VOXXI:WHY DOES BOLIVIA’S MORALES BELIEVE THAT THE PACIFIC ALLIANCE IS A CONSPIRACY?

Why does Bolivia's Morales believe that the Pacific Alliance is a conspiracy?
W. Alejandro Sanchez
VOXXI
October 17, 2013
Originally published: http://voxxi.com/2013/10/17/evo-morales-pacific-alliance-conspiracy/

Bolivian President Evo Morales has declared his distrust of the Pacific Alliance and the U.S. government as a conspiracy created “desde el norte” (“from the north,” meaning Washington) to divide the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a regional bloc of all 12 South American countries created in 2008.

Morales’ declarations, while inflammatory, have become staples of the head of state, who regularly accuses the United States and Western powers of orchestrating some conspiracy to overthrow him.

Moreover, the head of state also recently argued that the United States could try to carry out a military operation against the ALBA bloc, the brainchild of the late Hugo Chavez, of which Bolivia is a member.

Nevertheless, to specifically target the Pacific Alliance as part of this conspiracy requires a discussion of Latin American geopolitics in 2013.

As previously mentioned, the Bolivian President’s recent statement centered on the Pacific Alliance being part of a U.S.-conspiracy to stall UNASUR’s integration efforts and divide it.

A main reason for this argument is that UNASUR has not had a secretary general since August, when the Venezuelan Ali Rodriguez stepped down from this post, as its member states cannot not agree on a successor.

From Morales’ point of view, it is the Pacific Alliance members that also belong to UNASUR that are holding up this process.

Furthermore, Morales claims that this is an example of “well-designed policies” that are being carried out so that UNASUR will not advance. Furthermore, during his declarations to the press, Morales argued that“a small group of UNASUR presidents is no longer interested in carrying out economic, cultural and social integration.”

He also addressed the Pacific Alliance by name, stating that its aim is to advance the goals of the Washington Consensus, which have had little progress since the ambitious Free Trade Agreement of the Americas failed to become a reality. Hence, from Morales’ perspective, Washington is utilizing the Pacific Alliance as some kind of geopolitical weapon in order to derail UNASUR’s integration projects.

The Pacific Alliance and UNASUR

In a VOXXI commentary on May 23, I explained that the Pacific Alliance is foremost an economic bloc that supports free trade among its members, not a political entity. Nevertheless, it should be noted that all of the members of the Alliance are U.S.-friendly nations: Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

In addition, Costa Rica has been accepted to become a new member and it also boasts a Washington-friendly government (exemplified by President Obama’s visit to San Jose in May).

Therefore, it is understandable that Morales recognizes that the aforementioned nations that object to UNASUR initiatives are also members of the Alliance, and because this bloc is known for having U.S.-friendly governments, then the U.S. may be somehow orchestrating UNASUR’s demise by using the Pacific Alliance as some kind of proxy.

The situation becomes more problematic as La Paz-Washington relations have been marred by diplomatic incidents during Morales’ presidency.

For example, this past May, the Bolivian president expelled USAID from Bolivia. Moreover, this past July, the Bolivian presidential plane, which was transporting Morales, was not authorized to fly over Spain; the aircraft was then forced to land in Austria.

The reason for this incident was that, according to Spanish authorities, Washington told Madrid that the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden may have been hiding in Morales’ plane as he returned from a summit in Moscow.

On the other hand, to assume that Washington is the sole reason why South American nations cannot come together under the UNASUR umbrella (i.e. trying to agree on a new secretary general for the organization), is an oversimplification of South American geopolitics specifically and Latin American geopolitics as a whole.

The alphabet soup of different regional blocs that currently exist in South America has a mixed record of successes which can be “blamed” on a number of issues that do not revolve solely on the U.S.

For instance, MERCOSUR’s inertia can be blamed on Argentina’s protectionist economy, while the Andean Community’s stagnation can be blamed on a lack of interest by its decreasing number of members to carry out joint integration initiatives (though the Andean Community passports are a novel idea).

Moreover, even though the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), begun with great fanfare, little has happened to integrate its numerous members of two very different regions.

Nevertheless, the recent Declaration of Paramaribo (named after Suriname’s capital, where UNASUR held a summit this past August), provides examples of UNASUR members  having a common stance on issues like Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands and Ecuador’s dispute with the oil company Chevron.

Ergo, for President Morales to assume that certain UNASUR leaders are no longer interested in regional integration, or that the U.S. has (once again) the role of hemispheric puppeteer, is an overstatement.

