairs than a stay the hell out of the internal affairs of UNASUR policy.

The world has changed dramtically under the Bush regime, and many things have developed in Latin America that are profoundly positive. It would be a hard road to convince the world that Cuba still needs the embargo, Venezuela is a dictatorship, or that UNASUR is a bad idea. Ideally a libertarian position of peaceful development, bilateral and mutually beneficial fair trade, and a US military withdraw from Latin America would create not a power vacuum but rather a better way for Latin America to handle its own affairs and to work constructively to end the drug trade stemming from Colombia.

Despite these flaws one thing is correct, it is a damn site better then McCain's permamnet war with everyone rhetoric.