Blouin Beat: Correa’s PR hire highlights Ecuador’s shaky foreign policy

Correa's PR hire highlights Ecuador's shaky foreign policy
W. Alejandro Sanchez
Blouin Beat: World
July 19, 2013
Originally published: http://blogs.blouinnews.com/blouinbeatworld/2013/07/19/correas-pr-hire-highlights-ecuadors-shaky-foreign-policy/

U.S.-Ecuador relations have become tangled. In June, president Rafael Correa made headlines when he  offered NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (who has been living in an airport terminal in Moscow for weeks), political asylum. This was considered an attempt by Correa to demonstrate that he was not controlled by “el imperio” (the empire, as Washington is labeled by several left-leaning Latin American governments). But Quito ultimately withdrew its offer and, in baffling recent news, has hired a public relations firm, Van Scoyoc Associates (VSA), based in Washington, D.C., to improve its relations with the U.S. government.

The Snowden proffer was not an isolated incident. Since Correa assumed the presidency in 2007, one of his leadership trademarks has been diplomatic clashing with Washington. In 2009, he famously terminated the U.S.’s lease with Ecuador regarding a military facility in Manta. The base had been an important part of Washington’s efforts to combat drug trafficking in South America. In June, in a move largely overshadowed by the Snowden affair, Ecuador terminated a bilateral trade agreement with Washington, the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (the ATPDEA) — though it is worth noting that the treaty was close to expiring and the U.S. Congress was unlikely to renew it. The cancellation of ATPDEA occurred essentially simultaneously to Correa offering Snowden asylum in his country. Hence, both initiatives were interpreted as back-to-back acts of defiance against Washington’s historical, but currently changing, influence over Latin America.

While the Snowden affair was supposed to showcase Correa as a leader who could pose a viable challenge the U.S., as the late Hugo Chávez had successively (and successfully) done, the Ecuadorian leader ended up worsening his position. As Snowden waited in a Moscow airport, some of Correa’s own government officials called into question the rationality of offering him asylum. Moreover, rumors started spreading that there was concern within the Ecuadorian government that it wasWikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, who was the puppet master and was coordinating Snowden’s trip to Quito. (Assange himself has been living in Ecuador’s embassy in London for over a year to avoid a possible extradition to Sweden).

Given this complicated situation, VSA’s staff will certainly have their hands full if they aim to improve Washington-Quito relations. According to reports, the contract between the Ecuadorian government and this D.C.-based PR firm will last six months and will cost $300,000. The public relations company’s goal is to “provide counsel to the Embassy of Ecuador on strengthening the Embassy’s ties to the United States government and relevant U.S. institutions.”

Since Snowden did not manage to fly to Ecuador, there is room for improving diplomatic relations between the two governments, particularly as media attention has quickly switched gears to other Western Hemispheric issues (it’s currently fixated in as the North Korea-bound ship that was stopped in Panama, carrying Cuban weapons). Van Scoyoc will probably want to lobby key U.S. government officials that handle commercial issues — such as the new U.S. Trade Representative,Michael Froman — and highlight the advantages of continuing trade ties with the South American nation. Imports of agricultural and nursery products (particularly flowers) to the U.S. will probably be one of the cornerstones of renewed bilateral relations, should VSA be successful.

But if the Snowden affair and the hire of a D.C.-headquartered PR firm have shown anything, it is the lack of consistency in Ecuador’s foreign policy. These recent contradictory decisions make analysts and scholars alike wonder exactly how Ecuador’s foreign policy decisions are being formulated. What kind of advice is Correa receiving from his foreign minister Ricardo Patiño, or from his ambassador to the U.S., Nathalie Cely? Indeed, even as ATPDEA was falling apart, Cely published an op-ed in the Huffington Post this past June discussing (and generally advocating for) U.S.-Ecuador trade relations. That’s what you call a mixed message.

If Correa was hoping that offering Snowden asylum would be a milestone in his presidential term and would cement his international pedigree within Latin America and the ALBA bloc, he made a severe tactical miscalculation. He’s laying out a hefty chunk of change to help rectify that error. But every day that his administration delays rebuilding a unified foreign-policy message is going to cost him even more.

Quoted in: South China Morning Post: Edward Snowden may be one step closer to Venezuela

"Edward Snowden may be one step closer to Venezuela"
Article by Danny Lee
W. Alejandro Sanchez
South China Morning Post
World
July 10, 2013
Originally published: http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1279839/edward-snowden-may-be-one-step-closer-venezuela

Edward Snowden was supposedly one step closer to taking refuge in Venezuela on Wednesday and ending his state of limbo in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, but hours later confusion reined.

It all started with senior Russian politician Aleksey Pushkov saying that Edward Snowden had reportedly accepted an offer of asylum from Venezuela.

Pushkov, the chair of Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, was than contradicted by Wikileaks claiming Snowden had not yet come to a decision on the matter.

The report and denial ignited a flurry of intrigue and speculation on social media networks.

With Caracas’ support for the American fugitive, it amounts to a “public relations” campaign designed to antagonise Washington further, dragging relations to a new low, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs’ Alejandro Sanchez.

“[Maduro is attempting to show he is] the true heir of Chavez, and he is not afraid of Washington’s potential wrath for accepting Snowden,” he said.

[Maduro is attempting to show he is] the true heir of Chavez, and he is not afraid of Washington’s potential wrath for accepting Snowden

COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS’ ALEJANDRO SANCHEZ

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro could play up to anti-US rhetoric and wheel out the whistleblower as a trophy prize – not wanting to miss an opportune photo opportunity with Snowden.

Overall, Venezuela has nothing to gain and a lot to lose in providing a place of sanctuary for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, according to the US-based Latin American expert.

“If Venezuela’s economy continues to take a turn for the worse and Maduro is forced to revisit his relationship with the US, in order to re-structure his country’s debt with the international community and commercial relations, Washington could then demand for Snowden to be extradited back to the US as part of the negotiations to improve bilateral relations.”

Currently, America is Venezuela’s biggest consumer of oil exports. Sanchez explained that oil is “the cornerstone of exports and the economy” a whole. At risk is 900,000 barrels of crude exported to the States every day. Any oil-based sanctions could precipitate a worsening economic outlook, giving leverage to Washington to issue a wish list.

In the face of a showdown with Washington, it opens the door for renegotiation, and high on the list will be repatriating US citizen Timothy Hallet, arrested and accused of being a spy.

“The 'earnings' from giving Snowden asylum are mostly symbolic,” Sanchez said, referring to the drawbacks from being seen as a protector of last resort to Snowden.

VOXXI:Why is Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa granting Edward Snowden asylum?

Why is Ecuador's President Rafael Correa granting Edward Snowden Asylum
W. Alejandro Sanchez
VOXXI
June 25, 2013
Originally published: http://www.voxxi.com/why-ecuador-edward-snowden-asylum/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=jo

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who publicized a surveillance program carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA), may spend his immediate future in Ecuador, which has agreed to grant him asylum.

This recent development has put the small South American nation at the center of the global media, something akin to what happened in June 2012, when Quito granted asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

What is the logic behind Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s recent foreign policy decisions, particularly his granting asylum to individuals such as Snowden?

A Collision Course?

Correa’s lengthy presidency (he was first elected in 2006) has been characterized by his recurrent clashes with Washington and his intention to distance his county from U.S. influence. The country made global media headlines in 2012 when it granted asylum to Julian Assange, founder of the website Wikileaks and wanted by the Swedish government on charges of sexual assault.

Assange, an Australian citizen, has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past year, and it is unclear if he will leave the embassy anytime soon.

Now, Ecuador may be the future home of Edward Snowden. Snowden is currently in Moscow, where he should have boarded a flight that would have taken him to Havana, Cuba and then to Ecuador. However, the American whistleblower reportedly was not on his scheduled flight to Cuba.

The Edward Snowden affair is not the first time Washington and Quito have clashed. Back in 2009, President Correa refused to renew an agreement that allowed the U.S. military to operate a base in Manta. This base had been a critical cornerstone of Washington’s anti-drug operations in South America.

Most recently, Ecuador declared its intention to leave the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), which is based in downtown Washington. The IADB is an autonomous agency within the Organization of American States, which has been historically critiqued for being Washington’s watchdog over the Western Hemisphere.

Quito justifies its decision by arguing that Ecuador must focus its multilateral defense relations on fellow South American nations, particularly via the Union of South American Nations.

Although Quito has decided to leave the IADB, it is simultaneously trying to influence other Western Hemisphere agencies. Namely, Ecuador recently put forth suggestions for major reforms within the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which included moving the Commissions’ headquarters from Washington to Argentina.

Correa takes Center Stage

The question is: Why did Correa accept Edward Snowden when he knew the United States would disapprove? The South American leader was re-elected this past February with a comfortable margin – he obtained 56 percent of the vote while his closest opponent, Guillermo Lasso, obtained only 23 percent.

This striking victory (which suggests that he is supported by the majority of the population) may have emboldened him to execute other aggressive foreign policy decisions. Even before granting asylum to Assange and Snowden, Correa was regarded as having an anti-Washington ideology. Recent events only further reinforce this view.

Nevertheless, Ecuador is a small country with limited natural resources to make it a global economic powerhouse. It does possess significant quantities of oil, which has helped the country survive the global financial crisis.

Ecuadorian financial officials have continuously praised the country’s economic growth in recent years, but while economic stability affords Correa the luxury of focusing on foreign policy instead of domestic economic issues, his country’s oil reserves are not abundant enough to be utilized as a diplomatic weapon to gain allies, like the late Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela.

The extent to which Ecuador is isolating itself from the international community is debatable. Certainly, Washington and countries across Europe will not look upon the decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden with friendly eyes.

One can only wonder how Ecuador’s foreign policy is being debated in Quito, and what type of advice Correa is receiving from his ministerial cabinet, including the minister of foreign affairs, Ricardo Patiño, and diplomatic corps when it comes to his recent decisions.

On the other hand, such bold moves that upset “el imperio” (as the United States is commonly labeled) will likely make the nations of ALBA (Chavez’s pet project)—including Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela—declare their diplomatic support for Ecuador. In a March meeting, ALBA nations expressed their support for Ecuador in its ongoing dispute with the oil company Chevron.

It is likely that La Paz, Havana, and Caracas will similarly display their support for Correa’s decision to accept Snowden.

At the same time, it is debatable to what extent Washington will be able to exercise pressure on Ecuador for its role in the Edward Snowden scandal. Washington could push for some kind of trade sanction, but Correa clearly has little interest in cementing trade relations with the United States, as Quito is seeking more integration with fellow ALBA states.

For example, this past April, ALBA’s members came together for a summit in Guayaquil to discuss further integration initiatives, such as the group’s virtual currency (the Sucre), and the creation of a new agency, Eco ALBA, to promote financial aid between the bloc’s members.

Understandably, future analyzes will debate whether the Ecuadorian president should be regarded as Chavez’s successor, and if he is indeed actively trying to embrace this role. While Correa is not trying to become the new Chavez, he is nonetheless trying to make a mark and give the impression that his country is no “pushover.”

But because Ecuador is not profiting in any real way from accepting Snowden, other than by angering the United States even further, the real question here is who is formulating Ecuador’s foreign policy – is it created by a consensus of senior policymakers, or solely by Correa.

Read more: http://www.voxxi.com/why-ecuador-edward-snowden-asylum/#ixzz2XFvg7bPK

YaleJournal.org: The Clash of Civilizations and Latin America: Twenty Years Later

The Clash of Civilizations and Latin America: Twenty Years Later
W. Alejandro Sanchez
YaleJournal.org
April 29, 2013
Originally published: http://yalejournal.org/2013/04/29/the-clash-of-civilizations-and-latin-america-twenty-years-later/

In 1993, political scientist Samuel Huntington published a provocative article entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs.[i] Written shortly after the end of the Cold War, Huntington speculated on the future of global conflict. Huntington argued that, in the future, nations across the world would unite along rough cultural lines, and future conflicts would occur mainly between these unified “civilizations,” such as the Western world (i.e. the United States, Canada and Western Europe) and the Muslim world. Huntington argued that Latin America would unite, from Mexico (which he labeled a “torn country”) to Argentina, along with Cuba and the Dominican Republic.[ii] For Huntington, the unifying denominator among these states was their legacy of Spanish colonialism (along with Brazil, a former Portuguese colony, which he also placed in the group). Twenty years after Huntington put forward his famous theory, is Latin America any closer to being a “unified civilization” than it was in 1993?

Over the past two decades, new Latin American organizations have appeared with the goal of promoting regional integration. The Western Hemisphere now has an alphabet soup of such entities, with overlapping membership. This includes South American blocs such as the Common Market of the South, the Andean Community, and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Created in 2008, UNASUR stands as an interesting experiment of regional integration as its membership includes all twelve South American states, including Guyana and Suriname (which traditionally have aligned themselves with the Caribbean). There are other similar entities farther north, including the Central American Integration System, the Association of Caribbean States, and the Caribbean Community. These three entities also share overlapping membership and integration objectives.

But it was the appearance of heads of state in the past decade such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and the late President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela that raised the question about the ideological turn that the region was taking. These leaders constituted the most vociferous of a new wave of anti-Washington and ideologically left-leaning governments. Chávez and his allies even created their own organization, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a loose alliance whose ideological pillars primarily include distancing themselves from the United States’ historical influence over the Western Hemisphere and promoting regional integration. ALBA was founded in part as a response to the U.S.-proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas; however, this agency has had a mixed record of success. Its axis revolved around Venezuela’s petro-dollars, which Chávez utilized as a foreign policy weapon. With the Venezuelan leader’s passing, the fate of ALBA as a united alliance remains unclear.

The 2010 creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is the closest example of the Western Hemisphere’s attempt to unite as a single entity, following Huntington’s theory. It is noteworthy     that CELAC is an ambitious organization in that it combines both Latin American and Caribbean members. For Huntington, the Anglophone Caribbean constitutes a different “civilization,” distinct from that of Latin America. Nevertheless, we are far from witnessing the appearance of a unified “civilization” in the region. Even CELAC’s future success as an integration mechanism is questionable given that Latin American governments are historically reluctant to give up their sovereignty to supranational entities.

Huntington theorized that the world’s “civilizations” will ultimately enter into conflict with each other. As previously mentioned, a critical determinant leading up to CELAC’s and ALBA’s creation was to distance its members from Washington’s historical influence over the inter-American system and to create alternatives to the Organization of American States. Neither the United States nor Canada were invited to join CELAC. However, in spite of inflammatory declarations by Chávez, Latin America and the Caribbean are hardly on a collision course with Washington or other global regions. The 2012 Arab World-South America summit in Peru and the 2013 CELAC-European Union summit in Chile exemplify Latin America’s general desire to improve commercial ties with other global regions. Latin American nations have also continued to promote close relations with the United States, as exemplified by the 2011 ratification of trade agreement between Washington with Panama and Colombia.  Moreover, countries with Washington-friendly governments like Chile, Mexico and Peru are parts of the U.S.-inspired Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Additionally, President Barack Obama traveled to Mexico and Costa Rica in May 2013 where he attended a meeting of Central American heads of state (members of the Central American Integration System). During the summit, Central American leaders asked for greater U.S. involvement in the fight against drug trafficking in the region, while the Mexican leadership supported President Obama’s proposed changes to the U.S. immigration system that would allow undocumented citizens to legally stay in that country. While no high-profile agreements were made, such diplomatic trips additionally demonstrate how most Latin American governments want to expand ties with Washington, rather than seek confrontation, as Huntington theorized.

In his conclusions, Huntington acknowledged that “civilizations” will not “become a single coherent political entity” and that conflict between states of the same “civilization” could occur.[iii] Indeed, a simple desire to distance themselves from Washington is hardly enough to make over 30 countries in the Americas enter into an alliance that could unify the “civilization” while forgetting historical animosities. (Also, most Western Hemisphere governments do not have the same anti-Washington stance as say, Venezuela’s government under Chávez). Additionally, there remains a plethora of territorial disputes and occasional tensions among regional states (i.e. between Peru and Chile, Nicaragua and Costa Rica or Colombia and Venezuela).

Latin American and Caribbean nations are divided over how to shape their relations with Washington, as countries such as Mexico, Peru, and Colombia seek closer commercial and security ties, while the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador seek to further distance themselves from the United States’ influence. These different foreign policy objectives and national interests demonstrate that there are plenty of issues to be resolved before we might see Huntington’s vision of a “Latin American and Caribbean civilization” emerge.[iv]

*W. Alejandro Sánchez Nieto is a Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) where he focuses on geopolitics, military and cyber security issues, particularly regarding Latin America and the Caribbean. His commentaries on Latin American-related issues appear in VOXXI and he is a regular blogger for Blouin News. His analyses have been published in numerous refereed journals including Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defence Studies, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, European Security, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Globalizations.

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[i] Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), Summer 1993, 22-49. The article was then expanded into a book: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

[ii] Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” 42.

[iii] Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” 48.

[iv] W. Alejandro Sanchez, "Whatever happened to South America's splendid little wars?," Small Wars & Insurgencies 22 (2), 2011, 322–351.